(Fri, Dec 12, 2008)
Ah grocery shopping! And the demonic boy with lips all chocolate smeared too dazed by basic idiocy to stop being an obstruction as I try to pass him and his haggard wretch of a mother toiling with another spawn busy wailing and shitting itself on the floor nearby. I ripped my sweatshirt on some obstruction as I passed them theater-style, turned angrily holding a flapping piece of fabric as if to present evidence, see here, look what your inbred offspring has caused! She huffed and stuffed the little cretin into a newfangled shopping cart, one equipped with the plastic simulation of an automobile on its front for dull-eyed child storage where the sticky beast can spin the wheel around and around like the nitwit it is and shall most likely remain. Meanwhile I paused to wonder if I could literally bowl the child over with a gallon of milk (I eventually decided I could and that it would therefore be unethical). And from above us, the insidious noise: have a holly jolly Christmas, and a blah blah blah blah.
(Fri, Dec 19, 2008)
I just watched that Heroes season finale. Well! It was chock-filled with magnificent story ideas that any normal person might consider unreasonable; but that Jeph Loeb, who after all wrote a few legendary Batman books, is not a normal person at all, no sir! He'd clearly decided that the finale was the right place to let loose with some extra-special ideas.
You know that Speedy chick? The one that the telepath guy fell in love with five seconds after meeting her? Turns out when she plugs into the Japanese Amplifier she can travel through time by running really fast (it's possible because Einstein said so, yes sir). She can even pick which direction and how far she wants to go because she's just so damned fast. And that Flying Senator, the one with the creeping unibrow? He decides he better beat the life out of that whiny little brother of his after a difference of opinion over super-power drug distribution policy (unibrow said yea). Meanwhile there's this drug that gives people super-powers. If you bathe in it your unpleasant lesions will disappear. Meanwhile Super Evil Dude hatches an elaborate scheme to convince a few people he kind of knows that they're just as Super Evil as he is. Last week he killed Electricity Chick, the one girl in the universe who actually liked him and didn't mind his creepy super evilness. Also last week there was this Super Soldier who got infused with super-drug super-powers (super-strength in fact) but then this week he was killed after three seconds. It was that Fear Eating Dude who killed him, who was soon also killed, this time by the Ice Lady who used to be the Mirror Lady. Meanwhile the Fire Lady, one of Cheerleader Girl's several mothers, decides to blow up a building from the inside rather than take a stroll outside. And that Cheerleader Girl, she's got this big shotgun that she can barely lift, and she sure likes to pump that thing by golly, got to pump that shotgun to show you mean business, and there's nothing phallic about that at all, and certainly nothing just a little bit weird that her dad gave it to her when the Super Evil Dude turned predator and started hunting her. Girl power! Ah-hmm.
Super-extra-special story ideas there! Thanks, Jeph! Sorry you were fired from your writing job on Heroes; I can't imagine why they would dump you. Hopefully that Bryan Fuller will have as many extra-special story ideas as you did, champ. Hey maybe DC or Christopher Nolan will let you back into Batman, hey? No? Hmm....
You know that Speedy chick? The one that the telepath guy fell in love with five seconds after meeting her? Turns out when she plugs into the Japanese Amplifier she can travel through time by running really fast (it's possible because Einstein said so, yes sir). She can even pick which direction and how far she wants to go because she's just so damned fast. And that Flying Senator, the one with the creeping unibrow? He decides he better beat the life out of that whiny little brother of his after a difference of opinion over super-power drug distribution policy (unibrow said yea). Meanwhile there's this drug that gives people super-powers. If you bathe in it your unpleasant lesions will disappear. Meanwhile Super Evil Dude hatches an elaborate scheme to convince a few people he kind of knows that they're just as Super Evil as he is. Last week he killed Electricity Chick, the one girl in the universe who actually liked him and didn't mind his creepy super evilness. Also last week there was this Super Soldier who got infused with super-drug super-powers (super-strength in fact) but then this week he was killed after three seconds. It was that Fear Eating Dude who killed him, who was soon also killed, this time by the Ice Lady who used to be the Mirror Lady. Meanwhile the Fire Lady, one of Cheerleader Girl's several mothers, decides to blow up a building from the inside rather than take a stroll outside. And that Cheerleader Girl, she's got this big shotgun that she can barely lift, and she sure likes to pump that thing by golly, got to pump that shotgun to show you mean business, and there's nothing phallic about that at all, and certainly nothing just a little bit weird that her dad gave it to her when the Super Evil Dude turned predator and started hunting her. Girl power! Ah-hmm.
