Precious Memories: Meeting David Lynch

A friend (and former teacher of mine) some years ago introduced me to the work of film director and writer David Lynch. His most notable works are Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, and Blue Velvet. To say Pipitone and I are fans is putting it lightly, and the idea of meeting him was something we dared not ever dream.

Lynch is very well known for two other things: being extremely private, and being batshit crazy. He wrote a coffee table book in 2007 (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=david+lynch) and decided to do three book signings: one is LA, one in his hometown of Montana, and one in New York. Pipitone and I pre-ordered and received these books and when we learned of the signings, we knew this was our one and only opportunity to ever meet the man. And is that the smell of stale bong water in the air? Then, yes, it must be another Eddie misadventure.

Since I had afternoon and evening classes that semester, I took the day off and met him as he was leaving work and we took the train into the city. Problem is, he had to work until five that day and the signing began at six-thirty. We both were dressed for a wedding—Pipitone: "It's David Fucking Lynch!"—and the train station was packed with students. Many came over to talk to him as we maneuvered to the front of the train. "I can't talk right now. Look, I'm meeting David Lynch....None of you know who David Lynch is?! That's it, you fail." He's won teaching awards, don't judge him on this one situation. We weren't just fans, we were warriors, fighting for our king. Besides, I'm sure he didn't fail those students, he probably skated them a D-.

Because it's the N train we stopped repeatedly and without reason. Other travelers, none of whom understood how important is was for us to get to 14th street, would block doors to get on the train, hold it for friends and those selfish pregnant women who couldn't move fast. Goddamn savages didn't understand.

So once we finally reach 14th street, like the Magellan and Christopher Columbus caliber explorers that we are, we get lost, and end up six blocks in the wrong direction. When we finally ask someone where the appropriate Barnes & Noble is, we both break out into a run and we are met by a line that is stretching down the escalator, and out the building. We make it upstairs to the seating and we make it in the last row. As it turns out Lynch had to be someplace soon after this and would only have time to sign autographs for those in the seats. The cheers of me and Pipitone drowned out the collective groans (and in some cases sobs) of the two hundred people behind us.

Lynch did an interview with someone from NBC. His hair was its normal haphazard style, moving of its own volition. When he spoke, he often looked to the sky, and gesticulated with his fingers as if they were climbing some invisible structure. Despite his decades of heavy smoking his voice was soft, calm, and tinged of an accent that was noncommittally Midwestern—he grew up in Montana, Spokane and several other places—which is somewhat surprising considering at this point he has lived in LA most of his life.

He spoke of meditation, ideas, and consciousness, of coffee and cigarettes, of his new film INLAND EMPIRE, of his characters and his legacy (he hates that word), and when asked for a method of deducing a good idea from a bad idea he said, "Finding a good idea is like waking up one day and always having a preference for blondes, and walking out of your house and around the corner and falling in love with a red head."

Music was provided as he spoke by a trio of young women who called themselves Au Revior Simone, a reference to Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. They were quite fetching and their music was strangely haunting. They had an off beauty to them; some sort of middle ground between nerd- and heroin-chic.

Finally we started the line for the autographs. Pipitone went ahead (he was the elder fan) and he shook Lynch's hand and said some sort of platitude and Lynch smirked and said, "You're welcome." Pipitone quickly dialed his wife on the phone and talked to her. He was wearing a large coat, and from the corner of my eye I could see the dark blob suddenly fall into a chair. But I couldn't care at that moment, I was next.

I started to step forward—nothing between myself and this genius—and then some little girl cut in front of me and handed Lynch her book. She was a Barnes & Noble worker and just skipped me! I've never hit a woman, and have always been brought up believing that it is wrong. At that moment, however, I felt the urge to punch her in the back of the head and then do the chant from Twin Peaks: "FIRE WALK WITH ME, BITCH!!!!" (I added in the 'bitch' myself) Lynch saw what she did, and stood up, and refused to sign the book for this girl because she had no couth! God, I love this man. Then, his assistant, whom I will refer to as Captain Douche, explained that Melissa—this gutter slut who just cut in front of me—was a very big fan but had to leave in a hurry and was hoping that she could get her book signed. Lynch begrudgingly signed the book, but didn't even look at her. And this—I won't use that word—DIDN'T EVEN SAY THANK YOU. Lynch and I looked at her like the monster that she was. Finally, I stepped forward, and he said to me, "Sorry about that."

