Random Musings

So I'm short on time today, and this bastard library computer's space bar is broken, so this is going to be very short. Basically I'm forcing you to read through me keeping my fingers limber.

As you've seen through the past couple posts, I'm trying to shift the format of this blog to a quicker, shorter stream-of-consciousness kind of thing. I started this blog as an outlet for all these little thoughts and ideas I find no use for in the real world, and mainly as a way to sharpen my writing skills. Time was, I used to fancy myself a pretty good writer. Well, a couple years of neglecting that talent have left it rusty and covered in cobwebs. I tried initially writing long expository posts, things that had "messages", and I've discovered that doesn't quite work for me. I was always a bit underwhelmed by the results, my frustration increasing because of the amount of work I put into a lackluster result. And so, I've decided not to overthink things, just let fly with whatever I want to talk about.
You can thank one person in particular for this change; Warren Ellis. Observant readers will notice I've included his website on my links list. He's a comics writer I'm becoming quite a fan of, but he's also one of the most prolific guys out there. I think only Brian Michael Bendis would challenge him in the contest of who's writing the most current comic books, and his aren't nearly as good. Bendis is more consistent, but he never gets close to the sheer insanity and genius put into every panel of a Warren Ellis book. It struck me after reading a few of Ellis' books, and reading his email column for a couple weeks, that he has no filter. Not that he's vulgar or offensive(although he is, often), but that he doesn't filter anything that he puts on page. If he has an idea, he writes it down and puts it out there. This leads to some interesting stuff, but also has a few problems. Sometimes he has a great idea, but doesn't take the time to explore it, and sometimes he has a bad idea and doesn't think about tossing it aside. I'm pretty sure that if he doesn't have a keyboard in his hands he'd be holding a gun and using that just as often.
For those of you unfamiliar with his work, it should be pretty easy to track down. His most famous series, Transmetropolitan, is available in paperback form, and at most libraries. It's pretty good, even if the main character is obviously Hunter S. Thompson blasted a few hundred years into the future.
Fell is currently ongoing, up to issue 4, and conveniently priced at 1.99 for those not able to buy lots of expensive comics. Each issue is a self contained story, free of advertisements. A bit shorter than most mass market comics, but very dense, giving you a sense of a complete world. It's apparently sold out, but entering second printings. It shouldn't be too hard to find, and the shop I work at still has a few copies of each issue hanging around.
He's also writing some more mainstream comics over at Marvel. The Ultimate Galactus trilogy is amazing, but probably not so interesting to people who don't normally read comics(true fanboys will already know what the story entails by the title). Nextwave, though, is a comic with so many D-List characters that it should only be funny to truly hardcore fanboys, but it's amazingly accessible. The humor might not be for everyone, but I urge everyone reading this who likes comics to go out and buy it. It's up to issue 3, and completely entertaining. It's amazing to me how much Ellis is able to get away with at Marvel. None his titles are too out there, but they do head farther away from the superhero stereotypes than the company usually goes.

So that's it for me. Thanks for reading through another meaningless message. I promise to balance my timewasting with actual informative stuff. Also, I've noticed a real lack of response to these things. I've had one or two responses, but I'm not even sure if outside those 2 people anyone is reading this. So, drop me a line sometime, either personal or on the comments section.

American Wasteland

I was channel surfing the other night and stumbled across the forbidden channel; Fox. Not for any puritanical reasons is it forbidden, but because every brilliant show they produce gets cancelled for more reality tv knockoffs. After King of the Hill got cancelled I decidedI really didn't need to see anything on Fox anymore. Anyway, Fox caught my eye, and it was American Idol that was on. It's a show I'm familiar enough with, but have absolutely no feelings towards. All in all I'm pretty ambivalent to entertainment I might find offensive. I mean, I don't have to watch it, do I?

