Yes, I Know.

Another Week of Bad Movies

2009-09-03T03:02:00.000-07:00

Another more-than-a-month passed, and our little clique thought itself ready once more for another evening of terrible, terrible cinema. The Greeks had a word for this: hubris. At least, as these things have continued, our choices in food for the evening have gotten better. We started with chips and dip, and have added more and more, until this night: a selection of fajitas, beef and chicken. Host Dave is a very good cook.

Last time, a surprise hit was the Christploitation flick, If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, in which Southern preacher Estus Pirkle and reformed filmmaker Ron (Please Don't Touch Me) Ormond showed us how Commies would take over a Godless America and proceed to torture and execute Christians, all with a cast composed of Pirkle's congregation and a few actors from Ormond's more heathen days.

In case you forgot that combination of bad acting and bargain-basement gore:

So of course we felt behooved to check out the next picture on the sadly small Pirkle/Ormond ouvre, The Burning Hell, which concerns, unsurprisingly, Hell. This one's got some money behind it, as apparently Pirkle, Ormond and crew actually went to the Holy Land to shoot some footage; the Biblical sections, in which backgrounds of actual antiquity are cut against painted backdrops that would cause high school theatricals to shake their heads sadly, are quite astonishing. Pale-skinned Beduoins argue with each other in Southern accents, while gentlemen wearing buck-fifty Santa beards pontificate.

Then, of course, there is the Rev. Pirkle's hyperbole:

The mod fellow looking uncomfortable is Ormond's son, Tim; in the story that moves our atrocity footage forward, his friend (the one dressed in denim), just got his head ripped off in a motorcycle accident some twenty minutes earlier. Pirkle comforts Tim with the words, "Right now, your friend is burning in Hell." Oh, yes, this is a scare film in every sense of the word, as every syllable is bent toward expressing how being in Hell sucks, heck, it supersucks. The makeup in the Hell sequences have a sort of raw effectiveness, but all the fearmongering and outright hatefulness get very wearing after a while.

Everyone then decided we were through with Mr. Pirkle forever, but when has that ever stopped me? Apparently Pirkle and Ormond had a bit of a falling out, and Pirkle's next movie, The Believer's Heaven was done partly or wholly without Ormond. Turns out Believer's Heaven was excerpted in Diane Keaton's excellent documentary, Heaven (The Ultimate Coming Attraction), which explains why I found Pirkle so eerily familiar:

Though it's good to see that Pirkle had a non-yelly, even gracious side, I still wonder where he's getting his numbers, especially since it seems Heaven should be infinite in size. Or perhaps not, as it appears, in this cosmology, that only a small percentage of people ever make the cut for Divine Residency. Ormond went on to make a couple more movies, the most notable being The Grim Reaper, in which it takes Jack Van Impe and Jerry Falwell combined to make one Estus Pirkle. YouTube appears to be sadly lacking in clips, but there is one photo I've tracked down:

Oh, my, yes. That must be Hell. And isn't that Alan Cumming on the right?

We plunged into secular Hell after that, also known as Night Warning, or originally Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker. This was infamous, at the time, for starring Kristy MacNicol's younger brother Jimmy, and for having some rather disturbing undertones. Susan Tyrrell plays a woman who's raised her sister's son son from a toddler after a (harrumph) suspicious auto accident. Now the boy is preparing to go to college, and she's starting to unravel, plotting ways to keep him with her forever.

Psycho pictures like this are not my cup of tea, but I was kept entertained by a superb performance by Susan Tyrrell, a lady who never got the acclaim she deserved. Also impressive: Julia Duffy plays Jimmy's teenage love interest (creatively named Julia). Yes, there is a nude scene. And she was 30 at the time. We had no idea until we started poking around in the IMDb and doing math.

And then we came to the corker of the evening. You see, one of our group - we'll call him Rick - is the hand on the tiller of our torment. Somehow, he manages to choose one movie per outing, and somehow we still let him. He is the one who inflicted Dondi upon us. He is responsible for the psych-scarring Naked Ass of Clint Howard in Evilspeak; yet, somehow, when he sent a group e-mail that said, "I wanna see Myra Breckinridge!", we did not hit the "delete" button as a man.

I had never seen Myra before, so my hand was complicit in its screening (not to mention that it was my DVD). This is an odd movie - I mean, look at that hat on John Huston - yet the surrealism never totally takes hold. Old movie scenes are cut into the action, possibly the first time that was tried in a major Hollywood flick. But really... this is not a very good movie. Had it been confident enough to be as brash as it wanted to be, it might have been much better; as it is...

Paul slinked out before Myra began, muttering something about an early morning. He was branded with the epithet "wuss". Later, I'm sure he was envied. Rick kept up a constant barrage of pseudo-intellectual claptrap about the symbolism that was unspooling before us, possibly to maintain his fragile sanity, but more likely to keep an increasingly enraged Dave at bay. Finally, we reached a point at which Dave asked, "Now, what does that represent?" and I answered, "Rusty represents the audience, and Myra is about to represent the movie." A look of slow-dawning horror. "No! NOOOOOOOOO!"

Ah, yes. The infamous dildo-rape scene, which supposedly ended the career of actor Roger Herren. Neither as explicit nor as shocking as you've been led to believe (you never even see the strap-on Myra uses on the jock). Farrah Fawcett and Tom Selleck's careers survived, though, and Mae West went on to make Sextette, with which I have threatened our little group.

Here's Raquel talking about Myra Breckinridge on the Dick Cavett show, and referring to it as a "smash", at about the two-minute mark. Bonus: Janis Joplin.

About ten minutes from the end of Myra, Dave announced, "This movie has not broken me. I still have power. Do you have power?" I allowed that I did, and we set to looking through his collection. And that is how we came to end the evening with Robot Holocaust.

Robot Holocaust is bad. It is very very very very bad. It is legendarily bad. Post-apocalypse robots rule everything, the air is poison (except when it's not), and some warriors fight the power that be. This YouTube compilation has boobies, and it's still four and a half minutes of your life you'll never get back.

And now, because dammit, I deserve it - and so do you - More Raquel:

The Week in Bad Movies

2009-07-21T21:38:00.000-07:00

I’ve been away from the movies for a while., concentrating my nerdlight elsewhere. I reveled in the world of crap cinema for quite some time, and in fact got a small amount of notoriety from it. But after a certain amount of time rubbing your own nose in a highly questionable pursuit, you start asking yourself questions. Hateful, hurtful questions like, Why am I doing this to myself? Wouldn’t I rather be watching something good? What am I doing with my life?

So, yeah. You try to distance yourself from the once- defining pursuit that has become toxic. You try to watch those movies you think you should be watching, but even then you steer away from Bergman and Fellini, no, you watch Key Largo and Kiss Me Deadly and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Eventually, though, you just need your entertainment in a different form. In my case, you start reading. And even then, if you’ve looked at the past few entries, you’ll know it wasn’t what the world at large would define as “real” reading.

The last week, however, I ran to the precipice and did a cannonball back into the world of the crap cineaste. My pal Dave did one of his Bad Movie Nights on Sunday, and the following Saturday was the fifth iteration of T-Fest, a small semi-official gathering started by three of the B-Masters and a gaming legend. But let us take this in order.

Dave began this odyssey of ordure with the classic If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? It was not one of the scheduled entries, but at 58 minutes or so, it was a …”pleasant” surprise, a movie I had only heard of, but had never seen. Exploitation filmmaker Ron Ormond, legend has it, walked away unscathed from an airplane crash and found Jesus waiting for him, which is a very understandable conversion experience. Ormond then fell in with Baptist preacher Estus W. Pirkle, who was having quite a bit of success with a sermon of the same name, already turned into a book and one of them fancy long-playing records the kids like.

In the sermon – of which the movie is basically an illuminated version – Pirkle warns of what will happen if America as a whole does not turn to Jesus in the next 7 years, which is that horse-riding Communists will take over the country. And it is all the fault of TV, Saturday morning cartoons (which apparently encourage fornication – I was watching the wrong damn cartoons, let me tell you), sex education, dancing and beer.

Now where Ormond’s exploitation chops come in is during the depictions of the various atrocities which are visited upon the god-fearing folks by those damn Commies. Low-budget gore abounds, as well as some Sunday school acting.

This is crap cinema at its finest. You actually feel the trap door open underneath you and you find yourself in Pirkleland, a land of starched dogma and crazed horror movie tropes. Highly recommended.

