Shark Island returns...Kind of

I just discovered a true gem on Apple Music.

Back in 1989 I acquired a cassette copy of what will always be one of my favorite soundtrack albums, that of the soundtrack for Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Through it I was introduced to several new bands, the first of which was, of course, Big Pig, with their opening track "I Can't Break Away," which led me in turn to buy their album, Bonk, which subsequently stunned and impressed me with such great, heavily percussive, alternative(? I'm not sure there's a genre to describe Big Pig) tunes as "Big Hotel," "Hungry Town," "Devil's Song" and so many more.

That, in turn, led me to re-purchase that particular album on CD when the tape wore out. I also bought the followup CD years later. Not as good, but still managed a few good tracks. Great band. Sorry to know that they are not only defunct, but I can't really find anything substantial any one of them has gone on to do in the music industry.

But this entry is not about Big Pig.

This soundtrack also introduced me to Extreme. "Play with Me" was a blisteringly fast, melodic rock song that really blew me away. Their debut and sophomore albums were amazing and among my favorites of the era, and unlike Big Pig, they quickly found relative commercial success, but lost me along with that. Don't even get me started on Gary Cherone in Van Halen.

This post isn't about them either.

Tora Tora and Nelson both made solid appearances on the soundtrack as well (though the latter appeared as "Power Tool" due to a contract arrangement prior to their debut album release), as did a couple other even lesser-knowns. But it ain't about them either.

This is about Shark Island, one of the most underrated melodic hard rock bands of the late '80s. This group, along with Babylon A.D., has one of those non-success stories that kind of sickens me, because they were really good yet practically ignored, and I place the blame squarely on their labels. Both bands had incredible debut albums boasting a solid selection of songs with no filler, but suffered horribly from a lack of promotion and airplay.

Law of the Order was Shark Island's major label debut album, releasing the same year as the Bill & Ted soundtrack, as did Extreme's eponymous debut, and Tora Tora's Sneak Attack. It was a fantastic set of music, start to finish. Great riffs & catchy melodies abound, and Richard Black's vocals were spot-on throughout. This album should have been a huge success. It's a crying shame that Epic just let such genius material sit and rot.

FFWD>> to 2007, and I'm still listening to the album with some regularity. In August that year Shark Island released a new album. They'd apparently gotten most of the original band together to bring to fruition a bunch of old material and demos they'd had sitting around in the vault. This was exciting news. Unfortunately, the prospect was far more exciting than the final project.

Gathering of the Faithful is a great album title, and it makes a fan of the band think, "Wow, this is an album dedicated to me, one of the faithful who recognized the genius of the first album and waited faithfully for 18 years for an amazing followup. I'm finally gonna get my reward." Sadly, what you get when you play the album, no matter whether you're a fan or not, is a bunch of castoff material that shouldn't have made it to an actual album release. There's a reason they didn't record this stuff 15 years earlier. It kind of sucks. And, insult to injury, the production value sucks too. The band sounds like they haven't played together for almost two decades. Major disappointment.

Today I discovered on Apple Music that there's other Shark Island material out there as well. In 2004 an independent French label had the good sense to re-release Law of the Order in 2-disc format, adding a disc of live material recorded at the Whisky A Go Go in July 1989, five months after the release of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, when these guys were raring for takeoff after having slogged along and slowly built up a pretty decent following after 10 years on the L.A. rock scene.

Shark Island: Alive at the Whiskey - July 14, 1989 Bastille Day on iTunes

That disc is now available online. Though you'll shell out $60 or more for a secondhand mint-condition LP, you can now own a digital copy through iTunes for a mere 8 bucks. It's worth every penny. Even though most of the tracks are just live versions of the same material on Law of the Order, they are done with such energy and passion that each selection is given new life. If you happen to be a fan of this band looking for additional listening, I would recommend the live versions of the stuff you already know on Alive at the Whiskey long before I'd recommend the sloppy-seconds original material you'll find on Gathering of the Faithful.

There is kind of a heartbreaking moment buried in the glee I was feeling in enjoying this fantastic resurrected material. As the band finishes the final notes of "Get Some Strange" and they soak in the applause and cheers, singer Richard Black slips out of the rock star persona for a second and you get the sense that he suddenly truly noticed the crowd reaction and the fact that he was on this great stage with his band, getting major exposure on a really successful film soundtrack, and things were beginning to finally happen, that all their work was finally paying off. He shouts to the crowd, "Unbelievable!" Followed up with, seemingly more to himself, "My dreams have come true."

If only he had know how badly his record company was going to fuck him over. Such a waste.

A Coaster Compendium - UPDATE

My list now consists of 69 coasters! 

Added two from Six Flags Great America--one is new, and the other is an old one I had completely forgotten about ever having ridden. Also, I finally got to ride Justice League 3D at Six Flags St. Louis a few times.

First there's Goliath, the most badass wooden coaster ever. Rode that one at the beginning of this season. Twice. Had to wait a very long time but that coaster was the only real reason I was there. It broke down three times the first time I was in line, but come hell or high water I was riding it. 

SO worth the wait. It's really sort of a hybrid if you ask me. There is obviously some very slick steel track embedded in that wooden framework because it rides like BUTTER. Smoothest coaster I've ever ridden, steel or wood, hands down.

Speaking of "hands down," one particular feature of this coaster is that there is no kind of handhold whatsoever. There's a lap restrain and a shin restraint to keep you in. No shoulder harness, and no bar on the back of the seat in front of you. If you're one one those "hold on tight til it's over" people, you're gonna have real trouble figuring out what to do with those hands. I'd suggest put 'em up.

Goliath is the fastest wooden coaster in the world, at a blistering but completely smooth 72 mph. Additionally it set records for the tallest drop and steepest drop on a wooden coaster--180 feet beginning at an incline of 85 degrees.

