This is what it's going to be, this time out, on this latest update of the one, the only true *aqua musings* blog on the wondrous web...! And it is done with a purpose - not a porpoise, no... In order to circumvent the tangent that ''Aqua Anna'' is obviously bent on giving this blog, whenever she hijacks it... Yes, I can imagine that I did encourage her (excite her?) and perhaps even enticed her into it - with all the Aquaficionadas she saw frolicking around here, over time... But come on now; there is a limit!
I give the top nods to the lyrical, luminous Aquaficionadas, like this:
While she outright lusts for -yes; lusts for- the ones like this:
But that is another story...
This remains, primarily and foremostly (?) *my* blog: my prerogative and my musings about all things aqua! And that is Aqua as in the angel, right: a luminous aquaficionado if there ever was one! Not necessarily aqua as in Aquaman - duh! He doesn't need me; DC doesn't! DC's beyond help, actually; they've got Geoff trying to salvage things there - Geoff and Jim! Geoff (to Jim): "he's dead, Jim!" Lest it is "IT"... hmm? Whatever... And Aquaman? He's still got all of his finny friends - does he not? He's still got Mera, that Eskimo girl (no, not the one who became an Elemental, oh-so-briefly - now retconned out of existence, most probably...!) and, yes, he still has whoever's behind that most blasphemous "shrine"... ugh! It moved -sailed off- to warmer waters: social media - Twitter! Never mind the fact that, meanwhile, the state of the actual seas continues to deteriorate...
I thought of turning the tide here with talk of another character that certainly fits in perfectly - but that we never really mentioned before, somehow! Given the title of this blog, of course, it is not entirely surprising that we'd focus on all things aqua - Aquaman, Aquawoman, Aqualad, Aquarius, Aquarian, Aqua Bats, Aqua Fresh, Aqua Velva... But there is certainly something to be said about one cosmic character that rivals Aqua The Angel himself (?) in sheer power and Aquaman One Million in pizzazz - and we do mean a Marvel, yes... but no, not that inbred with pointy ears --- come on!!! (That dud is not worthy evenwhen he's outfitted with that dumbo Infinity Gauntlet, a cosmic Rubik cube *and* the Anti-Life Equation on top of all that! You may add -or not- a silver conic hat with that - as seen below! LOL)
No, folks - we are talking of no one else other than the Silver Surfer himself here - somebody Jay would have approved and perhaps even say ''cool'' about...! (That darn cone of a hat does indeed appear to be made of silver though - argh! Bah - it's probably cheap aluminium foil or, cheaper still, some fool's gold type of thing worth nothing like make-believe adamantium or vibranium! LOL)
But back to the Surfer!
The Silver Surfer who did, actually, also beat Aquaman to the punch in terms of live action adaptation - despite being, roughly, 100 times more difficult to accomplish! (But that is no big deal, really: Popeye, Sinbad, The Little Mermaid, Ariel, Aquamarine, Nemo, Captain Nemo, Jack Sparrow, Davy Jones, Bluebeard, Yellow Beard, Redbeard, Rescator, Jaws, Flipper, Dory, Ahab, Quequeeg, Starbuck, Moby Dick of course, Fathom, smart sharks, Abe Sapien, The Fisherman, Gillman, his Shape of Water clone, The Waterworld Mariner, Disney's water-downed Atlantis and even Spongebob Squarepants ALL got to the Cinematic Realm -once referred to as the Silver Screen- before Aquaman & Mera, so...) ''Silver shine stretching to the seas'' sang that other Ryan (the better one, actually; not the goofball who happens to be married to Blake Lively - for the tide & time being) in a D.C. film - meaning a Damien Chazelle film, here... of course! ''La La Land'' - which could be one of Aqua Anna's all-time favorites if viewed as a mere prequel to Emma Stone's turn as a lesbian tennis player in Battle of the Sexes which was, indeed, her next big role, in Tinseltown continuity...
Genesis sang of a ''Silver Rainbow'' way back in the exceptional Eighties - a song that, once I discovered it years later, inspired me a great deal in the concoction, plotting and edification of my own Aqua Force (although not as much as the fantastical ''Home By The Sea'' which was found on the exact same LP - what a great album it was; the best Genesis ever put out, in my humble but luminous opinion! Their 12th overall - and second with Phil Collins as lead singer, I do believe! But that's another story...)
And there is, always, that other Silver Rainbow --- pardon: ''Man On The Silver Mountain'' by classic, seminal, spectacular Seventies band... Rainbow! There's nothing like it...
Although Norrin Radd would rather be a fan of this one, I suspect:
...for obvious reasons...
Hmm... maybe not that last one there...
But anyway!
Silver Surfer is one of the classic characters from that
much-maligned form of art - sequential art!