This was followed by Evil Town, which is not so highly recommended. Evil Town is constructed, Frankenstein-like, from at least two unfinished movies (some claim three or even four). One stars James Keach and a post-stroke Dean Jagger, and is about a town of old people who waylay unsuspecting travelers to harvest their pituitary glands to extend their own lives. The other movie features Lynda Wiesmeier’s boobies, and that’s about the only notable thing (or two, actually). The experience was made more tolerable by trying to keep track of what movie was what (made easier by the difference between 70s and 80s car models and fashions) and the expectation of the return of Ms. Wiesmeier’s ta-tas (in which we were disappointed).

The evening closed with Dondi. Yes, the escapee from one of the Medved’s Fifty Worst books. Based on a comic strip which ran from the 50s through the 80s, about an Italian WWII orphan who is semi-adopted by an Army unit, and who then stows away to America. Oh, yes, it is supposed to be charming, cute and heart-warming. And we all know how badly that can turn out.

David Janssen stars, about six years before The Fugitive, and appears to be drunk in every scene. Arnold Stang is in the unit, but as there are already two over-acting goofballs in the barracks, Stang elects to underplay everything. The kid who plays Dondi was the result of a nationwide talent search, and appears to have an eternally stuffed nose, because that’s cute.

You know, the last B-Fest I attended showed what was theoretically a Lassie movie, but was actually three episodes of the TV series strung together (and the reels in the wrong order, to boot). I think I was the only one in the auditorium during that; it was refreshing to find myself in an irony-free zone.

Dondi would love to be irony-free, but it had the misfortune to be directed by Albert Zugsmith. Anyone who has seen Sex Kittens Go To College knows what that man does to comedy. Now apply the same ham fist to family-friendly fare. My God, what an inferno.

But at least at T-Fest I was able to say, "Suffer, bitches! I've seen Dondi!"

T-Fest was held at SMU’s legendary Guildhall, where Sandy Petersen is currently teaching Game Design, and interested students swelled the attendance to a record 50 or so. Not bad for a bunch of friends who wanted to get together in the Summer and create something to replace the late, lamented New Orleans Worst Film Festival.

Things kicked off before the coffee had totally kicked in with Hausu, a 1977 Japanese movie chosen by Sandy.

Hausu is about some Japanese schoolgirls spending the holiday at one girl's auntie's country home. Alas, auntie is still waiting for her beau to come back from World War II, and has become a demon, and her house has a tendency to eat young ladies in the most bizarre ways. Actually, I probably could have just stopped at "It's Japanese".

If there is one thing I learned from Hausu, it is that if you are confronted by demon disguised as a roadside fruit vendor who demands to know, “Do you like melons?”, answering, “No, I like bananas!” will reduce him to a smoldering heap of bones. Unfortunately, you will then turn into a pile of bananas.

Like I said: Japanese.

This was followed by Ken Begg’s choice, R.O.T.O.R. Anyone who has known Ken for any length of time could have picked that one out of a lineup; Ken has a perverse love for all things R.O.T.O.R., and this time it was especially apt, since R.O.T.O.R. was made in Dallas.

Generally R.O.T.O.R. is referred to as a Robocop wannabe, as the story concerns an attempt at constructing a robot policeman; but since the prototype is accidentally activated and proceeds to shoot a man for speeding (and attempting to offer him a measly $20 bribe), and then spend the rest of the movie chasing his girlfriend, it is more appropriately a Terminator wannabe.

R.O.T.O.R. ain’t terrible, but it’s not particularly good, either. The budget is definitely low, and there’s plenty of touches guaranteed to trigger audience hoots (an earlier comic relief robot, a “Sensor Recall” mode that allows R.O.T.O.R. to see event that transpired when he actually wasn’t there, and an incidental character that defines the term “muscle bitch”). Ken was hopeful of looking up the director while he was in town and encouraging him to produce R.O.T.O.R. II. The sick bastard.

Then, to everyone’s dismay, came my first choice: the 1932 Island of Lost Souls, which I had ripped from my laserdisc, since for some reason it has never been given a DVD release. Heads crane to quizzically look at me. “What a minute… isn’t this supposed to be a good movie?” What can I say? I’m a nice guy.

Charles Laughton’s Dr. Moreau effortlessly upstages everyone else in the cast, and the presence of The Panther Woman (Kathleen Burke, though the credits don’t seem to want you to know that) guarantees many furry/catgirl jokes. Good times, good times.

Then the first of Chris Holland’s choices: Big Man Japan. Chris had intended to substitute another film, but apparently the kvetching about another of his choices – two years ago! – the utterly bizarre and frequently disturbing Funky Forest, convinced him to go with his first choice.

Japanese comedy is, I suspect, an acquired taste, and I don’t think the audience was interested in acquiring it. The buildup to the monster fights were protracted interview scenes, which provoked much shuffling and some unfortunate remarks about not enough bombs being used in World War II. Overall, like Funky Forest and Titanic, I’m glad I saw it, but won’t be revisiting it.

Somewhere around here, there was a horror movie trivia test. I only missed two, and won a DVD of Weasels Rip My Flesh. I think that was a win.

After dinner was supposed to be my second choice, an Indonesian horror movie called Mystics in Bali (“If you see only one movie about the penanggalen this year, make sure it’s Mystics in Bali!). But the disc wouldn’t work, so we used my fallback movie instead: the 1974 blaxploitation zombie flick Sugar Hill. Another flick that’s evaded DVD (though one is rumored in the works) I had a nice widescreen print pulled off Turner Classic Movies.

I’ve always considered Sugar Hill a fun but somewhat middling horror movie; its major plus is Don Pedro Colley’s turn as the voodoo god Baron Samedi, a death god who reaaaaaaaally enjoys his work. The fact that former Playmate Marki Bey as Sugar is hella cute and Robert Quarry is, as usual, wasted are icing on the cake. As is the fact that the movie became a crowd favorite by not causing any suffering. Like I said, I’m a nice guy.

I returned from the restroom to find a familiar sight upon the screen: it was a short film about Lapland, which can be found on the Something Weird DVD for Attack of the Animal People. A bunch of young, attractive Laplanders, dressed in traditional attire, herd up the reindeer for the yearly ritual. We are told that “Some will be slaughtered, some will be bred, and some will be castrated in the traditional way.” And we are then treated in the traditional way, which is handled by the Lap women, using their teeth.

Chris, mad genius that he is, was at the front of the room, taping with his iPhone:

And I still feel the best part of this whole folderol is that we expected to believe that the men then lasso the woman of their choice, magically causing them to be married, and these young folks then take to the hills to fornicate madly even though the men know that these gals just bit off a reindeer’s wang.

Things were running long, and Ken sacrificed his second movie, Cat Women on the Moon, so that we could, alas, watch Sandy’s second choice, Nightmare City, which is an Umberto Lenzi Italian zombie movie. Which should tell you all you need to know about it.

Yeah, a plane disgorges a bunch of zombies that either do or do not infect you when they suck your blood (see, they're not total cannibals. That would be derivative!) Society collapses, a journalist and his panicky girlfriend try to get out of town, nobody seems to notice that the only time the zombies stay down is when they get shot in the head, and in the end the journalist wakes up and it was all only a dream.

Yes, you read that right. In the end the journalist wakes up and it was all only a dream. Then he goes to the airport and it all starts over again. I believe a petition began circulating to prevent Sandy from ever choosing a movie again. I'm not certain, as the document was likely suppressed. Especially after what came next.

You see, it is traditional that every year, T-Fest end with a movie featuring a Tyrannosaurus, or something close (the "T" stands not only for Texas, but Tyrannosaurus). It was apparently Chris' turn to choose the end film, and what he came up with was Theodore Rex. You remember Theodore Rex, doen't you? Here, let me jog your memory:

Apparently the most expensive movie ever released direct to video at the time. Any movie that begins with a text screen detailing the plot is going to hurt. In the future, some genetic genius has managed to revive dinosaurs, but instead of opening a park, he's given them intelligence and turned them into muppets. One gets murdered because it gets wind of the plot - I guess it read that opening text - and Teddy Rex and Whoopi - who is some sort of cyborg cop - get the case.

Theodore Rex is one of those movies where you wonder why somebody didn't pull the plug on it sooner, like in the script stage. When a movie makes me think fondly of Howard the Duck, you know you're in trouble.

So that was my week. In closing, just let me say: suffer, bitches. I've seen Dondi!

Marvels (not necessarily of my youth...)

2009-06-21T15:48:00.000-07:00

In our last loopy entry, I alluded that the Current Madness began with the Fantastic Four, and now that we have dispensed with the age-before-beauty schtick with poor, early Silver Age Superman, we can perhaps speak a bit more generally.