Normally I would have skipped right on by, but I recognized the song that they were practising and wanted to see what happened to it. I was awestruck; after some generic reality TV confessionals of childhood dreams and inspirations, I was rewarded with a full blown, balls-to-the-wall suckass rendition of Not Fade Away by Buddy Holly, all under the watchful eye of Barry Manilow. Stephen Hawkings voice box would have done the job just as well. Hitting all the right words but missing the emotion completely.

I thought I was immune to it, this great race to mediocrity in pop culture. In a society where a song about cocaine addiction is used to sell family vacations, Jimmy Page sells his soul to P. Diddy for a spot on the Godzilla soundtrack, and Roger Daltry of the Who(The WHO, GODAMMIT!) shills time life record collections on cheesy half hour infomercials. I mean, after that, what more could happen, right? Wrong. The sight of prime time TV sucking the life out a truly great song(and musician) bothered me more than I thought it would after all the heresies that came before.

And so, for all you stuid Gen-X, hipster losers out there: Stop it! Enough with the ironic patronizing of crap media. Do what you love, read what you love, listen to what you love, and watch what you love. Don't sponsor these crap shows just so you can fell superior because no one else 'gets it' the way you do, your only adding to the problem.

Remember, the beast doesn't care if you love it, only that you keep feeding it.

Gods of Hollywood

It occured to me the other day that Josh Lucas is like the cosmos' response to the wasted celebrity of Matthew McConaughey. Like when the movie Powder failed to make any money, so the Gods of Hollywood got John Travolta and tried again with Phenomenon. A duplicate that seems less like crass marketing, and more like some karmic second attempt. Remember when McConaughay seemed like he could be the next big thing? He started off with some fun roles in low profile movies, and then seemed poised to break big with A Time to Kill, but then squandered it with cheesy, sub Meg Ryan dramedies and brainless action flicks. The best thing he's done since A Time to Kill was an absolutely gonzo performance in the otherwise useless Reign of Fire(watch it again, I think he actually BELIEVED he was fighting dragons). And so the cosmos got Josh Lucas, who has everything that McConaughey has except for the oily creepiness. He's been garnering some attention, appearing in a string of movies scientifically formulated to be as inoffensive as green peppers. Even if you don't like it, it's not about to leave a lasting negative impression.

The same thing happened about ten years ago when it seemed Johnny Depp would languish in the world of high quality/low profile films. Remember Skeet Ulrich? Any time Johnny Depp had a headache, Skeet Ulrich took an aspirin. But then, Johnny Depp started to rise in popularity, and now Skeet Ulrich is chained up in Jack Valenti's attic, eating a steady diet of fish heads and moldy bread.

Random Thought of the Day

A little while back I read an interesting fact about IUDs. IUDs(IntraUteran Devices) are an evil sounding form of birth control that blocks the uterus and stops egg production. Anyway, the basis for the IUDs we use today came from ancient camel-herders, of all places. Apparently the camel herder would insert a rock into his camel's uterus to prevent pregnancies while on long trips.

Now, with all strange ideas, my first reaction to this bit of info was a series of questions to myself. Who was the first one to discover this? Why did he discover this? And how the hell did he tell the other camel herders without being laughed into exile? I like to imagine it went something like this(to avoid horrendous ethnic stereotypes I'm giving the camel herders hillbilly names, because stupid ideas are always funnier from hillbillies):

Bubba: Hey Billy Ray, nice lookin' herd of camels ya got there.

Billy Ray: Why thank you, Bubba, they are a nice herd of camels.

Bubba: And how is it that your so lucky that not one of them has gotten pregnant on your cross desert trips?

Billy Ray: Well, Bubba, I'll let you in on a little secret. I put a rock up my camel's vagina one time and couldn't get it out. Well sure enough, after that she stopped gettin' pregnant.

Bubba: .... what the hell were you doin' puttin' rocks in your camels vagina?

Billy Ray: .....

It occurs to me that that crazy catholic rule about not wasting any seed may not be so crazy after all. Maybe it was a perfectly natural way of getting away from some really crazy uses for crocodile dung.

