Long week & Alien Brains

Been a long rough week – the end of the month usually has its mad points and then there is the end of the quarter and that is putting a whole new level on the pressure. Sooooooo
The blogging has been light. No real time to do any serious bad movie watching – since Net Flix seems to trying to keep them from me – I want my colossus you mush wits – yeah it’ll make my ears bleed but it’s better than dealing with the real world no?

In the real world:

The president and W have decided to ignore the subpoenas the house and senate have issued claiming executive privilege – one of the problems here is what they consider executive privilege is so broad and all inclusive that, if their interpretation is upheld, you might as well forget ever getting a member of the white house or the cabinet to testify in congress and just toss the over sight function of congress out the window. I’m pretty sure that this will go to the courts but considering that the Supreme Court just recently

A) Pretty much overturned Brown vs. Board of Ed - and

B) made it safe for companies to price fix – in this case overturning a 100 year old precedent – because it bothered large corporations.

I’m not sanguine that this court will side with the Congress no matter where the weight of the legal argument falls.

Meantime the fall out of the immigration bill continues. It’s been rather sad to see the absolute terror some folks have of brown people. There is a real fear that someday soon ‘they’ will be in the minority in ‘their’ country – which will mean What? Will White people have to ride in the back of the bus? Not get home loans? You have to wonder just what they are all so scared of.

Full disclosure I live in queens which has everybody – if I got flipped out by seeing people other than people exactly like myself I’d be on thorzine right now.

Meantime the nation’s talking heads are rounding to the defense of, of all people, Cheney. I’m not sure why – they have adopted him as the new symbol of the right wing manly man – since W has turned all mushy with a) he’s a dolt and b) that immigration bill that wouldn’t just round up and kill the scary brown people. Some one even said magic “the kind of person you’d like to have a beer with”

I remember this gibberish being tossed about W – which really puzzled the hell out of me – for one W seemed like a pretty dull person to hang around with – self centered and boorish – and probably cheap as hell (i.e. you’d have to buy the rounds) the other thing is that W is a recovering alcoholic and – trust me on this – one of the last places on earth you want to be is with an alcoholic when they fall off the wagon – it’s a 100 story drop off the tower of despair when that happens – great fun that.

But this about Cheney? I mean come on – the man looks like hell, he’s grumpy and angry and got a bad ticker and he’s really just a nasty old cuss - again not somebody I’d love to have a beer with. I’d like a beer with and intelligent and attractive woman – if you don’t mind much. What is wrong with that?

But it is this weird man crush thing the talking heads have – they have made Fred Thompson a 1 term senator of very modest accomplishments and actor into the new coming of Ronald Reagan. They want a daddy to make it all better. Kind of creepy sick if you think about it too much.

Ewwwwwww.

Random Neural Firings:

It’s a very weird world where a man like Edwards is being judged as inauthentic because he’s rich and isn’t out to screw poor people – by this logic FDR was a phony too.

It’s got to be something in the water or the cocktail franks inside the beltway.

Michael Moore has made another film I probably won’t see because I’m not into getting depressed.

Transformers is coming. Want to see things blown up by robots.

Been thinking about the end of the Brain From Planet Arous a bit the last few days – I’ve written about the film - the story is that an alien brain (and it’s a big big floating brain with little eyes on it – very weird) possesses John Agar and attempts to take over the world – while possessed Agar makes out with his girl (turns our the brain likes the physical stuff – I wonder if the brain didn’t regret waiting until after the sexual revolution to try and take over the world, Agar’s GF puts the brakes on awfully fast) and blows up planes and kills people while looking at them. There is also a good floating brain that possessed the dog to keep an eye on John and defend the GF’s honor (after all only aliens would be interested in sex instead of a barbeque).

Anyway the climax comes – after possessed John has killed and blown things up – he and the alien part company for a while, and while the alien is just floating about it is killed by John with a blow from an axe. At that moment the other brain leaves the dog and goes home.

Now this is what puzzles me – John, when possessed never said he was possessed so when the come to arrest and/or blow him up. What the hell is going to say? Granted there is the big dead brain but still.

“It wasn’t me, it was the brain!”
“This?”
“Yes”
“This is big hunk of meat – you mean this was inside you.”
“Yes”
“Making you do all the killing?”
“Yes”
(pause)
“You’re going to have to better than that son.”
“but it’s true”
“Sorry miss”
“You can ask the dog”
“Excuse me?”
“Another one is inside the dog”
“Another Brain”
“Oh that’s right it left after this one died”
“That’s very convent. Listen you are all going to have to come with us.”
“But it was the brain”
“And you’re giving me a head ache so shut up and let’s move it. And take that hunk of meat along”
“If it wasn’t an Alien why did I hit it with the axe?”
“I’m just a cop sir; I’m not here to answer crazy people’s questions.”

Peace Love Alien Brains.

Power Outages and such like.

Had a bit of a scare yesterday – a switching station for con Ed “blew up” or some other unpleasant event with the upshot that some areas were blacked out – which gave everybody who lives where I live bad acid flashbacks to last summer when about 10,000 folks mostly in Astoria were without power for 10 days. In addition to having to live without power for 10 damn days the power outage caused a number of businesses to close up the most notable being the local cold stone creamery (damn you con ed! that was my ice cream!)

So it was with some nervousness I was told about the power outages and subway service problems – I walked home from near city hall last blackout – I am not too hip on doing that again in 90 degree weather.

Fortunately I didn’t have to – the enemy below’s homeward commute was not as easy alas. Took him forever to get home.

The Immigration bill has gone down – I’m not that surprised – between the ‘oh my god brown people” neo-know-nothing on the right and concerns about the ‘guest worker’ part of the bill on the left – it was doomed. I can only presume W pushed the bill because he was told to.

White House (and it seems Dick Cheney) are claiming executive privilege in answer to the subpoenas given by a house committee. It’s getting hard to keep track of what documents they aren’t giving up for what committee. I think this has to do with the wiretap program – which I think had some aspects to it that John Ashcroft wouldn’t sign off on – even when on painkillers.

This boggles the mind really. John was and is a complete right wing hack job who was obsessed with among other things bronze statutes showing women’s breasts – he had the offending tit covered with a big white sheet. It was a pretty bizarre stunt. I also read that he was afraid of calico cats (who overwhelmingly female) – which doesn’t argue the sane much I have to say.

Still I have to wonder about the breast thing. I mean really what’s wrong with breasts. I happen to like them a lot they are great fun in the proper circumstances. I mean I’m pretty damn repressed, but I’m not so obsessed with sex that the sight of a bronze breast is going to make me uncomfortable.

So anyway the questions remains what the hell was sooo bad that Ashcroft threatened to resign over it? I mean other than spying on democratic members of congress - and I’m not even sure John would draw the line at that so you wonder just what it was that set him off.

Tonight – hopefully a bad film – I seem to be ordering films that are so obscure that netflix has only one copy of them in their entire system.

That makes me happy in some weird way that it’s best not to think about too much.

Tomorrow – we hope – a run/speak through of the killer sheep musical. Let’s hope we get folks to do it and doesn’t suck too much.

Busy as heck more if I can.

Peace Love calico cats

Anxiety, Dreams and Parnormal musings

Anxious is the word of the day.

There is this undercurrent of anxiety today– hell I guess it’s the ambient anxiety of the whole place rubbing off on me.

Been dreaming vivid and bizarre dreams the last few days – some a bit frightening some just odd. The spookiest one was like something out of a movie – I was back the door of my parents home in Long Island – which puzzled me but as in dreams you just go with it and I opened the door and as I remembered their cats came to see who was coming in the door (they were like dogs in that manner) then as I scratching one of them behind the ear I realized that this cat was not one of their cats and the house had been sold after Mom died and therefore, I must be dreaming. I woke up right after that but the moment I realized I was dreaming still sticks with me. It’s an odd helpless puzzled feeling mixed in with a bit of shock , because you never really expect to be fully lucid in the middle of a dream.

Finished the first draft of the book for the Killer Sheep project. It’s funny as you’re plotting things out you just bull on ahead and all of sudden you find yourself with a first draft and an interesting twist in that the 2nd half of this is a lot darker than the first. We actually didn’t quite plan it that way, it just worked out that way. It’s why the creative act is such an interesting process – you never really quite know what’s going to come out of it.

This may be why creativity while honored in the abstract isn’t quite as honored as it might be in the real world. It’s an unstable and tends to wander off and do things that interest it and not care much for the rest of the universe. It’s why writing a good sequel to something is so hard. The spirit that moved you then isn’t what is moving you now – and the creative impulse can get very bored if you try and make it plow the same furrow again. You either get something dead and lifeless or something that wanders very very far away from the original which might be good by itself but not what the audience for a sequel to (whatever they are) are looking for.