The best thing about the Marvel Essential books is that they start at the very beginning, not at an arbitrary point in the comics’ history, as do some of the Showcase books spotlighting older properties. Thus, you get to see a book founder and flop about, trying to find its own voice. The Mighty Thor is a fair example; he starts out fighting the Stone Men of Saturn, and goes on to a fairly mediocre career, up against Zarko The Tomorrow Man (twice!) and sundry menaces the thunder god seems to sort of shrug off, like those damned Reds (oooooo! Curse them!).

It’s in Thor, in fact, that we see rather starkly the impact of what has come to be known as the Marvel Method: the artist, after a story conference, goes off and draws the story, and Stan Lee would later write the captions and dialogue. When Jack Kirby is doing the art, Thor is engaging and dynamic, when he’s not… well, there’s a fallow period in the center of Volume One that, so to speak, illustrates the outcome. When Kirby returns to the title, the storytelling crackles; colorful adversaries like the Grey Gargoyle, Mr. Hyde and the Cobra fairly leap off the page, not to mention the back-up feature “Tales of Asgard”, which allowed all sorts of fanciful derring-do, at which Kirby excelled.

Killraven is another example . It starts out as “Amazing Adventures presents War of the Worlds”, the central conceit being the Martians put in a repeat appearance at the beginning of the 21st century, and this time they brought antihistamines and conquered the world. The Killraven we’re talking about is a guy raised in the gladiatorial pits of this un-brave new world, who escapes with a group of like-minded individuals who set to becoming freedom fighters. The series is kind of entry-level pulp adventure until writer Don F. McGregor signs in, and not too soon afterwards artist P. Craig Russell joins, and what is now called “Killraven – Warrior of the Worlds” starts to sing its own song.

I recognized Don McGregor’s name from some stories he wrote for the Warren black-and-white horror books (you know, Creepy, Eerie) which, almost without exception, I disliked. McGregor was a painfully earnest writer in a painfully earnest era, and would stop a decent horror story dead in the water for a sermon.

For instance, here's Sidney Portier telling it like it is while the guy behind him turns into a werewolf in Creepy #43's "The Men Who Called Him Monster". Don't those word balloons look like they're about to pop?

McGregor's work on Marvel titles, though, is incredible. Perhaps a bit overwritten… a better description would be densely written… but maybe his editors at the big M kept his more self-indulgent tendencies in check, with the result that his talent shines. He also did a stint on “Luke Cage, Power Man” which is more multi-layered than Mr. Cage usually got, and I seem to recall a stellar run on “The Black Panther” that I’ve got to dig back out, one of these days.

Marvel Essentials Killraven is one of these books that presents the entire run of a character, including a somewhat muddy black-and-white version of a Marvel Graphic Novel that at least wrapped up one storyline left over when the book was cancelled. Then it ends up with a well-intentioned (and undeniably pretty) but ultimately pointless attempt to revive the character in the Marvel Knights line. As such, it's more like reading a novel than most such books, with a couple of well-sustained story arcs and some great character work. McGregor is also one of the few writers in comics who seems to appreciate and employ running gags well.

I keep dropping the Fantastic Four name, and never get around to them, do I? Maybe it's because of the total seven volumes currently available, I've only read five. More likely it's just my scattered disorganized brain. Even more likely, I'm just too lazy to organize these slow-motion essays. I find that, overall, the reason I love the Marvel Essentials books is I didn't read that much Marvel when I was really young. I expected lofty stuff from my regular, text-based books, but for my funny books I went for the more easily-digested DC and Gold Key fare.

Anyway, here goes: I think the aforementioned Fantastic Four, and that other mainstay that pulled Marvel out of the poorhouse, Spider-Man, never went through the initial, ungainly phase as did Thor and Killraven. Their basic concepts and characters seem very solid from the get-go, even though it would take years for the Invisible Girl to realize her potential (to paraphrase William S. Burroughs, “She could kill anybody in the room, and that was a good feeling.”)

Going through the first five volumes of Fantastic Four is quite the trip down memory lane; this is the blueprint for what would become the Marvel Universe, introducing the Kree, the Skrulls, the Inhumans, Galactus, the Silver Surfer, the Negative Zone, and, of course, my favorite comic character of all time… Dr. Doom.

It's also well worth noting that, with rare exceptions, it's almost always Jack Kirby at the drafting table for these stories. With the last half of Volume Five, John Romita takes over the art chores, which is a damn fine choice; while his design sense is not as over-the-top as Kirby's his sense of drama is just as exceptional. It's possible, at a quick glance, to mistake Romita's art for Kirby's, but a closer examination reveals that Romita shines in his own, special way. Romita had a good track record at Marvel for stuff like this: he also took over Spider-Man after Steve Ditko left Marvel.

It tends to dismay my friends who are also comics fans that I'm not a Spider-Man fan. Everybody is a Spider-Man fan, it seems, but me. I've never seen the allure, but my pal Dave was able to put it in terms I could understand.

A) Most of the Spidey super-villains, if they met Peter Parker on the street, would not even be bothered to nudge him out of the way. He's that much of a schlub. So, yeah, I can see the Everyman aspect. And

B) Spider-Man's actual super power isn't the wall-crawling or the proportional strength of a spider; it's the fact that he can piss off anybody. Dave loves to relate in detail, with appropriate voice acting, his favorite tales of Spider-Man pissing off Mr. Hyde, for instance.

This should tell you something important about the personality of my pal, Dave.

Nonetheless: I own a cope of Marvel Essentials Spider-Man, Volume One. Why? It was at Half-Price Books. I picked it up. And I realized, "Wait a minute - this is over 500 pages of Steve Ditko art!"

I may swear allegiance to writers, but those artists I love, I love unreservedly. And here is the most gorgeous comic cover evar (click to truly appreciate).

When Superman Was A Sitcom

2009-06-17T16:25:00.000-07:00

In the early part of the decade, I landed a dream job: I was paid some very good money to write. The odd fallout of that lucky win: I stopped any extracurricular writing. I'm trying to get back into the swing of non-deadline-oriented writing, writing for pleasure, and you - you lucky lucky taxpayer - have stumbled upon the result. Try not to hurt yourself on the sharp edges. And there will be plenty, as I attempt to get my muse back on her game.

Now back to my waxing rhapsodical (well, waxing something) about my digging back through beloved comic books.

You’d think that I’d start at the beginning, that would be easiest. That would probably mean starting with Superman, the ground zero of superhero-dom (although my current madness really started with The Fantastic Four... but enough of that). Well, I’ve got one of the Showcase Presents Superman volumes – number one to be precise – and I had it down for my recent reading rotation. I was halfway through it before I realized I had read it cover to cover when I first bought it months ago and just simply did not recall any of the stories. My failing, aged memory? No. They just weren’t very memorable.

Supes has always ranked pretty high in my super hero listings, yet he’s one I’ve never had the typical fanboy yearning to write. Even in his more modern, down-powered state, he’s still awesomely overpowered, and that can’t be easy to build a story around. (watching some of the Filmation superhero cartoons of the 60s, I was amused to see Supes pushing the Earth out of orbit again. At least they made it look kinda hard – I seem to recall in the Super Friends days, he could pretty much do it by accident. Then again, the Super Friends always did five impossible things before breakfast, anyway).

There are two things that contribute to the lightweight quality of most of these stories. The first is a stolid, hidebound editorial stance alluded to by Mark Evanier in his book Kirby: King of Comics – a very strict view of “this is how comics is done”. Apparently a commercially viable stance, but it led to practically every DC comic being written in the same voice - which starts to be truly irksome in the early Justice League stories), with only different costumes and utility belt contents to differentiate characters.

It’s also this editorial stance that apparently led to a much commented-upon propensity to feature frequent gorillas on the covers of comic books to boosts sales. Yeah, I scratch my head, too, but this has given us such evergreens as Titano the Super Ape and Gorilla Grodd. Not to mention, I suppose, Congorilla and Beppo, the Super Monkey.

Heh heh. Monkey!
Heh.
The second thing? I note that the stories in Volume One all hail from the years 1958-59. The Comics Code Authority was formed in 1955, and it has to be admitted that these stories are pretty dang unprovocative, with nothing to insult anyone. Unless you’re a woman, or a man with a lick of sense. But as we all know, these are okay to insult.

Yeah, we’re getting to the era that’s mined for sites like Superdickery or What Were They Thinking. There’s much that’s risible here – Lois Lane is so Superman-hungry that you wonder when she’s got the time to be such a highly-regarded journalist, and Superman is, to say the least, extremely gullible. He blabs his secret identity to people in disguise at least twice in the first half of the book, which would lead Batman to smack him upside the head with a Kryptonite-lined glove and bark, “Clark, you moron! You have X-ray vision!!!”