A hero of mine just said something to me, and a million replies ran through my head: "Adopt me!", "Thank you for giving us such excellent work," "Please take me with you," or "It's okay, Mr. Lynch, I guess she was just"—I would wink here—"Wild at Heart." (Wild at Heart was a 90s film he did with Nicolas Cage before he started to suck, and Laura Dern) I'm sure he would've caught the reference and chuckled with me before he punched me in the throat for making such an awful joke.

So, with all of this going on, and the opportunity to say something really meaningful to someone I greatly admired, what do you think I said? Like the fucking tool I am, I stammered "It's okay, Mr. Lynch." Then, after he signed his name (followed, perplexingly, with four dots beneath it) I said, "Thank you, Mr. Lynch." Not only did I not say anything meaningful but I called him Mr. Lynch twice in less than three seconds and merely said thank you like the mush-mouth that I am AND I was so star struck I forgot to offer my hand for a shake. At this point he should have brained me with a ball peen hammer. No, better yet, Joe Pesci should've come out of a car, reassumed his character from Goodfellas and called me a "Stuttering prick" before he, Ray Liotta, and Bob DeNiro threw me in the trunk and buried me in upstate New York.

As the level of my stupidity would not yet strike me for another two hours (I was basking in the afterglow; yes, I'm using the word afterglow to describe the moment; yes, I know how that sounds) I remembered that Pipitone collapsed. He was now practically lying down on the seats and told me that his knees had gotten weak, and the only other time that happened was the day he met his wife. I suddenly feel the need to remind you all that both Pipitone and I are straight, and all of this was a perfectly normal reaction to meeting a personal hero.

Rant/Review: Star Trek

When I finished watching the new Star Trek movie I couldn't help but feel like Charlton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes. As a matter of fact we were both on the ground, pounding our fists yelling, "You Maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Goddamn you all to hell!"

To understand why Star Trek was rebooted we have to look at what it was in its prime and what it became in its dwindling years. I'll be going over its history, and I won't be as detailed as I'd like to be, but I'll try to do the franchise justice in the space I have.

When Gene Roddenberry created the original series in 1966 the show was meant to be socially relevant, adapting events in the world and bringing it to the show. Star Trek explored themes of race, sex, equality, war, genocide, fear, xenophobia, and science with an outlook that was optimistic about what humanity could become in the future. It didn't feature many battles (budget constraints) and the sets were largely silly, but the stories were mostly brilliant. Star Trek was always about (at least for the first three series) the human condition. It was the strong writing of the original series that made up for the terrible sets and awful special effects.

Six movies followed the original series (branded TOS) and a new show in 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation. TNG is considered the best of the five shows (personally, I believe DS9 is, but we'll cover that in a minute) but it is largely an echo of the original. After TNG ended it was given four movies, and we were given the first Trek show not created by Gene Roddenberry: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but I'm getting ahead of myself again. In the end, TNG was largely about maintaining the peace that the characters in TOS had worked to achieve.

Roddenberry died while TNG was on the air, and the reins of the venerable franchise was left in the hands of Rick "Cocksucker" Berman. SFdebris once summed up Berman's tenure aptly: "...part of his overall effort to seek out quality and grind it beneath his heel." (those of you who are interested: http://www.youtube.com/user/sfdebris?blend=1&ob=4 I would give my first born to that guy). To be fair, however, TNG remained strong, despite Berman's efforts, and he along with writer Michael Piller created Deep Space Nine in 1993.