Finishing my second read of Daimonic Reality by Patrick Harpur – it’s an interesting book about all sorts of paranormal events – except the famous fall of fish that was so beloved of Charles Fort (his main opus – The Book of the Damned – covers fish falls with an obsessive glee). The book’s focus is not so much to prove that such things do or don’t exist, as he points out the man or woman who has just had a face to face encounter with a UFO, ghost or Bigfoot have no doubt over what they just saw, what they want is some idea of what the hell it means.

Which Patrick tries to give. His argument is that Diamonic Reality is isn’t really about is it real or not – in fact it is defiantly not about one or the other – be convinced that say UFO’s are simply mental images you could find yourself under one as it spews metal or be convinced of the actual reality of Bigfoot and you’ll never see it or a foot print that can’t be challenged. It’s that kind of force.

At least I think so. The problem with the book – other than most human being’s tendency to start going – big deal – when presented with very odd things that a said to be true – but I think he has a bit of problem here in that the very tool he’s using Language is really more of a tool of the black & White yes or no world that he has problems being able to describe the Diamonic ‘realty’ which isn’t black and white.

Personally I think he may be on to something here – exactly what I’m not sure but there is something – It could just be personal relating here – I’m comfortable with a certain amount of ambiguity – the quantum wave particle duality never drove me as crazy as some. That could be more that I don’t understand Quantum than this being a mark that I have a deep understanding of the underlying theory.

Off to the open mike tonight – curious to see what the place looks like with the changes. More on that tomorrow.

We’re talking stickers and t-shirts for the gig – a good idea? Maybe. Who knows.
Later.

Peace Love falling fish

Blazing Saddles in DC

Short one today –

Has to be – got more to do.

We have a gig – August 1 at the Luna Lounge – 9 pm. More details to follow. Got to get busy with promotion and all that.

It comes as very little surprise that for the last 6 years or so, Dick Cheney has been in charge. The impression one gets is that of a far more sinister Hedly Lamar in Blazing Saddles. But not really very competent. It’s the secrecy – that protects the fact that Dick and his boys are absolute knee biters when it comes to getting anything other than screwing up done.

What is going to be interesting here is that you wonder if this story will get under W’s skin. Sure he’s an incurious dolt, but he’s insistent the people treat him with what he considers the proper respect – hell he insists that old friends from Texas (I think more like old business partners W doesn’t really seem to have friends in the way I understand the term) have to call him Mr. President – when he goes biking his damn socks have the presidential seal on them for god’s sake. He is, for all his obvious lack of ability, a very very vain man and this has got to hit him pretty hard in his weakest point.

Giant from the Unknown is on it’s way to me per Netflix – looks to be a pretty typical ‘50’s bad sci fic film – after the nonsense I’ve seen the last few days, I’m kind of looking forward the cheap sets and the bad acting (bad acting in the 50’s was different than bad acting in the 90’s most in that people in the 90’s are actually worse in most cases – Plan 9 and Manos excepted).

To work on the book tonight - we are going to try and get some folks in Friday to do a full read of what we have so the more we have the better it works out – at least we hope – that is the case.

Hot and Humid in the city - the air is a slate blue and the haze is already starting to obscure the taller buildings – and when you go outside you are bathed in sweat but since the air is full of humidity it doesn’t evaporate and so the body just starts sweating more trying to cool down.

Speaking of air – Ms Whitman she of ‘the air is okay’ post 9-11 was grilled yesterday in front of congress. As with everybody else in the administration - she is not to blame for the illness of the men and women who worked at ground zero while the fire was still burning – it took several weeks to burn itself out if memory serves. I got exposed to that gunk too so I have bit of personal interest in this – not as much as some folks I know – a cousin of mine is a fireman and he spent days at the site so of the two he’s far more likely to get sick than I am and he’s married with 2 kids.

Heck of a job Todd.

Peace love, that’s Hed-ly.

Again with the head, sharks, and Ian

I’m not sure why – hell maybe it’s just Monday but my mood is bleak as hell. Down, depressed, sad, whatever you want to call it, that’s what it is and here I am.

As always the principle facts of my life have not changed at all since yesterday but here I am feeling like Marvin the Paranoid Android was simply too relentless upbeat in his world view.

Hell even Marvin got a good send off when he finally got to read the last message to the universe from its creator. The message read “we apologize for the inconvenience”

I could use a little of that. It wouldn’t be much but at least it would be something.

Apropos of nothing – or maybe not exactly nothing – since when I am in a down mood I like – well like isn’t exactly the right damn word – I suppose I just find myself reflecting on my romantic problems – I don’t know why I do this but it’s like you have a tooth were the filling has fallen out, you just can’t leave it be you just keep poking at it even if the ragged edges of the damn thing tear at your tongue, you just can’t seem to let it be – so it is with me when I’m in this mood. I have been know to calculate exactly how long it has been since I last had sex – it’s going on years now – the exact number is not important, or just gnawing on the small number and brief duration of my relationships considering my current age.

That said, that is not what happened today – today I ended up flashing back to a conversation I have back when I was a teenager. I was oh 16-17 (and had not yet even had a date, which in the early 70’s, the heyday of the sexual revolution made me feel even more of freak than I would have under other circumstances) and I remember I went and did something foolish – I tired to talk to my folks about my frustrations. I suppose I was looking for a little sympathy and maybe a little build up. What I got was a lecture on how I was taking things too seriously, that I needed to lighten up, that I was probably driving the girls away because I was coming on too heavy.

Like I’ve said before, I never wonder just where my low self esteem issues come from. I suppose they meant well but – my problem was that I couldn’t even get up the nerve to talk to a girl never mind ask one out not that I was coming on too strong. Their advice to me came down to, conceal your feelings even more than you have already, nobody wants to deal with them anyway, in fact they will just drive girls away.

Again, I think they meant well but man oh man did that screw me up.

Well enough of that gibberish.

Watched Shark Attack 3 over the weekend – which made me question some things – like way does the universe allow such things as Shark Attack 3 to even exist? Who, when they were making this movie, did they expect to watch this? I can’t imagine that their target audience was the small handful of dedicated bad movie buffs who would watch it for its awful dialogue, stilted acting, absurd special effects – and one jaw dropping bit of dialogue.

The film that really should be called Jaw 11 or something like that features a shark that is attacking swimmers, a resort, a brave lifeguard security guard (exactly what he is, is never made clear) a unscrupulous resort owner, an evil business man, a beautiful paleontologist (right) eager to make a name for her self (because the shark turns out to be a prehistoric survivor) and some bait – sorry extras.

The story doesn’t make a lot of sense but there are naked women – and that does ease the pain somewhat – bad movie viewers I find tend to skew male for some reason – maybe men have more issues who knows. And then after the first shark is killed – it turns out that it is a baby shark – and that the adult is 60 feet long.

The special effects here are worth mentioning – what they did was take some old national geographic nature films of great white attacking some bait – using modern computer technology they stripped out the bait fish the shark was striking. and put in boat, people or man on a jet ski that the shark was supposed to be attacking. The results are amazingly fake. I mean like Ed wood level fake. If the shark could, it should sue.

Anyway the dialogue bit came about 2/3rd’s of the way through the film – the principles are going to do battle with the big big shark – which just eaten their boat and a friend’s boat and the friend as well – the next day. The male lead, right after the gruff old man side kick has driven away – says to the female lead – “I’m really wired right now, why don’t I take you home and eat your pussy”

And since this is the movies – rather than getting his face slapped – off they go to boink in the shower.

In the end the evil businessman, the resort owner are eaten, the huge shark is destroyed and I presume the leads go off for more oral sex.

I’ve read where the “eat your” etc. line was a joke the male lead said to try and crack the female lead up. It didn’t crack her up but a lot of folks have laughed at this line.

Saw Ian Hunter Saturday night – one of my main influences or guides or heroes when I was younger back when I didn’t or couldn’t quite get the words around the frustration, dissatisfaction the just general angry lost feeling I had when was younger. It was a good show but came away a little sad - who knows maybe that’s what’s got me. I realized that now I have ways of expressing myself and my feelings– the band and other things that while I’m still a huge fan (I have all his albums – even the bad ones) – I don’t need his stuff the way I used to. Mott the Hoople/Ian Hunter was one of the flags (along with the Ramones, Punk in general and others) that I nailed to my mast when I was lost and storm driven and all I could do was hang on. Now, while the flags still fly (tattered with age) I’m the one doing the steering however rough the waters get – he helped teach me how to be my own man but being my own man means I have distance myself. So it’s good but sad as well.