I suppose I regard these stories as more or less dispensable because they have no effect or impact on Canon, with a capital "C". Then, Supes has been rebooted at least twice in my lifetime, so how could they? For what it’s worth, I love the happily-married Lois/Clark dynamic, and the fact that Lois is currently a strong enough character to hold her own amongst super-types. Which makes the story in Vol. One where Supes, believing himself to be marooned for life on a tropical island with Lois, reveals his identity and marries her in a native ceremony, all the more quaint. Especially since Supe then has to pull off an exceptionally lame series of explanations how Clark managed to fake super powers when a way off the island is figured out. Because, you know, girls have cooties.

Cue Batman with that kryptonite-filled sap glove again. Maybe Superman is a dick.

Then again, Batman has it easy. His Showcase Presents starts in 1964, into the “New Look” period that brought Batman more or less back into the “real” world (or at least as real as Gotham City ever gets), and not gallivanting off into space every issue to fight alien menaces that Flash Gordon would have refused to take seriously.

Which is too bad, really. I was looking forward to some Batman and Robin vs. the Mullet Men goofballery that filled the 25 cent 80-page Giants of my youth. Then one has to admit those, like these Superman stories, were definitely slanted toward the juvenile demographic. No way adults would ever be caught dead reading this stuff. No way at all.

This is likely the charm the stories hold for me: their very milquetoast, workmanlike quality. I admit that a few years back, when Grant Morrison was writing the JLA, I actually got very tired of the universe coming to an end every month. That was the only way to manufacture any dramatic tension, given the amount of power on that satellite - but would it have killed them to have the JLA stop a bank robbery once in a while? Those idiots in the Royal Flush Gang seem to pull one a week, at least...

So really, it’s kind of a relief to read a story where Superman is trying to teach Lois a lesson by wearing an Alfred E. Newman mask.

What? No, I’m not kidding.

I Sing the Experience Life-Wasting

2009-06-15T16:38:00.000-07:00

Ah, youth, sweet youth. That joyful time when I regularly tackled the tough stuff. And by tackling the tough stuff, I mean reading the really thick books. You know. Ulysses. Remembrance of Things Past. Gravity’s Rainbow. Nova Express (which wasn’t thick but was no less scarring). Yes, by God, I was stretching my mind.

And truthfully, I remember very little from any of them, outside of enjoying them. Proust, especially. Maybe I stretched out the brain cells too much (though admittedly, not purely through literature. Chemicals may have been involved).

But you know what I do remember, with great clarity? The death of Jean Grey. Doctor Doom killing his right hand man rather than let him destroy the art treasures of Europe in an attempt to kill the Fantastic Four. I remember when Terra betrayed the Teen Titans.

If you look back over the card catalog of everything I’ve read in my life, this would not surprise you. By fourth grade I had chewed my way through most everything H.G. Wells and Jules Verne had to offer, but I had also read through almost the entire Tom Swift, Jr. series as well as every Doc Savage reprint paperback Bantam could toss on the market. This is pulp, you might say, this is trash.

To which I say, pfui. Big Deal.

I’m past the age of being evangelical about what I like. I’m also long past the age of being apologetic about it. And into the age where, if you ridicule me about it, I can smile easily, gently urge you to commit a physically impossible act, and then command you to get off my lawn.

I loves the funny books, you see. If you don’t, that’s fine. But you’re prolly gonna get bored here very quickly.

Funny books are what enabled me to read Verne, Wells, Heinlein and that damned nightmare-inducing Alfred Hitchcock’s Monster Museum while my classmates were still struggling to step outside Dr. Seuss. My grandmother read to me every day from comic books when I was wee – Herbie was a big favorite – and thus did I learn to read before my first day of school.

There was a brief attempt to stop me from reading comics early on, fearful that I wouldn’t read “real” books – but that turned out to be a groundless fear. Sickly child that I was, reading was one of the few pursuits I could easily perform. I loved books. Still do. Love the smell of them, the feel of them, heavy in my hand. Love the portability. No batteries required.

I find myself gadget-curious about the Kindle. But I hunger for the smell of dusty paper, and the tactile joy of physically turning that page of pressed wood and dead ink. I don’t think an e-reader will ever truly be for me.

For one thing, I don’t think comics will read especially well on them.

It’s like one of those sudden conversion stories they love in evangelical circles. You see, I once hated on those “Marvel Essential” and “Showcase Presents” phone books. They don’t have color! Where is my four-color fury? Bah!

Of course, then came the day I saw Marvel Essential X-Men Vol. 3 at Half-Price Books and figured “What the hell.” What the hell indeed. Not to diss any of the hard working colorists who labored in the trenches all those years, but the color was the least of the strengths of these stories, and I have gotten really hooked on an easy, affordable way to read through huge hunks of history.

To digress – which surely you’ve come to expect from me by now – These days, the computer-driven coloring in comics is extraordinary. There is a recent re-issue of the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Tales of Asgard in which the only change made was re-coloring, using modern methods, and the result is gorgeous to behold. I like to think Kirby would have approved whole-heartedly.

This is too long already, and I have rambled so far afield from what I originally intended to say, I hear search parties in the distance trying to find that intent. More on what I’ve been reading and why in the days ahead, I hope.

You know how I love going on and on about stuff nobody cares about.

Status Report, Mr. Chekov

2009-05-28T13:58:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I didn’t know if I was coming back, either.

In all the trials and drama and blah blah connected to my extended period of unemployment, there eventually reached a time of sweaty desperation when, if one were to be exceptionally kind (or to indulge in more than a little whitewashing) anything that did not involve finding work or making some sort of money had to go by the wayside.

Let’s get real. The truth of the matter is, depression was the flavor of the day and it was on clearance. There was a 10 foot doom field radiating from yours truly. So really, nothing was getting done, and I'm pretty sure I was not pleasant company.

That all changed in early February, when I caught wind of a part-time job at the local campus of Houston Community College. True, it was part-time, but hell, certainly better than nothing; they wanted to see a demo reel of my video work. I had thought that such things were past me, since most of my work happened in another decade, which causes most producers to suddenly become very interested in something else happening in another room. Nonetheless, I scraped together what I had, managed to actually get the stuff from VHS tapes – how primitive! – to DVD. And I guess they liked what they saw, because they hired me.

The official title is Media Videographer. What this means is every week I turn in a five minute story of either local interest or related to the college. I research it, make the contacts, shoot it, write it, edit it and it goes on the weekly newscast of Stafford Municipal Educational TV, Comcast Channel 16.

Which means it is only seen by those residents of the tiny suburb of Stafford who are also Comcast subscribers. That doesn’t even include me, since one of the things that got lost during the tribulations was cable TV.

I try not to dwell too hard on the shouting-into-a-deaf-teacup aspect of this; it is a job, and an enjoyable one, at that. I work with nice, likable people who don’t mind too much that I am a Mac noob (Final Cut Pro is amazing, incidentally), and basically learn one Hard Lesson a week.

We’re a curious hybrid here, a partnership between the college and the city; most of the other Channel 16s seem to be creatures of either the city or the college, either Municipal or Educational, but us, we’re both. That actually allows us some unusual freedom, mixed in with a lot of strange shibboleths, as there are two bureaucracies involved.

And here we are in the summer. The college is eerily underpopulated, and the part-time staff’s hours have been cut down. (Disappointing, yes, but the alternative was laying someone off for the summer, and since that someone would have been me….). Hand in hand with that, the weekly newscast becomes a monthly newsmagazine during the summer, and filling in those hours can be… tricky.

So currently, in between trying to get someone in authority at a local museum to call me back so I can start on next month’s story, and transferring old VHS tapes of programming onto DVD, I find myself… O most pernicious neologism! … cyberslacking. And now the network is down, so here I am roughing out a blog entry. What a country!

Geekboys REPRESENT!

2009-01-26T15:49:00.000-08:00

I await the premiere of the Watchmen movie with trepidation. First, I didn't care for 300, and I loved Frank Miller's original almost as much as I love the Moore/Gibbons Watchmen. Then again, I found much to like in Zack Snyder's version of Dawn of the Dead...

Then, it seems (if the innernets can be believed) Snyder fought to keep the parallel comic story of The Black Freighter in the movie - though God knows how. It has apparently been cut, and will surface in the inevitable deluxe DVD version, released six months after the initial bare-bones release. Not that I'm a bitter consumer, or anything.

Then, it is apparently common knowledge that the ending of the story has been changed. On the one hand, I can hope to be surprised by this new ending. On the other hand, how can a new ending hope to match the punch-in-the-gut impact of the original? On the mutant other, third hand, I will be glad that I will not be subjected to endless misspelled tirades on those same innernets that Watchmen totally ripped off the first season of Heroes, dude. Bad enough we're going to be getting enough of what the webcomic The Rack so insightfully predicts.