DS9 was the most original take on Trek since its inception in 1966. It took place on a space station, as opposed to a starship, the characters were flawed and came into conflict with one another (something Roddenberry originally said was a no-no) and the show was considerably darker than anything in Trek. Please note that Berman had very little say in what happened on the show—Piller, along with writers Ira Steven Behr, Ronald D. Moore, and hell, every other writer and producer on the show basically kept Berman away.

Many consider DS9 to be a betrayal of the utopian view of humanity orginally concieved on the outset of the franchise (especially the episode "In the Pale Moonlight," and the series spanning Dominion War arc), but in actuality, the show was something Roddenberry would have loved. It explored the vision, dissected and questioned it, and never lauded the dark choices certain characters made. The show was about moral complexities and gray areas in life, and eventually, during wartime; it told stories about war crimes, genocide, terrorism, corruption, family, religious fundamentalism, and in the case of its protagonist, Captain Sisko, the cost of hard decisions on a man's soul; that decisions have consequences, that there are no easy choices in command, that people will die no matter what choice you make, no matter how you try to avoid it. Star Trek was always about questioning things, and DS9 questioned Star Trek.

In the end, DS9 was given the least attention of any Trek show, and it was the most controversial, but it was the most human of the series.

Elsewhere, Rick Berman was building an army, breaking the Treaty of Versailles, and planning an invasion of Poland. He, along with Michael Piller (who left the series very, very quickly) created Star Trek: Voyager in 1995 and (with Brannon "Hack" Braga instead of Piller) Enterprise in 2001, as well as the final TNG film, Nemesis, as we reach the twilight of the franchise. Together they consolidated Trek once DS9 ended and writers like Ronald D. Moore, Ira Behr, and Michael Piller were basically thrown out of the club. Berman and Braga (known also as The Fourth Reich) had complete creative control of the entire realm of Trek.

Together, Voyager and Enterprise had more writing and continuity problems than any Trek series before them. The characters were paper thin, the plots were tired and often made no sense. At this point, it was the feeling of Berman and co. that Star Trek had a built-in audience—and he was right—but they took the audience for granted. It was believed that so long as a show carried the banner of Star Trek that we would watch it. Berman and co. were wrong.


(Berman, above; Braga, below; before they fled to Argentina)

Star Trek: Nemesis was a good idea that was poorly realized, but good intentions don't translate into numbers at the box office, let alone positive reviews. The franchise died with Nemesis and the eventual cancellation of Enterprise. After years of false rumors about a crossover movie that would encompass all of the series (minus Enterprise) Berman was canned (a little late, fellas), and Paramount gave JJ Abrams the reins of the franchise—goddamnit!—a man who I hope—and I'm not kidding—is the only casualty in a violent plane crash.

With fellow hacks in tow (Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman), JJ Abrams set out to reinvision Star Trek. The only problem was that none of them had ever watched any of the series. Herein lies a funny problem: Star Trek always needed to reach out to nonfans, and attempts in the past usually failed (Enterprise)—though some were successful (Wrath of Khan, First Contact), and Abrams was right to try to get a broader audience. Unfortunately, what he decided to do was just give small fan services to those of us who have always been with Trek and only abandoned it once we were taken for granted, and focus on giving us a movie about vapid characters and senseless action.

Abrams, as well as most of the people involved in the new Trek movie, are all Star Wars fans, and decided to make many, many references to Star Wars in the movie because "Star Wars was the movie of a generation and I enjoy eating unchristened babies." (not an exact quote from Abrams, but closer than you think) The problem is that Trek came first, Trek made something like Star Wars possible, and no offense to Star Wars fans, but Trek was the better franchise because it had and explored complex themes and didn't rely on vague magic and special effects (until Voyager and Enterprise) to tell a story.

So Abrams goes on to make over a dozen Star Wars references, and decides that in order to tell this story he needs to erase all of the continuity that came before, basically erasing 40-some odd years of Trek. Thanks.
However, considering all of the continuity errors they made in the natural timeline, most of us who don't like Abrams' movie just say that this entire thing happened in a different universe all together. Incidentally, none of us have touched a woman in quite a while.