And second is the no-longer-there Tidal Wave, which consisted of a lead up track and a single, enormous loop. For my age when I rode it, that thing was pretty amazing. Kinda wish it was still around, but I guess it just lost its impact when looping coasters became so commonplace. Only thing is, that damn loop was tall. I'm sure it was taller than any other loop I've been on since.

Finally, there's Justice League Battle for Metropolis 4D at Six Flags St. Louis, which replaced the Scooby Doo Ghostblasters laser target shooting boat ride.

Eventually my patience was rewarded and we have ridden this one four or fives times so far this season. It's an indoor target shooting game that incorporates 3D effects, lasers, fog, a six axis rotating coaster car on a linear track, and complex animatronics for a really immersive experience.

Here's a few pics, including my personal high score after three rides on it. I scored in the top 10% of all scores registered thus far, the ride informed me at the end!

• American Eagle (Six Flags Great America) [details]
• American Thunder / Evel Knievel (Six Flags St. Louis) [details]
• Avatar Airbender (Mall of America) [details]
• Batman: The Ride (Six Flags St. Louis)
• Batman: The Ride (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• Batman: The Ride (Six Flags Great America)
• Bizarro / Medusa (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Blackbeard's Lost Treasure Train (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Blue Streak (Cedar Point)
• Boomerang / Flashback (Six Flags St. Louis) [details]
• The Boss (Six Flags St. Louis)
• Cedar Creek Mine Train (Cedar Point)
• Corkscrew (Cedar Point)
• Dahlonega Mine Train (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• Dark Knight Coaster (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Dark Knight Coaster (Six Flags Great America)
• Demon (Six Flags Great America)
• Disaster Transport (Cedar Point)
• El Toro (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Fairly OddParents Fairly OddCoaster (Mall of America)
• Gemini (Cedar Point)
• Georgia Cyclone (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• Georgia Scorcher (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• Goliath (Six Flags Great America) **NEW**
• Great American Scream Machine (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• Green Lantern (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Iron Dragon (Cedar Point)
• Iron Wolf (Six Flags Great America)
• Justice League Battle for Metropolis 4D (Six Flags St. Louis) **NEW**
• Kingda Ka (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Little Dipper (Six Flags Great America)
• Magnum XL-200 (Cedar Point)
• Mantis (Cedar Point)
• Maverick (Cedar Point)
• Mean Streak (Cedar Point)
• Millenium Force (Cedar Point)
• Mind Bender (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• Mr. Freeze (Six Flags St. Louis)
• Mr. Freeze Reverse Blast (Six Flags St. Louis)
• Ninja (Six Flags St. Louis)
• Ninja (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• Nitro (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Opa! (Mt. Olympus Indoor Theme Park)
• Pandemonium / Tony Hawk's Big Spin (Six Flags St. Louis)
• Pepsi Orange Streak (Mall of America)
• Ragin' Cajun (Six Flags Great America)
• Raging Bull (Six Flags Great America)
• Raptor (Cedar Point)
• River King Mine Train (Six Flags St. Louis)
• Rolling Thunder (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Rolling Thunder [bobsled ride] (Six Flags Great America)
• Runaway Mine Train (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Screamin' Eagle (Six Flags St. Louis)
• Shockwave (Six Flags Great America)
• Skull Mountain (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Space Mountain (Walt Disney World)
• Spongebob Squarepants Rock Bottom Plunge (Mall of America)
• Superman: Ultimate Flight (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• Superman: Ultimate Flight (Six Flags Great America)
• Tidal Wave (Six Flags Great America) **NEW** I'd forgotten about this one!
• Top Thrill Dragster (Cedar Point)
• Tornado (Adventureland)
• Twister (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• V2: Vertical Velocity (Six Flags Great America)
• Viper (Six Flags Great America)
• Whizzer (Six Flags Great America)
• Wicked Twister (Cedar Point)
• Wile E. Coyote Canyon Blaster (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• X-Flight (Six Flags Great America)

Wah wah wwaahhhhh...

Grrr! Justice League is still under construction, even two trips to into the season. We will be returning to the park for July 4th and I'm very confident the ride will be open by then. Stay tuned...

On a related note, this week I'll be adding Goliath to my list of conquests. Stay tuned for more on that as well...

More coasters coming!

As Six Flags season approaches yet again, I'm gearing up with some genuine excitement because of two impending additions to my coaster conquest compendium:

Six Flags St. Louis opens, as always, on Good Friday. And, as we have done many times in the past, we will be there to secure our season passes. However, the passes will have to wait, as I want to be on the first official go-round of the new Justice League 4D dark ride once the park has opened for the season.

Justice League Battle for Metropolis 4D is billed as the first ride of its kind in North America. It's a "dark ride," similar to the Scooby Doo Ghostblasters boat ride that previously occupied the same space in the park, save for the boat part; this one rides on rails... I think. Either that, or it maybe doesn't move at all, but rather is a more "virtual" experience.

It's also similar to Scooby Doo in that the ride involves offing baddies and various other targets with laser guns attached to the conveyance. But that is where the similarities end.

Battle for Metropolis boasts the best, most high-tech animatronic characters this side of Disney World. In addition, it somehow incorporates "4D glasses." Not sure how that works exactly, but I can tell you with certainty that those glasses are going to be in the best shape of their lives on opening day. By midsummer you'll be lucky to see anything out of them. Unless maybe they're disposables? I don't know. There's an air of mystery about them as yet.

Oh, and Six Flags says this ride has 600+ shooting targets (!) compared to Scooby Doo's pitiful 115. In addition, we know that the ride incorporates five enormous screens, special effects, custom music and top-notch voice acting. JLBFM was designed by Sally Corp. (of Ghostblasters fame) and Oceaneering provides the motion-controlled ride vehicles.

I'm pretty stoked for this one. If it doesn't ride on rails, I'll still be super-excited to ride it on opening weekend, despite not being able to add it to my coaster tally. I'm confident that we'll be riding this one as a family at least two or three times Easter weekend.