The viral video campaign has begun, and though it's about as tepid as the fake news segments for The Dark Knight, it still shows promise:

And the Japanese trailer has many scenes familiar to fans of the graphic novel, and some that are not:

As usual, I reserve judgment until I see it with my own myopic peepers. But hell, I'm the guy who had nice things to say about Robocop II.

Well, I Couldn't Leave You Hanging...

2009-01-23T13:18:00.000-08:00

O Wow Whippee!

Things Once Seen, Never Unseen

2009-01-22T15:32:00.000-08:00

So, in my current status of At Liberty, it is my job to pick up The Boy from school at 3:00. This is the same school my wife runs, but by removing The Boy from those environs, it gives her a bit of peace as she stays after school and continues her quest to work herself to death.

Once we arrive at home, it is usually his turn to put in some time on City of Heroes, while I discover there is nothing on TV. Well, today's random surfing proved me wrong, as I watched a Korean children's show called, if the online guide is to be believed, Captain Poong Poong. The tile character seems to split his time between being a cartoon and a diminutive person in a suit. Poong Poong and his human sidekick were teaching Korean children how to play ice hockey while singing and dancing.

This is not particularly noteworthy. What is particular noteworthy is that Captain Poong Poong apparently can achieve anything by the awesome power of his magical farts. Yes. Computer generated and enhanced farts.

I can only weep that YouTube has failed me here. If there was anything that site was meant for, it was giving me the means to regale you with a demented cartoon character and its glittering flatulence.

It does, however, via other clips, suggest that "poong" may translate as "wind", which makes sense under the circumstances. It also, due to the Other Related Searches, remind me of how much I miss Bob Keeshan and Captain Kangaroo.

This came up, of course, from the proximity of "Captain" and something the search engine could interpret as "ping pong".

There's been a grass roots movement to put out some Captain DVDs, but they've met with no cheer. Captain Kangaroo, as I recall, used a lot of different media on his show, and I imagine just getting the rights for all the childrens' books he read would be a nightmare.

But my last question is, if I can own a DVD set with the entirety of UPA's less-than-glorious Dick Tracy cartoon from my childhood, where is this being hidden:

Redemption

2009-01-19T16:43:00.000-08:00

Last night, The Boy chose Jason and the Argonauts. Maybe I'll keep him.

Also, I will not be letting him see this trailer.

Ups and Downs of the Day

2009-01-18T11:32:00.000-08:00

First of all - it seems that Columbia has bought the movie rights to Isaac Asmov's Foundation stories, and the director tapped is Roland Emmerich.

To wash the taste of that out of your mouth... well, this worked for me, anyway:

As one of the three people who read this blog, you likely know about the recent issue of Amazing Spider-Man (#583, to be exact), in which President Elect (at the time) Obama makes an appearance. Blogger J. Caleb Mozzocco over at Newsarama posts in his Linkarama section:

“I swear to God this is the most often a black man has appeared on the cover of a superhero comic since they canceled Power Man & Iron Fist back in the 80s”: The Stranger’s Paul Constant on you-know-what, in a piece entitled “Everybody Knows Obama First Appeared in ROM Spaceknight #53.” I’d go double-check that in my copy of Essential ROM Spaceknight Vol. 3, but it doesn’t exist because there is no justice in the world.

Well, it made me laugh,

How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth

2009-01-17T13:43:00.001-08:00

Okay, that's who I forgot, in my listing of the genre-related recently dead: Ray Dennis Steckler. Sorry, sir.

Now...

My son, apparently tired of his former diet of non-stop Cartoon Network series and painfully unfunny Disney Network tween sitcoms, has taken to raiding my DVD collection for entertainment, since I finally alphabetized the damn things.

First of all, forget black and white. I ran into this a lot at B-Fest. Apparently the modern young mind cannot operate in grayscale. There's a hook to a cautionary sci-fi tale in there somewhere...

After the obvious stuff, like my animation discs, and all five seasons of Babylon 5 (I did warn him about Season 5, but you know kids: all 6 feet tall and bulletproof), it's a little harder for him to find stuff that I'll let him watch at his age level. He's ten, but functioning at a teen level on most things except the hormones. (Yeah, I'm looking forward to that, he said in a monotone.)

I have an entire shelf devoted to Sherlock Holmes books and movies, so he decided it was time to watch one of those. We sat and watched the first of the Granada Series starring Jeremy Brett, "A Scandal in Bohemia". At the end of the episode, his only response was a sigh and "That was long," At an hour. Guess we won't be watching more of those.

Then, today, he decided he had to watch the Halle Berry Catwoman. response after viewing: "Is there a sequel?"

How have I not disinherited this changeling yet?

Scarecrow, Scarecrooooooow...

2009-01-16T13:51:00.000-08:00

I've had this song running through my head for the last month. Your turn.

Rest In Peace, Mr. McGoohan. You done good.

Tough Week

2009-01-15T16:59:00.000-08:00

Well, it was a rough month plus for aging fanboys like me. Back in December we lost Forrest J. Ackerman, Bettie Page, Beverly Garland, Eartha Kitt. For the theatrically minded, there was Harold Pinter and Dale Wasserman. Probably several more that slip my mind. Sorry.

So this week, thus far: Ricardo Montalban and Patrick McGoohan. McGoohan is especially poignant for me, right now; I asked for and (barely) received for Christmas the Walt Disney Treasures edition of Dr. Syn, the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, which, to borrow a phrase from my pal Parker, Looms Large in My Legend.

In early 1964, I was in the hospital on one of my deathbed visits - not the most serious one, the one where the docs advised my mother I would not survive, or if I did, I would be a vegetable for the rest of my days, that would wait a couple of years - but one of the most memorable things about that stay was the initial TV appearance of The Scarecrow, broken up into three consecutive weeks.

I don't think I was in the hospital that time for three whole weeks, but I like to say that I refused to die, because I wanted to see how the story played out. That is also pure bullshit, but damn, it makes a great anecdote. I do remember asking my mother to make me a Scarecrow costume for that Halloween... which I never got.

So I felt I had a special claim to this DVD. I say I "barely" got it, because apparently Disney is quite serious - and infamous - for taking the "limited" in "Limited Edition" entirely too seriously, and the thing was out of print the week it shipped, or something. My poor wife was frazzled trying to track a copy down, and it finally came down to recruiting me for the search. I love the hunt. I find a copy misfiled as "Drama" at my local Fry's (where I swear every time I walk in I'm going to reorganize the movie section for @#$%! free), and my Christmas is Merry one.

I had looked to reviewing it for 50 Foot DVD, when I found out about its unavailable status... but now, with the review almost completely written, it seems a bit foolish to just toss it away.

Anyway.

Ran out of unemployment compensation this week. Registered for the emergency stuff. A job I applied for in October called me in for an interview in December - a good one - and said they'd be Making their decision in January. I write and e-mail once a week to keep my name on their desk. I hate this.

Anyway.

The re-reading of Cerebus is a dicey thing in this first volume, where most of the stories are self-contained, and, in my current state of Marvel Overdose, reading pastiches of Roy Thomas/Barry Smith Conan stores with an aardvark as the main character is still a little too close to Marvel. It is very fun, though, as I progress, to see Sim finding his feet, for the art to tighten up and slowly leave the Smith influence. The story and character work still lean toward the lampoonish, but the parody is becoming better executed, as Sim starts to actually embrace the satire for what it is, not simply as a tool to deflate barbarian comics standards. I just finished the two issue arc concerning The Cockroach, Sim's first parody of superheroes, and the writer/artist is obviously starting to have real fun.

And one last thing for a rambling post. I mentioned I recently re-read Rick Veitch's The One, one of the first revisionist superhero books, and in the back of my collected volume is a Round Table discussion by Tom Veitch, Neil Gaiman, and Stephen Bissette about said revisionist superhero books. In it, Gaiman asks, "I wonder, in the wake of the Batman movie, how long it will be before some idiot puts on a cape and goes out to fight crime?" The collection, and the discussion are dated 1989, so Gaiman is talking about the Tim Burton/Michael Keaton Batman. It took twenty years and five more Batman movies, but they walk among you.

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Now playing: Vibrasphere - Nowhere
via FoxyTunes

Practical Magic

2009-01-13T09:10:00.000-08:00

Spotted this over on The Daily Dish, where Andrew Sullivan finds them a bit scary. Me, I find them magical and impressive:

More Stuff Myself and Three Other People Care About

2009-01-11T12:51:00.000-08:00

Well, I really should do something beside read, apply for jobs I'll never get, play Chrono Trigger (thank you, Santa Wifey) and try to get interested in watching a movie for review. I know, I'll write in that blog I started once upon a time, knowing that it was a mistake then.

