As lifelong horror fanatics, my creative partners at Red Sneakers Media and I couldn't be more excited about the fact that Eli Fucking Roth, the twisted mind behind Cabin Fever and Hostel, has chosen to showcase our most recent short film, The Last Halloween, on his new cross-media TV-channel-slash-website-slash-Vine-platform-slash-mobile-app The Crypt! I mean, we're actually on the front page of the website part of that ambitious enterprise, right fucking now!Also, the whole Crypt team have been Tweeting the ever-loving SHIT out of our little movie! Thanks guys!
It should probably go without saying that I urge each and every one of you reading this, if you are a fan of horror entertainment and are interested in its new media evolution, you NEED to get a CryptHorror.com website account and follow them on Twitter. There's some interesting stuff going on over there. I'm getting a real Super-Deluxe vibe from them, and you're gonna want to be around when this shit finally achieves lift-off.
Marc Roussel, my life-long best friend and partner-in-creative-crime, is one of the producers behind HEIR, the latest and final short film from Richard Powell and Zach Green, collectively known as Fatal Pictures. HEIR caps off a trilogy that began with WORM and continued with FAMILIAR; both excellent films in their own right.
One of the things that Marc brings to the table is his extensive editing experience Therefore, he was able to put together a very effective and tantalizing trailer for HEIR. You can watch that trailer here and now. Prepare to be creeped out... and ENJOY!
1. Back in the later days of the Magazine Renaissance of the 1990's, one of my favorite regularly published indie political/cultural journals was Thomas Frank's The Baffler. Each issue of this slightly-bigger-than-digest-sized quarterly seemed like a beautifully hand-crafted piece of whip-smart critique. Thus, I was both delighted and relieved when I stumbled across an article from a recently-relaunched online version of the The Baffler. Delighted because the article, entitled Flakes Alive, is superlative, and relieved because it totally lived up to The Baffler's high standards, in all respects (attitude, quality, iconoclasm, entertainment). Here's a hilarious selection that will hopefully entice you into reading the entire, extremely worthwhile article. I'm serious, here. You should definitely read this, even if you self-identify leftist or liberal. In fact, you should read it ESPECIALLY if you self-identify as leftist or liberal. Check it out:
A few weeks back in Manhattan, hundreds of socialists, communists, anarchists, and even few decent “small-d” democrats shuffled into the unlikely venue of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (ironically, best known as a “cop school”) for Left Forum 2015. ... This year’s confab boasted 1,300 speakers and four hundred events under the salient title of “No Justice, No Peace: Confronting the Crises of Capitalism and Democracy.”
At its best, Left Forum remains a reassuring beacon of cameraderie and ambition. In addition to seasoned journalists, organizers and academics, it usually snags a few big public intellectuals, like Noam Chomsky, David Harvey, and Angela Davis, while also peppering the bill with high-profile activists like Harry Belafonte and Michael Moore. The organizers sometimes even lure the odd political success story, most recently Kshama Sawant, Seattle City Council member and open socialist...
At its worst, however, Left Forum is Comic Con for Marxists—Commie Con, if you will—and an absolute shitshow of nerds and social rejects. There are bitter old codgers that will harangue you about a thirty-some-years-old internecine grudge, and there are politically unsophisticated kids with Che Guevara t-shirts and Adbusters subscriptions. There are sanctimonious Trotskyists, ridiculous Maoist Third-Worldists, condescending horizontalist anarchists, smug social democrats and a glut of ardent adherents to similarly esoteric ideological traditions, all competing for the title of Most Insufferable Anti-Capitalist...
But the grumps and the brats, the blowhards and the sectarians, the narcissists and the pessimists—all of these people are bearable to me, some even charming. No, the worst part of Left Forum is the crackpots, the paranoiacs, the hysterics, and all the other truly dysfunctional personalities attracted by the conference’s most infamous policy: no panel submission will be rejected.
You can imagine where things go from here. Thankfully, you don't have to, as the article, as previously noted, is RIGHT FUCKING HERE. Read it, damn you. Read it and learn!
