2010: Week 49 Blots

BLOT: (11 Dec 2010 - 05:14:11 PM)

Bag o' Links: Doug shares things odd and aggravating things on a rainy day edition (Walmart's Homeland Security Video, the 17 Year Old Child Abuser, and the Hip Hop Cupcakes)

It has been a long time since I have done a "Bag O' Links" (I don't think this is true, but the last one I found was March 2008). Mostly I just toss up links here or there as I go, but random things have caused me to come into possession of a half-dozen weird, odd, aggravating, or otherwise juicy links to share. Why not bring back the old custom, eh?

First up, 17-year-old girl gets in a fight with a girl 10 months older and has child abuse charges pressed against her. Since the "victim" has some loose teeth and a concussion, it was a pretty serious punch/fight, but just tossing this out there for your joy and amusement.

Also for your joy and amusement, Walmart shoppers are about to show videos of the Homeland Security Secretary telling them that if they "see something, say something". Triple the creepy factor because this isn't going to be an occasional message through the overheads, or playing on some sweet new flatscreen in the electronics department, but apparently set up to play as the customers are checking out. For those of you rushing to type out the words "George Orwell", this somehow manages to make all such attacks redundant. It's like calling the weird kid in the corner of the room non-social: we already know.

Or its like calling this argument against the truth of the moon-landing a bit hard to follow and repetitive. To be fair, that is a German language website with an English translation, but then again, by the end it is disproving the moon landing by talking about volts from the Van Allen belts and the nuclear radiation on the moon. The big huge gist of that particular page? Disney, a self-proclaimed "King of America", produced cartoons that showed people traveling in space with Werner von Braun. This cartoons led to science-fiction illness that made people think they could go into outerspace. Therefore, the space race was a lie. I'm not making that up, by the way. Lots of images and commentary, though, if you want to read a long one.

And if staying close to Earth is more your style, watch this video cupcakes making noises after syrup is placed on them, and then read how angry it made some people. Duncan Hines originally marketed this, I guess (that whole thing has been taken down), as "hip hop cupcakes". Which means the cupcakes develop a rhythm and beat after having chocolate face applied. Those angry cite the long and hateful history of blackface performers (the bulging eyes and pink lips are supposed to be tapping into blackface). How moot this is made, say, by the fact that the "black" cupcakes are more talented than the yellow/white one, or that what they are doing is nothing, at all, like hip-hop, is occasionally brought up.

Finally, for those who long for Youtube videos involving singing-esque noises that have nothing to do with racist cupcakes, and everything to do with busty-women laying in a bed, I'll end with the Cup Size Choir. From A to G, the women sing the note of their bra size and only that note. You'll see how it looks in motion down below. Since these are women in bed, making "notes", and wearing nothing but lingerie...well, sex sells. I won't say it is not safe for work (unless you work in J. P. Prude's Super Conservative Warehouse) but just FYI before you click. Part of me kind of wishes they had not pointed out the bra size, and just let some music major notice it. It would have made his/her Christmas.

PS: Nathan of the Makers Local 256 group has added said video to his Youtube-athon Christmas Edition. If you don't know what Youtube-athon is, imagine a large and somewhat random playlist of Youtube videos in one easy place, with no need to search or anything like such.

PPS: For those who felt that the images of women contorting on the bed while making noises could have been a bit more obvious: La Senza is there for you. Note: that link sends you to the interactive version, where you can play your own notes. Yes, this means what you would think it means. Also note: the motions on the bed are a bit...um...exaggerated. Whether you hate the idea or love the idea...you need to click on at least one of the notes to see what programmers/webdesigners get up to when no one else is around. For science. I giggled like a schoolboy. Then I got my wife and brought her to see it. And she didn't giggle like a schoolboy. Also, I have to say, the animations make me think of a 2000-era videogame for some reason. Makes me want to play some Seventh Guest.

BY WEEK: 2010, Week 49
BY MONTH: December 2010

BLOT: (09 Dec 2010 - 07:14:19 PM)

Dark House (2009 Haunted Haunted House Horror. Jeffrey Combs. Fangoria Frightfest Presents...)

Is... is this meta? A movie filled with questionable CG horror effects about a haunted house attraction that has cutting edge, but still relatively questionable, CG effects via holograms that first scare and later kill? Oh, that blood splatter doesn't look real enough? That's because it's supposed to be CG, doofus, now watch the movie. Oh, and the actors in the movie? Most of them are playing amateur actors. She's hamming it up! Of course she is... How can you win against an argument like that? You can't. Brilliant, Dark House, just brilliant.