Reading, of course, should never be considered a waste of time. Though what I've been reading would likely cause some to turn their noses up, say something disparaging, and then the pig will get up and walk away. The only thing that can be legitimately called a book I've read during my unemployment is Jonathan Barnes' The Somnambulist, which reads rather too much like a self-conscious attempt to make a cult classic movie. No, I've been re-reading that collection of graphic novels - for which read funny books collected into book form - which I've accumulated over the years.

This mania started when a friend mentioned he had finally read Watchmen, doubtless in preparation for the movie. It had been several years since my last reading, so I settled down in my new reading chair - well, new to me, it was cast off by neighbors to my wife's school who had abandoned it - and got impressed all over again. Much of what Alan Moore did in that series has been ripped off so much in the intervening years (for instance, the first season of the TV series Heroes) that it has entered the realm of the cliche... but when it was coming out one issue at a time, it was electric.

After a brief detour to Watchmen's contemporary, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, I went back to Moore for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: volume one, good, volume two, near perfection, volume three... intensely problematic. Then on to the complete run of Neal Gaimen's The Sandman.

Then, a deep breath before diving once more into Alan Moore's exhaustively researched From Hell. Harkened back to other limited series from the dawn of creator-owned comics, like Rick Veitch's The One, or experiments from the Big Two like the maxi-series Camelot 3000.

In and about all these, I started digging through those Marvel Essentials I had picked up when I had disposable income. These are phone booked-sized black and white reprints of Marvel comics from back in the day, and I had resisted them for years because of the lack of color. Then I bought one at Half Price Books, found that color was the least of the charms of these stories, and set to picking them up against future boredom.

I positively devoured The Fantastic Four, which is arguably where you see the blueprint laid for what would come to be known as The Marvel Universe. A universe which is, in my not-so-humble opinion, currently in a shambled, smoking ruin... but that's a fanboy talking, innit?

Finally, after multiple volumes of Fantastic Four, Avengers, Defenders (Steve Gerber, how he is missed), Dr. Strange, Iron Man, X-Men and Luke Cage - Power Man (Sweet sister!), I feel a bit Marvelled out. I feel more comfortable in the overbearing soap opera of the early Marvel than I do in the stories of the contemporaneous DC Showcase Presents reprints. Even though Mr. Fantastic's barking to Sue Storm of "Don't go all female on me now!" may grate, it's an individual voice. The DC Heroes all seem to speak with the same voice, which becomes bothersome when they all get together in The Justice League of America. When Wonder Woman sounds the same as Batman, it's hard to get involved on any level but the scholarly, or even archeological.

The older DC stuff - which let's face it, was skewed to a much younger crowd than a 51-year-old fanboy, or the collegiate crowd Marvel hoped for - is also intensely formulaic. This house-mandated "this is the way comics ought to be" chased comics mainstay (perhaps even god) Jack Kirby into the arms of Marvel in the late 50s, according to Mark Evanier's biography Kirby, King of Comics (okay, maybe I read two books), whereby hangs a history. There are far fewer Showcase books on my shelf than Essentials.

So, Marvelled out for the moment, what remains on my shelf, in terms of Grand Sweeps of History (comic)? Alas, I have already used the word problematic in this post, for what awaits me is a near-complete run of Dave Sim's Cerebus.

Apparently, the name Dave Sim is supposed to be fronted by the adjective "controversial" whenever he is mentioned, the reason for which - it seems - won't even be apparent until, like, Volume 9 or so. Something about gender politics. I guess I'll find out when I get there.

You see, likely the reason I even busted out this blog post, was the serendipitous discovery of another blog as I prepared to dive into the Simiverse: Cerebus: A Diablog, in which writers Leigh Walton and Laura Hudson intend to examine the comic on an arc-by-arc if not issue-by-issue basis.

Now, this might have gotten off to a rockier start with me had I just weighed in on Laura's initial post, which begins:

Ah, winter 1977. Sadly, neither of us Cerebloggers had yet been born, and so we cannot nostalgically recall what it was like when Cerebus first came out, only that it was a long, long time ago. I say this not to make anybody feel old, but to emphasize the scope of Sim’s accomplishment: Cerebus would subsequently go on to run for 26 years, a marathon that Sim refers to as “the longest sustained narrative in human history.”

Well, a little too damn late for the old part, as I do remember seeing that first issue in the wild. I was going through the wire rack at Roy's Memory Shop on Westheimer, during one of my road trips to Houston from my college digs in Huntsville, looking for new issues of underground and "ground level" comics like Star Reach. I saw this first issue, and dismissed it another @#$%! funny animal comic. You see - if you are one of the uninitiated - Cerebus is an aardvark in an otherwise human-populated Conan universe.

This was the time of Howard the Duck (and have I mentioned how missed is Steve Gerber?). There were funny animal comics everywhere... hell, there was even a ground-level comic called No Ducks!... and I wasn't in the market for another "trapped in a world he never made!" series. Many months later, my brother would show me an issue which featured Lord Julius, in whom Sim managed to flawlessly insert Groucho Marx into this world, and I got hooked.

Sim made it known that the saga of Cerebus the Aardvark would cover 300 issues. The amazing thing is, it actually does. He did it. All 300 issues. Yep, took him 26 years, just like Laura said. I also begin to wonder how many people who started out, like me, back in the late 70s actually stuck with him all through that. I know I didn't.

Now, Cerebus, I hasten to add, is one of the things that got me through some very difficult times in the 80s, when I was just feeling my way through young adulthood and getting my nose rubbed in all manner of unpleasant realities. There were, generally speaking, maybe three continuing comic series that I looked forward to each month with anticipation, and one for a great length of time was Cerebus.

Sim started putting his work out in bound volumes which were very much the predecessors to the Essentials and Showcases - big, square phonebooks of comics goodness. The first four volumes - Cerebus, High Society, Church and State I & II - cover the years of my extreme fanboy-itude. They contain some of the keenest social satire I had seen since Walt Kelly's Pogo, and is stuff I wholeheartedly recommend.

Ah, but it's Volume 5 - Jaka's Story - and beyond where things get, shall we say, interesting. Yes. Interesting it is. Sim stepped away from the political satire for a while to concentrate on story-telling, and the Earth Pig Born fell to supporting character status for a long, long stretch. About this time I decided it would be far better to invest in the collections than the comic, since I would lose the narrative thread in the time between issues. Of course, it also made it easier to just put these books on a shelf and ignore them, since - like, I suspect, a lot of readers, I longed for a return to the days of Lord Julius, Red Sophia and Elrod of Melnibone, the last member of a race of albino sorcerer kings, who talked, I say, who always talked like Foghorn Leghorn, son.

Or maybe I was simply young and callow. I shall likely find out in the weeks ahead, and it will be nice to have Hudson and Walton weighing on these matters in a much more scholarly, incisive manner than I myself can muster. Turns out I stopped buying the Cerebus phonebooks just four books shy of the complete set. Hopefully, by the time I reach that point, I will not only be able to afford those last four books, but will actually want to buy them.

The Long and Dark of It

2008-10-07T14:08:00.000-07:00

Well, that was a long, dark week. A week of ignoring practically everything else in order to be at the disposal of contractors (themselves all overworked and behind schedule) so I could get repair estimates to submit to my insurance company. That includes my search for a job, to which I could only devote a minimum of time.

Well, I now have all the estimates I need, I have an interview this Friday (pray for me to your heathen gods, if you would), and I borrowed the money to get the destroyed tree out of my backyard and off my neighbor's house.

I need to get a picture of the pile of organic debris currently in my front yard - it's pretty impressive. The best news associated with this is that, once the damaged parts were removed, the rest of the tree was pretty healthy. I was worried that I was going to totally lose the tree, and dammit, I love trees.

Speaking of tree hugging - and that is my clumsy segue for the day - I am entering radio silence for the next month. By which I mean I won't be listening to the radio or watching TV until after the election. I made my decision quite some time ago, and it sure as hell is not about to be swayed by the sewer water spray that has become The Campaign.

On the other hand, via my ol' homie, Roy Bragg (who was known as "B-Pad" back in our dayz on da street), and his blog At Large, comes this sublime piece of Comedy Central:

Peace out, D.

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Now playing: Apollo 440 - Crazee Horse
via FoxyTunes

Bah, etc.