Not only that, but he only ignores most of Star Trek's themes. Yes, there's optimism, but where is relevance? Instead of a story we get product placement, Beastie Boys, nonsensical plot devices, lens flares (goddamn you), silly action scenes (Trek isn't an action franchise!) and a villain who looks emo and whose motives make no sense (You hate the Federation because they attempted to save your home planet, but failed? You have the rationality of an eight year old!), and instead of giving us an insight into the human condition you give Kirk an allergic reaction, and make Scotty fly through tubes of water? Die. All of a sudden, Spock wants to throw someone (probably to their death) off the ship? There's no brig anymore? LEARN TO WRITE BETTER! Then die in a plane crash.




(The resemblance is startling)
Just because it carries the banner of Star Trek and you use some of the names, doesn't make this a Star Trek movie. In the words of my friend Rob: "Don't wave a shoe in my face and call it bacon!"

I've talked to a lot of old school Trek fans who are split on the issue of this movie. Half like it, half hate it. A nonfan once said to me, "I don't like Star Trek but the new movie was tight!" Sometimes I understand why the writers didn't make many attempts to attract nonfans.

The only good that can come of this is that nonfans might become interested in the rest of the franchise and start to watch all three Trek series (Voyager and Enterprise don't count), and see Trek for what it was before Berman, Braga, Abrams, Kurtzman, and Orci did to Star Trek what a bunch of prison inmates would do to a drunk prom queen.

Until then, thanks for the memories.




P.S. I know I didn't exactly go into major detail about the new movie. This entry is nerdy enough as it is without me pointing out all the continuity and plot problems. It's almost not worth going into. It's the science fiction answer to Godfather III.


P.P.S.




Star Trek 2009: 0 out of 5

Rant: JJ Abrams

It has been my belief for some time now that JJ Abrams (director of the new Star Trek movie, creator of Lost and Fringe) is worse than Hitler. I believe that he is the purity of evil, and a helluva fiddle player. JJ Abrams is an arrogant asshole, a hack and has a face you just want to punch.

I, personally, have never really watched Lost so I can't say anything about it. I did catch Fringe and Star Trek. I've been a fan of both The X-Files and Star Trek since I was old enough to hold a remote, and Abrams has made a business out of destroying things from my childhood.

Interviews with him tell a great deal. On Opie & Anthony (the best radio show in history) Abrams said that he was never into Star Trek and took the reins because he wanted to make it into something he would want to see. This guy has also repeatedly bashed The X-Files for "overstaying its welcome" and not being very good. He then goes on to make Fringe which is a rip off of the very show he was bashing. Rather than go into specifics, TV.com did the work for me: http://www.tv.com/story/14726.html?tag=hotspot;gumball;1

Now, this rant is more of a teaser for my next review, which is of the Abrams helmed Star Trek movie. I just wanted a seperate article so I may attack the man personally because, well, he's an asshole.

Rant: Verizon Internet

I'd like to make the attempt to explore the width and breadth of my bottomless and immeasurable abhorrence for Verizon DSL. In the black chasm that my cardiologist so endearingly refers to as my heart, very few things have earned this dubious honor.

I've had Verizon cell phone service for years (and works wonderfully, I might add) and I can't say anything bad about them. I've had DSL since 2005 and without fail there is a problem with it at least once a year. Most recently my patience—something I have very little of in the first place—has worn thin. I'm a movie fan and I don't have a job. That makes things difficult. So I tend to download torrents of movies, TV series, whatever. I don't appreciate that it took me the better part of three days to download Strangers on a Train. For whatever reason it just wasn't going fast—downloads, websites.

For the last six weeks I've been on the phone with these derelicts at DSL, an alarming affirmation that Darwin was way off. After having me do the same tests over and over again they've diagnosed three different problems. Eventually, after replacing a jack, and keeping it propped up with tape, the DSL was running fast enough. Then, like an alcoholic's liver, the DSL just stopped working on Sunday. At the time I had a major paper due and I can just come into John Jay early and do it, but there's a small complication there too: after 10am the N train in my area does not run to Manhattan until 3:30. I have to walk half an hour to the D to get to John Jay. A minor inconvenience, but that's not the point. I pay for a service—the MTA also falls into this category—and I expect it to work, and it just doesn't.

