We are all inside now. If we leave the house and visit our friends, then it’s against all medical science and logic or a place where the absurdity of existence has taken over. “Stay at home!” – You’ll get screamed at. You’ll shuffle on and grumble to yourself, “Well, if I’m going to get this thing, I’m going to get this thing. If I’m not, I’m not.”
And that’s about the mantra you can take with Coen Brothers movies. You’ll either get them or you won’t.
Here are some podcasts for those of you who get them. The episodes are not a complete bowing to the source material or lauding the Coens for being geniuses, but the podcast episodes also don’t rip the movies apart.
I’m listening to The First Edition song “Just Dropped In”. I would have never listened to this song had it not been for The Big Lebowski. They take obscure music, cartoony characters, bumbling thieves, and over the top violence and put it all together. The Coens’ movies are about music and mood and characters. Plot is something to be meandered through. Add all of those things together, and you get something that hits my brain and soul in the sweet spot.
I think Fargo and The Big Lebowski should be watched as close to back-to-back as you can stand. The same day, ideally. The same weekend is also acceptable.
The Big Lebowski is a retort to the brutalism of Fargo. Fargo is mostly violent and brooding, but funny in parts. The Big Lebowski is funny, but sometimes brutal and brooding.
Enjoy the Yin and Yang of these two gems. Tumble on.
For a slew of reasons, it’s gonna be tough this year. Mostly family related.
You ever invite folks over and then all of a sudden, you’re knee-deep in a Google Hangout messaging barrage with a family member? And simultaneously on the phone reading verbatim that family member’s hangout messages to someone else who lives 2000 miles away?
If you have 70 year old chronically ill narcissistic parents you might relate.
So, at only 2 days into the new decade, I felt it appropriate to bring you this gem again:
The Mountain Goats released this anthem for all of us, the ageless anxiety ridden denizens of the planet that is literally on fire, back in 2005. The Australian Fire was not happening in 2005, but we also didn’t have an Obama presidency yet. Either way, this is an anthem that will stand the test of time. Although it’s arguable for me whether this or Palmcorder Yajna is their best song.
In any case, I was extremely hungry because I was waiting for my friend to get to my apartment so we could eat a brunch of eggs and tater tots and orange juice and other assorted things that I was attempting to use up to free up some much-needed fridge space. The lesson here: do not wait until you get jittery to eat. That is bad news. Especially when the absurdest urgent but actually not urgent phone calls and texts pour in.
The hangry-ness probably affected my ability to juggle the explaining to someone on the phone what a 70 year old was typing to me on Google hangouts with any sort of decorum. My insides are incapable of producing empathy at times like this and I just go into full blown John Cusack in the rain mode.
So, having eaten a thing and gotten the ever-so-urgent requests taken care of, we watched the truly confounding and horrible movie The Holiday (2006):
I won’t get into it here, but suffice it to say that Amanda and Juliet and Kari from theringer.com ‘s The Rewatchables podcast convinced me that I should check this monstrosity out. I loved the podcast episode about this movie way more than I liked the movie. My friend who is way more acquainted with rom com type flicks defended it at parts because it’s truly a nice movie.
Just coming off of the juggling of hangouts and carbs and eggs, this movie did kind of wash over me and put me in a state where I was in desperate need of a nap. But the movie is atrociously acted and written. So many good stars were in this. Kate Winslet. Cameron Diaz at the height of her powers. Jack Black as a romantic lead? Jude Law as a supposedly nice dude?
Go watch it if you’re looking for a huge puzzling mess of a movie.
Set boundaries, breathe. You’re gonna make it through this year, y’all.
Listen to this: A great podcast episode about giving up something you love.
Yesterday I was out walking my dog, which I do multiple times a day and I came across this podcast episode while scrolling the Slate Podcast Daily feed on Spotify:
The Man Up podcast by Aymann Ismail, and this particular episode is about a 24 year old football player who retired from the game due to primarily concussions, but also other nagging injuries.
