Zombieland

This was a very stupid movie. An awesomely stupid movie. And, between this and being dragged to see G.I. Joe, I am now convinced that stupid movies tend to attract stupid audiences. Zombieland was no different, and as every zombie got killed and dismembered in an ever wider variety of cartoon violence, this audience of Neanderthals cheered it on like grape-gorged Romans screaming for blood in the Coliseum. It was mindless gore-porn, without plot or meaning or certainly anything approaching art.

I loved every fucking minute of it.

Sure, it can't beat 28 Days Later for nihilistic horror, or even Shaun of the Dead for managing to be both funny and a real movie with actual characters and plot. Nebbish Geek hooks up with Redneck Wahoo, they fall in with Hot Chick and Spunky Kid, they drive to Los Angeles, have a zombie celebrity cameo, do something really stupid to move the non-existent plot along, and then kill a lot of zombies. That's it. If you're pissed that I just spoiled the plot for you, when it comes to Zombieland, you're doing it wrong. Forget character, forget plot, this is about laughing at carnage and nothing else. It ain't much - but just as Tallahassee feels about Columbus - it'll do, pig.

Dr. Octopoid, Occult Detective From Beyond Space and Time!

Courtesy of Flames Rising's Horror Plot Generator:

A gigantic octopus with psychometry, whose home base is in a Victorian funeral home, wants to bring the Earth closer to the sun. Supported by falcons, the gigantic octopus appears to have one weakness - bat tongues. Interestingly enough, the gigantic octopus is from the not-too-distant future.

Sounds silly at first, but consider this rewrite: in the last years of the twenty-first century, as civilization collapses due to an apocalyptic Ice Age, a small band of scientists use time-travel technology to send the consciousness of one of their own back in time to prevent this coming catastrophe. Now trapped in the body of a giant octopus, the futuristic Doctor, armed with hi-tech psychic powers that allow him read the sensations of memory by touch and control the minds of lower life-forms (like his flying army of falcons), plots from his tank in the basement of a Victorian funeral home, where he builds, with a workforce of cadaverous conscripts, giant rockets underneath London that will push the Earth further towards the Sun and save mankind from an icy demise two hundreds IN THE FUTURE!

And he also solves crimes and shit with the help of his plucky monkey assistant and a hot corset-wearing suffragette.

And he's allergic to bat tongues.

Once I Lived For Hate...

... but now I live for suck. For years, my entire enjoyment in watching the NFL has been based on schadenfreude. Sure, I've rooted for the Pats and the Steelers on occasion, but what really gets me off is the annihilation of those teams and players I detest. I hated Peyton Manning, and I watched him win a Super Bowl. I hated his brother, Eli, and watch him hoist the Lombardi. I hated Brett Fav-ruh, and am watching him tonight prove true the douchebags of ESPN. I can hate no longer. I must choose a team and stick with it, so I flipped a coin to choose between my two "home" teams.



And, starting tonight, I am officially a fan of this guy's product.


May God have mercy on my soul.

At least no one will accuse me of being a fair-weather fan. The starting quarterback has a passer rating lower than some major leaguer's batting averages. The head coach could soon be up on assault charges for knocking out his own assistant. The owner is so batshit-crazy old, I think his face has literally begun to melt. But, hey, at least I can now say I am rooting for something. That's a positive thing, right?

Right....

Procrastination

After a day spent cataloging them, I can now say that I own 424 Call of Cthulhu scenarios. Taking away PDFs (many of which are very short one-shots) and my own original scenarios (which may be still in-development), I still have 278 fully-written scenarios. Were I to run these scenarios back-to-back every week (and they were each completed in a single session, which ain't going to happen as a number of them are campaigns), I would be finished with them in over 5 years.

I really need to get an ongoing Call of Cthulhu group going.

Why I Don't Buy More Comics

Tonight I was reading through my latest issue of Previews, a catalog I get from my local comic book store to order my weekly dose of books, and came across the most obvious example of why I am buying less and less comics these days. Behold, Batman/Doc Savage Special #1:

Doc Savage returns to DC Comics…and comes face-to-fist with the Batman! Superstar scribe Brian Azzarello (100 BULLETS, JOKER) and the breathtaking art of Phil Noto combine to shine the first light on a shadowy new version of the DC Universe, where the thugs run rampant, corruption runs deep, and even heroes can't be trusted!