The following month, we are planning a trip to Chicago, where I'll be taking in a Laibach concert. Our plan is, as long as we're there, to hit Six Flags Great America the following day (or two). This has me even more excited than I am for the concert, and I've been a Laibach fan for over 20 years, never having been to a show before, The reason this trip has me prematurely creaming my jeans is, of course, the coaster that was new for 2014 but we didn't go last year to ride it - GOLIATH!

Shattering records as the world's tallest, fastest and steepest wooden coaster, this behemoth is the one I've been waiting all my life to ride:

• An initial 85-degree, 180-foot drop
• 72 MPH top speed
• Two overbanked inversions
• 180-degree zer-G roll twist
• Inverted zero-G stall

I'm just floored when a wooden coaster goes upside down. This baby does it several times. I cannot wait to board this sucker. I'm hoping the lines will be OK since it's a year old now.

I can't tell you how much I adore the Great America park north of Chicago. It was always my day-trip vacation destination of choice when I was a youngster, and it continues to be. The only pain in my ass now that I'm the dad is all the damn tolls along the way. That's where St. Louis takes an advantage over Great America. Actually, if you want me to be honest, the ONLY way in which Great America is better than St. Louis is in the number and quality of its rides. St. Louis has Great America beat on all other counts, including food, ticket/season pass price, weather, crowding, and the fact that there are a few rides that I'd miss if I had to only go to Chicago instead.

The Boss, American Thunder, and Screaming Eagle are the unique coasters in St. Louis that I enjoy most. Along with Screaming Eagle, the park's other iconic amusement ride is its giant Ferris Wheel, Colossus. We make a point to ride it every trip. It's a great way to decompress after a long day in the sun and on your feet.

But I digress. Obviously I'm excited to be heading to Six Flags once again. I was beginning to feel like an old fart because I haven't ridden a roller coaster in a couple years, and I literally can't remember the last time I flew from the seat of a playground swing. Thank goodness spring has arrived in Central Illinois. I need to get my ass to the playground with my kids, stat. No getting old for me just yet.

Stay tuned for more after Easter. I can't wait to tell you about the Justice League ride.

March Madness, Metal-Style

Hey, Manowarriors worldwide! I've got a chance for you to stand up and be counted! Speak out for your true metal heroes and make your voice heard! Loudwire is taking the college sports sensation known in the States as "March Madness" and co-opted it for metalheads everywhere. They've created brackets for fans to vote on and find the best metal mascot ever.

The first match-up is Black Sabbath's occasionally used demon known as "Henry" vs. Manowar's ubiquitous "Manowarrior." Face it, folks, the United States is heavily biased toward Sabbath, so my overseas brothers and sisters of true metal are the only ones who are gonna be able to save our beloved Manowarrior from certain defeat at the hands of a part-time mascot whom he could rip apart with his bare hands in a true brawl.

Help me bring our Manowarrior victory! Hail and Kill! Visit this round 1 voting link and cast your vote today! Voting ends at noon on Monday 23 March GMT. Spread the word and take the metal world by STORM!

HAIL AND KILL!

Angry Cat is the new Grumpy Cat

Meet Garfi, the Internet's newest feline of fame. His Flickr/Twitter/Facebook pages are blowing up right now because he's so much more bad-ass than Tard the Grumpy Cat ever was. Thanks to great free exposure like the above linked HuffPo piece and Chris Hardwick's Garfi-centric bit on a recent episode of his @Midnight gameshow on Comedy Central, we will no doubt be seeing a lot of Garfi in the coming months. He's a meme in the making.

So the moment I saw a Santa suit photo I thought, "Grinch. Someone has to make him the Grinch." Of course I figured that if I could think of it, someone else has undoubtedly done it already...

Guess not though. FIRST!

A different sort of "wild ride"

When I was a boy of 12 or 13 I used to read a science/pseudoscience/new age magazine called OMNI. I picked an issue up one day at Waldenbooks (remember that chain?) and instantly fell in love with it. Of course in those days I wanted to be a parapsychologist when I grew up. That was before the now-popular term "ghost hunter" came into vogue. And obviously before I understood that ghost hunting is really nothing more than a hobby at best and a swindle at worst.

David Patrick Kelly as Tommy Ray in the 1984 sci-fi thriller "Dreamscape"

Anyway, one of the articles I remember had a big impact on me back then was one concerning lucid dreaming. "You can learn to CONTROL your dreams?!" I was a huge fan of the Dennis Quaid (not to be confused with Randy) movie "Dreamscape" by that age; I can't recall if I'd seen "A Nightmare on Elm Street" yet at that point, but if not I would soon come to love it as well.

When I read this particular piece I was instantly infatuated with the idea of having a fantasy world bend to my whims each night, so I began incorporating the recommended exercises into my daily routine, each day warming my mind up for the idea that upon my nightly respite a new world would come alive to me and be under my control.

The technique I employed involved two components: weaving spontaneous reality checks throughout my everyday waking reality, and muttering affirmation-type statements to myself now and again. The idea is to make these routines such a part of your life that they become typical behavior and you will eventually we've them into your dream world, where the reality check will inevitably fail, allowing you to recognize you are indeed inside a dream, at which point you are in control of the direction your dream will take.

Lucid dreaming issue of OMNI magazine

I put my energy into these techniques and got great results. I became pretty good at it. Being a young teenager, of course, many of my lucid dreams turned sexual in nature pretty quickly. But I also flew and swam (neither of which I can do in reality), solved real-world problems that were bothering me and went on many crazy nocturnal adventures that would never be possible in the real world. Hell, some would have gotten me arrested in the real world. It was a virtual sandbox game of unlimited possibilities back when "The Legend of Zelda II" was the height of technology.