I’m not explaining this very well. More some other time.

Peace Love big sharks.

I get confused, Crocs and Ian Hunter

The latest head scratcher to come out of Washington is Dick Cheney’s odd claim that the Vice President, since he is president of the Senate is not a part of the executive branch and therefore not subject to the Legislative Branches oversight and the current subpoenas.

Not only does this sound stupid on face value – Cheney has spent the last 6 years hiding behind a claim of ‘executive privilege’ with regard to the series of meetings with oil executives that he had back in the early days of this mess. I’m not sure but I don’t think you can claim legal protections by virtue of your position in the executive branch and then claim not to be in the executive branch when the requirements become onerous. At least not without obviously being a raving hypocrite bastard. And since both claims are to keep people form finding out what he’s doing, it certain does peak my interest in what he’s doing.

Meantime General Petraeus our current commander in Iraq (except for the War Czar who once named has never been heard from since. It’s like a lot of the things that go on in this admin. Remember the Mars landing? Of course you do. But nobody else does). Has said something to the effect that we have been Iraq long enough for the people of Iraq to view us as their liberator’s twice – first from Saddam and now from the not civil war (or what ever they are calling it now). While not quite the Zen classic of “we destroyed the village in order to save it” it’s not bad.

Worked a bit on the book for the Sheep project last night. It was a weird feeling trying to steer the characters so they would sing the songs we have – I’ve noticed in my attempts to do longer works (4 un-publishable novels and a screenplay) that characters are very stubborn beasts once they get a sense of who they are and will not allow themselves to be pushed into situations or say things that goes against their grain without some serious damage being done to the character or the narrative or the author who after all is just trying to get words in a row.

Still it felt right to be sitting there staring at a blank computer screen saying “now what would he say about the sheep now?” and then trying to come up with something. Let me say it felt better doing that than all the meetings I’ve ever been at. Ever.

I also understand via the AP that they are talking about closing Guantanamo Bay since the court just kicked the chair out from under the reason they were holding people in there in the first place. I don’t know about this story since it sounds a little like the “we’ll be sending most of the troops home in 6-9 months” a story I’ve read once every six months for the last 4 years.”

With W’s approval rating at historical lows (beating out even Jimmy Carter leaving only Nixon to beat) and Cheney starting to make squealing noises like a rat caught in cage that is in a room that this rapidly filling with water – things are at a dangerous pass. Desperate men do desperate things and they are lusting after the chance to bomb Iran.

Going to watch Shark Attack 3 this weekend – because I haven’t lost enough brain cells from Star Crash I guess. It looks to be simply god awful with bad acting writing and cheese ball special effects (more on this later). As a side note one of the reasons that most shark attacks consist of one hit and then the shark backs off an leaves is that we don’t taste very good to sharks – if we did they would be hovering around the beaches at the start of summer like deer hunters in grocery store parking lots prior to the start of deer season. Actually the Nile Crocodile is the biggest man eater in the natural world – lots of people where it lives and it typical hunting style of lurking in the water until the prey gets close then striking and dragging it into the water to drown works as well on a human being as well as on a zebra – they may kill as many as 200 people a year but that number has a lot of guess work in it.

Going to see Ian Hunter tomorrow night – it’s been a while since I’ve seen a show and a while since I’ve seen Ian – he has a new album which I bought – I haven’t listened to it as much as I’d like but I’ve got all day tomorrow – when I’m less busy I’ll go on for some length about Ian and Mott and their personal importance. Which is a lot.

Just finishing up a book on the Crimean war (1853-56) which is called the first modern war but is more famous for things like The charge of the light Brigade, Florence Nightingale and horrible conditions for the troops who died by the thousands. I have a perverse fascination with this war – maybe because it was such a clusterfuck that unlike the other wars you can’t cover the true horror of the thing with glory and the thrill of well fought battles. It was a useless and bloody waste of men and material that solved nothing.

Peace Love All the Way from Memphis

Not a lot today -

Another problematic night for some reason – maybe going to the mets game depressed me – because lord did they play badly.

Still I was watching the scoreboard - the out of town action was better than the dull and dispirited game the Mets played – they hepped up that Perez had not given up more than three runs in any of his starts and then he promptly gives up 4 – the big blow the 2 run homer that turned the game from 2-1 Mets to 3-2 Twins – and that was on a 1-2 count (which is what really killed me – all night Perez was getting ahead in the count and then losing the guy – the first batter of the game got a hit on an 0-2 count).

Anyway back to the scoreboard – I’m looking at the out of town scores and I see that Toronto is beating The Dodgers 12-0 in like the 5th inning. And I just flashed on a thought on how bad it would suck if you were a dodger fan living in Toronto – career family stuff whatever and you were only going to get to one game when the Dodgers were in town and that was the game. You’d pretty much hate life.

For some odd reason that reminds me of an interview I read with Ian Anderson, lead singer and whatnot for Jethro Tull – in addition to saying “yeah I could live in a big mansion with servants but what would I end up writing about?” (I note that Sting seems to have figured that part out) he also said that while is just sick to death of playing Locomotive Breath – there could be fans that have never seen Jethro Tull and for them not to hear that song would be wrong – in the set it goes.

I am afraid Stacy is going to fall in that category for us.

Dealing with something of a writer’s block – and I think the only thing to do is go off and write like 3-4 really bad serious songs so the next funny/stupid/edgy one can come out. I really can’t be in charge of worrying about if the stuff is any good or not – at least while I’m writing it.

And even after that your own judgment isn’t always the best – The Enemy Below is never going to let Tired of being insane drop from the set list like ever and I’m not fond of the song. And there are some things on Dylan’s early 90’s albums that make you wonder just what the hell he was thinking.

Iraq continues its depressing descent into bloody futility – and in Afghanistan we’re really doing well winning folks over to us – in our effort to ‘get’ some Taliban or Al Queda leaders bombed some buildings, in the process hitting an Islamic school and killing seven children. At first we said that we wouldn’t have attacked had we known there were children in there and then later the story came out that the target was of such importance that it was worth the risk of ‘collateral damage” (blowing kids all to bloody hell. ) O’Reilly continued his descent into moral depravity by complaining that MSNBC was covering the story at all – claiming it was undermining our effort. I think that killing the kids is going to undermine our efforts there and maybe it’s important for us at home to know what the hell people are doing in our name.

The term Manichean has been tossed about to describe the world view of W and his fellows, the idea of a struggle between the forces of good and evil (it’s a little more complicated per what we know about actually Manichean thought – their notion was that the entire physical world was evil – even root beer floats and kittens which strikes me as just way overboard).

In any event – Iraq, Afghanistan and all the rest are viewed (either sincerely or as a cover for an amoral nihilism) as part of a vast struggle against evil – which, as Glen Greenwald has pointed out in his blog in Salon, the effect of debasing our own moral standards. If the enemy is pure evil, the thinking goes, you can not refuse to use any weapon any method in the struggles. Which means you blow up a school if you are trying to kill the devil, you waterboard, you torture, you lie to build up your case to doubters, and so on.

It as if in the effort to fight monsters we have become monsters.

May get to Shark Attack 3 tonight maybe not – but I will soon – it looks awful – not star crash awful but awful nonetheless.

Peace Love, Root Beer Floats.

And Miss Rigg of course.

STARCRASHED AND BURNT

Been listening to the Police’s Synchronicity and then just started thinking about the actual concept – which in my experience means all sorts of weird things are about to happen.

Found out a friend of mine is having a bad time, not her personally but her family is having all sorts of problems – just when I’m doing okay. Take if for what it’s worth but this isn’t the first time things have gone like that.

Watched most of Star Crash last night – taking notes until I found myself writing “no must stop now – we must get away” in a hand writing that I did not recognize – now I’m not saying that the film was bad enough to spit my consciousness into separate distinct personalities but it came close.

It’s hard to write about this film because like most of the true giants of a genre (in this case The Theater of the Incoherent) it is beyond words. This film refuses to make any damn sense on so many levels that sentences that have a logical structure and manage to convey information are simply inadequate to do the job of conveying the experience of watching this film.

That said – it starts with Star wars opening rip off shot of a Space Ship passing overhead. The only thing this really does is remind you of just how good Star Wars was – (side note –I will always remember the first time I saw Star Wars, as it opened there was a shot of this little ship flying by – not bad but nothing I hadn’t seen before but then the Imperial Cruiser passed over head and kept going and there was a low rumble from the speakers and everybody in the theater went ‘oooooooooooooooooooo’. This of course was back when Lucas wasn’t convinced he was a genius and was just making a movie – end side note).