After replacing the modem, this new modem doesn't work either. I had been drinking heavily at the time (a 2005 Riesling) because after calling these evolutionary aberrations, it seems that it isn't the modem, but my computer. At this point, I put my foot down. I've only had this computer for a few months and she works wonderfully (yes, it's perfectly normal for a twenty-one year old narcissistic with no girlfriend to give female characteristics to his computer; her name is Kara), or would work if the goddamn DSL would. But why bring logic into this argument?

So it turns out our next diagnosis from DSL (which in their incompetence basically advertizes for Cable's service) stems from a connection problem (diagnosed three weeks ago) but a different connection problem that might come from the pole outside. So they have to send someone to check it out (my reaction was priceless: "I don't want a pole-smoker, I want to check my e-mail." Aren't I a pisser?)

A technician replaced the modem and I had the internet back for almost 30 hours when it crapped out again. They set up another tech to come but the tech never showed up. When I called once again DSL told me that they were trying to do things from the office and didn't want to pay for the service people (who aren't actually a part of Verizon) to come out to my place again. I told the operator, as well as his manager that this was inconsiderate as I have things to do and had to set aside my day to wait for them. They didn't care. Again they attempted to "dial into" my modem, which sounds almost carnal, and I walked them through it myself: "Type 192.168.1.1 then go to the Verizon page and click—" at this point I starting telling them that I was tired with this and I told them: "Fuck it, I'm going to Cable."

Now I download movies at warp speed and my life is easier. The king is dead, long live the king.

Film Review: The Goods

What I find so striking about The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard is how much it reminds me of other, funnier, movies. Anyone who has ever dealt with a car salesman or follows comedy know that salesmen—especially car salesmen—are comedy gold, exemplified is the 1980 classic Used Cars starring Kurt Russell and Jack Warden. And if there's one thing that The Goods excels at it's imitating its predecessor. Unfortunately, Andy Stock and Rick Stempson just didn't seem to notice what made Used Cars so funny.

When Ben Selleck (James Brolin) needs help resuscitating his failing dealership he calls upon Don Ready (Jeremy Piven) and his team to save it. Don is a fast talker with a greasy charm who could sell you your own wife, and his team is made up of people just like him. His job is made more difficult by the inept salespeople that work for Selleck, his unrequited affection for Selleck's daughter (Jordana Spiro), and a rival dealership attempting to buy them out. Now, this really could work as a movie—as a matter of fact, it already has worked very well because Used Cars did it already! I'm not kidding you. Watch this movie then watch Used Cars and you'll see that it is almost the exact same story! They even use strippers and misleading commercials to help sell cars in both movies. The only difference is that Used Cars is a comedy classic and The Goods clings to mediocrity way Oliver Stone clings to insanity.

The Goods producer Adam McKay has acknowledged the similarities between the two films but says "regular people have forgotten about it," and that The Goods is a funny version of Glengarry Glen Ross. First of all, just because "regular people" have forgotten the movie doesn't mean you're allowed to rip it off. If I steal from Fitzgerald doesn't mean it doesn't count because some people may not remember it. Secondly, Glengarry Glen Ross—while being far from a comedy—did have very comedic scenes, and McKay would have done well to have taken notes from it.

If you've seen the trailer, or even the TV spots, you've probably seen the best parts of the movie already. Take away that ten minutes you have eighty more minutes of rip off and filler. The jokes come at a quick pace and when one fails another comes up a moment later. And there are laughs, just not very original ones. The ones that are original aren't very funny, and are usually predictable. Those that are funny are run into the ground so that the scene or exchange just becomes awkward.