I'm not sure why I eventually quit the practice, but I did. Seems like a crazy thing to do when it's all going so swimmingly. Maybe I got lazy. I don't know. I did, though, somehow end up rejoining the ranks of the world's passive dreamers. And I was satisfied with it for decades. Somewhere along the line it became regular for me to not even remember dreaming most nights. That seems like such a waste to me. I know my brain's doing it. Why won't it at least remember where I was all night?

Last week I got the urge and decided to begin trying the techniques again. So far it's been four days, and though I have yet to experience lucidity, I have noticed that my dreams have become quite vivid and I am now remembering them every night.

I've dreamt of leaving my daughter at a mysterious "summer camp" at a compound of some sort, witnessing a violent train derailment, sacrificing myself running a bomb out of a hospital, participating in a high-stakes karaoke contest run by an evil megalomaniac, being a guest in a house that turns out to slowly reveal its sinister side as the servants and my wife fall under its spell (I particularly love the bizarre image of leeches beginning to grow out of the ceiling)... This is definitely a step in the right direction. Perhaps within another week or two I'll gain some measure of lucidity and the real fun can begin.

This is easily just as much fun as a rollercoaster but more convenient and hella cheaper. I'll keep you posted on my progress, and if it truly pays off I will let you know the simple steps I employed to make it happen. I'm not a greedy man; I'll share.

WTF, Manowar?

I am a lifelong fan of Manowar through good times and bad, but even I am not sure what to think of the newest release coming out next month.

First off, they've rerecorded a classic--nay, the definitive--Manowar album, Kings of Metal, giving it the same treatment as Battle Hymns. I gotta say, even though Joey DeMaio previously has gone on record as saying the band would never stoop to rerecording and rereleasing old music, that Battle Hymns reboot is a killer record. I loved the original much better than many of the early releases, but since BH MMXI released, I hardly listen to the original release at all anymore.

I understand the desire to rerecord the debut album, or any of the first five albums, for that matter; the production value on those albums was definitely lacking. Hearing the old songs performed live really brings that realization home. The band is in its best incarnation ever right now with Eric, Joey, Karl and Donnie. They blow the shit out of all previous lineups, so it only makes sense to utilize their masterful playing and studio production values to breathe new life into solid but sonically dated material.
Kings of Metal, however, is not one of the releases that particularly begs to be revamped. In my opinion, it is the first of the releases with more kickass overall production values. Later on the sound quality and oomph on the records went into even higher gear with Warriors of the World. The way I see it (or, more accurately, the way I hear it) is that there have been four eras of evolution to Manowar's sound:

1. Battle Hymns, Into Glory Ride, Hail to England
2. Sign of the Hammer, Fighting the World
3. Kings of Metal, The Triumph of Steel, Louder Than Hell
4. Warriors of the World, Gods of War, Battle Hymns MMXI, Lord of Steel

Anything in category 1 is overdue for a freshening up. One down, two to go. Category 2 could benefit from a little dusting off. Anything in category 3 or 4 is fine as-is. With the exception of Louder Than Hell, which--if you're a regular reader--you might know is one of my least favorite Manowar releases.

So that's reason one that I'm not sure how to face the release of Kings of Metal MMXIV: it doesn't really need to be rerecorded. There's a reason Kings of Metal endures as the band's best selling album to date--it's sheer perfection already! "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

The second reason is, well, take a look at the cover, compared with the original:

Anything missing from the revamped cover on the right? That's right. Where the FUCK is the U.S. flag??? These guys are from New York City, for Chrissakes! Have they become so deeply involved in their overseas exploits that they've forgotten their roots completely? Joey DeMaio doesn't do anything without thinking it through very methodically. You know he and Ken Kelly communicated very specifically about which countries to represent on the new cover. This was a deliberate decision with some sort of very concise motivation behind it. Is it political in nature? What's going on? Why, before embarking on their longest U.S. tour leg in decades, would Manowar give the USA short shrift on the cover of the album they are promoting, especially when the U.S. flag held such a place of high esteem on the original cover? If Warriors of the World ever gets a rerelease, whose flag will our mighty warrior be holding aloft? Where is the interviewer who is gonna corner Joey and ask him head-on about this?

I just don't know how to take this cover. I think it legitimately warrants an explanation from the band, just because they took an iconic album cover that represented victory through adversity and American patriotism and, upon rerelease, completely removed that element, replacing it with symbols of other nations of the world. And truly that's the ONLY thing that changed about the cover artwork. The rest is identical. It doesn't have to be addressed with the hostile attitude I've given here. Just a simple question: "Joey, what was the thought process behind the cover choice for the new album? What inspired you to make the changes you did, and is there any significance behind the absence of the U.S. flag?" Simple.

I just gotta know. Of course I'll buy the album even not knowing the answer because Manowar is in my blood. But I might hate myself a little for it. Despite the buyer's remorse, I just have to own those damn bonus tracks. To have instrumental (read KARAOKE) tracks of "Blood of the Kings," "Hail and Kill," "Heart of Steel," Kingdom Come," "Kings of Metal" and "Wheels of Fire" is going to be amazing. I'll be taking those to the karaoke bar I work at and trying them on for size. I need no lyric sheets of course. I need only the roar of the Black Wind and an open mic.

Damn you, Manowar. I can't hate you even when you piss me off.

Dirty Peanutz has an official home!

OK, folks--if you've enjoyed my plying my twisted humor on these classic Peanuts strips, go on over to check out my new Dirty Peanutz page on Blogger. I'll be posting a new Peanutz strip there every day! If you've been following along, you'll see familiar strips for a while (with a surprise bonus strip coming up soon) and then after those have all been posted I'm moving on to ALL NEW MATERIAL!

Subscribe now to make sure you get your daily fix of beloved children's characters engaged in the most tasteless endeavors you can imagine. I will no longer be posting these creations on this page; to see more you'll have to visit me at peanuttier.blogspot.com.