Many are those who will still, to this day,
dismiss it with the back of their hand
even though it is the source material that has injected new life
into the famed seventh art's otherwise sagging box office results!
Imagine that: they cannot even hope for more
than 200 million dollars return
on any other film release; yet, any single one of those ''comic-booky'' films
stands a realistic chance of approaching the 900 million-1 billion range!
Even such an oddity as a Lion King/Batman rip-off!!!
No wonder there is no turning back, now, for movie studios -
they'll keep churning out super-heroes movies!
Much to the despair of purists like Jodie Foster -
Aqua Anna's own super-hero...!!!
But that is another story too...
Sometimes, however, the end results are very much odd,
misbegotten, mixed successes at best.
Somehow, three of the greatest teams of all-time
have seen their films come out as such:
Justice League... X-Men... and the Fantastic Four!
(... so *not* holding high hopes for the Doom Patrol, Titans
or my own Aqua Force!)
In those two Fantastic Four films produced in the early 2000s,
mostly regarded as failed attempts to capture the alleged grandeur of the source material, we get to see the Silver Surfer, eventually - a brooding, tragic figure originally come to Earth announcing its imminent doom - much like an angel of the End Times will.
Only he is alone of his kind - and without wings or halo!
The Surfer is very much like
a wingless angel indeed, come from above
to help humanity - save it, very nearly
although he is not quite allowed to do so;
just like actual angels are only our
heavenly attendants, and not our saviors.
We have One Savior:
remember?
At least Jesus The Christ has had
many more film adaptations
than this sad Surfer did! Thank GOD...
They did successfully translate onto cinematic form the essence of that "wingless angel" though - in that also much-maligned film production featuring that quartet there... Let's have a look:
In his "without wings" condition, he is much like Clarence in "It's A Wonderful Life" - or luciferian, outright. Yet he redeems himself; fighting the good fight! In that regard, he becomes quite like DC's Phantom Stranger instead - a stranger in a strange world, marooned here when he doesn't belong here at all. He belongs nowhere, really: the Beatles' Nowhere Man far more faithfully so than that old TV show time forgot ever could be...!
Fab Four > Fantastic Four - 4 ever!
Also very sad: but it is the way it is...!
Oh well...
Silver Surfer has suffered greatly
-much like Aquaman-
due to his "good guy image"
in recent years...
They think good guys are soft...
too much of a nice guy types...
in the worst cases of denigration
they will call them "gay"...
Although they are clearly superior
to all of the favorites of the day,
good guys like that
will be projected to lose
most if not all of their battles
against inferior quarry;
like Iceman, lower right
and this "Monica" there,
lower left - whoever she is!
The way the character was conceived and written, originally,
it is conceivable, too: he would just walk away
(or, in fact, surf away - in the sky.)
and let Icegayman and Mytilenia think of themselves
as the victors there - or work it out between them!
He is just that kind of a nice guy -
weary of trivial belligerence.
Much like a Dr. Manhattan.
It is simply very unfortunate that the so-called king
(king of comics - as in comic-bookies, Johnny)
Jack Kirby himself (not Stan Lee) could only think
of one possible name for him: Silver Surfer
thus pinning him forevermore with the lamentable initials
that are evocative for all the wrong reasons: "S.S."
(no: no one thinks of the OSS - ever.)
He still projects that cosmic, angelic aura - in spite of that.
So, yes, indeed, that Silver Surfer dude
is an angel of a kind
and one with a proclivity for the aquatic
-if only by the looks of it-
that is far more charming than, say,
the penchant perceived in Lobo, for example!
... well, it is all
in the eye of the beholder, really...
ANYHOW...
Next time he's on the big screen
-when he finally makes it, officially, to the MCU-
I could see Vin Diesel in the role:
why not? It's light years better than Groot
and if S.S. was all CGI the first time around,
now, CGI could be used to make Vin
look younger... leaner... ever whiter too!
And isn't it apparent that S.S. was,
from the very beginning,
an allegory for slavery
and the emancipation
of a man recently freed from bondage?
A black man can play the Surfer
-it is better suited here, actually,
than it is in Jack Kirby's other sports
or sports-inspired character:
Black Racer... or Skier-
albeit a bleached black man
bleached to the cosmic extreme.
Let's dance to that...
Oh, and to go back to that angelic Aqua vibe, in conclusion - do not, I repeat, do not seek out aqua-angel.co.za (even though it promises "water treatment through reverse osmosis... water filtration... water purification" - nothing less than that!) --- their site has been infected by a virus! So sad...
Zimbabwe - it's not Nigeria, but still...
Kind of brings back fears and nightmarish visions of water contamination - perpetrated on purpose, in an evil scheme of biochemical or bacteriological terrorism or warfare...