(First off, yeah, the name of this podcast isn’t something I’d gravitate to. I’m a dude, but I’m not really a jock-bro-dude, and the name of this thing sort of screams that out to me.)
But, what did appeal to me was an athlete talking about something he loved due to concussions. This ties back to my own life because I suffered a concussion while coaching a roller derby practice.
The backstory is that I played (I almost typed “play”, present-tense, because I’m still dealing with this whole can’t play because of injury thing) roller derby on an all-genders team. I had some pretty rough injuries – herniated disc, torn rotator cuff, and finally the concussion. It happened really suddenly and for a dumb reason. I was demonstrating how to block someone, and I fell backwards, and hit my head. It wasn’t a dramatic fall. It wasn’t something that stopped practice. I was wearing a helmet. Right away I could tell that something was amiss. Over the course of a few months, I’d have to stop skating. I went to a concussion doctor and they basically told me to take it easy and not skate for 3-4 months. This was pretty devastating to me because I loved the sport of roller derby. I loved my friends there, the liberal and welcoming community, and I loved pushing myself like crazy to do physical things I didn’t think I was capable of before.
A lot of those sentiments are reflected in that podcast episode with Joshua Perry. He brings up things I hadn’t thought of, either. How these sports like football (or in my case, roller derby sometimes) cause you to push yourself and not listen to your body. Sure, there are times in exercise and in sports when you need to push through, but playing with a broken rib, for example, is not one of those times.
Aymann reacted comically when Joshua Perry said this about playing a game with a broken rib. What is funny to me is my own reaction – I’ve known MANY derby players that came back and played with a broken rib. Or played derby with a cast on their arm, or a concussion that they sustained the day before.
Joshua Perry also said how ultimately he decided to quit because he thought about the long-term effects of what that sport would do to him.
I feel similarly about roller derby. I’m not 24 anymore by a long shot, and still thinking I can handle a full-contact sport. I think it might be time to put myself out to pasture and not risk further head or back injuries.
Read this: A great book about working in normal, yet terrible jobs.
I’m usually a person who takes forever to read a book. Especially lately. My attention span gets grabbed and twisted toward other things – walking the aforementioned dog. Finally making my room, which I moved into back in May, habitable. Playing endless amounts of phone games. Guendelsberger caused me to defy my own slothful reading habits and plunge through this book faster than I usually do.
She worked at three places – an Amazon warehouse, an AT&T call center, and a McDonald’s. Rather than interview people at length about the conditions at those places, she got employed at them and thereby was able to report back on things that journalists usually don’t have access to firsthand, like what the inside of the Amazon warehouse looked like, or the precautionary talks from the call center trainers about how using the bathroom could be construed as “time theft”, or how at the McDonald’s her shift manager had her refuse a cup of coffee to a person who had the money to pay for it. (I won’t spoil the reason for that one. You should definitely read the book.)
It is conversational enough to be a page-turner and also theory based enough to be substantive. I checked it out twice from the library because I forgot to copy down the further reading list at the back. This book lead me down the path to check out Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich (a little old now, and her written voice doesn’t appeal to me as much as Guendelsberger’s), and Scarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir (haven’t started it yet, but I’m looking forward to it.)
This book reminded me that these types of jobs are totally normal for people in the United States to have. It’s totally normal to go to work sick because your job doesn’t allow you any paid sick leave. It’s totally normal to have your bathroom times monitored. “Normal”, not in the sense that it’s good or should be that way. “Normal” in the sense that so many people have to deal with that kind of crappy work environment that saps your soul.
Watch this: An old movie about dudes that say the F word a lot, but has a lot to offer in terms of work today.
Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet, directed by James Foley.
Here is a quick grab of probably the most memorable moment of the film, featuring this speech we’ve all probably heard by Alec Baldwin’s character.
CAUTION- lots of F-bombs and assorted language. Mute if you care about that sort of thing.
