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Batman: Public Enemy #1

10 Oct

October 10, 2012

We’ve met Mark Wayne Williams before. He was arrested hanging from the side of a building.

Before I get into the Bat-news, it needs to be said that this is a perfect example of the Wayne as a middle name rule.

From News of the Weird: It only occurred to me in the early 1990s that “Wayne” was a popular middle name among a few of the most heinous murderers of our time, e.g., the clown John Wayne Gacy (who killed almost three dozen boys and young men in the late 1970s and buried most of them beneath the floorboards of his Des Plaines, Ill., home) and Elmer Wayne Henley (sentenced to six consecutive life terms in 1974 in Houston for his role, with ringleader Dean Allen Corll, in the murders of 27 young men). I began to publish periodic lists in 1996, and soon readers made sure I never missed a one that made the news.

The News of the Weird list, as of 2008, had over 300 names.

Luckily for us, Mark Wayne Williams bucked the trend.

This never happened in the comic books. Imagine the indignity- the police confiscated Batman’s costume! I hope he was wearing clean underoos.

I’ve never been a fan of cosplay. Except at Halloween, my favorite holiday bar none, the idea of putting on a costume and acting like a cartoon character has never appealed to me.  And worse, there are people who put on superhero costumes and create their own identities to do good. Strange as I find the idea of dressing in a silly suit with a silly name and prowling the streets, many of these people actually help the populace. They help feed the homeless, for example, or escort people through dangerous neighborhoods. How they don’t get their own asses kicked I don’t know but they do it.

Vigilantes are a different story. Society- not to mention the police- take a bad view of and look down upon them. For every group like The Guardian Angels, who have been doing great work aiding (and being recognized by) the NYC police department for decades, there are a dozen people of groups facing serious jail time for enforcing their own brand of justice, usually very violently and illegally. You simply can’t take the law into your own hands.

All of this brings me to Mark Wayne Williams. The Petoskey Batman embodies the worst of cosplay and vigilantism. He totally buys into it. I won’t go so far as to say that Williams thinks he’s Batman but he certainly thinks that Batman is the embodiment of his idea of justice. Batman once said that “criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot” and while that may have true back in the 1930’s- and I have my doubts- it is not true today.  This man is not inspiring fear in anyone.

Nor does he seem to be pursuing justice.

I want to know what he was doing at the crime scene. The last time he appeared in Mr. Blog’s Tepid Ride he was conducting surveillance, which even from an untrained person could potentially be useful.  Here he was investigating a crime scene. I’m taking some liberty here. The article does not say what he was doing; he was most likely standing there striking poses. I doubt his utility belt had any criminologist gear.

“Batman” clearly needs some help. I’m not sure jail time is right for this guy, though he did break the law and obstruct police activities. His heart is in the right place, it is his head that needs help. In comics Bruce Wayne is very psychologically well-adjusted; in the real world Mark Wayne Williams clearly needs some help. Rather than jail, I hope his arrest leads to his getting the kind of therapy or counseling he needs.

Besides, now that his secret identity has been made public, he’ll need police protection from all his underworld arch-enemies. I only hope that when it comes to trial, District Attorney Harvey Dent goes easy on him.

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What would Miss Manners say?

4 Oct

October 4, 2012

I was faced with an etiquette dilemma yesterday. Etiquette is an interesting subject. There are rules for every situation. Which fork do I eat my salad with? How long do I wait before writing a thank you note? Should I tell my date she has food stuck in her teeth? Stuff like that. Not that I really care. These are the stupid rules that I don’t live by. Which fork do I eat my salad with? Whichever is in my hand. How long do I wait before I write a thank you note? I dunno, never wrote one. I said “thank you” at the time the event I was thanking them for occurred. Should I tell my date she has food stuck in her teeth? Not if I want her to put out.

But I do have to admit that once in a while I am faced with some social situation that I wish there was a handbook for. For example, I think there was a dead man in the men’s room yesterday.

At times like this I wish Mr. Know-It-All was still around because this is right up his alley.

Let me say a (mercifully very) few words about my bathroom philosophy. In a nutshell, I am all business. I don’t talk or socialize, I don’t conduct business, I go in and do what I am there to do and leave as soon as possible. OK, maybe I’ll send a text while I’m siting there but who hasn’t done that? There is nothing enticing to me about the men’s room. I will therefore avoid anything less than clinical in this description. 

I went into the men’s room at The Company I Am employed by and was immediately struck, almost physically struck, by the smell. It was a stench the likes of which can only be found in Satan’s can of air freshener. In normal situations I’d turn around and use the facilities on another floor, but in this case I really had no choice. Not if I wanted to retain my dignity. So I went in and rushed to the urinal and yada yada yada the stink only got worse the longer I stayed there. So I rushed over to the sink (no matter how diabolical the odor I still wash my hands and you better too!) and as I was washing I looked in the mirror and had a view of the closed stalls behind me.

I thought I was alone. There was not a single sound, other than those I made, the whole time I was in there yet the mirror showed me the feet of a man in the stall. Nothing remarkable about the shoes. They were the average shoes you’d see on a businessman, and I am not enough of a lavatory detective to identify a man from his shoes in the bottom of the bathroom stall, nor do I care to be.

But they didn’t move.

The stink was only getting worse yet whatever was causing it was doing so soundlessly. The man in the stall seemed to be totally motionless. And the stink in the men’s room could only be caused by the rotting dead.  Either that or it was the stench that killed the guy and I wasn’t sticking around to find out.

I hurried out and went back to my desk.

What should I have done?

A- Ask the guy in the stall if he is OK.
This makes no sense. If he is fine then it will do no good to embarrass the guy by pointing out that he stinks like road kill. If he is sick then I sure don’t want to catch the evil effluence that he has. And if he is dead then the question is moot.

B- Inform someone that there is a dead man in the men’s room.
If I am wrong then all I have done is embarrass myself, not to mention the guy in the stall when security arrives to investigate.  And if he is dead then my filling out forms and spending time telling various authorities about how I found the corpse on the toilet will not do him any good, let alone me.

C- Do nothing and pretend you were never there.

C. I did C.

I never did find out if the guy was dead, but when I went back at the end of the day the bathroom had been sanitized to within an inch of its life.

 

For another men’s room etiquette issue, click here.

You know another guy who doesn’t follow social conventions? Larry David. Here is one of my favorite bits.

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