Super-extra-special story ideas there! Thanks, Jeph! Sorry you were fired from your writing job on Heroes; I can't imagine why they would dump you. Hopefully that Bryan Fuller will have as many extra-special story ideas as you did, champ. Hey maybe DC or Christopher Nolan will let you back into Batman, hey? No? Hmm....
(Fri, Dec 19, 2008)
Every year in December a Dark Hideous Void settles around out little community, out past the knee-high perimeter wall of smooth asteroid granite, out beyond the hedge maze and pop-culture topiary (thorny Jessica Simpson, leafy Will Smith), cast upon and surrounding our monuments to future deities. It creeps in at night like a fog or a drunk teenager to encircle and beguile us, a dark and hideous nothingness in which no star shines, no bird flies, and no person survives. A shout into it returns no echo. A jump into it sets course for eternity because there is no gravity in the Dark Hideous Void. It will linger for a month or so and then creep away again, like an unloved badger.
In the meantime, the old human reflexes are kicking in and people are starting to act strange. The Dark Hideous Void is traditionally a place for telling dirty little secrets, a deep silent confessor eternally mute. It's where people go to spill their hearts into fragile words: "Are you there God?", "I love you, Caroline!", "Where is the fairness?". The void will always listen and the void will never respond.
Years ago a DHV lingered for six months and became such a hot-spot of activity that entrepreneurs set up small businesses along its perimeter: hot-dog stands, souvenir shops (I stood at the edge of the Dark Hideous Void and all I got was this lousy tee-shirt), hawkers selling telescopes and amplifiers for the optimistic (but the abyss stares back, and also listens). There was a scuba-supply company that offered oxygen tanks and large rubber flippers just for the occasional maniac intent on braving the void -- there must be another side! and goodbye cruel Coventry!. One guy, a rich sort of guy with nothing much else to do, constructed and provisioned a flying machine then set out on a Voyage into the Impossible Abyss (as it was later characterized by the local drama company after he too failed to return). The longer that Dark Hideous Void lingered the more folks believed it would never go away, and that the end was near, oblivion just outside and waiting to devour them. It even inspired a new religious cult that went wild flinging virgins into the void (which lasted until they ran out of virgins; then some fathers of virgins showed up and threw the religious cult into the void; it was a black mark on a bad year). But it finally dissipated as it always does, and things went back to normal as they always do. Ah the myriad ways we seek to understand the Dark Hideous Void beyond ourselves!
In the meantime, the old human reflexes are kicking in and people are starting to act strange. The Dark Hideous Void is traditionally a place for telling dirty little secrets, a deep silent confessor eternally mute. It's where people go to spill their hearts into fragile words: "Are you there God?", "I love you, Caroline!", "Where is the fairness?". The void will always listen and the void will never respond.