2. If the BBC is so hifalutin and sophisto, then why the Hellespont are they publishing articles with ridiculously ludicrous and misleading titles like The Strange Phenomenon of Musical Skin Orgasms? Because the article, good as it is, is really just about how some people experience really, really intense tingles, shivers and goosebumps when listening to their favorite piece of music. I mean, it's a great article. But a really shitty, exploitative, unnecessarily sexed-up title. I imagine you'll enjoy it as much as I did, though. So go for it!
3. And now, to cleanse the palate, here's a weird little article from sci-fi blog io9.com, all about The Five Best and Worst Demons to Get Possessed By. Please ignore the dangling participle, but do NOT neglect to close your magickal summoning circle and perform the proper banishing rituals once you're done with any and all workings! Because, I mean, come on... who could possibly resist summoning the likes of this?
4. SURGAT
Many of the demons on this list are first mentioned in theGreat Grimoire of Honorius. Who was Honorius? Historians aren’t sure, but they think that he was Honorius III, who was the Pope from 1216 to 1227. Whether he wrote the book or not, Honorius is famous among popes for deliberately doing ceremonies to summon demons so he could then banish the demons back down to hell. Apparently, he wanted to be ready to fight Satan at any time, and the demons were his sparring partners. Surgat, of all of these, earns his place on the scary list because he can’t be shaken. He’s described in Honorius-the-Professional-Demon-Ejector’s book with one sentence: “Surgat is he who opens all locks.”
In the seventh episode of Paul Feig's excellent, Yahoo-produced sci-fi sitcom Other Space, the lovely, computer-generated ship's computer, Natasha, threatens to join a bunch of dating sites in order to make her on-ship romance object, the somewhat alien Kent Woolworth, jealous. The name of those dating sites flash across the screen. I decided to list them here.
Farmermatch.com
Starsearch.net
Fine A Human Mate
e-Misery
Love 2 Go
Blender
Arby’s
Costco Dating Club
Bojoging Matchmaking
www.theboynextdoormovie.com
loveontherocks.it
Zuckerberg Industries
Healthcare.gov
Meet Your Mate
Hot Or Not Or Hot
HIMYM
Husband for Hire
Find Your Doppleganger
Marriage.net
Celebrity Livestock
Robots on Call
Computer Wife
Second Right Hand
JILM
AI Love
Something About Space
Dater King
Swanch
Freaks and Freaks
iPatch
Fake Plastic Treats
Dani, Dave- and YOU
Chew My Food For Me
Dangerous Pervs
MeetABaker.gov
MeetABaker.ca
MeetABaker.co.uk
AmpuTease
VacciNation
CheeseFans
Arraigned Daters
GuysNamedCharles.org
Long Torsos or Else
Swarthy Connections
DogLoverHaters
LoudMatch.com
It’s Computercated
West Fargo Singles
Dirty Blondes
Sal Eats Huevos Rancheros
We Have Hands!
Legless Hearts
Go Raiders
Quimber
MatchMatcher.com
Kind of Sweaty
Dinosaurs Rule
ZOIK HOTTIES
Digital Digits
It’s Just Smoothies
7 Guys, 5 Girls
Come Date Matt LaPointe
AsexualHealing.net
We Love Gonch
iTalians
Bi Jewish Farmers
Teethers
Sbarro’s Social
So Slacks Allowed
Deight.biz
Dandy Crush
Commie Mommies
Ex-Catholic Hookups
Hazel Eyes Only
Furrier
Pharmaceutical Reps
As readers of VICE and alt-weeklies from around the world are already aware, Marc Bell is one of Canada's most intriguing and entertaining comics creators. His latest work, STROPPY, serves as both an evolutionary step forward and a tangential excursion from the trail he's been blazing for the better part of two decades.
As a draftsman with a Fine Arts background, Bell has earned renown for his charming, oblique sense of humor, his obsessive rendering, and his nigh unto psychotic dedication to minutiae. He typically fills every centimeter of his frame with intricate, pseudo-mechanical “things” that end up telling stories as involved as the narratives around which they orbit. Think Sergio Aragones meets Tony Millionaire by way of the Fleischer Studio... or not, it's totally up to you.