I always firmly believed that anyone who didn't like the ''super-hero'' (though really ''fantasy reality character'' would be a far better term to categorize them all) known as ''Aquaman'' to the masses - well, via their simple dislike of such a character, they simply proved to lack imagination, vision, refinement, perception, intuitiveness - depth, without making any pun whatsoever here...
In one word, the better word for it all: soul.
For only a borderline soulless creature fails to see the spirituality of the sea; and such characters truly embody that - the ocean, in all of its mystery and fascination it can exert upon us all. Everyone of us wishes to be at the beach, but only a few are truly mesmerized by the rhythm of the waves, the lure of the tides, the great mystery that is the sea. Only those ''souls of the sea'' can get what I'm alluding at; for they are, verily, soulmates of the ocean and, thus, its sons and daughters...
The recently deceased Paul Walker was another such soul of the sea, to a lesser degree, however much greater than the newly-trained to surf Gerard Butler may be; both of them would belong to a sub-category just above that to which the above-mentioned 'Sea King' character and all others like him are constrained - and that, in and by itself, is not exactly praise, by any stretch of the imagination.
In sharp contrast, one of the most recent record-holding freedivers, the late Patrick Musimu, unquestionably was another one of those true blue souls ''of the sea''... So were Mark Foo, Bob Simmons and Eddie Aikau, to name but three. Many others, perhaps most notably breath-holding record holder Stig Severinsen, retired queen of freediving Tanya Streeter and/or Jacques-Yves Cousteau or Vasco Da Gama himself, have been far more fortunate in their indulgence of this love for the sea that consumes them; yet, none of these are a real-life counterpart to the make-believe Aquaman, Marine Man, Captain Nauticus, Undersea Knight, Sea Ghost, Mera, Marella The Aquawoman, Marina The Aquagirl, Seadragon, Sub-Mariner or Amphibion. They are nonetheless the closest to an Odysseus, Ulysses, Aegir, Poseidon or Neptune history will ever get to see. Each adventure out to sea could be their last; and they accept that risk and will continue getting out there, always. Because in the sea is also their soul - and, no; not everyone can fully get that.
One who always saw the sea for all that it is, was Jay. He took to surfing as if he was born in the waves - and, in a sense, he was, right off the coast of Santa Cruz, where everyone fondly remembers him to this day, and always will. Now there's an example of someone who took to the waves due to his fascination with it: he would count them, as a child! The closest of all, arguably, to being ''king of the sea'' out of all the notables mentioned and not mentioned here; Jay was... and is... in a class all of his own, on top of that tidal wave. He garnered nationwide attention for his first few exploits: riding that huge wave, surviving the wipe out, continuing on a promising career of soul surfing and free diving, as Jay's reputation grew throughout the world, which brought him to the Maldives in 2001...
We skipped the 10th anniversary (leaving to others, more suited, to cover that) - but, since, roughly two years later, both a book and a film came out on Jay - we take this opportunity of the unlikelier-to-be commemorated (in such a grand way, at any rate) anniversary of his untimely passing (the 13th) to salute, as we did back in 2001 (...) this greatest of soul surfers... of soul searchers... of souls.
What all sea adventurers should be: so much more than a make-believe one. Jay's story deserved to be retold and it was in a magnificent way, in the recent film we salute, also, below...
The following are NOT in my "Aqua Force" either...! *LOL*
~~~ Splash ~
Not to be confused with this Splash nor with this one! Or my very own Mariamar...
Marine Boy, Neptina and another Splash-er...
Deep Blue/Indigo I don`t really want, yo...
And Marrina... Ah, no go!
Not the Octonauts - and not this Aquaman either:
Atalon... nah!
and none of the following either - for obvious reasons!
Hmm... I think I`m forgetting some Sub-Altern here...?
no - that`s not it!
Submarine Man
... ah... also Submarine Man!
And Michael Turner's Fathom is off-limits! Ask around - you'll see that I'm not bastardizing the facts at all...! But I might invite Shark-Man though... *lol*
~My Mer-name is Glaucus Bioluminescence. Wow ~ even the Mer~folk agree that I am luminous! ~They identify me with a minor sea~deity though: Glaukos has nothing to do with glaucoma, at least ~~~ (thank God! The REAL GOD!) ~~~~ Oh... no; Glaukos gave its color to glaucoma... :( ~~ well, says they! ~~~~~~~~ Aegir, Poseidon, Triton and scores of others are more powerful than him, anyway... so there! Everything will be fine! The Aquaficionadas are on my side! :) ~ Take The Merfolk Name Generator Test anyway! ~ Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator.
... An LP Anthem to the end of a childhood dream...? By LP...
... and assorted aquatic tunes for your listening pleasure... (l.p.)...!
But now, for your reading pleasure... ISSUU - brought to you by... an Aquaficionada!
Look, below, on this luminous aqua-map: PROOF that the Earth is indeed 70% SEA WATER! Weep, batty ones! ;)
Splash ~ 