And, let’s get this out of the way, Bill Hader’s rendition of this speech on the HBO series Barry:
There’s way more to say about Glengarry Glen Ross, but I’ll keep it brief. Watch it just for the over the top 90s noir vibe. The music, the shots, the rain in the first part of the movie. Watch it to see Jack Lemon act the shit out of that part and say more curse words than you’re comfortable seeing come out of someone who could be your grandfather. Also watch it because Alec Baldwin’s character is pretty much who I think Donald Trump thinks he is at all times.
Play this: a time waster of a game for your phone that takes legitimate finesse and is also pretty fun.
Walk Master is a game where you guide ridiculous and lovable cartoony characters through a cartoon landscape on stilts. It’s a little puzzle-y at parts and reminds me of another game in a very opposite sort of aesthetic – Limbo.
The sounds are nice and calming – crunching through grass, wind in the trees, the bleat of your cartoon goat as it falls down a cliff.
Okay, I’d like to say I get some wacky ideas in my head sometimes and I go off and get all Bukowski-like when I’m writing. I’m referring to the past two entries from last year that got a little weird and free-versey. Hey, that’s fine. These things happen.
In any case, I’ll attempt to rein it in, in the future. (Yes, rein it in.)
What to do with all the TV watching?
One of the reasons I entered into that free-verse “lowercase reviews” as I was calling them is because I was trying to find a new form of movie and TV review. I love thinking and talking and writing about TV and movies, but it’s something that gets done everywhere. And the more I write about all of that stuff, the more I realize that I’m just sort of mediocre at it. I really enjoy recording podcasts about entertainment, but that’s me talking to another person and hashing things out. Usually I listen to those types of podcasts when I’m bored as hell and have 3 hours on the road or more ahead of me.
But still, can we do anything with all that TV watching that a lot of us do? I would like for that time spent, where I am ingesting the latest Netflix whatever it is, to profit me in some way. But I think the writing of reviews is sort of dull and adds up to not much of a hill of beans.
Kevin Sorbo shakes hand with a blonde lady. Hologram Jen, Pink Raver Girl, Bill S. Preston, Rat Face, and Capoeira watch with serious faces.
I’m trying to be a bit more intentional with what I’m doing lately. I bemoan the fact that my apartment isn’t clean even though I haven’t cleaned it. I say I want to write and read more, and yet I don’t spend time doing that stuff. So anyway, here we are and I’m about to watch this Andromeda show. I decide I can split the difference between my desire to glance up and watch some stuff happening on the TV, and reading a chapter in this book – The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – by just having the TV on, but with no sound, and listening to Charles Mingus instead. – All of that said, Andromeda looks terrible.
I don’t have an answer to how or what to do about the watching of series and TV. It seems like our cultural language (and in some ways, how smart you are, and success, maybe?) trades in what shows you watch. “Oh my god, you haven’t seen ALL of Black Mirror? What’s WRONG with you?”
There are some great narratives on TV out there, but there are not enough hours in the day to watch all of the things and still get stuff done.
So, I’ll just end with a question: How do you feel about all the TV watching you do? How do you feel about all the reviewing of TV?
I’ve got to be avoiding some sort of deep dark abyss opening inside myself or in the world. That’s the only explanation for how much I’ve been watching television and movies lately.
I guess there’s a way to deal with these existential things bubbling under the surface in a healthy way, or I could try to find answers by watching all four of the original Alien movies over the course of 3 or 4 days.
