June is busting out all over

B2Keno = 12.5

So where the heck has the year gone already - it's June! Muggy weather for biking, though.

So, we have been seeing these superhero-type movies lately, like X-Men 3 and V for Vendetta, and it got me to thinking about the "Mo Movie Measure."

This measure, from the great Alison Bechtel's great comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, is a character's explanation that she only watches movies in which:

• 1) there are at least two female characters with names,
  
• 2) who talk to each other sometime in the course of the movie,
  
• 3) about something other than a man.

It seems a fairly simple standard, one that would reflect the breadth of human experience and some variety of characters and plot. It turns out the very few movies, even those with strong female characters, "mo measure" up.

Take those last two films. X-Men 3? If you count the brief exhortation from Storm to Rogue about "nothing being wrong with any of them," I guess so. V for Vendetta? Natalie Portman's Evey hardly talks to anyone besides V; can we count her being told to go get coffee by her boss in the TV station, or did we even get that woman's name?

Other recent films:

Princess and the Warrior (the Tom Twyker film) has some plot-advancing conversations between Franka Potente's Sissi and her female. co-worker at the asylum. Solid yes.

I guess there's a woman or two in Mountain Patrol Kekexili (the girlfriend, the daughter) the first serves only to reflect the character of one of the patrolman and the other doesn't speak. Nope.

I can't recall specifically if Odgoo, the main female chacter in Weeping Camel, ever talks to another woman - I guess maybe her mother, for a little bit, but most of the interactions are with the male family members. Maybe.

Transamerica works if you consider pre-operative Bree as female (which we should). Yes.

Team America World Police: Two of the puppet-ladies talk to each other, but IIRC, it's only about the man-puppets. Nope.

In 16 Blocks, there's Diane (the sister) and A.D.A. MacDonald, but they never talk to other women. This is a nope.

Try this measure on some of your favorite movies. It's surprising.

One TV show that has always met this measure in Otis's late and unlamented guilty pleasure, Charmed, in which the three witchy sisters often had conversations about fighting demons of all stripes. In the series "climax," the sisters are up against The Ultimate Power, which happens to reside in Billie, a typical WB hootchie-teen. In the penultimate episode, elder sister Piper puts the smackdown (both magical and physical) on Billie. All of which is a long preamble to today's

Annoying Animated Gif:

(Billie was such a hated character on the show that the Television without Pity discusssion boards celebrated her defeat and a poster compiled this "tribute" gif.
I actually dig it.)