No Need to Drag Me. I'll Go Willingly.

As I've surveyed the current state of horror movies, I've discovered that the genre is totally letting me down. The last original horror movie that I've seen was James Gunn's splatterrific epic Slither. That was back in 2006, dammit! Two whole years have gone by without a single horror movie that did not fit into the following categories: Saw-inspired "torture porn," or franchise reboots (there are probably exceptions, but where the hell are they? Why can't I watch them? That's another thing that's been bugging me. The good movies are hard to see, and when I can see them, I have to put up with the elitist dicks over at the Broadway or the unshaven posers at the Tower. Eff them). The problem with the former category is that the thrill factor does not come from well-paced tension or grisly atmosphere, but from flat out brutality. There's no story to speak of, the acting is awful, and there's no depth at all. It's just a random collage of gruesome death scenes that really have not point other than to display someone's head getting crushed by a sledgehammer. Now, let me take this opportunity to say that I'm one who appreciates a good sledgehammer head-crushing. I love sledgehammer head-crushings. Love them! But sledgehammer head-crushings have to be perpetrated in a certain way to be truly meaningful. There's gotta be a message behind it, man. Anywho, Saw and the whole pathetic goth teenage fanbase who love the hell out of it have really screwed things up.
I won't say too much about the reboots, because their mere existence is unnecessary and shows a shocking lack of creativity on behalf of everyone who has ever been involved with them. Plus, they make the originals less cool by default. It's a shame.
In light of this current horror recession, I've got a little tiny bit of hope. Sam Raimi is coming down from his Spider Man ivory tower to plumb the depths of horror again with Drag Me to Hell (kickass title). I'm happy about this because Raimi knows how to make a good horror movie. Evil Dead="the ultimate experience in grueling terror (it says that on the box!)" Behold!

Let's Get Psyched!

And lo, the reason I haven't been paying much attention to my blog has come to a screeching and emotionally ambiguous halt. For those of you who don't know (or those of you who are just insensitive), I've been student teaching at a middle school for about two and a half months. It's given me time to think about my choice of profession from beneath its own crushing boot heel.
I can say that it didn't scare me away from teaching, but it also didn't fill me with a philanthropic desire to "reach" every student and convert gang members into "decent" folk. Anyway, it's a lot to think about still. In the meantime, here's a playlist of songs that kept me psyched up.

"Wolf Like Me" by TV On the Radio: I owe some thanks to Ben for putting this song on a cool mix CD, and some to Ryan for inviting me and Sheree to see Local H where they did a crackingly good cover of it. When the moon is round and full, gonna teach you tricks that'll blow your mongrel mind.

"Seventeen Years" by Ratatat: Nothing like seeing what kind of sounds can actually come out of an electric guitar via synth-exorcism to get one psyched. This song psyches me up for just about anything. I'm psyched just thinking about it.

"The Mountain" by Heartless Bastards: Great song. I am still really trying to like the whole album, however. Spilt blood on this place/it only echoes true all through the day.

"Twilight Omens" by Franz Ferdinand: This album in contrast is spectacularrr (roll the "r" for the correct emphasis). "Ulysses" also gets me pretty damn psyched. Anywho, I like this one because it's got one of the best lines that I've heard in a song: I typed your number into my calculator where it spelled a dirty word when you turn it upside down.

"Sex on Fire" by Kings of Leon: That's right. Sex on mutha-huggin' fi-yah! I heard this song one day on KRCL, which prompted me to get the album. For a very long time I've been hesitant about Kings of Leon, but this monster of rock did me in. Hot as a fever/rattling bones/I could just taste it/taste it.

"Heads Will Roll" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Even though I hate dancing because 1. I look stupid when I do it and 2. I know that I look stupid when I do it, this is a good song. If I looked cool/sexy when I danced, I'd totally dance to this song. Off with your head/dance 'til you're dead.

I'm grateful for good psych-up songs. They helped me lots with the peculiar student teaching experience, and they kick ass for other reasons too.

Brain Damage. On Purpose!

I've been student teaching for a little over a month now. It's going okay, but there comes a time every few days where my brain needs to decompress. I've found that logging many hours on Fallout 3 was a good way to do this. As the days go on, however, it takes a bit more than shooting mutants in the face with a combat shotgun to successfully get my brain back to its natural, pudding-like state. Luckily, I rediscovered a box set of DVD's that I purchased way back when DVD's were the new shit, and I was working at a respectable mall retail outlet known as Sam Goody/Suncoast. Yes, let it be known that among my very first DVD purchases was Full Moon pictures' Puppet Master series. I don't even want to think of how much I paid for it (this was back when one DVD sold for like, 25 bucks, and I worked in the mall...), but I had to have it at that point in my life (high school). You see, once when Ben and I were younger, we managed to rent ourselves copies of Puppet Master and Puppet Master II. We watched them both back to back, and, due to the fact that we were both young and impressionable, we thought that they were badass (well, I thought they were badass. I'm not sure what Ben's first impressions were).