Alien (1979) Director’s Cut on Blu-ray :
Ridley Scott made this masterpiece of space horror that every other space horror or serious sci-fi action movie has tried to emulate on the heels of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars. You can see hints of both in the scene when Tom Skeritt is talking to MU-TH-UR (Mother) in a blinky-light room, punching away at a black screen with green letters. Star Wars borrowed from 2001 (I’m assuming) all of those white hallways. Alien borrowed form 2001 and Star Wars the same thing, but added in the freight business. 70s-type dialog where people talk over each other and cut each other off, jump-scares, good special effects. This movie holds up except for a few moments when the alien definitely looks like a puppet. The chest bursting scene is terrifying, but the way the chest burster peeps his head around is a little too sock-puppetty. I watched this movie with my friend who is an ex-Jehovah’s Witness, meaning she was sheltered and hasn’t seen the films we all grew up with. But she also hasn’t been under a rock so she new the major plot points. The biggest shock for her was the reveal of Ian Holm being an android. That scene definitely is still so bizarre- who tries to kill someone by stuffing a magazine down their throat? And the weird noise Ian Holm emits while whirling around before Yaphet Kotto smashes his head off is uncanny and freaky. And Yaphet Kotto is the best in this movie. Probably my favorite acting performance in the whole film.
Aliens (1986) Director’s Cut on Blu-ray:
James Cameron, pre- Terminator 2, and pre- Titanic. This movie goes more for action movie than horror. I think it’s fair to say that it coined a lot of things that are cultural staples. Bill Paxton yelling “Game over, man!” Sigourney Weaver yelling “Get away from her, you bitch!” I was seven years old when this movie came out and my brother and I watched it repeatedly. Of the four original movies, it’s definitely the one that will appeal to 12 year old heterosexual white males the most. It’s still a good romp, but the tone changed drastically from the first movie. The first Alien movie was about claustrophobia and survival. It was about encountering an unknown thing in the midst of your routine life and finding out that the company you work for is actually out to screw you over, royally, and doesn’t give a crap about you. Aliens is about paranoia and the fight of a woman trying to get a bunch of dudes to listen to her. She’s talking sense and is getting condescended to left and right. There are claustrophobic moments, but Aliens is more about guns, sets, space ships, and kicking ass. There’s more humor and mugging for the camera. Sigourney gets into a freight suit thing that I’m pretty sure they made specifically for this movie, and stomps around in it a bit, while the camera follows each movement. “Where do you want it?” She says to the marine dudes. It’s clearly a sly moment for the audience and it felt a little silly. The special effects didn’t hold up as well as the first movie. The flying spaceship moments look kind of like Crayola on cardboard, somehow. The Aliens are frightening, though. The introduction of the queen Xenomorph is genius. Although the getting sucked out into space thing to kill it- that just felt way too familiar. I was surprised at how this one wasn’t as good as I’d remembered it being.
Alien 3 (1992) Director’s Cut on Blu-ray:
David Fincher directs this weirdly paced and overly long movie. It has some really good moments, though. A way younger Charles Dance, before he played the maniac Lannister on Game of Thrones is actually really good. The prison setting worked for me, too. A lot of this movie is Ellen Ripley trying to figure out the prison scenario and also play detective, of sorts. You think Charles Dance is going to be a huge part of the whole movie, until he’s killed by an Alien right after revealing some deep dark secrets of his past to Ripley. And I was with the movie up until around this point. It kind of felt like 12 Monkeys, in a way. Weird British dudes in this run down future, trying to stay alive. Disgusting lice-ridden dead oxen, other bugs clogging up pipes, and molten metal bubbling in the basement. It was pretty cool. But right around the point when Charles Dance gets killed, the movie sort of loses its way. We learn Ripley’s got a chest burster inside of her and she’s suicidal. Dance’s character is gone, so the other heavy lifting for acting goes to Charles S. Dutton, who is really really good, but he can’t quite shoulder the whole burden himself. The scenes of the inmates trying to shut doors and lead the Alien-dog-oxen thing into a piston room goes on way too long. There’s a fisheye shot from the Alien’s perspective that they keep coming back to. It goes on a long time. The wide shots of the Alien are just too phony- the CGI has a weird glow around the Alien against the “real” foreground. It’s just not that great. Overall, this movie was sort of disappointing.