Clash of the Titans

So I've been thinking a lot about comics these days, which makes sense, seeing as how I work at a comic shop these days. You see an odd cross-section of humanity working at a comic shop, although I can't really say anything bad about them. People in glass houses and all that. The thing that makes a geek isn't what he or she is interested in, but when they begin telling people who don't give a crap all the miniscule details of their obsession. Let's just say I've learned when to shut up about the things I enjoy doing in my free time.
Still, comics are a great, and undervalued medium. We get the occasional old lady buying comics for her adult son who opines loudly on how comics are worthless, which of course, for her they are. But comics are a continuation of a great tradition. The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote, Great Expectations, all of them began life as short, serial publications that later formed a full novel. Comics are merely the 20th century evolution of that genre. And not only that, they could be seen as the perfect medium for our busy lives; short, compact bursts of information that can be single doses, or spread out over a year or two. In some cases, decades.
For the most part, my comic book reading has been confined to mainly independent or lower profile comics. The so-called 'literary' comics. Not to say I'm a snob, I love a good superhero yarn, but they never really interested me as much as books like Sandman or the current Y: The Last Man did. DC was my comics publisher of choice because one of their flagship characters was nothing more than an obsessed millionaire who dressed like a bat, lived in a cave, and got into fistfights with escaped lunatics. As you can see I was into the high concept stuff.
The only superhero books I really paid attention to were Alan Moore's dense reinventions and Batman, who isn't a superhero at all. The change in my attitude started rather slowly, with a loaned copy of the novel It's Superman by Tom De Haven. It's a great reimagining of the Superman myth from a more realistic approach. I'm not saying it's the Sopranos, but this Clark Kent actually lives through a very real depression era thirties. If your at all interested in comics, it's a great read. Then I noticed some good Superman stories by non-superhero writers like Brian Azzarello, and began to change my opinion a bit. I realized it wasn't really the character I didn't like, but the writers. Superman is too easy to make into a bland, one trick pony, but ocassionally great things can be done with the idea.
Once I got past that hurdle, along came DC's Infinite Crisis. Infinite Crisis is a huge universe spanning event that's going to change every single title that DC has. In fact, some of them have already ended due to the events of this storyline(I doubt that will last too long, though), and a few heroe's have died. Some of them you'll even recognize!
I have my coworkers to blame for the rest of my superhero acceptance. I was the only DC fan in a store full of Marvel fans, and it was only a matter of time before they tempted me over to the darkside. At first it was the low-profile title Runaways, which I contend to be the greatest book Marvel currently has in print. It's like the Arrested Development of comics; brilliant, but nobody pays any attention to it. The problem is, it has frequent guest stars from c-list heroes and villians across the Marvel universe, and it was enough to get me interested.
Of course, Marvel also just finished(some say started) their huge universe spanning event, House of M. In it, through a fairly simple but also boring to non comic fans, over 90 percent of the mutants on earth lose their powers. Bam, overnight their regular human folks. Only not quite regular. Some of them lose the powers, but not the freaky appearances, which is a bit disquieting. Basically what this did was set the clock back to the 1960's origins of the X-Men, where they were a minority persecuted by humans. This time around, with Xavier nowhere to be seen, the X-Men academy has become a relocation and internment camp for those mutants still left. It has some topical reverberations, but it's also turning out to be just a good read. Of course, after reading House of M I now have to read almost every single Marvel title to see what happens next. And I do. What I don't buy I read on break, or at least flip through, and I'm a hardcore comics junkie now.
In the end, I have to admit something that I'm finding very hard, given my past relationship with comics. In the battle between warring Universe Altering Events, Marvel is clearly the winner. It may be too early to tell, since Infinite Crisis has just really started, but House of M really outshone it. The thing is, Infinite Crisis is a horribly complicated story, with ambitious writers doing a pretty good job at keeping the pace and interest up. But House of M was a simple story executed almost perfectly. With DC you're forced to read everything and memorize 20 years of continuity, with Marvel you only had to read the 8-issue miniseries and whatever titles you already picked up, and you knew everything you needed to know.
DC seems to be falling under the weight of their own intellect. Where I once loved the more cerebral hich concept ideas, and was willing to forgive the occasional lapse in storytelling, Marvel has won me over with simple ideas playing into complex variations.
Of course, I work at a comic shop, so I'll be reading them both anyway.