Ah, a plot? Right. Claire (Meghan Ory) is sent back to the Darrode house, where she witnessed something horrible 14 years previously. Her therapist thinks it will be good for her, to help her overcome the trauma that left her depressed and anxious and a cutter. Claire is unable to do this on her own, but when Walston (Jeffrey Combs) comes to her "advanced acting class" and asks for some temps to star in his new Dark House attraction, a haunted house opening in the old Darrode house itself, it seems like a win-win. She gets company to face her fears, Walston gets the actors he needs to put on a preview performance, and her acting class gets paid $300 a piece. Dark House is not your average haunted house, it is stocked with state-of-the-art holographic projectors that detect people wandering around and displays random horror vignettes that seem to interact with the patron. Think X-Box Kinect, but with flesh tearing demon thingies instead of, um, whatever things you get with a Kinect. In the midst of the preview, which is actually going just smashingly, the evil that once made the house a tragedy comes back, and things spiral down to their inevitable conclusion.

What you have here is Waxwork for a new generation. Gone is the 1988 simplistic charm of plastic and blood pack horror effects, rendered "real" in wax with homages to Universal and Hammer. It is no longer a house of wax with a dark secret, but now a house of holograms with an updated repertoire. Zombies, killer clown things, chicks with long fingernails, poison breathing bathtub inhabiting things. If this movie lacks Waxwork's iconic badguys, settling for a more generic "Things that stab" or "Things that melt your face" troupe, maybe that is a statement in and of itself. What horror icon has come out of the past few years that is not considered a property or a brand, rather than something more universal?

Chances are, if you are going to enjoy this movie, you are going to enjoy it for Jeffrey Combs, who pumps enough charm and energy into his role as horror fan, house proprietor, and theme promoter to make up for the lack passion shared by a few of the others. That, and the odd little jabs, pro-horror fist-pumps, and jokes that float up. The "debate" between the horror mag fan writer and the USA today mainstream reporter and the pro-horror rant by Walston—who proclaims horror as relieving the need for tension and fear in our lives in a safe way—are a nice edition without being to terribly preachy. The jokes range from flat—"War is hell," deadpanned right before being shot by a soldier—to the pop-kitschy—a lesbian character grabs her latest crush and shouts, "Come with me if you want to live!"—to the random—"She had more bugs than Windows Vista,"— to the semi-surreal—as when multiple characters whip out a lighter at the same time to light their way in a newly dark house (pun intended!), despite no evidence to this previously, one intones: "It's a good thing we all smoke."

Remember that bad CG and the amateur actors? Yeah, well, that only gets you so far as an excuse. Some of the effects are actually alright, a scene involving a garbage disposal comes to mind. Some are atrocious: a recently beheaded guy spews digital blood that would have looked lame for Clay Fighter. And the acting? Can't actually fault most of the actors. Even when they don't feel authentic, they fall in place with the others around. The weaker ones are buoyed sufficiently. Just keep in mind that this movie has a ghost hacking a Matrix-themed mainframe, by showing up on the monitor and spinning around and making "Wearrrhg" noises as huge letters proclaim things like "Trojan detected!"

Suppose it was a Fair movie overall. Bad bits were outweighed, mostly, but fair to good bits. Would watch again, but will be drinking next time.

LABEL(s): Horror Movies

BY WEEK: 2010, Week 49
BY MONTH: December 2010

BLOT: (09 Dec 2010 - 03:17:34 PM)

Cthulhu (2007 Horror Movie. Starring Jason Cottle. Directed by Daniel Gildark. Written by Grant Cogswell.)

A phone rings in the dark. A man answers. Finds out that his mom has died. His lover, presumably short term, asks what's wrong. The man explains. "That sucks," says the lover, "Can I borrow $20 dollars?" This is how Cthulhu begins, as written by Grant Cogswell and Daniel Gildark and directed by Gildark. A 2007 indie horror movie about Russel "Russ" Marsh's return home under horrible circumstances, and getting stuck in the quagmire that he fled many years ago.