Upon rediscovering this nostalgic gem, I decided to make watching it in its entirety a part of my weekly decompression ritual. Here's what happened (and did I mention the box set consists of SEVEN movies? Yeah, that's right)....

Puppet Master: Nazis! The Bodega Bay Inn! Puppet POV shots! Old man suicide! Psychics! Dead friend (or is he?)! Weird and unecessary sex scenes! Grown men being overpowered by tiny dolls! That one has a drill for a head! This one has knives for hands! What? That one pukes up leeches? Gross! Reanimation (he wasn't dead)! Green blood, as opposed to red! Ending?

Puppet Master II: Grave digging! Cattle mutilations! Hillbillies! In California? More, different psychics! What? A new puppet? Why, he has a flame thrower hand! Head stab, followed by improvised brain surgery! Wait, psychics? Mysterious bandage-faced man! Bandages come off...oh! It's the guy who shot himself in the first one! Well preserved! Man-sized puppet body? Soul transferrance! Wait, woman-sized puppet body? I fell asleep! Woke up...how did the woman puppet come to life! Winnebago!

Puppet Master III: The past! WWII! More, different Nazis! Six-armed cowboy puppet! Hitler puppet gets shot! Kids laugh! Nazis rage! Random nudity! Sex scene with old Nazi man! Puppet six-gun attack! Oh! Puppets=dead Jewish friends! Pale Gestapo dude! Meat hooks! Wha?

Puppet Master 4: Lack of roman numerals! Psychics? No! Scientists! Robotics! Oh! I get it! Egyptian demon god! Mini-demon puppets! Smarmy 1990's guy! Psychic girlfriend! Puppet discovery! Killing? Yes! But, no? Evil puppets turn good! Puppet on puppet battles! Cheesy dialogue!

Puppet Master 5: More Egyptian terror! Same main guy! Rick! Omega project? Decapitron! Frankenstein-like reanimation scene! Puppet on puppet electrocutions! Close up on Rick! Ending!

Curse of the Puppet Master: College! Roadside attraction! Shy gas station attendant! Bullies! Old man vs. young man! Recruitment! Weird dreams! Sexual frustration! Bullies! Crotch stab! Puppet/human hybrid! Stock footage!

Retro Puppet Master: Awful accents! He was French? Old sorcerer! Pursued by mummies! His friends die? No! Soul transferrance! Wooden puppets? Dangerous! Who cares anymore!

And there you have it. The things I go through for brain decompression.

FUN FACT: The puppet known as Tunneler looks an awful lot like Alessandro Juliani AKA Lt. Felix Gaeta (it's the lips, I think). Behold!

The Year of the Oh-Niners

I want to say that the reason I haven't posted for so long was because of a rigorous barrage of finals (just to put my particular finals week into perspective, I was inspired to watch Kill Bill 1&2, Jackass: The Movie, and 28 Days Later in straight succession while working on them). I even think it would be acceptable to say that I've been busy with student teaching. But, to be honest, I haven't posted in such a long time because I do not think it is possible to ever top Neal's and Ryan's amazingly geeky Star Wars vs Star Trek banter. Things like that don't happen every day, and if you've read through their meticulously planned point/counterpoint argument, you should pat yourself on the back for witnessing something worthy of induction to the geek hall of fame.
Even though I know this post (nor any of my subsequent posts) will ever come close to capturing such unbridled awesome, I can't neglect my little blog any longer.

So, 2008 is over, right? Yeah, I thought so. Here's what I remember fondly about that year:

The Dark Knight: I want to preface this by describing how much I love the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Those were movies that effectively captured the living essence of an already stellar work of art such as J.R.R. Tolkien's novels about Middle Earth and almost perfectly translated it into a living, breathing epic. I know that everyone loves these movies, and a film snob like myself should shun the big-budget, CGI stuff, but let's just be honest with ourselves and say that those movies deserved every bit of praise they got.
That being said, I haven't seen a movie since then that even comes close to capturing the same sense of awe and wonder that I felt upon seeing each of the Lord of the Rings films. And then, in 2008, The Dark Knight comes out and reminds me of what it's like when excellent source material is perfectly crafted into a near-flawless cinematic spectacle. I think you all know what I'm talking about, and if you don't, call me up so I can come over and break your collar bone with a crescent wrench.



Battlestar Galactica/Lost: I blame these two shows for making me plan my weekly routine around my TV (or sometimes someone else's TV, cuz we don't get Sci-Fi). It's hard to talk openly about their awesomeness (spoilers aplenty!), so if you haven't caught yourself up on both of these epic tales, get crackin'!