Alien Resurrection (1997) Director’s Cut on Blu-ray:
This movie had a lot going for it. Jean-Pierre Jeunet directed this- I’m surprised at how many of my friends hadn’t seen City of Lost Children or Micmacs, but they recognized his name from Amelie. The movie was written by a pre-Firefly and pre-Avengers Joss Whedon. You can definitely see the beginnings of Firefly formula in the rag-tag bunch of mercenaries. Winona Rider and Sigourney are great. The Aliens look fantastic. There’s virtually no “ugh, that looks dated” reactions until we get to the final morphed Alien, which is a strange human-Xenomorph hybrid. It has eyes, it has a weird nub of a nose, it’s kinda pasty and jaundiced looking. We’re made to feel bad for it and also despise it. At least Jean-Pierre put a spin on the air-lock death by having it be sucked through a tiny window. It screams pathetically while we watch its guts get deposited into space. Then the ending is also kind of a thud. They land on Earth, Winona and Sigourney exchange a few words, the camera pans out to show a demolished Paris. My friend I was watching this with had never seen it. “Wait, are the humans all dead?” She asked. I have no idea. Ron Perlman is great in this movie. Raymond Cruz, young and way before his role as Tuco on Breaking Bad is great- manic, likable, and just generally calm mixed with bursts of crazy (like Tuco). Dominique Pinon is so damn likable as the wheel-chair bound mercenary. Brad Dourif conjures his creepy doctor vibe yet again. There are so many good things about this movie, it’s a shame the weird Alien baby thing at the end had to happen in it.
I’m sure there are misspellings all over the place. I need to edit more.
I’m working on the second day of being sick- a head cold- the dog’s helping, of course. He’s laying on the couch in front of a space heater, and nudging me to take him out on walks. I’m Google Hangout-ing into my work meetings and keeping my microphone on mute so they can’t hear me hack and they can’t hear me talking to the dog as he’s pestering me.
When you’re sick, it’s the best time to binge watch TV. That’s definitely what I’ve been doing.
Community – Last part of season 1:
My friend dog-sits for me and lets me use her Hulu account. I log in and see the “Shows You Watch” category. We have clear differences in what we like. You can pick them out: Hers- Kardashian things, Grey’s Anatomy, uh… actually I have no idea what else is on there because they all seem like variations of those two things. Mine: Community, Seinfeld, Adventure Time, Stephen Universe, Samurai Jack.
Community is finally getting good. I’ve heard friends say how they love the show because it plays with the format of the sit com itself, but I hadn’t gotten to that part until now. The first part of season 1 is kind of mood-setting, treating the characters as you would in any sit com: the weird one, the shy one, the cool one, etc etc. But after a certain point in season one they start being self-referential. It’s starting to get good. I dose up and… oh great my ADD or cold meds are kicking in. Here’s what else I’m watching-
Hell On Wheels :
Cheesy at parts, but then it redeems itself with some beautifully screwed up racial politics and dynamics. It’s like Deadwood-light. With less likable characters.
Batman: Year One :
I’m sure I watched this before at some point, but I can’t remember. This is the adaptation of the comic that began my love of Batman and gritty comics. It’s a faithful retelling of the comic book story. The best part is Bryan Cranston as Gordon. Oh and you wouldn’t know it from listening to her, but it’s Katee Sackhoff as Ellis. Or is it Ennis? I’m still on cold meds. I can’t wait for The Killing Joke to be released next month, even if Rotten Tomatoes did rate it pretty harshly.
Sleepy Hollow (the Tim Burton movie) :
I rated this on one of my blogs a couple of years ago and I think I was more disturbed by it back then as opposed to now. It’s a good movie. Bloody as hell but that’s part of the fun. It’s cool to see Christopher Walken have no lines in the movie and yell like a madman. Netflix informed me that Big Eyes was also directed by Tim Burton, and I’ve yet to see that so I suppose that’ll be coming up soon in my sick-watch list.