So here the ship – which doesn’t seem to have a real shape – or function, all the parts of the model look stuck on for no real reason. And the space it’s flying in looks like it was filmed by taking a black cloth and sticking Christmas lights on it – Red green blue the whole deal. It’s amazingly fake looking.

At this time someone on the bridge jabbers something about finding the lost planet or something like that, and then they come upon a planet – which is pretty good since they were looking for it.

“Scan it with computer waves” one guy says.

Now here’s one of the problems with the film – it doesn’t know when to shut up. Like ever. Star Trek (the original) knew enough to just say scan it and have done it with – don’t let the audience start wondering just what the hell you were scanning the planet with – saves wear and tear on the audience.

Soon after red things attack the ship and it is destroyed.

We jump to credits and then we meet Akton or something like that played by Marjo Gordner and Stella Star played (but not voiced by) Caroline Munro (she’s dubbed for some reason – Marjoe isn’t but Caroline is (it’s her body in the bikini however which is something). They are galactic smugglers or what have on the run from the cops – they are caught after they discover a survivor from the first ship – then sent to prison - Stella was apparently sentenced to wear a bikini as well as to prison time. Then – they are, along with their two captors – the police chief Thor and Robot L who speaks normally at first and then gets a Texas accent are on a mission to find the same planet the other ship tired to find – and the emperor (Christopher Plummer who must have owed somebody a ton of money to do this shit) notes his son was the commander of the ship.

It seems the mystery planet is a weapon al la the death star. But you are not sure.

There is a quick cut to the evil count who you know is evil because he yells a lot, dresses his minions in black suits (with helmets that about a size too small making them look foolish – now that’s evil) and wears a red cape. The cape kept bothering me – normally you see a cape on a bad guy it’s red inside black outside – it’s these little details that make this such an odd film.

The first planet they land on is the planet of Amazon women who wear little more than Caroline was and the Amazon queen who keeps yelling she wants revenge. But as far as we can tell she’s never met these people - so revenge? Is that really the right word?

Stella and the Texas Robot escape the Amazon and but are attacked by a huge female robot which animated al la Ray Harryhusen via stop motion. When you see this sequence you realize what a great animator Ray was – because this sucks.

Also to whoever put the nipples on the giant female robot’s breasts – thank you. You have no idea how much damage that caused. Really. None. You took something precious from me and I’ll never get it back. Thank a heap.

They escape and then after much toing and frowing Stella ends up in a cave fighting cave men with a man wearing a golden mask that shoots beams of light at the cave men. When Stella gets a chance she asks “who are you” and in the manner of this film the guy says “this is an energy mask” A little while latter I think while Stella is asking if he knows a way out the man gives his name. It’s David Hasslehoff playing the emperor’s son (come on you know it has to be that right?) Even at this early age Hoff show all the charisma that would make him a star provided he had a talking car or was surrounded by hot babes who ran in slow motion. Jesus Gortner (who can’t act) out acts him.

The count then arrives and they know this is the bad guys planet – now earlier it was supposed to be a huge weapon al la the death star but now bad count is going to blow it up along with Mr. Plummer who is on his way to rescue his son (David Hassleoff – yeah I know).

There is a fight with stop motion robots (who explode when you knock them over) the Marjo Gortner character dies to swelling music (the music is annoying as well as everything lese) the emperor enters by deus ex script writer – and then when it looks like they will get blown up – says “stop time” pretty much what this film did.

There is a battle that makes no sense with human beings in torpedoes that crash throw the windows of the bad guys ship and well do nothing – the humans jump out and fight one of the most confusing space battles ever – you don’t know what’s going on and by the looks of it neither did the director.

Then when his troops beaten – Christopher Plummer orders the desperate tactic of the star crash – which involves crash a badly built city model into the badly built model of the bad guys ship (which looks like a hand – no reason just does)

Stella and the robot do this – leaping out of the crashing city through and open window – as in no glass – into space just before the city crashes into the bad guy’s ship.

At this point Chris mutters something – and I take to hitting my head with a bourbon bottle not drinking it, just banging my head with the damn thing to get the images out of my brain. Nipples on a robot noooooooooooo!!!!!

As a last point there is no crash of anything into a star or a star crashing into anything else. Like the rest of the film the title makes no sense.

In one bit of weird news – A. Scalia the troglodyte chief justice ended up jabbering a defense of torture by citing Jack Bauer in 24. “He saved LA would you bring him to trial”.

Tony – for what may be about the 55th time 24 is fiction - there is no Jack Bauer and torture doesn’t work – it’ll make people confess to flying on broomsticks but it won’t give you good intelligence.

While the whole ticking bomb idea has a lot of holes – one is this – if the man being given the water boarding knows that if he can keep his mouth shut for X amount of time his side wins a great victory wouldn’t he? Why assume he is less dedicated to his cause then you are?

There are other holes in it but that’s a big one.

Peace Love, Bikinis in Space!

Surprised by the Fantastic Four and some Fan boy Laments.

Over all I was pleasantly surprised by Fantastic Four 2 – The Rise of the Silver Surfer, the Surfer looked cool as hell, the story wasn’t much but it wasn’t bad either, nice action sequences, love the Fantasticar (yes that’s what Stan Lee – who has a cameo in the film as a guest that gets tossed out of the wedding – called it. Let’s just say Stan, while having a lot of good ideas doesn’t use the English language as well as he might) and there were some interesting bits about celebrity and some jokes here and there that actually worked.

They even raised the rather weird and somewhat uncomfortable topic of what sex with the Thing would be like – which I’d rather not speculate about truth be told – and I want to thank the movie for putting that thought in my head.

I understand there is something out on the net called (I think) Rule 34 – which states – no matter what it is, there’s porn of it, so there probably is Thing Porn – so again thank you putting that thought in my head.

I’m reminded of course cause I have a mind like that of an essay on superman by Larry Niven who wrote that if Superman ever did have sex with a human woman (say Lois lane) he would gut her like a trout. Again thanks to all for that image.

Anyway I had fun and considering I expected the movie to stink like old fish it was a nice surprise.

Still a few things. Some real, some just fan boy laments.

1) Jessica Alba – okay she’s got a hot bod – but oh heaven she is so not Sue Storm – and what’s with the lips? – She looks like someone’s belted her in the mouth just before each take.

“Okay rolling”
“Sound”
“Smack Jessica”
WHACK
“Okay Scene 55-1 take 3 – Action!”

And so on. And she does whine a lot about the wedding and living a normal life and what not, and I kept thinking as she was talking – “so just how much lip gloss does she have to use?” – Which meant her performance wasn’t that enthralling to me. And she looks YEARS younger than Johnny. (I’m told she older but she sure as hell don’t look it)

And the title really doesn’t make a lot of sense – The Rise of the Silver Surfer. He isn’t rising from anywhere – if anything he falls. He sacrifices himself to save the world. I’m really not sure just what they meant by Rise of the Silver Surfer but it’s Hollywood – which often makes less sense than comic books – see The first Punisher film or atrocity that was Captain America.

The biggest disappointment was Galactus – in the Marvel Universe there is no being more powerful or feared than Galactus a being eats worlds in order to survive. – in the movie he was portrayed as a kind of solid smoke octopus or cloud or some such – several times bigger than earth – okay fine you do things in movies that you don’t in comic books. But what was a bad tease of the fan boys was that as Galactus was passing Saturn there was an oh so brief tease where an ever so brief shadow of his Helmet on the planet’s surface.

And that was it – when there was the final confrontation between the surfer and Galactus he was talking to a cloud – sheesh you couldn’t have put in damn money shot of Galactus in the middle of the storm for a second before it all blew up? I mean come on how hard could that have been to do? Some sugar to the fan boys that’s all we ask. It was this kind of thinking that made the American Godzilla such a rotten film “a 50 meter tall lizard okay – on that breathes fire isn’t realistic” or “a huge sentient Interplanetary cloud that can travel at many times the speed of light okay – but a huge humanoid at the center of it no that’s not realistic.”
Sheesh.

And as the battle rages on – Doom (who is a bit better this time, yes he still have the silly mutant powers from the first film but at least he’s not made of metal) gets dumped into what I think is Hong Kong or LA or Seattle – I can’t quite tell where – after falling off the surfer’s board (which he’d gotten his hands on by being a rotten bastard – ah doom it’s good to have someone you can count on) and we last see him heading for the bottom of the bay. Which of course sets up foreshadowing 101.