Anyhoo, as a long time fan of Bell’s work, I have always assumed that the labor intensive nature of his style is one of the main reasons why he’s kept his stories relatively short, running to, at most, a handful of pages. So when I found out that his latest book, STROPPY, would be telling a single, 70-plus page story, I was intrigued. Would he be able to pull off a long-form narrative and still retain the utterly bonkers style and sensibility that make reading his work a comics experience unlike any other?
Fortunately, it turns out I had nothing to worry about.
STROPPY is a complete success. Simultaneously playful and enigmatic, satirical and whimsical, beautiful and grotesque, base and transcendent… Bell manages to extend his enterprise with a minimum of artistic compromise and a maximum of narrative integrity. In his own sweetly surrealistic way, Bell even manages to drift in the direction of social commentary, exploring the socio-cultural underpinnings of the Late Capitalist Dream from which we are all desperately attempting to awaken.
Not that STROPPY is a polemic; far from it. I merely suggest that there’s more going on under the surface here than weird characters being weird to each other. There are all-too-familiar stakes and consequences for these characters—exploitative employment, precarious housing, class immobility, ambition in the face of hopelessness—which serve to make the surreal moments all the more effective.
This is an Open Letter to "Zack", "Davi", and "Ty", three BMX-riding "dudes" from, I think, Connecticut, who filmed the video embedded above roughly 8 years ago.
Much time has passed since your encounter at "McD" with the individual you have baptized "Crazy Eyes", and I just wanted to know... did you ever come to the realization that you'd spent an inordinate amount of time mocking, humiliating and terrorizing someone with the mind of a toddler?
Did you ever figure out that, early on in this video, this poor lonely person seems like he believes that maybe, against all odds and contrary to everything that's happened to him up to that point in time, that on this night, he might somehow get to experience a degree of camaraderie and fellowship? That, despite everything, he still had hope?
And what did you choose to do with that hope?
You ripped it from his grasp, held it up to his face and tore it in half. Then you wiped your collective asses with it, and forced him to swallow the shitty scraps.
Congratulations. At 5:55 in this video - at the precise moment when we can witness the tragic spectacle of the final, bitter dregs of hope draining from his weary countenance, as you and your friends continue to mock, taunt and shame him - you succeeded in murdering hope.
To you, it might seem like a minor transgression. However, I would argue that, for your victim, your relentless harassment made a lasting, perhaps even permanent, impression.
I am not a religious man, nor am I prone to sentiment. And yet I cannot help but feel a shiver on your behalf as I recall this timeless admonition: "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
This time our quest for traces of prehistoric alien visitations takes us to Iraq where we come across many stone figurines and carvings of the Anunnaki - "those who from heaven to earth came". The National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad contains remarkable artifacts that offer proof of ancient aliens. Some of these artifacts are more than 10,000 years old. The museum's huge collection tells the epic story of human civilization, from the earliest settlements to the rise and fall of vast empires. This is also the place where we encounter a number of stone figurines and carvings depicting otherworldly beings. Below you can see a strange looking figure with very big round eyes, odd arms, no lips and a weird elongated body. It has been dated to 4000 - 6,000 BC.
Personally, the first thing that came to mind upon seeing this intriguing bas-relief was the Sleestak, those terrifying bipedal reptilians that served as the primary antagonists for the Marshall family in the 1974 cult classic Saturday morning kid's TV show, "Land of the Lost".
For a primer on the Anunnaki - and on Nibiru, and on whether or not we'll be seeing either's "return" in our lifetime - check out this thorough breakdown from the 'Truth Be Known' website. It's absolute baloney of course... but it's damn tasty baloney!
And so long as we're on the topic of paranormal simulacra, the recent discovery of a "Cyclops statue" on Mars put me in mind of yet another famous face from our collective childhood... Sloth from The Goonies.
