I’m currently trying to come up with a plot that ties in every single summer movie this year. It’s tricky - there are a LOT of summer movies.

While I’m cooking that up, here’s a similar mashup from last summer. I’m actually pretty proud of this. Maybe prouder than I should be.

CHAPTER 1

It’s Bart Simpson’s eleventh birthday, and the family is driving to New York so he can tour the offices of Mad Magazine. Along the way, the car has been followed by owls trying to drop envelopes in the windows.

On the Brooklyn Bridge, they’re attacked by witches on broomsticks. The Simpsons don’t know it, but this is a group of Death Eaters, led by Bellatrix Lestrange. Spider-man swings in to help, trapping Lestrange in a web, but he’s outnumbered and soon overpowered. Just when it seems that he and the Simpsons are doomed, a gigantic boat rises out of the Hudson River. It’s the legendary Flying Dutchman, and it fires magical cannonballs that chase the witches away. The Simpsons are taken aboard the ship, and its captain introduces himself as Jack Sparrow, Professor for Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts.

Aboard the Dutchman, now safely underwater, Sparrow answers some questions. He explains that he’s hundreds of years old, immortal thanks to the Fountain of Youth. Apparently, a new prophesy says that in the final battle between Voldemort and Harry Potter, the winner will be decided by a first year wizard with yellow skin and spiky hair. Sparrow was sent by Dumbledore to escort Bart and his family safely to the school, before Voldemort could kill him. “I’m afraid you’ll all be living at Hogwarts for a while. Savvy?”

“Mmm,” says Homer. “Hog.”

Movies introduced in this chapter: The Simpsons, Harry Potter, Spider-Man 3, Pirates of the Caribbean

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I am a medium-rabid Apple fanboy, having started out on the Apple IIc (excuse me, //c) when I was a sperm. And, yes, I spent this morning reloading several liveblogs of Steve Jobs’s WWDC Keynote Address like a rat hitting the lever marked cocaine.

For those of you with, you know, lives, today saw the anouncement of the iPhone 3g as well as the very cool looking (though awfully named) Mobile Me sync and cloud-computing service. If you’re talking about the “Making Tech Things That Are Cooler Than Anyone Else’s Tech Things”, then Apple is winning.

But it strikes me that they’re losing the expectations game. If you read the Apple fanboy blogs (and, boy, do I read the Apple fanboy blogs) the fevered pitch of speculation leading up to the announcements managed to build a mountain so big God himself couldn’t lift it. In fact, I think nothing could have lived up to the process story.

(Much of the speculation happened to be inspired. My favorite was the so-called iTablet, a handheld computer about four times as big as the iPhone, with about the same feature set. I still think they should do that.)

And it further strikes me, since this is a pop culture blog, that this is the same problem that some summer movie blockbusters have been facing. The plots, the running times, the box office performance, the star salaries, the concession prices having to do with summer action tentpoles have become so bloated, that the actual content of the experience of going to the movies can’t compete with the hype.

Wrather is joined by Belinkie, Fenzel, Shechner, and Stokes to rate Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on a 5-whip scale. (Spoiler alert: The movie earns a “whip it”, but not a “whip it good.”)

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Wrather, Stokes, Sheely, and Fenzel overthink summer blockbuster Iron Man.

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Wrather, Stokes, Sheely, and Fenzel preview summer movie releases through June in the latest episode of the OTI Podcast. Yes, some of them have been released already. Deal with it.

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