I mean who’s he gonna find at the bottom of the ocean? If you know Marvel you know who:

Prince Namor of Atlantis, the Sub Mariner – one of the FF’s other old time sparring partners and while a personal favorite of mine, a problematical character unless in supporting role - he’s Aquaman with an attitude, bad tempered, distrustful of humans, prone fits of rage – he’s strong enough to provide the Thing with a sparring partner – and instead of the utterly wimpy “I can talk to the fishies” power Aquaman has – he can fly with little wings on his ankles (I don’t get it either but he’s always had them - since the 30’s he’s had them) so he and the torch could go mano-a mano (recreating the first great superhero fight featuring the original human torch from the 30’s) and he has the hots for Sue. So this could work.

I understand that there is a Sub-Mariner movie in development over at Universal but it’s been in development since 2004 and they haven’t even gotten a cast together – I suspect that project will die and fox or marvel will get the rights by the time FF3 is in production.

I suspect the plot will involve Doom conning Namor into attacking the surface world and melting the ice caps or some such to flood New York as he looks to expand his realm and ends up destroying Doom himself when he realizes he’s been duped. While not too bright, he hates when that happens.

More later – tonight spaghetti and starcrash again – god help me.

Peace Love, Imperious Rex!

Summer, Fours and a Cult

Drinking tea this morning – coffee is kinda bad around here. I never quite understood why coffee service coffee is just sooo bad but it is. I assume they use a lower grade of coffee but the stuff is so awful that a lot folks both in my company and elsewhere go to one of the Starbucks or the other coffee houses that are near by- so okay you’re saving money on coffee but at any given point in the day you have people wandering around the streets looking for coffee – when they would be at their desks if the coffee you had didn’t taste like battery acid.

It’s summer – it’s not official yet – but the sky this morning was that gray blue with a touch of slate color that you get in NYC when the air is heavy and humid and doesn’t move much. And it just thrills me to remember that I’m breathing this gunk.

Speaking of breathing – it seems that now we weren’t given the fully story on how bad the damn air near ground zero was – I went back to work about 4-5 days after the attack down town – and I remember the smell of and the smoke in the air. We were kind of split between is it safe? And trying to get back to work – we didn’t think that NYC and the Federal government would deliberately endanger us or the people working at the site if the air wasn’t safe. I doubt we’ll be that naïve in the future.

Off to watch The Fantastic Four tonight – although the reviews have been as they all can’t resist saying, less than fantastic. The Enemy Below thinks and I agree with him that the FF is really more of a fan boy movie than say Spider Man or especially X-Men. The X-men’s uneasy relationship to the rest of humanity can be used as a metaphor for the struggles of any minority in a hostile or mistrusting society. And spider man well – the thing with Spider man was his personal life was always falling apart and heck he even lost most of this fights – Schmeal as superhero.

The Fantastic Four are a different kettle of fish – they as heroes – with the exception of Ben Grimm as the Thing lack depth. The whole thing about the FF was that they didn’t get along all the time – like big whoop these days but in 1962 or so when it came out it was a revelation – along with the idea that maybe villains aren’t simply rotten people – there may be reasons they are doing what they are doing.

In some ways it could be just the blandness of the FF that made Stan and Kirby come up with the fantastic worlds and the series of foes and races that they came to fight over the ears. Their main sparing partner Doctor Doom has dark depths aplenty simply to make up I guess for the FF’s shallowness. I didn’t like what they did to him in the first film to have him be changed by the cosmic rays as well as the FF actually limits him as a bad guy – his mind, not ray blasts are his greatest weapon but well the screen writers decided not to do it that way (and added these weird psychological reasons as to why Johnny burst into flame, Sue vanishes and reed stretches and Ben’s well Ben.) So we’ll see.

Personally I’d like to have Galactus and maybe Namor the Sub-Mariner – but hell even Marvel can’t figure out how to handle Namor correctly so maybe that’s better left for some other time.

It’s summer so I’m listening to Blue Oyster Cult again – I don’t know why but when it’s hot they are one of the bands I pop on the headphones. Especially the first three albums – there is something distant and cool and unearthly about them and the thinness of the sound adds to it – their third album – Secret Treaties is the best of what they call their black and white period (the album covers were in Black and White) - At their best here there is a sense of emotional states so complex that words are sadly inadequate to describe them along with a sense of a dark mystery lurking just out side field of vision, you feel it you don’t see it – BOC would go on to huge success with Don’t fear the Reaper and
Burning for you but I have a fondness for their early stuff – later albums would show some of the Band’s lunkhead rock and roll star instincts come to the fore and it would get ugly.

Will be rewatching Starcrash along with Shark Attack 3 (megaton) Tuesday night – wish me luck. I may not be back.

Peace, Love, it’s Cobberin’ Time.

Disasters and Starcrashes and Mancrushes

Well the Mets are coming into Yankee Stadium the way the Hindenburg came into New Jersey in flames with people trying to escape or flee the wreck. The papers are all in a fine fettle – Rocket vs. the Duds was the Daily News Headline – The Post had some kind of cartoon featuring a huge and confident Yankee and a childlike Met cowering in fear or some such celebration of bullydom – the Times had a story on a golf tournament. Still from the coverage you’d think the parade was tomorrow. The tabloids haven’t been this ecstatic about the Yankees since July 2004 when with a 10 game or so lead they were going to play the Red Sox in Boston – I remember the News’ headline was “it’s over” saying the Sox were done for the season. And we all know how well that prediction turned out. It's the kind of straw you grasp at as all the worries you had about the coming season come true all at once.

Still it’s just shows how bad the rest of the NL east is that the Mets are still in first place as of today. Maybe not by Monday however.

I’m told that Philly fans are worried about the Marlins. I hope that is not true – because that would mean Philly fans are morons.

This is also the first real rough patch Willie Randolph has had to endure as a manager of the Mets – we’ll see how he does.

Watched Starcrash last night – and oh my sweet lord what a horrible film – I need to watch it again and take notes because this, this is classic horrible film – it has it all bad acting, horrible dialogue, absurd and pointless plot, and ridiculous special effects. It’s a perfect storm of dumb here. I’m just in awe here, really a train wreck of cosmic proportions.

Again a full review will have to wait for the second viewing – but a few notes:

The film was made in Italy - it was shot in about a week after the huge success of Star Wars - I can only assume Christopher Plummer (who was in the film) was on vacation in Italy and decided to extend it a bit.

What was with the robot with the Texas accent? I mean it's the future. Right? Or the past? Right? Is there still a Texas?

Who told Margo Gortner he could act?

The evil baron during the pointless battle toward the end of the film spent the entire time wandering around yelling “kill! Kill!”. These guys are soldiers they are in a battle - you think you could come up with something more useful to say or do than just walking about yelling kill kill? How about getting reinforcements?

“Kill! Kill!”
“Yes sir we’re doing that. We have guns and we are shooting them. What the hell else do you want us to do?”
“Kill! Kill!”
“Oh thank you sir – we were wondering what to do.”

And in space you can just shatter a window and nothing happens - or jump out of a hole in the ship?

My head hurts - I need to see this one again. I swear one of the cave man (don’t ask) was the lead cave man in The Cave Dwellers. Now that's a sign I have no life at all yes?

Other things:

Chris Matthews is a very strange person – why he has a show on TV is a bit beyond me. He as talking about Fred Thompson (who is currently the great white hope of the GOP since the powers that be figure Romney is total tool and Rudy scares people because he looks like a living skull) and started speculating about his sex appeal and what he smelled like.

A quote: (From Crooks and Liars)

“Can you smell the English leather on this guy, the Aqua Velva, the sort of mature man’s shaving cream, or whatever, you know, after he shaved? Do you smell that sort of — a little bit of cigar smoke?”

Listen in the first place Fred Looks like a thumb I mean I have more sex appeal. And who the hell gives a shit what he smells like? Who the fuck even thinks about things like this? It’s a new level of creepy for Chris. This babble is more like a fantasy memory of his own dad – who for all we know reeked of bourbon and cigarettes and hit him a lot when he wasn’t passed out drunk.

Another thing, Thompson has made quite a bit of money acting and what not – so honestly I’d very much doubt that he’s splashing his face with mass market stuff like Aqua Velva or English Leather – one thing you can count on with the GOP is conspicuous consumption – hell the dude’s got a trophy wife (that always looks in pictures like she’s being held hostage) no Aqua Velva for him. Yeessh.

