Vote Venkman/Stantz 2008!!!

For a first thought, I ask you:

Who better to lead us in these difficult times than self-starting entrepeneur scientist adventurers The Ghostbusters?  They made their own business from scratch!  They never backed down from a fight, even when anyone else would rightfully shit themselves (Slimer was pretty much the only ghost that wasnt really scary looking).  When Gozer the Gozarian was about to bring unspeakable horror on the world, and all the cops and firemen and FBI and army guys were all standing around like “what do we do,” the Ghostbusters were begging to get in there and fight.  When Vigo the Carpathian locked New York in the grip of hate-filled spirit/monsters, what did the Ghostbusters do?  Did they run around trying to catch each single ghost?  Did they just shrug and say screw it?  Nope.  They supernaturally animated the Statue of Liberty.  That wouldn’t even occur to the rest of us!

And of course, the leaders of the Ghostbuster are Peter Venkman and Ray Stantz.  This is no knock on Egon or Winston.  Egon is the brains of the outfit; without him they wouldn’t have their cool EP detectors or the proton packs or the trap devices.  And Winston is the sheer guts of the team.  He’d never met these guys, he has no idea how the science works, yet he’s always ready to throw himself into whatever crazy ass situation they’re in.

But Venkman and Stantz are the natural leaders.  It’s just that simple.  And they are the two people who should be in the White House (and don’t give me any crap about them being fake; all politicians are fake!).

Now.

Second point is more of a question.

It being the Halloween season, it’s about time to get into the Monster vs. Monster discussions we all love.  And this time, I feel we should add the Ghostbusters to the mix.  So, to start us off:

Ghostbusters vs. Jason–could their traps capture his soul?  would he escape the containment and run wild as an intangible ghost? 

Leprechaun vs. Chucky–no size advantage, but Leprechaun is magic, so there’s an advantage (which begs the question, why did Lep use his magic so inconsistently?  he should be unbeatable)

Ash vs. Night of the Living Dead (series)–so this would include any “of the Dead” movie or remake (and really any zombie film; they all ripped off the idea).  I know I would feel pretty confident if I was in a boarded up house surrounded by zombies and Ashley “Ash” Williams was attaching a chainsaw to his handless arm, talking shit on zombies and shotgun-blasting their dicks off.

What others you guys got?

Inspector Gadget was a No-Talent Bum Who Endangered Millions

As a child, I was like most young Americans – full of hope and dreams, looking to my role-models for guidance.  These role-models were usually cartoon characters and professional wrestlers.  What boy didn’t love to play G.I. Joe and pretend to shoot and kill the bad guys, or to body-slam their younger brother or smaller friends, then jump on them from on the top of the couch?  Standard, wholesome American violence aimed directly at the fragile minds of our most precious natural resource, our children.

That being said, what the fuck was with Inspector Gadget?  I hated him so much.  He was a complete fuck-up with awesome tools that could really hurt some people, but he never put them to their proper use, and only injured himself.  Meanwhile, Dr. Claw was like the Osama Bin Laden of his day, able to unleash terrorist attack after terrorist attack without any repercussions.  If it weren’t for a geeky girl and her dog, people would have died.  And it’s not like Claw was a genious or anything.  He just sat in the same creepy room all day, everyday.  How could Gadget not find him?  Weren’t there any better police in that entire town?  And how did Gadget get all the credit for stopping disaster after disaster even though he never knew what the hell was going on, or how to prevent the next one from happening?

This country needs better role-models, and Inspector Gadget was a dead-beat.

Top 5 Dinosaurs I would prefer to be eaten by…

A few months ago my girl asked me if I wanted to watch some godawful romantic comedy movie (can’t remember at all what it was…my instinct is that it was McConaughey was involved).

I thought it over, and told her that I could list 5 dinosaurs that I would rather be eaten by than watch that shit-stain of a movie.

Here are those dinosaurs:

5.  Brontosaurus:  I realize it’s a plant-eater, but I included it anyway.  Sliding all the way down that long throat would be a hell of an experience.  Plus, I feel like I could stay alive in its stomach for a while, like Pinnochio in Monstro.  Maybe I could bust out.  Who knows?

4.  Stegasaurus:  Again, a plant-eater, but I had to go for it.  It’s got all those cool, sharp spikes on its back and those badass spikes on the tail.  There’s like ten ways it could kill me.  That’s suspenseful.

3.  Tyranosaurus Rex:  More out of respect than anything else.  It’s like in those old Roger Moore Bond movies, when he’d rush the bad guys lair with a platoon of Nato troops, or whatever.  If you were one of the villain’s goons, wouldn’t you rather be killed by James Bond, 007, than by Private First Class Random Doucheface?

2.  Ankylosaurus:  I know you’ve probably never heard of this one, but when I was a kid I had a bunch of plastic dinosaurs (you did too?  No way!), and one was this guy, the Ankylosaurus.  Check this fucker out:

Tell me he wouldn’t eat your fucking soul.  Look at that razor-sharp back, that club tail!

1.  Pterodactyl:  This would probably be the most painful, because it’s all beak and claws, but at least for the few seconds between the beast swooping down to pick you up and it carrying you off to kill you somewhere, it’d be awesome to get the bird’s eye view of the jungle (or wherever you are).