To clarify, this is not based off of "The Call of Cthulhu", which many assume. It is much more related to "The Shadow over Innsmouth"—name dropping a similar town/county, Rivermouth, and the Esoteric Order of Dagon as well as Zadok and some back story—but is also an original tale. In one drunken scene, Zadok tells Russ about the "shargath*", a partial reference to At the Mountains of Madness, which later appear to be these pasty infant-looking crawling things. "He caught something in his net...it looked like a giant baby!" A creature much more akin to something from Ramsey Campbell's dripping-down-below Lovecraftian horror than anything written by Lovecraft himself.

Once you align yourself to a modern spin on an Innsmouth tale, the movie's impact will vary on the viewer's mood and what elements the viewer latches onto while watching. Cogswell/Gildark spend much of their time hinting. Radio broadcasts talk about the last wild polar bear dying, of Eskimo terrorists, of a world in which violence and ecological disasters are so commonplace that outrageous, to us, news is treated as secondary and commonplace to the people in the world. Twice, something like white tentacles, strange brachen like antlers, are glimpsed by not seen. Something horrible in the woods, something destructive without shape. Childhood memories of distant shouts, things shrouded in plastic, are blended with a small town with unknown night visitors driving around, always wearing shades. It is a movie seen from the eyes of an outsider who is never quite looking in just the right spot. For some, this will no doubt frustrate and be passed off as lazy film-making, for others, it is a measured response to the sensory overload of recent horror movies. Again, impact with vary.

Especially since a fair amount of the impact is a lingering sense of environmental dread, which is always a laden topic for viewers, most of whom are pre-disposed to think one way or the other. Since the 60s, the Innsmouth sub-genre has had numerous stories in which the deep ones and their old religion are actually a pure thing, an embracing of nature as itself, and the horror derived from experiencing comes from the inhuman aspect of nature**. The movie does not spend a lot of time dangling this thread at the viewer, but it is clutched thickly in its plot.

Much of this movie's fan response has focused on two issues: (1) that is not based on "The Call of Cthulhu" (which is kind of odd since it doesn't actually make that claim) and (2) the protagonist is gay***. Russel Marsh is a gay man returning home to a small town. Get it? Because something else Cogswell/Gildark have done is collude the sense of outsidedness, the sense of not belonging, of brushing up against a world you cannot be part of...with coming out to small town parents and dealing with small town attitudes about other lifestyles. That is actually a simplification of the process, and makes it sound agenda-laden, a claim that is both fair and unfair at the same time. Yes, the makers are juxtaposing being unable to tell the man you have loved most of your life how you feel with the encroaching end of the world. No, it never really gets preachy. The townsfolk are bad people because people have been dying while others have looked the other way. The fact that they made a son of the town a pariah due to his sexuality? That's secondary and the writer/director leave it as such. Hell, Russel seems to prefer it that way. It is flavor that exudes the entire piece, but could have largely been written out if needed. And yes, goddamn it, there is a youthful masturbation scene and a gay love scene (also a woman raping a man scene that seems hunky-dory in the eyes of 90% of the people decrying the first two...homo-sex = ewww, hetero-rape = awesome?).

Well, I say that it could have been written out, which might not be true. It is woven into the movie in a way that continuously moves the story through multiple levels. While you could retain one or two of the levels within the story about having the son come home to strange circumstances after his mom's death—think Garden State with deep ones and you have a perfectly heterosexual version—the unique blend of this movie requires all elements to fire at once. The creatures&mash;I'll avoid calling them "shargath"/"deep ones"—that stalk the underbelly of the town look, kind of, like misbegotten infants and one element of plot involves missing children, sometimes down to the baby level, disappearing. The overarching nefarious plot is to bring forth things from the womb of the ocean. Tapping into the miscegenation elements of the Innsmouth sub-genre, and wrapping into the environmental elements in which the very life force around us, as we know it, are being destroyed and forgotten, the story is about a man who missed his destiny to carry on his family's genes for what is deemed, by many, to be a petty reason: sexual attraction. We are talking family names and fate and legacy, what does love have to do with it?

I also cannot help but think that using a gay male is a perfect way to modernize many Lovecraftian protagonists. Studious, artistic, generally non-butch men who have strong, passionate male companions. Who are overly emotional, cat loving, sometimes effete and disdainful of brutishness? While it is true that Lovecraft is tapping into the scholar-poet, the Byron-Keats (not that there is anything wrong with that), the modern version of a single male who is more into emotion and strong male companions than family tress... well, it is Russel Marsh.