Peanutz 11 & 12

PEANUTZ 11

PEANUTZ 12

I must be stopped... Or must I?

I whipped up a few more crazy Peanuts strips. Hope you like them. Click on a strip if anything in the right margin is obscuring it, and it will open in a new screen.

PEANUTZ 7

PEANUTZ 8

PEANUTZ 9









PEANUTZ 10

Crazy Peanuts strips

I recently discovered a great online archive of Peanuts comic strips. Now I'm a huge fan of Peanuts strips and have been all my life. However, while browsing the archive it struck me that sometimes it's funnier if you make up your own captions instead. So here are a few examples I came up with.

PEANUTZ 1

PEANUTZ 2

PEANUTZ 3

PEANUTZ 4

PEANUTZ 5

PEANUTZ 6

Hmmm... A new hobby in the works? It sure is fun! Stay tuned.

Movie review - Elysium

MILD SPOILER ALERT

Went to see the new science fiction action thriller Elysium this afternoon, and I really liked it, even more than Pacific Rim. Best sci-fi pic I've seen in a long time. Elysium was directed by Neill Blomkamp, who made a name for himself in the industry with his independent debut feature film, District 9, which was both a critical and box office success.

Elysium stars Matt Damon, whom I personally think is highly underrated as an actor. I've really enjoyed his performances lately in We Bought a Zoo, Beyond the Candelabra, and this picture. I think he brings an everyman quality to any role he plays. He makes it relatable no matter what the role. Well, maybe not so much Jason Bourne. That one's kind of a stretch to relate to.

His costar and foil in the film is Jodie Foster, whom I conversely consider to be extremely overrated as an actor. I just think she hit her high point way back in The Silence of the Lambs and has never regained that glory despite having a few hits since then. Though I did like her in Contact as well. I've never quite gotten why she gets such attention in Hollywood. I liked her as a child actor, but to me she's just kind of annoying nowadays in most films.

Part Mad Max, part Cyborg, part Holy Bible and part Johnny Mnemonic, Elysium takes place in the mid-22nd century. Earth has been raped and basically destroyed by the human race, so it has been left to the indigent "have-nots," while the richest and most powerful people in the world have pulled together the resources to construct for themselves an enormous, terraformed space station in orbit around the dying planet. This is Elysium.

Damon plays a factory worker named Max who has always dreamed of the day he is able to find a way to take himself and his childhood sweetheart and lifelong love to the beautiful manmade paradise of Elysium, where there is no crime, no poverty, no disease, and anyone who dies does so of old age alone.

Foster is ballsy Secretary of Defense Delacourt who takes no prisoners in stopping illegal immigration of unlicensed earth folks who constantly attempt to infiltrate Elysium security and stow away on the space station to make a better life for themselves.

When our hero is accidentally exposed to a massive dose of radiation in a manufacturing plant accident, he has no choice but to return to his former lucrative life of crime to pull one more, practically suicidal job to earn the money to pay for his ticket to Elysium. This is how he ends up crossing paths with dirty double government agents of Elysium, and his own plans of salvation entangle with Delacourt's deceitful political power play.

Action-packed and exciting, with Max an overtly Christlike figure by the end, I found the movie to be very enjoyable. I like seeing new interpretations of a bleak earth future. It was well crafted and well written, though there were a couple of issues I had that prevent me from calling it flawless. 

The biggest potential distraction from full enjoyment was Jodie Foster's horrendously inconsistent accent. I think it was meant to be French...ish? But it was just hit-and-miss. At times it would wax and wane crazily like the ocean tides of Bespin (if it had any liquid oceans), even during the same scene. Foster's never been known for her versatility with accents, but this was worse than Mike Myers' faux Scotsman, even pre-Shrek. Not that his Shrek characterization was particularly impressive...

All in all, a nicely done film. It's not often that a sci-fi flick comes along that I can enjoy with my wife. I think the last one we both liked and saw in the theater together was The Matrix. The first one. And that was some time ago.

Well done, Neill Blomkamp. I fell asleep during District 9, but this I liked. Hmm. Perhaps I should give District 9 another shot. I'll check Netflix this weekend. Maybe I didn't give it a fair shake. It's pretty difficult to find any negative feedback on that movie, so there must be something to it. Stay tuned on that front...

Pacific Rim not perfect by any means, still worth my nine bucks

I finally went to see Pacific Rim last night, clinging desperately to the stellar filmmaking reputation of Guillermo del Toro and the positive reviews I've seen. Obviously that means I've either avoided or ignored the negative reviews up to this point. My friend and former coworker posted his review (which contains mild spoilers) and I avoided it until after having seen the film myself because he prefaced it with the mention of spoilers.

I think I'll follow the same format here as he did in his review.
Again, be aware:  >>>>>> SPOILERZ AHED <<<<<<<

What I liked:
Not being a huge fan of the whole Godzilla-style monster invasion flick, I didn't come into this movie with an extensive viewing background in the genre and a bunch of preconceived notions about how the ultimate giant-monsters-versus-giant-robots story should go. I'm still not what you'd call a fan--it didn't convert me--but it was reminiscent of some of the anime I used to watch back in high school, and that felt good and nostalgic in a way.

The action can't be faulted, except maybe to say that some of the action-packed close-ups of kaiju (that's the monsters in the movie) and jaegers (what the "robots," or more accurately "mechs" [they're not automatons; they're controlled by pilots inside them] are called in the movie) are just a little too frenetic at times to really pick out exactly what's happening. But if you want to see massive destruction, monsters getting pummeled, and cities being leveled, you'll see it here.

I love the idea of alien monsters emerging from an unexplained and sudden physical and dimensional rift that has opened in the ocean floor. Too often, our would-be alien conquerors announce their visit ahead of time by traveling in huge, easily detectable spaceships. We never look down. Nice twist.