Fallout 3: I don't really like to write about video games. They're just way too subjective to accurately critique. But today I'm breaking my rule. I've never been so completely sucked into a game in all of my twenty some-odd years of video-game nerdery. Let me just sum my experience with this game up in one of my many simulated experiences while traversing the post-apocalyptic wasteland that was once Washington D.C.: I reached a point in the game where I was getting hassled day in and day out by hired mercs (I'm playing as a do-gooder, and the evil folk don't jive with that). After I slew them mightily and rifled through their dismembered corpses, I retrieved a letter from a dude named Tenpenny who had hired these douchebags to come kill me. When I was finally able to activate the coordinates of every possible map destination, I discovered a place called Tenpenny Tower. So I thought to myself, "I'm gonna find this bastard and make him pay!" I got to the tower, and this Tenpenny guy had set up a community of elitist jackasses within an old hotel (kinda like Dennis Hopper in Land of the Dead). At first, I was just going to blow Tenpenny's head off with my shotgun, but a more intriguing opportunity came my way. It turned out there was a settlement of ugly, radioactive folks who wanted to move into the tower, but of course the folks who were already there didn't want anything to do with these nasty Ghouls. So what do I do? I let these vicious psychos into the tower through the basement and let them rip through the place! I figured that every son of a bitch who through his lot in with the coward who sent mercs to kill me deserve to be eaten alive by mutants! I lost good-guy points for doing this, but it was so very gratifying.

I'm a total nerd :(

Comic-Con: Such a grand celebration of everything that I ever thought was awesome (including Frankenberry)! I sometimes find my mind wandering back to our trip to San Diego to witness this conglomeration of movies, comics, TV, video games, zombies, Anime, F-list actors, washed-up centerfolds, and rare collectibles when I need cheering. Even though Nathan Fillion came very close to stealing Sheree away from me, I have nothing but love for the Con.





7-18-08: That's mine and Sheree's wedding date! It was so amazingly wicked awesome! Flowing rivers of ice creams and sauces, happy folks coming and going, tasty cakeses, and most of all, the most intelligent, beautiful, and perfect woman in the world became my wife. Indeed a great moment of 2008.

Mmm hmmm.

Take the Ticket. Enjoy the Ride.

Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know

Yeah, that's right. I haven't posted anything since Obama trounced McCain in the presidential election. Why? Because for the last 20 days I've been slavin' away in the pursuit of academic merits! I've been getting piledriven by midterms, suplexed by classroom management plans, and atomic elbowed by advanced Russian grammar! It's been a rough coupl'a weeks is all. But, have I learned anything? Let's find out.

Byronic heroes are dicks: So I have this class called Russian culture. It's all about Russian literature that has been written at the turn of the century, right before the tsars where 86'd so the Bolsheviks could set up shop. Apparently it was pretty hip at this time to integrate what us literary hipsters call a "Byronic Hero" into Russian novels. Anywho, Byronic Heroes (taken from Lord Byron; famous romantic poet, Greek revolutionary, and sexual deviant) are dicks. But they're kinda like cool dicks. Frank N. Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about. I'm not sure why this archetype took such a strong foothold in Russia, but we've read about four books now that prominently feature a bored intellectual who uses his good looks and cultural acumen to woo ladies and then break their hearts in front of the men who really love them. Interesting, no?

Rewards can punish kids just like punishments can punish kids. But maybe they can't?: There's this dude goes by the name of Alfie Kohn. He's all about reforming the classroom to be less about rewards and punishments, and more about student/teacher democracy. To which I say, "Awesome! In this perfect fantasy world, do I have my own butler on a luxury space station orbiting planet Goodtimes?" Yes it's wrong to teach kids that they're in school in order to get a letter on a piece of important looking paper. Yes it's wrong to make kids afraid of participating in class discussions because they think you're going to punish them for wanting to learn. But let's just take a step back and realize that our entire society is based on a system of rewards and punishments, and that's just a cold hard fact that kids are gonna have to deal with.

Eastern European wedding customs are bizarre and unsettling: One day in my Slavic Folklore class, we watched a home movie of a wedding in some village located in Yugoslavia. Now, I mentally checked out about thirty minutes into the thing, because at the end of the day, you're watching someone's poorly made wedding video. Here's what I remember seeing though: The entire village population dancing in the street while firing pistols into the air, the groom attempting to sharpshoot an apple that has been hung from the bride's roof, the groom attempting to pay the bride's sister for permission to enter the bride's room to claim her as his own, lot's of funny hats, a very long church ceremony where both bride and groom looked nervous at first, but then slightly tired. Messed me up good.

Preacher by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon is badass: I'm about five TPB's (that's "trade paperbacks" for all you plebians) into this series, and I freaking love it. It's like an existential western road movie with vampires, demons, angels, and a horrendously botched suicide inspired by Kurt Cobain's own demise. There's a cinematic quality to Ennis' and Dillon's work that I've never seen in another comic book. And it is also home to a character called The Saint of Killers, who is possibly the most terrifying, grizzled, pissed off, and vengeful fellas I've ever seen. This doesn't really have to do with school, but it was nice to spend some downtime with the Reverend Jesse Custer, his gal Tulip O'Hare, and their mutual undead friend Cassidy the Irish vampire.

I can't think of any other important lessons that I learned over the last 20 days, and I blame this on the fact that my brain was getting punched in the nuts for at least 16 of said 20 days, and just wants to exit my head via my ear so it can saturate itself in a healthy brine of fried chicken, apple beer, pizza, and David Lynch movies.

Politics, Shmolitics.