JOINING THE NIGHTBREED

My family always thought it was laziness that kept me in my room, away from my peers throughout high school, but they were wrong. True, Sloth has always been the easiest of deadly sins to come by, but it wasn't the whole story. While my relatives were worrying about my social life, I was discovering the magic of cinema. And not just any cinema, but horror cinema! I was an addict, swallowing up anything I could find. From direct to video Full Moon films to tried and true black and white classics, I was a horror fiend. My weekends were full of late night creature features and Vincent Price marathons.

It could be argued that a social life was never in the cards.

It hadn't always been that way, though, there was a time when I wouldn't go anywhere near horror films. Sure, I had always loved scary stories(strangely enough, I have fond childhood memories of the book 'It' by Stephen King, having read it in high school), and I was fascinated with books about horror movies and monsters. I studied the pictures in those books much the same way I would stare at a spider on the wall, entranced by it's complex anatomy. And, much like a spider on the wall, if the pictures were moving, I would scream like a girl and wave my arms like an epilectic watching pokemon.

You see, I've always been a bit of a coward. Intensely in love with those things deemed frightening and monstrous, but constantly scared by it. This may stem from the fact that the first movie I consciously remember seeing was John Carpenter's 'The Thing'. Regardless of how scary it may seem to a modern audience, it made quite an impression on my 5 year old mind. After that fateful day, I avoided horror films like the plague. I would suddenly leave the room if one came on the TV, and I'm embarassed to tell you how old I was before I could sit through the entire video for 'Thriller'. Ask anyone who knows me, and they'll testify to the fact that I'm the first to jump in fright at a movie. More times than I can count I've been forced to disguise a startled jump as a flamboyant scratching of the nose. And not just horror movies, either, but any film that has a sudden noise and quick camera cuts.

So, what happened in between kindergarten and high school? The movie Nightbreed, for one. If you haven't seen it, the movie is about a troubled man who dies and finds himself a member of the Nightbreed, monsters who have lived hidden away for centuries after a bloody massacre at the hands of fearful humans. It came out while I was starting Jr. High, and at the time I gave it about as much thought as I would any other horror film. Which is to say, next to none. Thank god for friends with cable, is all I have to say. We watched it one night, against my initial hesitations, and I loved it. Here was a horror movie unlike any I had ever imagined, where the monsters weren't just sympathetic and frightening, but heroic as well. They lived in a complex society, and were more than just the bloodthirsty fiends who usually stalk half naked teenagers. The villians in the film were religion, authority and science. As flawed as the movie may be, imagine the impact on my impressionable teen mind.

After that, the floodgates opened, and horror became a steady part of my diet. I began renting near a dozen movies a week(I didn't sleep weekends all throughout high school. That was for class), and I've made it a point to do everything I can to catch a horror movie during it's theatrical run. Any movie where the main characters are WB poster children can wait until video. Hell, right now, as I type this, the original Amityville Horror is playing on the TV next to me(it's a fairly bargain basement haunted house flick, but it has a few moments).

And yet, despite my obvious addiction to the horror genre, I would always downplay it's significance. About a year ago, Stephen King wrote a column for Entertainment Weekly about the resurgance of horror, and horror fans in general. He compared us, not unfavorably, to junkies, so addicted that we would constantly be hunting for the next score. Fiendishly trying alternate sources, like Italy or Asia, and always chasing that fleeting high of fear even when we know the results will probably be disappointing. In my case, at least, he was spot on. I spent a large amount of time in denial, masking my horror addiction in shame. You see, horror films are also a lot like porn. You can keep a horror DVD out in the open, but people are still going to assume your a drooling pervert. But just because one person is into whips and chains doesn't mean the next guy is into anything more than plain old vanilla.