Soundbreaking (PBS series):
It looks like George Martin (Not R.R.) helped fund this cool series about music that’s kind of divided up into weird sections. Voice, electronic music, producers- each episode takes a different facet of each of those and then lets the pros in the field do the talking. There’s no voice over narrator. It’s great zoning-out TV, with a parade of all these people from every musical genre talking about how they make music. It made me plug in my guitar and pedals and start noodling around on it. My dog woke up and gave me the stink eye for a bit so I stopped.
Spotlight:
Holy shit, this movie is fantastic. (No pun intended there.) It’s along the lines of Woodward and Bernstein uncovering stuff, but it’s great and if you’re like me and despise organized religion, this will just get your ire up even more. I love watching Michael Keaton act in just about anything (maybe Mr. Mom is an exception). It’s appalling how many priests got away with molesting kids and how the Catholic church covered it up. The movie making is kind of on the dull side, as my friend Bill pointed out when I texted him about how great this movie was. He’s right, but I think it works for this narrative. There’s also only one black guy in the whole movie. Hey if we’re making a movie I think it’s okay to cast against type and race every once in a while. Just try that more, Hollywood. Okay?
I’m sure there’s more but I can’t remember them. Didn’t John Donne keep some kind of diary about when he was surviving the plague? I’m sure if he had Netflix, he’d be much happier. Did he have a dog? He needed one of those, too.
(Forgive all the misspellings in this post. I’m not 100% with it.)
There’s the hum from the lights in my office right now.
4 rows of flourescents that I only turn on when I’m having a meeting. Which starts in about 10 minutes, but my brain is clunking along about non-work things: the apocalypse, zombies, standup comedians, and men in spandex. The lights humming are taunting me about my lack of precision and focus.
I’ve gotta clear the docket, put the salve on my brain, use the sherbet (sherbert?) to cleanse my brain palate of all this ephemera.
Swirling around in my head-space I’ve got audiobooks, comic books, movies, TV shows – these are all mixed in with the first winter I’ve spent in a place with snow, actual snow!, in maybe 10 years or so. Trudging to work in the muffled layered shirt-shirt-hoodie-coat-hat combo, pumping a young adult Star Wars book into my ear holes I’m looking at banks of snow created by the plows and feet crunching on weird bluish-white salt crystals to keep the sidewalks clear. All the while carrying my cluttered head around.
Oh and then there’s roller derby. Dear Cthulhu, so much roller derby up here in the Twin Cities. Playing roller derby. Going to practice, watching games. Derby begets more derby. More derby begets friends who like derby which begets more friends and more derby…
Also, just adding to this mix, something I probably won’t go into at all here ( none a-tall) are the weird-isms of dating life. Late 30s and dating. Being a nerd in your late 30s and dating. Is “nerd” another word for extended adolescence? Does being a nerd of a particular type mean you’ve stunted yourself to the point where the nicknacks and escapism and art you’re into are just forms of reality avoidance? Fear of maturity, fear of buckling down? But I’ve gotta say that no, it’s not that because nerds have lives. Nerds take on immense responsibility (and great power) because of their nerdy-ness. Nerdy comic dudes combine their forces and put on conventions. The nerdiest and most creative of us make art and sitcoms and movies about our nerdy-ness. Maybe being a nerd means being idealistic and enthusiastic about a certain aesthetic and way of thinking that just isn’t present in popular culture but goddammit you’re willing to shove your way through the masses and show them that this ONE THING – be it Superman, Firefly, Captain Phasma, or The Elder Gods- is the coolest. You get enough people together with that ONE THING for a common purpose, and it’s powerful and addicting.
What I’m getting at is that I’m at odds with myself. I want to talk about all of this cool media and art that’s coming out, but doing it in the REVIEW THIS fashion makes me want to break down the walls, but still the impulse is there: Document the things that happen. Don’t be a passive consumer of media. Challenge and push against the things that are coming at you. CREATE! (Ugh, that last one is a struggle for me.) But I’ll trudge onward into the salt flats of life and grab at these strange images swirling around me, around all of us.