Years ago a DHV lingered for six months and became such a hot-spot of activity that entrepreneurs set up small businesses along its perimeter: hot-dog stands, souvenir shops (I stood at the edge of the Dark Hideous Void and all I got was this lousy tee-shirt), hawkers selling telescopes and amplifiers for the optimistic (but the abyss stares back, and also listens). There was a scuba-supply company that offered oxygen tanks and large rubber flippers just for the occasional maniac intent on braving the void -- there must be another side! and goodbye cruel Coventry!. One guy, a rich sort of guy with nothing much else to do, constructed and provisioned a flying machine then set out on a Voyage into the Impossible Abyss (as it was later characterized by the local drama company after he too failed to return). The longer that Dark Hideous Void lingered the more folks believed it would never go away, and that the end was near, oblivion just outside and waiting to devour them. It even inspired a new religious cult that went wild flinging virgins into the void (which lasted until they ran out of virgins; then some fathers of virgins showed up and threw the religious cult into the void; it was a black mark on a bad year). But it finally dissipated as it always does, and things went back to normal as they always do. Ah the myriad ways we seek to understand the Dark Hideous Void beyond ourselves!
(Mon, Dec 29, 2008)
Television (the drug of the nation)
- Best Television: The Wire, Season 5. Some of the best writing for any television series ever.
- 2nd Best Television: The Shield, Season 7. Vic's confession scene was the perfect crescendo to a great series.
- Worst Television: Heroes. Eeeeegh. I've never seen a tv show tank so steadily from a promising premiere all the way to sewage treatment. (Including even BSG.)
- Most Overrated Television: 2008 Olympics. As usual. And phhhgh to NBC for their whitewashing of China.
- Best Hollywood Movie: The Dark Knight. Far from perfect but better than the other nonsense splashed onto theater screens this year. I loved Heath Ledger's Joker.
- Best Indie Movie: In Bruges. What's this? Colin Farrell in a movie that doesn't suck? Outrageous!
- Worst Movie: Tough choice here with so many contenders. There was the latest George Lucas abomination, another M. Night disaster (although The Happening made for a fantastic Rifftrax), and the final piece in a rousing trilogy of suck involving evil mummies and a dude who yells a lot. Still, the worst, the very worst thing my brain beheld this year had to be Disaster Movie. While such vomitus passes for satire in our culture we can never be more than squalid and lumpish.
- Most Overrated Movie: WALL-E. Am I the only one who hates this movie? It had a dull story, insipid characters, and an offensive premise. It is this century's Forrest Gump.
- Best Book: Neal Stephenson's Anathem. I love this book, and I'm practically at a loss to explain why. I agree that the plot is often ridiculous and the philosophical discoursing goes on too long, but it has that special indefinable quality that only great books are able to achieve, a kind of cozy completeness like a home that has known eleven happy Christmases.
- Next Best Book: Unaccountably I consumed seven or eight fantasy novels this year (most years I read maybe one or two), and out of that pile I liked Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora a great deal. But even better was The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, which is a kind of fantasy Bildungsroman, the first in a projected trilogy. Highly recommended.
- Best Music: Sun Kil Moon, April.
- Worst Music: That one that goes Lemme lemme upgrade, lemme upgrade... eeeegh.
- Most Disappointing Music: Mogwai, The Hawk is Howling.
- Most Overrated Music: Fallout Boy.
- Most Shocking News: Dow Jones drops ~700 pts (the first time).
- 2nd Most Shocking News: David Foster Wallace offs himself.
- Worst Event (1): Mortgage Meltdown
- Worst Event (2): Mumbai Massacre
- Worst Politics (1): Bail-Out Bonanza! Yippie! Get yer Bail on!
- Worst Politics (2): Our dread masters in Washington decide to ignore the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 by authorizing CCMRF. Recent projections anticipate as many as 20,000 uniformed troops stateside by 2011 -- just to make us all feel eversomuch safer.
- Best Politics: SCOTUS upholds the 2nd Amendment in DC v. Heller
- Most Ambivalent Politics: We have a new POTUS. He has to be better than the last guy, right? Right?
- Best Cigar (CC): Juan Lopez Seleccion No. 2.
- Best Cigar (NC): Ashton San Cristobal.
- Best Software: Ubuntu.
- Most Overrated Software: Twitter.
- Most Disappointing Software: KDE 4.
- Best Country: USA! USA! USA!
- Worst Country: Russia. Those guys suck. Also Somalia (yarr mateys!)
- Most Overrated Country: Blech, Spain.