"Liberals are afraid of Charleston because it's a preview of coming attractions. They’ve been given a vision of a time in some imagined but possibly not too-far distant future when all of a sudden, on the street or in their office, or in some trendy fern bar, or Starbucks, or wine-and-cheese boutique on the Upper East Side or in San Francisco, they will look up, possibly from the laptop, where they are typing up their day’s quota of leftwing, liberal horseshit, and they will see a young white man like Dylann Roof standing in front of them with no steroid-pumped policemen in blue to protect their liberal candy asses from the consequences of years of their own behavior. They will see in that young white man’s eyes, that he recognizes them. That he is now beyond deception or bullying or browbeating or Twitter-shaming or intimidation, that he knows them for what they are. And they will look down and see that he has something in his hand.”
A spectre is haunting comedy—the spectre of Political Correctness.
If you're reading this, you're either a former reader of my Daily Dirt proto-blog (1999-2006), or you've followed a friend’s link from some form of social media, which means that you’re probably pretty savvy regarding current events, and you don’t need me to tell you about the PC war on comedy being waged by self-appointed Social Justice Warriors the world over.
The most recent eruption involves comedy ‘It Girl’, stand-up comic Amy Schumer. In a recent, otherwise laudatory article in The Guardian, TV critic Monica Heisey wrote: “For such a keen observer of social norms and an effective satirist of the ways gender is complicated by them, Schumer has a shockingly large blind spot around race.” As evidence, Heisey points to a couple of jokes in which Schumer suggests that Mexican men are a) hard workers and b) sexually aggressive.
When Schumer took to Twitter in a half-hearted attempt to defend herself against the racism charge, the aptly-named online entertainment blog Vulture swooped in to publish a rebuttal, in which Schumer’s racial jokes were criticized as having “no big reveal, no clever moment of redemption where the audience member has been edified on the machinations of American race relations.”
Because, as we all know, it’s every comedian’s dream to edify the audience on the machinations of race relations in America. Which works out great, because now, apparently, it’s also their responsibility.
Then I remembered, no, I was probably thinking of the time Jerry Seinfeld told ESPN that many of his comedian friends no longer perform at colleges because the crowds have become too PC.
This prompted a self-described “politically correct college student” to write an open letter to Seinfeld—the world’s most successful stand-up comic—in which fingers were wagged, tongues were clucked, and Seinfeld’s point was proven beyond Caitlyn Jenner’s 5 o’clock shadow of a doubt.
Wait… no! It wasn’t Seinfeld! It was Tina Fey! The veteran Saturday Night Live performer and one-woman media empire about whom a recent Flavorwire-by-way-of-Vulture (again) editorial declared that “race” is Fey’s “biggest blind spot” (again), “because the act of mocking something automatically implies that the comedian has, or thinks she has, the authority, objectivity, and distance needed to mock it.” They even go so far as to criticize this quote by suggesting it could be “used as a negative example of intersectional feminism in a gender studies seminar” …as if that somehow counts as a negative.
Or… hold on a second. Could I actually be thinking about the time The Internet collectively decided to pour over every last Tweet ever twatted by Trevor Noah, the comic chosen to replace Jon Stewart in The Daily Show anchor chair? Said “Twit-hunt” revealed a handful of jokes implying that some Jewish people have succeeded in the entertainment industry, and that some fat chicks are funny to look at. Remember? That mini-scandal prompted Patton Oswalt to unleash an epic 53-part Twitter-based take-down of Noah’s self-appointed PC shamers. And then the shamers went after Oswalt, and round and round we go…
On the other hand, perhaps I’m thinking about that one time when “hashtag activist” Suey Park tried to get Comedy Central’s Colbert Report cancelled over the satirical, faux right-wing pundit’s satirical, faux charity, the “Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever”, which itself was a parody of NFL franchise owner Dan Snyder’s establishment of the “Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation”. That Park’s campaign could itself serve as evidence for certain pre-existing negative stereotypes about the Asian sense of humor was, no doubt, completely lost on her.
In many ways, I suppose, ‘twas ever thus. Only nowadays, I would argue, it’s more so. But why?