The producers are the same behind Talladega Nights (which had all the comedic value of Schindler's List) and Step Brothers (which is actually pretty funny) and you get a lot of the same actors filling in the exact same roles they had in those movies and other comedies they've been in. Jeremy Piven is basically playing the same role he's been playing on Entourage (cue the insufferable Oh yeah!) just less convincingly and more hammy, while other comedians like Tony Hale and Ken Jeong, who are very funny, and who deserve more screen time, are just forced into the periphery so Will Ferrell can get an extended cameo where he plays the same person he plays in everything he's in.

But I'm not totally devoid of humanity. There were funny moments, and just as I said, most were in the TV spots. The extended scene of the "hate crime" and any scene that focuses on Charles Napier is guaranteed for a laugh. James Brolin even gave me a laugh or two. However, it was a little hard for me to accept him in his role at first. Brolin has had a pretty respectable career, and I couldn't help but wonder if he was embarrassed playing such an undignified character, but then I remembered this man has to have sex with Barbra Streisand, so the man should be used to indignity. His coup de grâce came in a rather bland scene: he's claiming in a commercial that he's dying and he wants to see his cars sell before he dies. It's boring until Brolin scratches his head and takes some hair with it. He looks at it and says, "I guess the chemo's working." I don't know why but that was hysterical. If a movie can make you laugh at cancer it can't fail completely as a comedy.

Even Jeremy Piven has a few good moments. He has a smarminess (I'm not sure of it's him or the character) and smugness I can't help but identify with, and as a smoker, I adored his speech about smoking at the beginning of the movie.

At the end of the day, The Goods is an unfunny rip off of a classic, and uses recycled jokes from funnier (and sometimes just as unbearable) movies. In keeping with the theme of ripping off classics I'm going to crib a line from Jay Sherman: "...if it's the remake of a classic, rent the classic."

The Goods: 2 out of 5.
Used Cars: 4 out of 5.

Film Review: Orphan

In Orphan we are introduced to a familiar situation: a scary kid is doing awful things to good people. Parents Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John (Peter Sarsgaard), reeling from the miscarriage of their third child, decide to adopt Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), innocuous and charming in her introduction, but has deep secrets, and a penchant for artifice; its tagline was: There's Something Wrong With Esther (besides her name?). I'm a big horror movie fan, my favorite being the Hellraiser franchise, but the last fifteen years we've have seen some truly terrible additions to the genre—all of the Jason movies after the original, Saw after the original, which at least attempted to be clever, The Grudge, Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake and sequel, The Hills Have Eyes and its sequel, House of Wax, Final Destination, that rely more on gore and Abercrombie and Fitch models spitting pedantic dialogue and are only really there because they're attractive (vacuous looks aside). And don't even get me started on Godfather III.

By and large you see more of the Nameless Evil antagonists—serial killers or some sort of nonhuman entity chasing gorgeous and vapid individuals who wouldn't know common sense if it was as force fed to them as their lines. Through these tired trappings and clichés we start seeing cookie-cutter horror movies—adapted from foreign countries, watered down, stamped with a PG-13 so the studio can get more bang for its buck while the product and genre suffers.

All of this makes Orphan quite a surprise. It gives you those telling camera angles that nods to the audience that when the main character turns around or replaces the medicine cabinet door the mirror will reflect the villain or someone innocuous and startle us with its lack of imagination and elevator music. Instead, there's nothing. No peak in the music, no fake out. It's just a camera angle used by the director. The camera lingers, yes, and reveals Esther coming out of a shadow or hiding behind a column listening as her adoptive parents speak too loudly. That is another horror film cliché, but the movie makes up for it by always keeping the tone of the film in mind, and doing something that most latter day horror films don't: develop their characters.

When the film begins we meet the family in the middle of their lives. We get a silly beginning, an obvious dream sequence, a ubiquitous gore moment, showing the wrapped up and bloody corpse of a stillborn baby. I'll be the first person to say it's unnecessary and shocking for the sake of shock, but at the same time, it is a rarity: American films rarely show dead children—but they got away with it in this movie, and it tells the audience that you're going to see something different.