2008-10-01T06:07:00.000-07:00

The last time a hurricane came through, I rented. Now that I'm a homeowner, a whole new universe of tedium and anger has opened up for me. Though we were told an insurance adjuster would be in contact with us within 24 hours, it was actually more like a week. A week later, I attempted to get an estimate from him to see how it matches up with the figures I'm getting from contractors, and was told that it would not be ready for another week. I still have a tree down in my back yard, resting on my neighbor's roof, and have resorted to trying to raise the money on my own to get it removed - not an easy thing when you're unemployed.

As a somewhat un-hurricane related aside: I really hate that I only seem to write here when I have something to complain about - but when things are going alright in my life, good God, am I boring.

I also feel compelled to mention that yes, I am lucky. My house still stands. I got power back relatively early. My discomfiture stems from the fact that the pressure that I am experiencing is not being felt by the people in charge of alleviating that pressure.

I recognize they are busy. I am not the only one with problems in this area. That still does not help - it only makes me feel more petty.

Yet another contractor arrives within the hour. I will attempt to restrain my enthusiasm.

The Aftermath (and I flunked math)

2008-09-16T07:41:00.000-07:00

This is going to come as absolutely no news to anyone, but man... that was the antithesis of fun.

We should start with us losing power at about 7:00pm, long before any wind or rain showed up. Now, I must admit: the power came back, and stayed until the time I predicted it would vanish, at about midnight, just as the first official winds were starting to batter Galveston Island.

As I think I mentioned, this was my first hurricane since Alicia, back in '83, and I could easily go another 25 years without another one. In '83, I didn't have a family, and trying to be a calm, strong influence in the noisy dark is... a little wearing. I'm not sure if I'm good at that, but I tried.

My new battery-powered radio worked like a champ. I had used the time with power to tune in a TV simulcast for Channel 11, which had gone into DOOOOM overdrive several days before (My wife and her best pal Ronnie the Crazy Cat Lady are still pissed at Big Brother being pre-empted Thursday night). This was the only to track the storm's progress, and I was glad to have it, and all schadenfreude was put on hold whenever KHOU or the radio station took a hit to their power, and I had to find another station.

About 2am we had the first of the Noises, with a capital N. That was the siding being ripped off the side of my house and tumbling over the roof.

The storm had shifted enough to the east that we never saw the eye, and we were on what is euphemistically referred to as the "clean" side of the hurricane. The only clue we had that the eye was passing to our east was the change of direction in the wind.

At about 4:30, we had the second noise. We didn't know it at the time, but that was a giant hand reaching down from the heavens and applying a purple nurple to the large chinaberry tree in our back yard. The poor thing shattered, and missed our house by literal inches. In fact, leaves from one of the upper boughs were pressed against one of our windows.

Our neighbors didn't do so well. The tree took out their satellite dish, and the offending branch is still on their roof. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As the sun came out, Ike was winding down in my part of the world. Ronnie - who is our neighbor - came over to check on us. I looked out our back window and went Damn.... And I eventually crawled into bed at almost 8am and drifted into exhausted sleep in our stifling bedroom.

That was interrupted - as it would be interrupted several times throughout the day - by people banging on the door to check on us and oooh and aaah at our shattered tree. We had the dubious honor of having the most damaged tree in our neighborhood.

Lisa went to check on the private school she runs and, miracle of miracles, it had power. We moved in, with Ronnie in tow, and microwaved some thawing TV dinners and watched a couple of movies that had nothing to do with hurricanes. I got a few hours of sleep... but was awake when another rainstorm came through at about 4:30am, killing the power there, too, and confirming my suspicions that God hates me. No, that confirmation actually came through at 4:45, when I was in the bathroom and my Mini-Mag-Lite's bulb gave up the ghost.

After the rain let up, about 10:00am, we went back to our houses and started to clean up. It was the first time I had a chance to actually contemplate the fallen tree.

Here's the same picture with my bulk added for scale:

After three hours with my cutters, bow saw and a borrowed chainsaw that gave up the ghost rather than deal with anymore of this, I was forced to give up. This was way above my abilities, even if I were a younger man with an uninjured back and legs and no health problems.

That was a hell of a blow to an already bruised ego. But I have to be rational about this: I could keep on whacking at it, but it wouldn't be safe. This is no time for enthusiastic amateurs.

So we took showers - thankfully, the water pressure remained constant here in the hinterlands - and returned to the school, where the industrial-grade insulation stood a better chance of retaining some cool from the previous evening's air conditioning. There was some recovery evident: about half the traffic lights were working, and some businesses on the main drag had power. Anything with food prep abilities were doing great business, including my beloved Tornado Burger. I didn't even order the Spicy Burger, I was so happy. After 36 hours of Pop Tarts and Doritos, this was, and I do not exaggerate, heavenly.

As we sat out front of the school, enjoying the cool front that had pushed that early morning rain ahead of it (a small mercy shown to a city without power)... the power suddenly came back. Max was overjoyed to discover that cable and Internet had returned, too. (I may have to reconsider this whole grudge-holding Deity thing) The school uses Comcast for such things, and their phones, too, which was a blessing, as regular phone service and cell service had been nonexistent for some time. I had managed to send out some text messages, but it's not the same as hearing voices.

I didn't have much choice, I actually managed to sleep six hours, almost straight through - a near record for me, lately. Power was restored back at the house at about Noon on Monday, and we moved back, and started cleaning out the spoiled food in the refrigerator. Some of the meat in the freezer was actually still half-frozen and we went into an orgy of cooking.

About this time, I started shaking uncontrollably; the last few days had finally caught up with me. We checked my sugars, and they were normal, but the blood pressure... ah, jeez. I was riding for a stroke. I was ordered to bed, and I wasn't about to argue. Stitches were creeping up my side, and I recognized the early signs of bronchitis. Just what we needed.

So here I sit, on Tuesday morning. I feel somewhat better. We await the call from our insurance adjuster, I have actually taken the plunge and gotten a Facebook account, since it's very hard for me to reconcile my geek cred with a most un-geeklike wife who has a Facebook page and a Crackberry, while I just have a Bluetooth headset and a Nintendo DS. The world is totally out of whack, and I expect to see Rod Serling smoking a cigarette in the corner at any moment.

Well, that was my weekend. How are things in your town?

Look! In the Trees! It's Coming!

2008-09-12T05:07:00.000-07:00

So my usual four hours of sleep got chopped down to three. Man, you'd think I was worried about something.

The sun is rising. Amazingly, the city trash pickup just happened, and I'm glad I was optimist/dick enough to put out the garbage. According to HurricaneTrack.com, there is already some wave and water rising action in Galveston.

Ike strengthened a little overnight, but is still a Category 2 hurricane.

Last night, I watched 102 Minutes that Changed America on the History Channel, which edited together 9/11 footage from a variety of video sources. I only intended to watch a bit of it, but wound up getting sucked in for the whole ride.

The really awful thing is I kept thinking "Yeah, Cloverfield got that right."

Things still to do: Patch that loose siding. Gather up all potential projectiles and lock them away. Fill up some more water containers. Take some photos. And get some damned sleep.

Batten Down the Hatches, Ar.

2008-09-11T06:04:00.000-07:00

Man, that's a big storm.

As I write this, what are referred to as the A and B Zones in the Gulf Coast region are evacuating in advance of Hurricane Ike making landfall late Friday, early Saturday. Seems that while I got usual four hours of fitful sleep last night, Ike shifted its path northward yet again, and unless it does so some more, I'm going to be getting some eye action this weekend.

Spent the early morning trimming off some branches (a project I started Labor Day weekend, but abandoned when my @#$%! cheapass bypass trimmer snapped), filled some containers with water. Most of my other shopping was done weeks ago. A new radio, batteries and even one of those shake-it-up-and-down-powered flashlights sit by my desk.

This will be my fifth hurricane to ride out; considering the nearly five decades spent living near the Gulf Coast, that's not too bad. In two of those, I didn't even lose power, but 50% ain't great odds. So I'm likely going to be losing my ability to watch crappy movies, cheat at video games, and grouse on the Internets.

I guess the local media is breathing a sigh of relief; at least this time they can't be accused of fearmongering, nor will some poor correspondent, sweating in their rain gear, be filmed desperately stating that they heard about some flooding maybe five or six streets over, though there's not any rain where they are... at the moment. Back to you, Bob.

See you on the other side.

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Now playing: Holy Fuck - Echo Sam
via FoxyTunes

Gobsmacked

2008-09-02T12:52:00.000-07:00

Still looking for a job. But you know the guy I used to work for? I just found out last week that he's been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Completely unsure how to feel at this time. I'm glad I'm deriving no satisfaction from the news, and that's about it.