Enough of that, let us wrap up the movie review real quick. Starts moody, gets moodier, and then reaches a middle passage that often only half works. Right at the point of breaking in two, seems to get its feet back and then launches towards a powerful ending that both shows us everything it needs to show and leaves out one final, crucial element (on purpose). While some fans and non-fans have been quick to say that of course it means this or that; it is really an excellent use of withholding the final piece to the puzzle just right.

Flaws derive partially because some of the bit-parts are acted so melodramatically. Take the scene with Zadok, as he goes on his rant: some of the lines hit and some are bouncing off walls and careening into the rarefied atmosphere and if you do not laugh, it is because you have made yourself complicit in the contract to not laugh at this movie's less-even moments. The epitome is reached, as is the movie's nadir, when Russ explores the strange dripping wall in the old net-shed and the old man comes forth to chase him. Russ runs up to a house, strangely lit by the snowcrash on a television set, and a young, blind boy sits there watching the noise. Right as the viewer is ok with waving away the oddness of Russ running to that house and being ok with being asked inside by such a strange lad, the boy talks about waiting for cah-thew-loo and some synthetic cymbals crash. It flips the whole scene into malformed pastiche and half ruins the soon-to-come revelations of the things in the dark.

All in all, a Good Lovecraftian movie with some flaws in a couple of tarnished spots. Not a direct adaptation to any particular story, and should not be thought of as such, but more so a summation of several elements, especially elements in the 1960s and 70s (and later) Innsmouth themed tales. As a strange aside, the captions are sometimes odd and off. In one scene, Tori Spelling's character mentions that "Ralph fixed the pool filter" (while the captioning says that Russ fixed it). Later, as the cultists are chanting "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn", the captioning informs us that they are speaking "Native American Language". A perhaps minor aside, but it did bring a wry chuckle. Finally, extras are non-existent besides a commentary, a trailer, and a photo gallery.

* Not sure if that's a drunken slur version of shoggoth, which are then realized completely wrong, or something new.

** It is perhaps most obvious when Susan and Russ are looking at the [caged] polar bears. She says that the bear would rip Russ apart in seconds, "but isn't it beautiful?"

*** In "Director Dan Gildark Answers Call, Explains His Cthulhu", AMC points out that some/many, without seeing the movie, also took to panning it because it is not set in New England (see S.T. Joshi's intro to Black Wings to see why Lovecraftian place is best a byproduct of a given creator's own, rather than mere pastiche/homage) and because there was no big name stars outside of Tori Spelling (presumably these people all suffer from a mental disorder related to their mothers using strange chemicals while they were in the womb and misunderstand terms like indie and low-budget).

BY WEEK: 2010, Week 49
BY MONTH: December 2010

BLOT: (08 Dec 2010 - 01:40:55 PM)

My mom discovers Facebook, asks why people are posting about stupid stuff...

My mom is not a technophobe nor a luddite nor a backwoods bumpkin. It is just plotting her need of new technology on a scale of 1 to 10 in which 1 is someone on an South Pacific island monestary with no electricty nor generators and a vow of solitude and a 10 is your average Apple addict, she is somewhere about a 4. She once used a Sega Dreamcast to surf the net for a couple of years* and now, perhaps with an inate sense of irony, plays game using her TV satellite box. She comes into things late, and often at odd angles. I recently joked somewhere on this blog - lo but I am lazy and will just repeat rather than seek out - about her sending out the text: "Doug, I've finally figured out how to text." The response she got back? "This isn't Doug, so not quite."

Recently, she has started using her cellphone to browse since her package includes 30mb or so of data per month and she was barely tapping 1/100th of that, and solely through sending picture-laden text messages. After a few tries, she got Wikipedia to load, and some weather stuff, and some other things. Somewhere in here, she went to Facebook and browsed. Now, I'm not sure if she made a profile or if she just used someone else's profile, or which-what, but in a phone call to me yesterday she summed this up as...

What was my response? I gave her a link to my Twitter feed. And my website. Heh, which means she might get to read this. This was my own dash of irony, since my posts range from indolent to well researched, from functional to esoteric, from inane to profound, and every flavor in between. The sum of which has to be a bit odd to those fresh to the fold and not unlike reading of some strangers day-to-days or commonplace happenings. Though I rarely talk about cleaning house and all the time talk about what characters are doing, wrong, in horror movies.