That said, here’s some docket clearing. Some REVIEWS:
Mad Max, and Mad Max II: The Road Warrior –
Watch these movies with someone who’s never seen them before. All the familiar beats take on a new impact when you’re seeing them with someone who’s genuinely taken aback by the car crashes in the first movie. The end scene with the handcuffs… Sure, we’ve seen similar things since these movies came out in the late 70s and 80s, but dammit, George Miller and a super-young Mel Gibson made some really good movies. Probably inspired by the “dirty futurism” of Star Wars, Miller cranked out these post-apocalyptic movies. (The first Mad Max is probably pre-apocalyptic, to be exact. There’s the facets of society still clunking around like cops and robbers and small villages, but they’re on the brink of extinction.)
The second Mad Max – The Road Warrior – Is a proof of concept for Mad Max: Fury Road. There’s the buildup to the final 13 minute chase scene, which is still great to watch even after having seen the crazy LSD trip that is the new Fury Road movie. Mel Gibson, in his pre-insane racist era is great and charismatic to watch. Don’t think about that Passion of the Christ movie or whatever else he’s done. Mel needs to stay in the early to mid 80s making Mad Max and Lethal Weapon movies.
I’m probably a chameleon. I take on the way of speaking and mannerisms of people around me. Maybe that’s what’s happening after listening to Patton’s book – it’s a mish-mash of jokes, bits, and memoir. He talks about incredibly nerdy (see above) things and drops references to books, movies, and art that you’ve never heard of but will want to see when he enthusiastically endorses them. The best chapter is his theory that everyone is either a Zombie, a spaceship, or a wasteland. I like this personality typing more than the Myers-Briggs test or Enneagram or whatever else is out there. He read the audio book, which makes the jokes land so much better than just cramming them into your eyeballs. It’s a good read (listen) with some ups and downs in there, but you won’t be disappointed if you’re looking for something pretty humorous. Check it out of the library. Look it up, I bet yours has audio book check outs like mine does.
Okay, I need to eat. I’ve got that shaky and focused feeling that means I haven’t packed enough protein into my body. I feel like my palate’s been cleansed but now I need to stock back up.
Watchmen: “Part two of the weird comic book movie double feature.”
You’ve gotta watch this movie if you’re trying to retain or obtain your Boy Scout merit badge in being a COMIC BOOK NERD. Okay, that’s not exactly accurate. If you’re trying to be a certain TYPE of comic book nerd. What kind? Probably the kind that I am – pseudo-intellectual, into violence, and willing to justify some brutal scenes for the sake of the story. I’m the type of comic book nerd that will say, “Yeah, I like the X-men, but it’s GRANT MORRISON’S run that is really great.” or, “Sure, Batman’s great, but c’mon it’s Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One that matters the most!”
Look, it’s Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ brain child of a comic – well, that’s where the impetus came from anyway. Alan Moore is, to use Marc Maron’s oft-used phrase, “A dark wizard” of comic books. He’s responsible for V for Vendetta. He wrote Watchmen. He despises the hell out of the movie adaptation. Go Google it. He’s adamant about Watchmen only existing as a comic.
But the movie, right? Zach Snyder’s best one so far. Whatever qualms Snyder has about this movie, as far as I can tell, shouldn’t be that it’s not faithful to the comic (well, with one exception that I’ll mention in a minute) – shot for shot, it seems like in my memory he delivers it. Rorshach, the story, the Comedian, Night Owl, Dr. Manhattan’s shlong – it’s all there like it is in the comic.
Okay, but the thing for me is – this movie differs, just like the comic- from other superhero movies that are out today. It takes these goody two shoes heroes and shows us the dark side of them. It’s brutal as hell and twisted.