So that’s my list.  My question to you is two parted:

A.  What is your list (obvious question)?

B.  What situation would call for you to prefer death by dinosaur-attack?

The Bewildering Genius of TV on the Radio

Breaking “rant” form today, I cannot list enough superlatives in describing the new album Dear Science by TV on the Radio.  Let’s try this: listening to this album is, emphatically, more enjoyable than 90% of the sex I’ve had in my life. 

If there were ever true heir apparents to the creative throne of The Talking Heads, it’s this group.  Dear Science is the perfect confluence of what makes this group so goddamn special in my opinion.  I tried to express my sheer obsession with their last album Return to Cookie Mountain with as many people as I could, I will try that again with this album, easily the frontrunner for album of the year in my book, followed by The Hold Steady’s Stay Positive (thank you, Toasterhead!). 

Head over to tvontheradio.com and check out “Golden Age”, the first single which is streaming on the site, and try to tell me you’ve heard anything like that in years.  Well, maybe since In Rainbows.

Singularity Please

We need more movies about robots/kitchen appliances/ electric dildos taking us over, or at least threatening to take us over.  Something made me think of this admittedly terrible 80’s horror/sci-fi movie called Pulse (not the bullshit J-Horror remake of recent years) about, quoting directly from IMDB:

“An intelligent pulse of electricity is moving from house to house. It terrorizes the occupants by taking control of the appliances…”, eh, you get the idea.

We need more of this!  With all of the talks of televisions that, somehow, have Netflix built directly into them, and computer-cum-stereos that access your intangilbe music library eliminating the need to organize your record collection into nice little stacks, so on so forth.  I mean, I still like to hold things: CDs, DVDs/Blu-Ray, fucking books…

(To qualify, I don’t mean books about fucking)

Looking over this post, I’m amazed how quick this turned into a Ludditive rant, I was going to hold off a bit on that.

In summation: fuck iTunes.

Orange you glad I left your soul intact?

 

 

The word “orange” and its associations dominate the brain.

 

Look at the 5 human senses and the effect “orange” has on each of them:

 

 

Taste-sweet citrus flavor; very distinctive

 

Smell-very unique; easy to isolate from other smells

 

Touch-between the texture of the peel and the shape, size, and density of the fruit, an orange can be identified blindfolded with no trouble

 

Sight-very distinct color

 

Hearing-virtually nothing rhymes with the word orange

 

 

Orange owns all our senses.

 

Can any other single word apply to all our senses with such distinction?

 

Hail Orange, and weep for your own paltry worth!!

 

David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008

My favorite living writer is now gone.  If you haven’t read anything by him, do yourself and the rest of the world a favor and pick something up now.

This is really terrible.

I Have A New Favorite Web Site

its called popthatzit.com

here is a sample:

We’re Number One!

“Tired of the daily office grind where nothing exciting seems to happen?”

“Are you fed up with the by-the-book blowjobs from your secretary and predictable corporate kickbacks”

“Have you ever wanted to fist-fuck a Shell Oil executive while lasered on cocaine?”

“Well, now you can!  All with an exciting position in the Department of the Interior…”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/washington/11royalty.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Upcoming/Planned/Proposed Movie Remakes That Might Actually Be Good

Knowing full well that I’m not scoring any manner of points for originality here, given the previous post, here are some upcoming relaunches that I think won’t suck the proverbial rod:

1. Friday the 13th- I find myself an apologist of this film before I’ve even seen the fucking thing.  I don’t know what is it about this but if there is a slasher franchise that could stand to use updated effects and flashy camerwork, it’s this series.  The original was garbage.  The sequels ranged from “still garbage” to “worse than AIDS”, but I still, quasi-secretly, loved them.  If you haven’t seen the leaked footage from ComicCon, check it out, especially the money shot of Jason sprinting, fucking sprinting, with machete in hand at some hapless blonde.  Add the fact that the actor playing Jason has said that he modeled his performance after Stallone in First Blood and I’m painfully erect.  Painfully.

2. Daredevil- This one just hit the rumor mill as a possible relaunch.  I saw the Ben Affleck original years back in the theater while suffering from a fever.  This added a veritable sublimity to the sheer Hitler-caliber awfulness of it.  Hitler might have been an executive producer, I can’t remember.  But DD is a pretty cool hero who could fit into the darker stream of comic movies being made if done right.

3. Robocop- My first reaction is “Who the fuck do you think you are?”, but after learning that Darren Aronofsky is behind this, I might be on board.  I’ve read that it’s a relaunch, not a remake, and he plans on taking it out of Detroit.  Still too early to call it but I’m interested to see where it goes. No matter what though, three things must happen in this: (1) Kurtwood Smith has to be in it.  I don’t care if it’s a walk on roll as a janitor (2) Someone, anyone, has to re-use the line “He’s a cyborg you idiot!” (3) Someone better get fuckin’ melted by toxic waste.  Producers should see if Paul McCrane might be on board to relive his iconic melting and subsequent decapitation.  I know I would be.

4. Bad Lieutenant- Considering Herzog claims he’s never even seen the Abel Ferrara original and that Ferrara publicly cursed both the production and Herzog personally (actually wishing death upon him), I can think of nothing else as gleefully insane as this to watch play out.