I liked that it's a PG-13 I am comfortable taking my 11-year-old to. IMDB's parents guide doesn't do the film justice. It always sounds so much worse when you read it out of context. It mentioned an f-bomb, but I certainly didn't hear it and neither did my companion. Nearly all of the violence in the picture is kaiju/jaeger centered. It's all CG. In those shots you don't even get much of the "Run for your life from Gojira!" panic in the streets as people are crushed under the foot of a marauding monster.

There's a bit of blood now and then when the pilots get tossed around inside the jaegers during combat, and we do see one man get picked up by a kaiju and basically swallowed. And there was a fistfight between two headstrong jaeger pilots where there's a little blood. But for the most part, even the more "gory" violence is really a computer-generated mech ripping a huge, computer-generated hole through a computer-generated monster to a spray of computer-generated fluorescent blue blood analogue. Not the kind of violence I'm worried about my kid seeing. And there's no sex-related material other than an herbalist trying to sell someone something for "male potency." IMDB says he makes a gesture. I imagined him using his forearm to simulate a strong, erect penis. Nope. He simply closes his hands into two fists to demonstrate virility.

What I didn't like:
Some things just didn't make sense to me. Did I interpret the timeline wrong, or did the first kaiju invasion take place in 2013, seven years before the events of the film, which is set in 2020? If that's the case, then how come the little Japanese girl rescued by the jaeger pilot--who appears all of six years old--is obviously in her mid-to-late 20s when the bulk of the story takes place? How does a child age at least 15 years in a span of seven? ...Or did I miss something?

Many--no, make that all--of the characters were straight out of central casting. Some of the smaller roles were blatantly stereotypical, and maybe even racially insensitive. The aforementioned Japanese girl--who as a small child, sounded like she was straight out of one of those anime videos I mentioned before, making those tiny, weird moans and gasps that nobody in real life ever makes as she picked her way through the carnage of a devastated city to face her rescuer--grew up to be not only way too old for her age, but also horribly stereotypical: demure, heavily affected with her fake Japanese accent even though she'd spent the last seven-to-twenty years being raised by a British man, and secretly a ninja.

I kept expecting a close-up of that Russian dude saying to a kaiju in his best fake Dolph Lundgren-Russian accent, "I vill break you." I don't remember their names. They possibly weren't even mentioned. I shall call them Boris and Natasha because that's how stereotypical they were in appearance. Also, all the other nationalities dressed alike but like no other subset of people. It was just weird and made the future look like, "Yes, we all came together as a united world to stop the menace of the kaiju, but there's no way we'll dress like one another or begin to assimilate into one world culture." I half-expected the Chinese to all look like rice farmers in their stereotypical cartoon Chinaman crash-cymbal hats.

I'm going to do my best Seth Myers now: My, how our technology has advanced in a mere seven years. My companion pointed out that necessity is, after all, the mother of invention. But really, Pacific Rim? Really? 50-story, airtight, fully-articulated robots that are controlled via a Vulcan mind-meld of two pilots with the robot's command matrix? Really? We have 3-D holographic computer interfaces all over this world? Not that unbelievable, I guess, but at the same time we have a timer measuring how long since the monsters appeared, and it's a humongous FLIP-NUMBER-CLOCK? Really?? And can some one explain to me how the old, series three or whatever jaegers are ANALOG in nature versus the DIGITAL ones that were knocked out by the EM pulse kaiju? "Analog?" REALLY?

One more big question: If the rift needs to detect kaiju matter in order to open to a traveler, how did the jaeger escape pods make it back through to our world?

And there's one last minor thing that bothered me. Apparently the jaeger design teams took at least one cue from Inspector Gadget. It seems like in order to deploy any special feature on the mech (elbow rocket, plasma cannon, sword), a pilot has to announce it aloud first. The only thing it was missing was the preliminary "Go-go, Gadget," as in "Go-go, Gadget Umbrella!"

I'm starting to talk myself out of having liked this movie as much as I previously thought. Better stop now, because I think I'll have to take my son this weekend to a matinee. I want to enjoy the second screening too, and not be constantly reminded of that nitpicky review I read that purported to be positive but ended up kinda panning the whole affair. Wait, I wrote that review, didn't I? Crap. 

A sequel? I'd be interested in seeing that. I'd rather see At the Mountains of Madness, but if GDT can really nail it with The Strain and Hellboy 3, and if Richard Stanley can truly deliver on his proposed adaptation of The Colour Out of Space, I can settle for Pacific Rim 2. At least, for now...

Macklemore destroys our differences and brings world peace

Buried amid an unexpectedly fantastic and inspirational pop/rap song about tolerance and acceptance is this even more unexpectedly wise phrase that, when extracted from the whole of the text, really stands alone in its universal importance:

  

"Whatever god you believe in, we come from the same one. Strip away the fear, [and] underneath it's all the same love."

I don't know if rapper Macklemore realizes just how very deep this sentiment is. It's the first song lyric to ever jump out of a pop song, slap me in the face, and command me to spend time truly pondering it in a deeply personal manner. I wish that everyone in the world, believers and nonbelievers alike, could sit alone in a room and quietly ruminate over this lyric excerpt for a good 30 minutes. Maybe even up to an hour. It could be an attitude- and life-changing experience for many. It could be the first step down the road of understanding and enlightenment for all. That's how heavily this lyric impacted me. It's like a light went on where there was before only darkness.

Before you ask--no, I'm still an atheist.

"No matter what god you believe in... We come from the same one." >> We can't all be right. My god and your god might go by different names and have different methods of handing down their edicts or suggestions for a holy life, but must not their titles be but differing ways to refer to the same being? For as the bard suggested, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," would it not? No matter who you believe your god is... if there is a creator, I think we can all agree that--much like the Highlander--there can be only one.