There you have it, my mom's summation of Facebook (and by extension, all social media). And my smart-ass reply, but she won't realize it was smart ass until she goes to see the link and sees three or four tweets in a row about me stubbing my toe or something. Love you, Mom!

* This makes my mom cooler than your mom.

LABEL(s): My Family, Social Media

BY WEEK: 2010, Week 49
BY MONTH: December 2010

BLOT: (07 Dec 2010 - 08:34:59 PM)

Guess who is going to end up pissed at her local library?

I don't have the day's paper, but I heard from another source that this appeared in today's Help from Heloise column [this might be up for correction or clarification when I get more data]:

Somebody is going to end up pissed in a few months when they get a craving to revisit some beloved James Patterson mass-market and realize it was not retained in a collection. The part that made me [wryly] chuckle the most was the fact that they left a note and then turned this in as a helpful hint, which was then printed, so it will probably happen at other libraries as well. If budget cuts and massive restructuring weren't enough, now we have to worry about notes, too.

"Dear library: I know I should have turned this in a month ago, but I didn't. Please disregard my fine. Thanks!"

LABEL(s): Libraries

BY WEEK: 2010, Week 49
BY MONTH: December 2010

BLOT: (06 Dec 2010 - 01:18:09 AM)

The worst cover ever for a good album? The Death of "Hipster" as a pejorative? Is It Ok to Giggle at a Cock Trap? And other questions...

Sarah flies out in the morning and so I am, again, alone for a week. Just me and the cat. Watching horror movies and other random foreign oddities. Not that horror movies are foreign oddities, but I do have some horror movies that are foreign oddities. Those will get watched. Just jamming out to various random songs online right now. Thinking about reading, not sure what. Thinking about maybe renting and watching Monsters, the new indie horror about the guy and gal trying to escape Mexico after an alien invasion (hmmm, I wonder if that pun was intended?) Figured I would toss out my three big questions of the night, or well...tinny little questions of the night. In no particular order:

Question #1: Is Familjen's cover for Det Snurrar I Min Skalle the worst cover ever for a good album? Seriously?

At least the eponymous song is catchy. LGT: Youtube video that I highly recommend.

Question #2: Is it only my lack of maturity that makes me laugh so hard at this product image and name?

Or is it reviews that, no matter how earnest, including bits like "I also tried it with and without the wobbler...While I prefer the convenience of all the extra angles available it's somewhat more difficult to cock the trap arm each time because the unit is trying to move as you pull...So if you are forced to use someone who is not that strong to cock each time it might be more prudent to leave on the original unit which remains totally stationary upon cocking... " and "At first glance this cock trap (CT) looks utilitarian and not very forgiving. I guess, don't judge a book by its cover, or, more accurately, don't judge a CT by its cover. Other than the squeaking, this cock trap is bar-none the best cock trap on the market today". Heh, somewhere, some professional skeet-shooter is hating me right now.

Question #3: Is the word "Hipster" already dying as a proper pejorative?

I remember, a few years back, when "emo" became the default way of saying "white teenagers I want to complain about". This was not to say there weren't seriously over emo-fied teens with faux-goth make-up and broken heart t-shirts that spent all day moping about their tragic love life, but every teen that was down or complaining about something got the "emo" moniker. Now, only about two years later, the same thing is happening again. Everything that is just a little alt and suburban (which is often "white" in depiction, but not necessarily) youth is getting labeled "hipster". Trust me, people, the annoying sort of hipsters are something you know, right off, without having to guess "Is that a Hipster?" Hell, the non-annoying sorts of hipsters are the same. You know when you see them. It's like kidney stones or appendicitis. You don't sit around and wonder is there really a pain in your side. So, when a video about various youths running around with a kite during a picnic gets derided by a fair number of commentators as being "hipster picnic", I can't help but note that has this video been made two or three years ago, they probably would have called it "emo" picnic. Just because it is slightly alt youth chilling out. What's the lesson of the day? Keep your pejoratives fresh. Well, except the Amish-geek at the beginning. Total hipster.

And that will just about wrap it up, except for one bonus question: Question 4: Can anyone make sense of IUPUI's University Library's fine system? Here's the breakdown. Have fun with it.

LABEL(s): Media, Society

BY WEEK: 2010, Week 49
BY MONTH: December 2010