Between Chris’s weird man crushes and the twit on meet the press (who isn’t even a journalist by the by) who keeps on jabbering bout Big Russ you have folks with pretty serious dysfunctions. Love my dad but hell I don’t worship him and I’m not waiting for him or what ever damn psychic projection of him to take my problems away.

Later.

Peace Love Burma shave!

Gay Bombs, Starship Troopers & Soviet Kitsch

The day is busy and the parade is passing me by. But some things to be noted.

The Pentagon was going to or did spend 7.5 million dollars to try and build a bomb that would turn soldiers of the other side gay. I assume the idea was that when the bomb (a hell broth of chemicals and hormones and the secret sauce from Big Gay Al’s Restaurant) exploded the troops on the other side would start thinking Halleluiah it’s raining men and start doing the wild thing with each other.

Remember that’s 7.9 million dollars that you paid in taxes. To build a gay bomb.

Now of course Electric Six’s Gay Bar is running through my head. Check it out, it’s a great song – even better search “flying Viking kittens do gay bar” on Google. You won’t be disappointed.

Anyway as long as the Pentagon is tossing money around for stupid ideas – maybe they might want to see of our music will turn people gay? For a small grant of ohhh maybe $500,000 or so we’d love to do about a years worth of research and come back with the answer “it doesn’t” and then have a party. How about that.

I have to imagine that working on the Gay Bomb had to been classified top secret – if for no other reason this really isn’t something you wanna talk about with you wife or husband when you get home from the office.

“What did you do today dear?”
Mumbles something
“Dear”
Mumbles again
“Dear what is it – did you say Day Glom?”
Mumbles a bit louder
“yes?”
‘GAY BOMB okay! I’m working on a bomb to make men gay alright – it’s a stupid and pointless task but it’s my job okay!”
“I’m sorry dear”
“That’s alright – is there a gladiator movie on tonight?”

Meantime another high member of the Department of Justice can’t remember anything. And the White house has ‘lawyered up’ in preparation for the coming conflicts with congress. Amazingly none of the newly high powered attorneys were from Pat Robinson’s Legal school. Can’t imagine why.

Saw Starship Ship Troopers 2 last night – it was mostly dull and predictable and kind of lazy – I did get the satire or social commentary in the bookend ads that lead off and end the movie this time – maybe the Iraq war has heightened my awareness or something. Still the special effects were pretty lazy (as you’d expect with a direct to video production) and the story was stupid – this time the troops were trapped al la beau Gest in a tower but it turns our that some of the troopers have been taken over by the evil bugs. There is a lot of tedious plot turns and padding but in the end the plot is foiled somehow or other by the good guys. It wasn’t a bad soul sucking film as say Women of the Lost Mesa or even Blood Rayne it was just a dull snoozer.

Still I did learn that another danger of casual sex (and is there formal sex by the way? And if so how does that work? Do you have to fill out a form – a dress code? What?). Anyway another danger is that at some point your partner could regurgitate an alien life form into your mouth and from there it will take over your brain. I’m not sure condoms would help here.

Had to trim the myspace friend list today – somebody got his knickers in a twist about folks wearing t-shirts with soviet symbols. – Hammer and Sickle and what not. He started to bitch about how many people Stalin and Mao killed and then said all socialism turns psychopathic – which I think would come as surprise to Sweden.

For one thing Socialism isn’t communism is it? for the other Stalin died quite a while ago – China is our best buddy (at least the GOP thinks so) and the folks wearing the soviet kitsch stuff are, if they think about it at all, are making a comment on America’s unthinking knee jerk communism that among other things – got 50,000 kids killed in Viet nam.

So he’s off the buddy list.

Peace Love The People’s Flag is a deepest Red

Sleepless nights - Random thoughts & COH

Not much time for blogging today.

Busy we’re coming to the end of the month and the end of the quarter and well it’s a business thing – people are running like chickens.

Also didn’t get that much sleep last night – for some reason all my anxieties decided to just show up last night and gather around my bed and said helllooo bobbbyyyyy! At about 2:30 in the morning. And then some where around 4:30 I was thinking well I’m not getting back to sleep at which point the next thing I knew I was thrashing about and the alarm was ringing.

I hate when that happens.

Random Neural Firings:

I’m not sure but maybe the Subway announcements should just try some reverse psychology

“Please pile into the subway train the instant the doors open – if the people leaving aren’t strong enough to force their way out to hell with them”

“Please, once in the subway car stop instantly and form a huge crowded mob”

“Keep shoving things into the doors – we’re not going anywhere.”

I’m upset with the way the Mets have done lately but at least the NY Press is so busy planning the Yankees World Series Victory Parades they haven’t been able to spare the time to rub salt in the wound (the standard “we told you so, the Mets will always be the second team in New York” – well as long as you write the sports stories yes.)

W received a rapturous reception in Albania – this sounds like the punch line of a joke but no it was true. It also seems like someone snagged his watch.

Some folks in Iraq tried to finish the job they started last year by blowing up more of the mosque they blew up last year.

W tried to convince GOP members of congress to support his immigration bill, apparently this time he’s going stress the punish the brown people aspects of the bill since the only people he has left on his side are the No-Nothings and outright bigots.

Rudy is looking very unwell these days – and isn’t making much sense when he talks either.

I’m embarrassed to admit but I’m excited that this weekend is double experience points weekend in City of Heroes – I mean to get my main guy Le Bug of Blue to level 30 – and I get a new costume (yes I am such a geek).

Going to look for places outside Manhattan to play – love Otto’s but since I know now how to make Mai Tai’s I don’t need them as much.

It comes over the wire that Harriet Miers is going to be subpoenaed. The net is getting tighter around our man-boy president. He may stay in Albania.

The beltway’s weeping for poor scooter Libby makes you think he’s going to devils Island in a cell right next to Dreyfus. I mean come on – he’ll do his time in club fed with the other white collar criminals and then get a life time grant from some rich right wing welfare organization. He won’t even miss a payment on his country club membership. So Jesus lighten up – yeah prison isn’t nice but he put Dick Cheney above the country so he goes to jail.

Read a depressing stat that since 1979 the share of income for the top 1% has increased by 7% to 16% – while the bottom 80% share fell by 7%.

Apparently even economists are becoming worried about the badly lopsided distribution of income and wealth in the US. And they are normally paid to explain why closing the factory and sending the jobs to a 3rd world hell hole where their president takes a cut of the action while the CEO of the company gives himself millions is a good thing – so if they are starting to worry – well its simple – we are all fucked.

Peace Love City of Heroes.

(that’s the bug by the way)

Advice al al Hunter Thompson - and Troopers

For some reason I’m channeling Hunter Thompson this morning – not the bourbon drinking, the drug use and cigarette smoking – rather simply the crude way he wrote about politics.

Some advice for Harry Reid.

1) It is time to put Joe Lieberman’s nuts in a grinder. Strip the little punk of everything – right now – Between the damage he did in Iraq and the insane blood thirsty gibberish about Iran and now voting with the Autocrats on the Gonzalez vote of no confidence – he’s gone over to the dark side anyway – there are at least 40 million other democrats who would do a better job on the committees he is charge of. He’s a lying backstabbing weasel and unless he finds all is stuff in garbage bags on the sidewalk this morning when he comes to the Senate today he’s going to keep pulling this shit.

You’re not the only one to blame here Harry, there are a lot of democrats in the Senate who just didn’t fucking get it – they figured Joe was one of them so neither you nor any of the other heavies in the party suggested to Joe that he accept the wish of the parties members and retire – and if he didn’t – you’d start the nut twisting right then. Jesus you all treated Lamont like he was a fucking radioactive monster rather than your party’s senatorial candidate – and by your knee cutting of Lamont helped to ensure that Joe returned to the Senate.

It’s galling to remember the if you clowns had decided not the run Ralph the half wit’s choice for Senate in Tennessee – One Harold Ford who spend his campaign trying to convince voters that were going to vote for him no matter what he did that he supported the war in Iraq and hated gays as much as they did – Lieberman’s Benedict Arnold turn wouldn’t be important. This was Ralph’s guy and he running as gop lite got stomped in a year when we ended up with a democratic Senator from Nebraska and Virginia – and even Joe lied like a rung about wanting the Iraqi war done with.

But you made Joe important you now you have to do something about him – at the very least a political kneecapping – and a brutal one, none of this Joe means well mush mouthed nonsense. Joe does not mean well, Joe is a bloodthirsty batshit crazy lunatic who will stab any back he can reach – time to have him sleep with the fishes.