"Strip away the fear, underneath it's all the same love." >> In the end, if you distill each of our faiths down to their respective cores, aren't they all about loving your god, your fellow man and yourself? Let's put aside the differences and concentrate on the similarities. Let's do things that please our god and make this life on earth more bearable and pleasant for us. For despite who you think your god is, we are ALL his children, even those of us who believe he is someone else entirely or that he doesn't even exist. Why can't we just leave the judgment to him and just concentrate on helping our fellow man have a rich and rewarding experience here on this earth, where we have unquestioning control of our lives and our impact on the lives of others?

Heavy philosophical words bringing a very deep line of thought for a pop song ostensibly about the support of gay marriage--a topic not to be taken lightly, for sure. If you think about it, though, were we to simply worry about taking care of ourselves and loving others, all people would be equally included. No preferences based on race, sex, gender identity, age, color, religion (or lack thereof), class...

Respecting each man, woman and child as a beloved creation of the god of your choosing, (for I don't know about your god, but the one I grew up on loves ALL of his creations, even animals with no souls) erases our imaginary dividing lines. It brings us together like nothing else can, save the elimination of religion entirely from the face of the earth.

Hey, someone has to play the logician's advocate here. One aforementioned scenario is unfortunately no more likely than the other. The people of this world will never see eye to eye. There's a third possibility that has the potential to bring an unprecedented unity to the people of earth, and that is the discovery of intelligent alien life. Like a legitimate first contact situation. It could cause mass chaos, but my hope is that it will force people to at least think, "Wow. This universe just got smaller. Maybe I was wrong about EVERYTHING. Let's start over."

But knowing the people of this planet, it would be more like, "Hey, there is a whole universe of people-ish creatures we can turn our xenophobic disdain upon. There's no more reason to fight amongst ourselves. We're all humans here. The real threat is OUT THERE."

It's not perfect, and it could potentially destroy our entire planet, but at least, for that short period of time, we'd all be together focusing on our newly found solidarity. Sorry, Macklemore. I know you tried.

"The Mound" turned out to not be fashioned of dirt, if you know what I mean

I was excited at the prospect of reading this story after having read another of Lovecraft's collaborations with Zealia Bishop, "The Curse of Yig," back near the beginning of my literary odyssey. Alas, while "The Mound" began with a lot of promise, in the end it completely failed to deliver the thrills as "Yig" did. A very disappointing climax indeed, especially given the really incredible bump-and-set that kicks off the first half of the story.

"The Mound" is ostensibly about an ethnologist who studies American Indian tribes--surely the same character who seeks out the story in "The Curse of Yig." So anyway, he comes to an Oklahoma town called Binger in order to research supernatural stories about a large mound or small hill a few miles outside town. Apparently, it's haunted--or possibly patrolled--by two ghosts.

In the daylight hours, an Indian man paces atop the mound, only to vanish if approached. In the night, the patrol is taken over by a headless Indian squaw. And so it has gone for the past century or so. Many of the daring explorers brave enough to investigate have either disappeared NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN or have returned after a brief period of absence to find themselves apparently mad and babbling typical Lovecraftian cosmic nonsense.

Pretty cool setup. I'll give them that.

So our hero goes up alone (he could find nobody in town stupid enough to join him) to dig and find out what's up. That's where he finds, after a decent afternoon of digging, a strange metallic tube containing ancient documents. As dark approaches, he decides to hoof it back to town and give the mysterious documents a thorough once-over.

The pages are the notes of famed 16th-Century explorer Francisco de Coronado...'s hired man, Panfilo de Zamacona. *sigh*

The bulk of the story is the ethnologist's reading of Zamacona's journal about his extended visit to an underworld inhabited by strange men with strange powers. I really don't want to get into the details, but it takes up a good 5 of the 7 chapters. Suffice it to say he found a primeval, subterranean society of telepathic, teleporting man-things and came to be more or less accepted by them, trading their knowledge, living quarters, food and all for his knowledge of the outside world.

This land, called K'n-yan by the natives, turns out to not be the only inner-earth world thriving with its own form of life. For beyond the shimmering blue iridescent light of K'n-yan, one can find sub-subterranean passages to a red-lit world even deeper in the planet. The natives of the blue world, of course, do not get along with those of the red, and nor do the red folk get along with the viscous black blob-like shapeshifters that can be found in the coal-dark sub-sub-subterranean world to be found even deeper beyond their own. *yawn* OK, I'm sufficiently bored.

Back to the blue world beneath the green (that's ours). The interesting bits are that they are a Cthuluhu- and Yig-worshipping, technologically advanced super-society that now has a genetically engineered slave class to do all the heavy lifting so they can just concentrate on educational, philosophical, artistic and sexual gratification. Also used as slaves are the people who would not conform--criminals, rogues, etc. First they are thrown in a gladiatorial coliseum and maimed in whatever horrible ways imaginable, to the delight of the crowds. This maiming includes but is not limited to: cutting, scraping, bruising, dismemberment, disemboweling, and death. This underground "civilization" also has the power to reanimate the dead, giving them a sole purpose--to please the living.

Anyway, Zamacona spends decades with them before he realizes he's run out of things to say and is pretty sure he's bound for the coliseum, so he tries to escape with the help of his lady-thing friend. He is able to get his missive to the surface, but that's all we know other than they got caught in their escape attempt. She faces a stiff punishment, but he is given another chance.

I am really cutting a ton of shit out of this shit-filled story; you have no idea. You're welcome.

So our hero decides he's gonna rediscover this society that Zamacona wrote about, and he sets off in the morning to continue digging.

SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! Of course if you haven't already read it, you probably shouldn't. Maybe just finish this review and call it quits for this story.

When he gets to the top of the mound, his shovel and pickaxe are missing. He figures it's a prank by some wise-ass villager watching through binoculars, so he just mans up and digs with his bowie knife instead, eventually being swallowed up by a sinkhole or something and ending up in a subterranean cave described by Zamacona.