The family in the movie has its share of problems as we move through the two hour film—another rarity; these affairs usually last 80 minutes—involving a miscarriage, a past infidelity on the John's part, alcoholism on the Kate's—which, due to her negligence, caused an accident at a lake that cost their youngest daughter her hearing. These people have complex problems, and have layers to them, and multiple reasons for doing what they're doing. This is shocking on its own, and a pleasant surprise. And the truth about who Esther really is and where she came from is not only new but absolutely disturbing, and it makes you not only horrified but almost paints her as sympathetic.

Of course this movie does have flaws belonging to the genre: Esther and her four year old accomplice hiding the body of a chunky middle aged nun? Really? Would parents with three kids in ages ranging from 4 to 13 really choose to have considerably loud sex in the kitchen right after dinner? Why don't the kids just go to their parents when Esther is going nuts? Would the husband really take the side of his new daughter over his wife after we see them deal with all the other incidents of "odd behavior" and "irregularities"? Nobody saw Esther fiddling with the car? How did Esther forge all those documents? Did we have to get the "It turns out she wasn't dead after all!" fake out? They could hold their breath that long? And no hypothermia? Really? Did Kate really have to make a quip before striking Esther once more? No epilogue? Really? But all these grievances are fairly minor and are forgivable when looking at the film as a whole. It is still suspenseful, it keeps you interested, the music adds mood and a deep feeling of foreboding, and you care about all the people involved.

Critics have been kind to the film, yet another rarity for the horror genre, and despite being somewhat dismissed as being another in the line of "creepy kid horror" genre (which it admittedly is) the film gives that subcategory a shot in the arm, proving that just because the kid is the evil in the movie, doesn't mean the movie has to be supernatural or border absurdity. Definitely worth seeing.

4 out of 5.

Reviews

One of the main articles you'll find here on this blog will be of reviews—movies, books, TV shows, though I will not be doing Star Trek reviews; SFdebris has that market cornered. The movies and TV reviews will be mostly contemporary works: no one needs to read yet another article about how influential The Godfather and The X-Files were. I will, however, be discussing the latter at length in another entry at another time. My first review will come later and it will be of the film Orphan.

King of the Hill, however, is the topic of today's rant. It was recently announced that the show has been cancelled once again—this time for good after thirteen mostly exceptional seasons—to make room for yet another half hour animated abortion by Seth MacFarlane, a spinoff of the suicide inducing Family Guy entitled The Cleveland Show.

I used to like Family Guy and even found American Dad tolerable, but the show just lost its funny. Now Family Guy is a series that MacFarlane uses as his soapbox to spew his political agenda. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing him for his political leanings, I'm bashing him for not being funny. Political satire can be really fun if you write it correctly. Just saying that Bush is stupid just doesn't cut it. It hasn't been funny since 2002, and to say that if everyone was a liberal everything would be fine—a stance MacFarlane has made since the show was "uncancelled" (meantime The Critic stays dead?!)—and is indicative of the same kind of Fascism he so often accuses the Republican party of being. Episodes like "FOX-y Lady," "Boys Do Cry," and "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven" puts the comedy in the backseat and lets political agendas drive.

I'd also like to point out that my own political views do indeed clash with MacFarlane's, and I have no problem with jokes aimed at the right. What I have a problem with is flat humor. South Park has also changed its format towards the more political—but they attack both sides, calling them out on their bullshit—and they're always insightful and funny when they do it. A good example of this kind of comedy is a joke I saw on Bill Maher. Maher is another person I find unfunny and too biased, but he once compared Sarah Palin and Peggy Hill and the comparison was uncomfortable, true, and hysterical.

However, when Family Guy feels yet again the need to attack the conservatives they are portrayed as simply being small minded, evil individuals. It's propaganda. And if I wanted propaganda I'd listen to the ramblings of Rush Limbaugh or Sean Penn. But I don't want propaganda. I want comedy, and that was something Family Guy used to deliver, but no longer does. The remedy is simple: be more funny. Stop with the random segues and the agendas and WRITE FUNNY JOKES.