2) Impeach Gonzales – yes the bill has to come from the House but Nancy won’t allow it to be pushed forward until you signal you’re willing to go forward with the trial. The trail would be a very different kettle of fish from the milksop no confidence vote you tried to have passed. Time has come to draw the evil mothers into the light one by one where they will scream live vampires caught in the sun, howling as their rotten flesh melts away. Gonzo seems a good first step – one – he’s guilty as sin and two he’s the type that will rat his own grandmother out.

Granted it will be hard to get a conviction – but the trial will lay the little lawbreaking ass kisser out for the world to see, and even better they won’t be able to ignore the subpoenas that are issued – and when Gonzo and his enablers testify under oath – you’ll have the documentation that they have been hiding up till now. God knows what horrible things lurk in Karl Rove’s e-mails.

And the deal is that everybody who votes against conviction will be marked forever as an enabler of the little monster and his yahoo boss. And that will come to haunt them come election time – hell 7 gop senators jumped ship on this. Ramp the pressure a little more – you really want to go down defending Weasel face and his boss monkey boy? – Especially when they start trying to drag you down with them. Time to take the hatchet to their grasping hands like they were zombies in a bad sic-fi movie – because unless you chop their hands off they will drag you out of the building and eat your brains.

Yes the beltway insiders will scream – but Reid – here’s a new rule of thumb – the more fuss the beltway makes the better you are doing your job. Okay? To called names by these swine should be considered a badge of honor not something to worry about.

3) Quit. Reid you really seem to want people who will never fucking like you because they are either evil greedy bastards or have sold their souls to evil greedy bastards to like you. It’s making you act in stupid and self destructive ways and you’re pissing off the American People – congress’s approval went down 10% in a month and it wasn’t because you were having too many hearings on the Department of Justice. It was your el-foldo on Iraq. You were one of the folks that urged that – it was a mistake and you need to fall on your sword to make up for it. Mushy nice guy stuff isn’t going to clean up the mess. So do the right thing and just be a Senator – maybe take over Joe’s chairmanships hold hearing on Katrina and work to fix FEMA – and get some corporate looters tossed in jail.

Well enough of that – still it felt nice to get some cursing out.

Will be watching Starship troopers two – at the Enemy Below’s request – I’m not looking forward to it – I didn’t much care for starship troopers #1 (I may be thick or something but I didn’t get the satire if there was satire intended there – all I kept thinking was – they should get bigger guns or at least explosive bullets, cannons maybe? – and if memory serves other than Michael Ironside none of them could act a lick)

Remember reading Starship Troopers many many years ago and well that’s about it, what I remember best is that in the society you couldn’t vote unless you had served in the military – I’m sure Heinlein thought that was a good idea but it’s so goes against the ideas of the republic (and our history) that it’s only in science fiction that you can toss this stuff about. People fell all over themselves over Stranger in a Strange land but I really didn’t grok the book much – I lost interest when the human raised on Mars was pointing out what a great invention money was and how there wasn’t any difference between dating and hiring a hooker – which I’m not really sure looking back on it if he was trying to call all women prostitutes or not – or if he thought that was a bad thing to do so or was trying to ponit something out. Who knows – fewer people care and hardly anybody says grok these days.

Ex from a long time ago kept tyring to get me to read Heilien – never worked – I supose once you read Fear and Loathing In Los Vegas anything else is pretty tame.

Peace Love huge bats.

Mondays, Doom and Madmen

Faced with an interesting feeling today – a sense that I have got too many irons in the fire right now and have to decide what to do with them.

Listened to the pod cast – weird feeling and oh god do I hate my voice sometimes but they only did one song – the Waltz is going to be on vacation in a couple of weeks and I understand the second song will be broadcast them.

Anyway listening to this made my wonder about doing my own show of some sort. Truth be told when I was younger I fantasized from time to time about being a DJ – back in the days when they played records on the radio – and not just any DJ the late night DJ – the guy in the late dark hours of the morning who managed to put the right song on the air as you were driving home at 3 am – that guy – the guy that Bruce Springsteen sang about in his album Nebraska.

Radio can be a very personal medium and that link between a dj and the folks out there can be pretty strong – even though you never really meet – but I remember for me it was a link, being stuck in you must conform suburbia, a link to a larger world.

Of course that wasn’t what I want to do now – although I suspect for the right money I would consider it. What I started kicking around was the idea of doing a pod cast show about bad movies – but we’re going to have put that idea up on the shelf for a bit for a few reasons.

1) we need to put together a press kit – the band’s getting out of its training wheel stage and if we want to do bigger venues we are going to have to a) promote ourselves better and b) present ourselves to the bookers as being a professional act that they can deal with.

2) We need to get the book and the lyrics and the music of the killer sheep musical set so that we can workshop the whole thing and start the process of getting it ready to pitch.

3) We need to convince our producer to let the damn tapes go and give us at least a rough cut of the damn album. The thing is now – with the big band – we won’t sound like the album – which means – well who knows – at least I want to hear the damn album – I like the guy and I know he wants it right but at least a track or two yes?

4) Once we get the album we’ll have to get the reproduced – and work on the design and all that.

5) We need to get the standard promotional items together – t-shirts, more buttons, stickers who knows maybe key chains

6) We need to book some more places and look into playing Philly or Boston.

So with all that on the plate – to do a weekly radio pod-cast is going to have to wait – I’ll do it but it’s not the first time I’m doing today or even this week.

At some point I’d like to do a pod cast or two about bad movies more as a pilot and less of a regular weekly thing just to see if the format could work. The Enemy Below has some pretty sophisticated equipment on his computer that we can use – which actually would work for the better – not having the pressure of a weekly show we can experiment and see just what works and doesn’t. More details on this later.

Speaking of bad movies – at the Enemy Below’s suggestion (he actually said “here you’ll hate this, it’s awful) I watched Doom last night the adaptation of the video game staring The Rock and some other people.

First the good points - the special effects were well done – there was a lot of love and care in making the monsters in Doom Come to life (I’ll confess I never played Doom, nor have I played Halo – I’m not a big first person shooter fan – for one thing I miss a lot so my first person shooter experience consists of going “shit shit oh come on I hit him” and then watching as the words “game over” shows up on the screen for the 15th time in as many minutes and me just getting bored with the damn thing.). So the eye candy stuff works nicely.

The rest, well, not so good – once you started dealing with human beings problems emerged.

The story consists of an Aliens like team of special commandos going to Mars where a research lab and other stuff has found (it’s kind of confused) that human life originated on Mars that they were messing with genetic material and bad things happened and they have some kind of instant travel between Mars and Earth that makes you throw up.

Now here’s one that I noticed when they used the ark (the instant transport) everybody upon arrival puked – it that was the case wouldn’t it make sense to give everybody a barf bag before they left or if that was practical at least a basin or two so they don’t have to keep mopping the floor all the time.

And then there is the squad. Now here is where I got really annoyed or bored with the deal. These fellows are supposed to be commandos, top line soldiers and what not, the space whatevers. Now while it maybe hard to get guys to do this in the future – one thing I know for sure is that the Rangers, Seals, Green Berets in addition to their testing and training they also evaluate potential recruits mentally. You don’t people with shall we say issues going into dangerous situations – but this squad it’s a squad of psychopaths and misfits better suited to guarding a warehouse than being an elite team. Ones a drug using pervert, one is a kid on his first mission (again you have to be in the army a while before going into special forces – you don’t take geeks out of boot camp) the Sergeant is a martinet who turns into a psychopath later in the movie (mostly cause the script wants him too – Rock does an okay j0b with a stupid part). Ones a slick ladies man (black guy – like come one let’s get another cliché in there) one is a self mutilating religious freak – ½ the squad would have been booted out of the army under section 8 in less than a week – or at the very least reassigned to something like the motor pools so they wouldn’t have weapons in their hands.

There was also the Soldier with the dark secret (he is the brother of the chief lady scientist on Mars – at least they weren’t former lovers – I’ll give the writers at least a ½ point for trying to come up with something new) and the rest were just monster chow.

The fist 1/3 or more of the film is trying to gin up the suspense – which since it’s a movie called doom doesn’t work to well – I remember saying “come on make with the death already!” as we got yet another scene where the marines with flashlights on their guns (this is the future right? 2050 or so? What about infrared? Nothing says here I am shoot me in a dark room as turning on a flashlight.) Enter a room and yell “Clear!”

Once the action starts it doesn’t make any sense people die or they don’t the monsters are zombies or some such created al la Aliens from people’s bodies (but not all people – some kind of gene is to blame – but I’m not sure it’s like only folks born evil turn into monsters or some such – it’s confusing and stupid) and then Rock turns evil kills people and fights with the sensitive soldier and then things blow up and then the movie ends and I need a stiff drink and I have a feeling of emptiness in my soul because once again time I could have spent watching my shoe had been wasted on this film.