Old, old, old

2008-08-24T05:29:00.000-07:00

While doing research for 50 Foot DVD, on the long-gone vistas of 1967, I started thinking about a few things that had some impact on the then ten-year-old me. Of course, YouTube has it:

Yes, I owned a toy sniper rifle in its own case. There was a lot of incredibly un-fun crap going on in the late 60's, but goddamn how I miss them sometimes.

Somehow made more poignant by last night, when my ten-year-old finally prevailed upon me to watch Alien vs Predator: Requiem, a viewing which was fraught with multiple pronouncements of "Awesome!" from him.

Here, let me spare you the incredibly spastic nature of the YouTube comments by embedding this here:

It wasn't as awful as I'd been led to believe, but then few things are. It was pretty much standard action movie mediocrity wrapped in a fairly large budget, and continued the first AvP movie's pattern of a large cast of undeveloped characters about whom the viewer could not be bothered to care. The more I think about this movie, the more I think this course of affairs deserves closer examination in that old, venerable project of mine, The Bad Movie Report... but that would also mean watching this, the first one, and Alien 3 and 4 again, and that could get ooky.

I have joked that since my son professes the original Alien vs Predator to be his favorite movie (it edged out The Empire Strikes Back), I may have to disinherit him... but then, he's ten. And I have to ponder how my parents felt, forty years back, when yours truly watched that psychedelic Levis commercial raptly, over and over again... on a black and white set.

Was there a point?

2008-08-22T00:19:00.000-07:00

That last post got very scattered, yes, I know. There was a point I had intended to make in there when I started writing, and it all got buried. That point was - while I was talking about the quality of the speakers in the Nintendo DS - I was struck by one instance in particular.

I'm still playing Etrian Odyssey II - Heroes of Lagaard. As you know, I've typified it as an old school dungeon crawl (which I lurvs), where the lower screen is used to map the dungeon as you travel through it. In this particular labyrinth, you start at the bottom and work your way up, and it has become so overgrown that it is a forest into and of itself - no stone walls or caverns. Seasons seem to change with every five levels or so, and when I got to the third stratum, where it is perpetual winter, there it was, captured with perfect fidelity, one of my favorite sounds in the world: the sound of boots crunching in snow.

Yeah, yeah, I know, you folks in the more Northern climes, like my pal Ken Begg in Chicago, are doubtless sick to freakin' death of the sound, but as a lifelong Texan, it remains quite exotic to me. I seem to make it to Chicago every two years or so to visit snow (and Ken and B-Fest), and on the rare occasion that snow does not coat the ground... man, I miss that sound.

And since we are speaking of Etrian Odyssey II and my time-wasting activities: I finally got past the twin bosses that were giving me so much grief and continued to advance into the game. At this point, I am starting to mess with the makeup of my party, so here comes some gaming geek stuff. If you're not interested, well, there's some links over to the right. See ya later.

Lagaard allows a party of up to five characters, and by and large I've been pretty traditional in the makeup. There's a jack-of-all trades warrior (called a "Landsknecht" here), a tank - high hit points, high defense, decent damage (called a Protector), a "War Magus", so-so damage but some great healing and buffing magic, a dedicated healer called a Medic (fancy that) and a Gunner. Yes, a character with a gun in a fantasy game. It happens all the time. And once you start leveling a Gunner's attacks, that character starts kicking ass without bothering to take names.

I've been using the War Magus as a backup healer, but that's really only utilizing half his potential, as many of his special attacks do extra damage to targets that another character has placed a status effect upon - a monster that has been stunned, or had Sleep or Fear cast upon it.

What this means is I should be leveling up a Hexer... a character whose sole function is to cast Curses upon opponents. Yet, so far, I am not. (Though if the Hexers attacked with canes, and were called Curmudgeons, nothing would stop me from fielding a party of five of them)

Minor digression: Lagaard has some attacks, both on the player and opponent side, that "bind" various portions of the target's body. A Bind on the head lessens accuracy and damage. A bind on the arms prevents the fancier, higher-damage-dealing attacks and magic. Bind the legs, there is no escaping (and that's card I've had to play several times).

Minor digression 2: After a certain number of battles, each character is able to perform a Force Skill. If you've played Final Fantasy, you'll recognize it as a Limit Break. A devastating attack that costs no points to perform. For the Gunner, it's a Riot Gun, for the Landsknecht it's All Out, which deals heavy damage to every target onscreen.

Now that you have that information, I can try to tell you about what is distracting me from that Hexer I seem to think I need. Cuz I'm leveling a Dark Hunter.

From the website:

"The Dark Hunters of High Lagaard are similar to those found in Etria; they can still work with either whip or sword to focus on bindings or status ailments, respectively. The key difference comes in their ability to set potentially deadly traps: in High Legaard, Dark Hunters can react to either physical or magical attacks, no matter what weapon they use."

But wait, there's more.

"Force Skill: Bondage
Using every binding technique at its disposal, the Dark Hunter will bind an enemy's head, arms and legs, rendering it completely incapable of acting in battle."

Attacks that bind the opponents legs, arm and head, individually? They are called Shackles, Cuffs, and Gag. Higher attacks in the tier are named Climax and Ecstasy.

I'm leveling up a dominatrix.

The game supplies four possible portraits for each character, but I think this one says it all.

Did I mention this game is rated E - 10+ ?

I guess this may be the "Suggestive themes" alluded to in the ratings box....

God, I love Atlus Games!

EDIT: Now that I've gotten a chance to use it, the Dark Hunter's Force Skill in-game is called "Dominate", not "Bondage", as it says on the site. I'm not sure if that's more or less explicit...

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Now playing: Haggard - Larghetto / Epilogo Adagio
via FoxyTunes

Bodies Electric

2008-08-18T10:22:00.000-07:00

As everybody knows, I remain perpetually behind the curve. For instance, perhaps by this time next year, I will have finally seen The Dark Knight.

Which is why I am here to proclaim my love for the Nintendo DS.

Before I bought a used one a little over a month ago, I'd had very little time with one, but I distinctly recall reading the pre-release stuff and thinking, "Two screens. Huh." And also recalling any number of NES peripherals that went unsupported and wound up on the Toys'R'Us clearance aisle. The Powerglove still looked cool, though. And dig that proto-Wii gameplay:

Time has, of course, proven me wrong, especially if the number of DS Lites I saw being pulled out while people were waiting in line at Disneyworld. Lots of kids, sure, but several adults, too.

The most remarkable thing to me - besides the actual utility of two screens - is the quality of the speakers on this dang thing. Little, tiny thin things, and they sound fabulous. At least one writer called them "surround sound", and I scoffed... but the dimensionality of the sound coming from these things is awesome.

I picked up an affordable used copy of Final Fantasy III (the one that had gone untranslated for many years, for those keeping score). Uematsu's music sounds very rich, even coming off a tiny chip. There are some things about modern times I wholeheartedly endorse.

Etrian Odyssey has gone by the wayside for the moment. There was sort of a story in there, but only released in small, puzzling droplets. SquarEnix excels at sort of thing, so I've been engrossed in FFIII's story quite happily.

Also: when Etrian would eventually serve up a boss that ate my lunch, I would go out and grind levels until I was strong enough to take it on. In Etrian, I would think in terms of 10 levels or so. Final Fantasy, generally one is sufficient.

Viewing wise: Watched the first disc of The Wild, Wild West, Season One, and you can't go home again. Love the steampunk spy gadgets, adore Michael Dunn as Dr. Loveless... but twice in two episodes we've seen Jim West turn women from the dark side by simply being Jim West and having smoldering good looks, thereby saving the day. I find I didn't buy it with James Bond and Pussy Galore, either.

Hadn't seen The Battle of the Bulge in many years, either, so thank you, Netflix. I liked it, but it still doesn't beat Tora! Tora! Tora!, in my book. Though TTT seems equally crowded, it had a marvelous, semi-documentary feel. Bulge has a lot of extraneous material that could have been cut with no detriment to the story, and I really have my doubts about that final battle at the fuel depot. Still, good stuff, and it is wonderful to see the Cinerama moments, comparable to the roller coaster sequence in This is Cinerama, which did not translate at all during my first viewing on network TV, in pan-and scan. Blech.

Lastly, saw the first disc of the new version of The Andromeda Strain, which was one of my favorite movies because the science fiction is so darn hard. I had my doubts about this, as the travails of the scientists working inside the underground bunker of Project Wildfire has taken a back seat to thoroughly modern tropes like competing agendas of various government agencies (including the Office of Homeland Security, an unthinkable concept when Crichton first wrote Strain), a cocaine-addicted investigative reporter, and ground-level views of the unfolding effects of Andromeda. Taking the story largely out of the bunker has limited the pressure-cooker race against time feeling the original movie possessed, but darned if it ain't still compelling viewing.