Of course, we horror fans don't exactly help our case by going in droves to see goddawful remakes of once classic(and sometimes classy, in their own way) films that merely increase the gore and nudity. Horror has always had an air of exploitation, but over the past few decades an increasingly mean spirited edge has begun creeping into what most studios believe a horror film should be. The problem has only become worse now that the generation raised on such films(well, I guess that would be my generation. sorry folks) has matured and begun making films of their own. As much as I enjoy some of these films, I'm a bit dismayed at where it seems to be heading.

The problem is, too often people(especially movie studios) confuse shocks with scares. Anyone can make you scream by hiding in the dark and yelling BOO! as you walk by, and cinematically thats what most horror movies do these days. They bombard you with quick cuts, sped up or slowed down footage, and wall to wall noise, deadening your senses. The rare and true genius realizes that horror isn't about jumping in your seat, it's about mystery. Not the mystery of what you don't see, but what you don't understand. When you truly can't understand something, when you just can't wrap your brain around it, thats when it truly gets under your skin. In that respect, some of the best horror movies I've seen probably wouldn't classify as horror. Check out Fire Walk With Me(or Lost Highway, if you aren't a Twin Peaks fan), or the psyched out road-trip movie Gozu for perfect examples.

And so, in my shameful, horror junkie attitude, people perusing my collection have been told to ignore my DVD copy of Astro Zombies and pay closer attention to Umbrellas of Cherbourg, or my Buster Keaton collection. Any questions as to why I owned such trashy movies used to be met with stock replies that it was for camp value. But screw that! I am here to tell the world; I love it all. As bad as the movie is, I get a genuine enjoyment out of Beware! The Blob(the movie JR shot!). Not just a hipster's ironic entertainment, but true joy.

Horror movies affect me in a way that borders on spiritual, and it's actually hard to explain to people, so stick with me. Imagine your sitting in a dry stuffy room, or standing on a street waiting for a bus, whatever, just imagine it's mundane. So your sitting there, probably zoning out, when along comes a sudden breeze. A draft of pleasant air that brings with it the scent full of adventure and the promise of lands beyond the oceans. It reminds you of something, something you can't quite recall, but something very specific. And since all memories bring a bit of sadness with them, you experience a whole array of emotions. Longing, joy, comfort and anxiety. You feel it all at once and it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. If someone were to catch you at that moment, and wonder as to your state, you honestly wouldn't be able to tell them if you were crying out of joy or sadness, but you could tell them you were content. There ARE lands beyond our borders, and places unseen by human eyes.

That, to me, is what truly fantastic horror movies can do. Hell, even the bad ones do it in some small way. Instead of deadening the senses they open the floodgates, bringing out every possible emotion. They all offer the hint of some faroff place, both familiar and unknown. Frightening, and somehow comforting, like going back to childhood. A place where you can belong, with other outcasts. And to the 14 year old me, longing to be somewhere else, where the outsiders were the insiders that was a powerful idea, and a life changing feeling. One of the few things that kept me from snapping and doing what too many confused and repressed people do today.

Horror movies may be the first ones mentioned when Washington sets it's sights on Hollywood, but it should be the last thing we want to get rid of. Horror is one of the few venues of true freedom of expression, where the artist is free from not only censorship, but logic. The person working in the medium of fear is completely free to create whatever he wants, owing allegiance to no single idea or set of rules. And without that creativity, what do we have? Reality. And reality without mystery is just soul crushing.