In other news Joe Lieberman spouted batshit crazy ideas about attack Iran like right now on national television and instead of being dragged off in a straightjacket and having thorazine pumped down his throat with a turkey baster was listened to respectfully by the interviewer.

The Senate is going to debate a no confidence vote for the Attorney General. There seems to be a sense that won’t get to the floor because there aren’t enough votes for Cloture or whatever the term is – maybe so but if I was a mean person (and I can be) I’d want every GOP Senator’s named linked to a vote saying Alberto Gonzales was a-okay with them.

Peace Love Scary Monsters in the Senate

Celebrations, Dracula, This and That.

We start with quotes:

"Who made America leader of the free world? I voted for Belgium" Eddie Izzard.

It was Diebold, Eddie, sorry.

“You know a society has been abandoned by God when it celebrates lesbian sex.”

This was broadcast over the air by some bible thumper the other day under the auspices of Dolan or whatever the hell is name is (I’m not going to bother to go look it up cause it’s not important and there are better things to do with my time) now there are a few things that came to my mind (other than the man is a homophobic bigot) reading this statement.

Did the abandonment by God cause the celebration of lesbian sex? (Man I am going to get a lot of porn surfing hits today for this topic) I mean is this a symptom rather than a cause? And then what was the cause? Is there anything else we should look out for? Locusts with hair like women or some such? Paris Hilton going to and then getting let out of jail? The election of a man child nitwit to President? The flooding of a major city? Come on guys – I want to know.

And just what do you mean celebrates lesbian sex? How is that being done? Is there a parade? Did I miss it? Speaking as typical male this is something I can get behind (as long as the women are good looking and there is someone around to video tape it). As a side note I remember reading one of the psychological tests or indicators for being Hetro is how you respond to lesbian porn or erotica or what ever you call it – seems the more, shall we say, enthused you are by it the more toward the hetro end of the Kinsey index you are (other factors of course join in as well) End Side note.

Anyway if there is going to be a parade somebody let me know. I have to buy a camera.

Finally saw Dracula AD 1972 and well eh. Now this is a film a little celebration of lesbian sex would have helped enormously. As it is we have Christopher Lee as Dracula (he actually doesn’t do all that much in the film) and Peter Cushing as a descendant of the Van Helsing who drove a stake (a wagon wheel spoke as it were – don’t ask) through Drac’s heart in 1872.

As you know it’s hard to kill off a good bad man so we find ourselves in 1972 – where a bunch of hippies (in 72?) looking for kicks led by one Johnny Alucard (Dracula backwards ooooooooooo spooky) perform a black mass (with a tape machine playing groovy spooky music) and end up re-awakening the count.

Turns out Johnny is a descendant of one of Dracula’s servants and has been waiting for the right moment – why 1972 is the one is never said.

Anyway – the film becomes Dracula among the hippies – and is pretty silly and dated and dull – it’s not as awful as other films on the Monster Times list of worst monster movies made but it really doesn’t work at all. Cushing does his usual good job – Lee while menacing doesn’t have enough to do (henchmen do most of the heavy lifting) and the ever lovely Caroline Murno is absolutely wasted as the count's first victim after the silly back mass .

I don’t know what the hell it is about the Hammer folks – all the heroines have to be blonde – you see a dark haired girl in the film – you know she’s dead meat. The Female lead by the way is supposed to be Peter Cushing’s granddaughter – but unless his son married a very blonde Swedish model I can’t see it. It’s not quite as a bad as Claude Rains being Lon Chaney’s father in the Wolf Man but its pretty bad.

Caroline is oddly enough best known for her role as Dr Phibes Dead wife in the two Dr. Phibes Movies. Well all she had to do was nothing which she did very well.

All told while Lee and Peter do their standard good job – or at least play it straight – the whole thing is just too much. The scene in the 60’s/70’s moved like lightning especially in England – hell by 72 it was metal and glam rock – not hippies. And the rest of the actors aren’t really very good – the women are pretty enough but the film really becomes kind of a weird too hip version of leave it to beaver “Beave did you raise Dracula from the dead and did he turn Wally into one of his undead servant?” “Yes mom” "well that means I'll have to drive a wooden stake through his heart, cut his head off and stuff his mouth full of garlic then. And that means I have go back to the store for more garlic and that means dinner will be late" "Sorry Mom" – it really does sound a bit like that.

Putting a vampire into a modern setting was done a lot better in the TV Movie The Night Stalker which was set in Los Vegas oddly enough in 1972. The advantage they had here was that the vampire wasn’t Dracula so they could allow the reporter time to put the case together rather than deal with the dull jabbering of Van Helsing (Peter tries but there isn’t a lot he can do with the lines he’s given).

Anyway off to go write the book of the musical (or start the damn thing) with The Enemy Below - tonight – I’ve never done this kind of writing before so it’s going to interesting a challenge really – I’m okay with one liners but otherwise? Not so hot. We’ll see what goes.

I understand the President had a little stomach trouble and was unable to join the rest of the leaders at the G-8 breakfast. Unkind minds say too drunk to leave the room.

As further poof that in this day and age you worst nightmare can come true at any moment a couple were fixing dinner when the door was smashed down – flash grenades when off and 15 heavily armed police from the narcotics squad bust in – in the resulting scuffle the husband was kicked in the groin and both husband and wife were handcuffed.

Later it was discovered the cops had hit the wrong address.

Peace, Love, Caroline Munro

in Re last night & Band Business

Well I didn’t get interviewed – the radio guy showed up late so they just taped us doing our stuff. There were a few people at the Mike that hadn’t heard our material before and well that’s always fun. Some laugh some look like they’ve just gotten smacked in the face with a fish (reference to the fish slapping dance and a line from MST3K) and frankly it’s all good.

I’ve been told by fans that half the fun of watching the band is watching the reactions of the newbies – especially if they have no idea what the hell is about to happen to them. Which is part of the gag I guess.

We did someone else and Stacy – someone else because it is almost the prefect example of my ideas on dada style song writing or kicking the chair out from under people and Stacy cause people want to hear it and it’s disgusting and funny at the same time.

Anyway someone else – this is a breakup song that, as I like to say, cuts right to the chase (no I’m not giving away the joke here – come to a gig or listen to in on our myspace page). The songs – as we have put it together – starts out in sounding in deadly earnest (indeed it has to be sung and played absolutely straight) and sounds like about 1 billion other songs the audience has heard. Zappa talked about this saying something to the effect that by the time we’re say 18 years old we have heard thousands of songs and we recognize types of songs even simply by tonal quality. In someone else we play straight to the cliché even to the words – which you’ve kinda heard somewhere else before – it’s pretty it safe and then we just kick the damn chair out from under you. It can get laughter it can get blank looks – but it gets a reaction. That’s the deal and that’s were the deal lives for me. I’ll take laughter (which is the intention) but if not I’ll take a sunned blank stare as a sign that we’ve done our job.

Bill was talking about the interviews at some other time maybe tomorrow or today or whenever but we’ll see – we got invited to the first show and that’s a complement.

The Enemy Below, the Insect Girl and I all agreed that we need to get a bit more professional/serious about promotion/booking/publicity – starting with a press kit – and hell maybe even an 8 by 10 glossy (just thinking out loud here). Really if we want to get better or larger venues we need to do that – and not just talk about it – so the next couple of weeks will see the press kit get hammered together – posters and the other stuff will be planned – and even a p.o. for our mail so that our personal stuff doesn’t get mixed up with band stuff. Like a real life band yes indeed.

We’re really good enough – with the band we have now especially – to damn play anywhere and do anything – and I especially have to get over this low self esteem hiding as modesty bit. It’s not helping – I’ll save for when I need it. which is?

No gigs for love nor money just yet – need to go further afield here – trouble is the 169 bar is now becoming some kind of jazzish club so our band of acoustic punk humor showboating can’t really fit – since we like it loud.

I see by the news reports that W is really doing a great job in restarting the cold war. We’ll see how he does the rest of the time over there – maybe he can get the Berlin wall put back up. Since they are so hot for the days of Reagan maybe they want the big bad bear back.

I get a strange feeling listening or reading the words of the GOP candidates for president – the feeling I get is – well – oh my god they all fucking nut cases. But that’s their base these days.

Going to have to break this off – another ned of month (typo is deliberate) emergency.

Peace Love Someone else

blogger hates pics at the moment - later.