This leads me, in a roundabout way, to King of the Hill. A lot of people have viewed the show as conservative leaning, and I can definitely see that, but the political views of the characters, and their feelings on political issues, were rarely addressed in its thirteen year history. But they did have leanings: people from "the north" were generally shown as kooks. Some liberal minded people were portrayed as weak. But each of those characters were given their fair shake, and the other characters thought about what the other person said, and sometimes minds and behaviors were changed. Yes, it was a comedy, but it was open-minded.

While King did have some less-than-believable situations, it generally stayed in the frame of reality, and that's where a lot of the humor came from: subtle jokes and reference as opposed to George Bush snorting coke and shaking hands with Osama bin Laden.

King of the Hill rarely preached, but when it did, it didn't omit the opinions of the other side (except for people that come from Oklahoma—they don't seem to be too popular) and after thirteen years it does seem appropriate for the show to wind down. But not the way it did.

For whatever reason FOX rarely advertised the show and changed its time slot so that it was be cut off by baseball and football games. I can't help but find it ironic that a conservative minded show on a network run by a conservative mogul was treated so poorly. But then, this is the kind of joke you would see on King of the Hill, so I guess there's that.

Seth MacFarlane isn't funny anymore. His shows followed suit. Now a new ship under his flag is the primary reason that King of the Hill is being cancelled. A funny and insightful show gets cancelled for a show about a guy who talks like he had three consecutive strokes. Way to go, FOX. You've got yourself another winner.

I'd like to say at least they're always DVD, but FOX stopped producing them after season 7. Thanks again, Rupert. By next spring you won't have old Hank Hill to kick around anymore.

Introductions & the book

Considering I'm only going to have about three viewers on this blog, this introduction is really just a formality. This blog is going to contain my thoughts--fractured as they are--on just about everything: movies, TV, literature, politics (I'll try keep that to a minimum), writing, the minutiae of daily life. This will basically be a series of rants written by someone who feels the need to inflict his personality on an unsuspecting audience. That being said, I have a dry sense of humor, so bear with me; I've gotten into enough trouble for my sense of humor, I don't need the extra grief.

As the more observant might already have figured out my name is Edward Cambro. I'm an English student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and became a published author at age 20: (http://www.amazon.com/Wilderness-Mirrors-Ed-Cambro/dp/1934925527/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250201696&sr=1-2)-- and just as an aside, the "Ed" thing was a suggestion made to me as a way of making me sound "edgy but casual"; personally, I think it makes me sound like a horse.

The book makes up the width and breadth of my first rant. For God's sake, buy it. I love sitting on my (once firm) ass and collecting checks for nothing. They're not the biggest checks in the world, but money is money no matter how you get it, as many a prostitute has whispered in my ear.

A Wilderness of Mirrors is my freshman outing, a culmination of many years of hard work edited until it hardly resembled the original work by someone who had never read the book at all. I love publishers.

Mirrors has certain issues--as I said, I didn't edit it, and was forced to cut quite a bit from it--but it's a fun little read, and is partially the reason why I decided to create this blog.

Creative people—I fall into that category (!)—are, according to an article I read recently, narcissistic because they try so hard to say in their work what they cannot say aloud. I, personally, think that's bullshit, but a nice crutch nonetheless. Writers have a certain narcissism from birth and we believe that what we have to say is so important that we have to write it down, and we believe it's good enough—brilliant enough—that other people should read it and learn something from what we have to say. It's ego stroking, it's emotional masturbation. Hell, my impetus to get my work published was, in the end, just to prove everyone who said I wasn't good enough or that I was dreaming too big, wrong.

As it turns out, spite is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Going back to my primary reason for starting a blog--get used to this, I tend to go off on tangents--is to try to get a following and earn more money for Mirrors and the works that will eventually follow. Also, it's just nice to write/rant.

And with any luck, I'll win over my audience, and attain that mythical fourth viewer.