The "shadowy new version of the DC Universe" that this issue inaugurates is what most fascinates me, as this seems to be setting up a new pulp setting for the DC superheroes. I love this stuff, both the author and the artists look solid, and I would be quick to gobble this issue up, except for one niggling little detail...

On sale November 11 - 56pg, FC, $4.99 US

$4.99. Four dollars and ninety-nine cents. $4.99 for a "prologue" (so not a self-contained story) that also includes a sketchbook that the publishers think is a plus but is actually just filler when you charge over FIVE DOLLARS with tax for fifty measly pages of story!

I don't care if it's the greatest comic on the planet, I'm not paying five bucks for an issue of anything sight unseen, especially when I don't even know if it will be total and complete ass. Maybe I'll wait for the trade, when, in the unlikely event that it doesn't disappoint, I can pick up the complete story on Amazon at a 20-30% discount off the cover price in a format that looks good on my bookshelf.

Over the past year, I've dropped more than a few comics that I was enjoying (Booster Gold comes immediately to mind) and never picked up others (the Lovecraft pulp one of the independents put out) because I refuse to pay more than $2.99 for a comic book. I wonder if the publishers really understand what I could do with $5... I can buy a used paperback of most novels, a used copy of many current-generation video games, a DVD of even recently-released movies, or go on Ebay and get a trade paperback of their own comics. I've heard rumors that the Disney buy-out of Marvel might result in a price drop to as low as $1.99 to rebuild the casual market that's been lost over the past two decades. Based on this kind of nonsense, I can only hope it's true or I might end up not buying any comics outside of trades on Amazon and Ebay.

The Strain

The Strain, by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and novelist Chuck Hogan, is the first book in a trilogy about an outbreak of vampirism in modern-day New York. A jet lands at JFK airport with its entire crew and passengers seemingly dead (a la the Demeter), with a mysterious coffin-like cabinet aboard. This first sequence is taut, and the free preview available on Amazon.com is what lead me to check the book out, but it's misleading. Whereas those first 28 pages are full of foreboding, that quickly fades as the book then goes on for literally hundreds of pages before anything interesting happens. The book is padded with repetitive sequences of uninteresting characters stumbling to their doom (usually at the hands of vampirized family members), and whatever is mildly interesting (the ancient vampire clans, the corporate conspiracy behind the outbreak) is left implied, presumably to be fleshed out in the next two volumes.

All that said, the real cardinal sin of The Strain is that it's just not scary. The vampires, an uneasy mix of traditional folklore and biological pathogen, are too mindless to work as the "monstrous human" of traditional vampires, while remaining too silly (the Master vampire still runs around in a cape) to work as scientific horror. It also doesn't help that none of the characters are engaging enough to fear for their safety. The protagonist is a recovering alcoholic workaholic who blames his ex-wife and her new boyfriend for the dissolution of his marriage, so you can guess how the authors lazily have this whiny jerk get his satisfaction. The rest of the supporting cast are cardboard cutouts, except for the absurdly over-the-top Van Helsing-esque vampire hunting ex-professor pawn broker, an 80+ year old with a heart condition and crippled hands who still swashbuckles around decapitating vampires with his silver cane-sword while belching his ridiculous catchphrase: "My sword sings of silver!"

Yeah, it's that bad. In the end, the book reads more like the pilot script for a television series, with more effort spent on creating antagonists and situation than resolving conflicts, setting us up for the next episode (book two) but not offering anything like a good read. Mercifully, it was a quick read, although I admit that by the end, I just shuffled through the tedious action scenes. The Strain was shit, and del Toro should still to movies.

April 6, 2055

According to Wolfram Alpha, April 6, 2055 will be a Tuesday. The sun will rise in the San Francisco Bay Area at 6:49am in the morning and set at 7:40pm in the evening. It will be a waxing gibbous moon that night. And according to this website, that's about as far as I can expect to live.

45 years, 6 months, 28 days...