He follows the passage, finding along the way his shovel and pickaxe, and an undead, highly maimed sentry. Oh shit. It's Zamacona.

The end.

Seriously. Yep. It ends that poorly. Very disappointing. I think HPL must have just been sick of writing it even though it was only a two-month project. In any event, it was considered a collaboration and wasn't printed until after his death anyway. At least he never had to see it published.

As I said, it started out so cool and promising. That's what made the ending even worse. This had the potential to be a sci-fi masterpiece. Too bad nobody has picked that idea up and written more tales in this setting. I'm sure the blue inner-world folk have many interesting and thrilling stories to offer the green earth, but this wasn't one of them.

Movie review: The Conjuring

Vera Farmiga looks for spirits in New Line's The Conjuring

The Conjuring is the new horror film from director James Wan, who previously brought us the original Saw as well as Insidious--and who most recently finished work on Insidious: Chapter 2, due later this year. It stars Ron Livingston (yes, of Office Space fame), Vera Farmiga (elder sister of American Horror Story's Taissa Farmiga), Patrick Wilson (if you saw him you'd recognize him from Watchmen, Insidious, and many smaller supporting roles), and Lili Taylor (from High Fidelity, The Haunting, Netflix's original series Hemlock Grove, and scores of other supporting roles on TV and film).

The Conjuring is based on the allegedly true story of a 1971 haunting that occurred in the Rhode Island home of the Perron family. This haunting and demonic possession was investigated by demonologists/paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (famous for later investigating the Lutz home portrayed in The Amityville Horror), and Lorraine was consulted during the film's pre-production. Ed Warren passed away in 2006.

This movie was quite enjoyable; and by that I mean it was more than a bit uncomfortable and unnerving at times, and effectively creepy and suspenseful throughout. Though somewhat formulaic and predictable due to the genre, as it borrows scares freely from every haunted house tale you've ever seen, and liberally from The Exorcist, the film hit all the right notes at all the right times.

The period dress and atmosphere were effective in transporting me back to the 1970s, and I even noticed some dated camera techniques we haven't seen much of since the filmmaking of the early '80s, such as the long, slow zoom. It all comes together quite nicely with very few digital effects to create a paranormal thriller that I could almost believe came out of that era. One thing's for sure--if The Conjuring had been released in 1980, it would have scared the living shit out of a lot more people than it will today.

I'm not into giving movie spoilers, so fret not and feel safe to read on.

Moving on to the more lackluster elements of the movie, I will first mention that I'm typically a tough scare at the cinema. I thoroughly enjoy a good horror flick, but I am of the opinion that the truly great ones have all been shot already. Despite the effects-laden shockfests that Hollywood has the ability to churn out one after another, how can anything compete with the classics of horror that created those elements we've come to accept as tropes of the genre?

With such creepy masterpieces as the original The Haunting, The Exorcist, The Omen, The Shining, and even more recent honorable mentions like The Ring and Paranormal Activity, it's getting hard to come up with new things to scare us. We recycle the same tried-and-true elements of horror over and over again. The fake-out, the face in the mirror, the creepy child, mysterious whispering... the list goes on. That's why it pisses me off when there's a great new type of scare and they blow their load early by showing it in the trailer to the people who haven't even seen the movie.

In this case it's the hand clap thing. If you've seen the trailer you know what I'm talking about. It's one of the most original scares of the film, but anyone who is in the theater knows it's coming up because they've obviously seen promotion for the movie. That removes the fear that we should be feeling in that pivotal scene because we're all going, "Oh, that pair-of-hands-clapping-in-the-dark thing is coming up here!"

One other thing fails to impress the fear that it felt like the film was trying to exert, and that's the whole God vs. Satan thing. Really? Are we still at that point in our intellectual development and spiritual enlightenment in this country that this lame crap can still scare us? Especially the typical horror movie crowd? I don't believe that.

In the movie, the Warrens speak to one another about how God brought them together to help people; God gave Lorraine the gift of second sight or whatever; demons have the ability and desire to possess people or objects--real demons from biblical hell...
Before the credits roll at the end of the movie, a quote from Ed Warren is displayed on screen. To paraphrase it said, "The fairy tale is true. The devil is real. God is real. The battle for this world and your soul goes on always, and you must make a conscious choice  which of them you will give your power to."

Blah blah. Yawn. It felt weird in that it was heavy handed, but that heavy hand had no effective weapon in it--it was just an empty, yet somehow heavy, hand. Maybe it's my unbelief standing in the way, but when they mention Satan in the movie and what witches and devil worshippers do or whatever, I wasn't the least bit creeped out. It felt like another one of those time warp moments. I remember being a little kid and feeling like stuff like that was unknown, forbidden and super-scary. As an adult, though, seeing that in a movie made me feel like I was either watching a melodramatic Kirk Cameron production or like they were trying to scare an eight-year-old child (who has no business attending an R-rated film) rather than the target demographic.

So overall, I thought The Conjuring was an effective horror movie, though somewhat rote in using accepted horror conventions that were created by far superior films. It felt dated but like if it had been released 30-40 years ago it would have been extremely successful. The makeup effects were excellent, by the way. Very scary. A 1980 theater showing this film would have had quite a seat-cleaning bill after the first screening. Some scares, however, play off of religious themes, demonic possession, and the biblical battle of good and evil, meaning to some folks they are completely empty threats, even when presented while the audience is open and volunteering its suspension of disbelief.

I would recommend this movie to horror fans. It's not incredibly gory, but it does have pretty frightening and intense scenes involving the dark, death, ghosts, evil entities, etc.. The foul language is mostly PG-rated, with some blasphemous utterances. Heck, the redband trailers before the movie had far more graphic and objectionable language than the feature. There are hints of sexual behavior but no nudity or sexual conduct takes place on-screen.

3.5 of 5 stars from me. Good, solid genre film. Not one of the greats, but a decent tribute to them.