PROPER INTRODUCTIONS(In all things can be found the Tao)

It was march 24th, 2002. The United States(and the world) were still reeling from the events of September 11th. We'd recently invaded Afghanistan in a hopelessly optimistic attempt to roust the our enemies. The global unity and support for America was already starting to fall apart in the wake of some questionable choices by those in charge, and our country was beginning to divide and polarize in anticipation of conflicts to come. It was in the midst of these troubled times that I sat huddled in the front seat of a 4 door Buick, loudly weighing in with my opinions on the real important business of the day; that Denzel didn't really deserve that Oscar for Training Day.
Don't get me wrong, I think Denzel's a fine enough actor, and it's about time the academy started paying attention to the multitude of outstanding black actors out there, but come on! Training Day?! The performance was really nothing special, amid a year full of interesting and unique actors at the top of their game. It was quite obviously a political move by the academy in response to the increasing amount of criticism for ignoring the African American community. I was happy they had begun listening, but disappointed they allowed the choice to be so obviously swayed by public opinion, and not by the merits of the actor. The entire political move seemed to work against the very importance of the event.

Do you see the problem here? I had remained blissfully unaware until that moment, but suddenly I was aware of a deep character flaw. My priorities were clearly not in the right place.

Albert Einstein once wrote "The health of society depends quite as much on the independence of the individuals composing it as on their close social cohesion." His point was that society needed individuals, and individuals needed some small amount of conformity, that the true measure of a man's worth was how much he utilized his own individuality to better the world he lived in. That made an incredible impact on me when I first read it, and it's an ideal I've aspired to live my life by. I never thought I'd run for public office or become a great and wise sage for millions, but I always tried to live my life in an upstanding manner, acting as at least an example of how to make the world a better place.
The problem is, the example I'm giving usually involves sitting on the couch with a box of pop tarts and a cherry coke and watching as many Godzilla movies as I can before my brain dries out. Sure, I follow politics and current events, and I'm always more than happy to share my opinions and beliefs with those that are willing to listen. Unfortunately my political discussions always make reference to Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader, or I compare today's world with the Lord of the Rings(hint: George Bush isn't Gandalf).
I was torn... between wanting to live my life as a witty, upright citizen who volunteers and actively works for a better tomorrow, and my real skill which is apparently memorizing the complete works of film directors. In the face of such misery in the world, how could I turn away from it and focus on such trivialities? Luckily for me the personal crisis was short-lived. I began to realize that the solution to my problem lay in the problem itself, and two things became apparent. Firstly; paradox exists in all things, especially people, so who cares if I believe two opposing ideas? Secondly; in all things can be found the Tao.
I've always considered myself a Taoist, if I was forced to actually pick a religion. But that's just a cheat, since I know slightly more about Taoism than I do about whatever religion the cavemen practiced. See, Taoism is all inclusive, it makes allowances for all those paradoxes, hell, the Pope is as much a Taoist as anyone in Asia. And so, no matter what religion I practiced, I could be said to be following the Tao, and that's a great comfort for someone as indecisive as I am.
But more than that, I began to realize that all these pop culture references I was making, all these small behind the scenes stories I was cataloguing, they did amount to something. Pop culture is probably the only culture America has left these days, and I was throwing myself in head first. Pop culture reflects the true face of America, no matter how much we lie and say it's just Hollywood nonsense. It's a giant feedback loop. Hollywood picks up on something America latches onto, and then keeps repeating until we get tired of it and move onto something else. Our true desires, hopes and depravities are reflected up there in a clearer light than they are in the murkiness of politics.
I was liberated! No longer was I a basement dwelling dork, I was an Academic! I was a scholar! I was studying humanity on the grandest scale imaginable! I had found my loophole. Crisis averted. Now, if only I could find some way to share this with the world, and therefore work to better the world we live in.
And so, welcome to my blog. Here, on a semi-regular basis, I will be spouting my wisdom to whoever has the patience to read it. The posts could be rants, little downloads from my brain, or thought out theses, you never know. For that matter neither do I, but we'll take it as it comes, right? I do promise that I won't be using this space, or your time, to moan about my life. In fact, I'll be striving to leave my day to day life out of this, using it only in the manner you've read above. If you're a friend, or a family member, thank you for sticking through this. If you aren't, well, even greater thanks to you! Feel free to stick around, my road to salvation as a human being is dependent on you!