My friend and I watched this as part two of a double feature, Unbreakable being the first. I wanted to shake up the taste in our mental mouth-brains of the current swath of Marvel Comics superhero stuff. And I didn’t really want it to be the overly weighty and self-important shtick of The Dark Knight or Man of Steel (blue-grey washed out everything movies). My friend and I – we’re blissed out on vegetarian fake meat in our Chinese food. We’re in a big pile on the couch with my black Florida dog in the middle of a cold Minneapolis winter. To be honest, I’m snoozing in and out because it’s late and dark and I’ve got above-mentioned 60 pound snoring dog on my lap. The images come into my brain when I come to – a fever dream of a blue god on mars talking to a girl who looks like a 60s go-go dancer, a guy with prosthetics on to make him look like Dick Nixon, a guy in an owl costume… then I’m out and these images are dancing around inside my noggin, the MSG or whatever they put in the Chinese food making me trip a little, or at least pound my blood sugar to the point that I’ve got a complex carb coma going. It’s nightmarish, and I think that’s the point.
It’s a good movie if you’ve got the stomach for some pretty gruesome scenes. Watch this if you’re trying to impress the angsty comic nerds in your life. Watch it if you’re into spandex and a lot of cynicism about the human race. Do it with your belly full of General Tso’s and dark 10% beer.
Finished reading Vol. 2 of Black Science. They’re really toying with the whole time/interdimensional thing. It’s a good book. I wonder if volume 3 is out yet. I love the art and I love how they don’t make people out to be one-dimensional. The one son loves his dad and thinks he’s a hero. His sister thinks he’s a jerk. The villain actually has some real motivation for feeling the way he does and for sabotaging things. It’s a great book. I’d never heard of Rick Remender before this, but I think I’ll go check out the rest of his stuff.
Re-watched the first episode of Sense8 last night, and a bit of the second episode. After derby practice is probably not the best time to watch something like that, as my brain is firing like crazy and it’s hard for me to pay attention to a drama where the pieces are all moving and swirling as they are. The thing I love about Sense8 is how they have every demographic represented. AWESOME. I still feel like they’re focusing too much on the white guy cop and the white british girl and the white Darryl Hannah (she looks great for however old she is). I hope in other episodes they shift the focus over to the other folks in the series.
Went to see American Pop by Ralph Bakshi at the Trylon. I think I’ve seen this movie before, or else it just left me with the same level of melancholy that all of Bakshi’s movies leave me with. It was really good. Some great music in it, too.
Finished reading Maximum Minimum Wage by Bob Fingerman. A black and white comic about Rob (Bob’s alter-ego, I’d say) and how he’s a struggling artist trying to make it.
Read volume one of Outcast by Robert Kirkman. He actually did the forward to Bob Fingerman’s book. I think that’s how I heard about the previous one. Robert Kirkman was on an episode of WTF, and that led me down the rabbit hole of getting caught up with Walking Dead. Anyway, Outcast was good. A horror comic about people who have been possessed. The protagonists are a guy who was always surrounded with these people who were getting possessed – his mom, his wife, his kid. He wound up beating them to get the evil out. Thus he has a reputation of being a guy who beats up his wife and kid. Drawn well. Written well, too.
Listened to this podcast, Everything is Stories. Good podcast. Listened to episode 15: Vanished Stories. They interview a guy who was a war protester during the Vietnam war. He was accused of throwing a firecracker underneath a car and thus got 5 years in federal prison for it. He then changed his identity and made a life doing other things. He was eventually caught when he ran for city council.
DERBY:
Last night at derby practice was pretty great. We worked on a ton of different stops. Left and right-footed hockey stops. I stink at the left one. Then we worked on powerslides- skating backwards and putting your leg out behind you, but not carving with it. It was awkward and I know I’ll need to work on that. It felt good to be out of fresh meat and skating with those other dudes. Tuesday is a scrimmage with MNRG. I volunteered to ref, but we’ll see what happens. I’ll at least show up and see some great game play.
OTHER STUFF:
The weather’s been awesome in Minneapolis lately. It was 50 something degrees out today when I was walking to work. I love when the sky is overcast and you need a light jacket. This’ll be my first winter in Minnesota, and every single person I talk to says that I need to prepare myself. I think I’m mentally prepared. Let’s do it.
Cyborg Astronaut Dog 