“The Onion started out in 1988 as a cult comedy fake newspaper circulating around the college campuses of cities in Wisconsin and Illinois. After the launch of its website in 1996, it found its way into the homes of comedy fans across the United States and the world. And now, after the explosion in social media over the last decade, The Onion’s articles are shared, re-blogged and re-tweeted by hundreds and thousands of people. And while those people might be sophisticated comedy aficionados, with tastes for edgy satirical social commentary, many of the friends and family they’re sharing the jokes with are not.”
Celestino concludes with a couple rhetorical question of his own: “So now The Onion has to answer to armchair critics and soccer moms who have no interest in or understanding of what satire even is? How does a joke wind up in the hands of someone for whom it wasn’t intended?”
His half-defeated reply: “Well… yeah. That’s a part of being a world culture. The world has an opportunity to react.” Celestino goes on to say that, as a liberal, he’s devoted to the idea of “safe spaces” where people don’t have to be constantly on their guard, worried that they’re going to be attacked or ridiculed. However, he also says “it’s a little unreasonable to expect your safe space to be EVERYWHERE.”
And therein lies the rub.
Mel Brooks famously said that “Tragedy is when I cut my finger; comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” John Cleese believes that the best comedy requires transgression against taboos, and as such always risks offense. At the peak of his powers, Steve Martin put it succinctly: “Comedy is not pretty.”
From George Carlin’s seven words you can’t say on television to Chris Rock’s genuinely dangerous meditation on the differences between black folks and “niggers”, comedy is never so effective as when it’s bumping up against, or crashing through, psychosocial barriers, whether or not those barriers are mandated by law.
One of the themes you may have noticed running through many of the above PC critiques of “offensive” comedy is the implied notion that the critics, themselves, are in possession of razor sharp, sophisticated comedy chops. So much so, in fact, that they feel qualified to lecture some of the world’s funniest people about what makes for truly great comedy. It seems as though they want to have their fair-trade, gluten-free, vegan “cake”, and have it taste good, too.
In other words, they desperately want to be in on the joke.
And in a strange way, they are, because while comedy is definitely a shared, group experience, it is not 100 percent “inclusive”. It almost always requires an Other, an "out" group for those who "get it" to reflexively position themselves against.
And that, dear reader, is what these critics represent. The necessary, archetypal, ultimate component required for any truly successful and transcendent comedy: the Square Left Out of the Joke.
I'm beginning to think we've all been punked by this "Wayman Gresham" individual.
In case you haven't heard of him - and if you haven't, you're in the minority - Wayman Gresham is the most recent multi-million-hit, viral video phenomenon to appear all over the media, from breakfast TV to late-nite talk, to international newspapers and broadcast network news, celebrity Twitter accounts, and all over your own personal Facebook timeline.
And it's all thanks to a single video, which he posted on Facebook less than a month ago, and which ends with an uplifting switcheroo twist.
Here is the video in question, via Youtube. I'll explain why I wasn't able to link to the Facebook original deeper into this post:
So what we seem to have, here, is a somewhat overweight but otherwise perfectly normal family man, who is pretty much prime-time ready with his "Family Matters" mien and his adorably huggable "Christian love" ethics in practice, who apparently has a good, strong relationship with his son. And that's fine. Better than fine, even. It's great.
And then there's the video, in which he pretends like he's going to humiliate his son by shaving his hair on social media (something shitty parents have been doing lately, apparently leading to at least one teen suicide). only to pull a switcheroo and shame those who would shame their children publicly in such an awful way. Once again, I applauded. Very good message. I appreciated it.
I even went so far as to find Mr Gresham on Facebook and ask to befriend him, and he hooked me up within minutes. And I was very pleased.
Then, I started getting his updates in my Facebook timeline. They were very Christian, which is not a problem for me. I have religious friends. I have a few religious beliefs of my own. He kept it light, you know, saying how he felt "God blessed" and shooting out little mini-prayers throughout the day. No biggie. It was not only unoffensive, I actually started asking myself "May we finally have found a great spokesman for modern American Christianity?"
And then his posts started getting political. He started bad-mouthing liberals, and getting just a bit fire and brimstone, making thinly-veiled allusions to various "non-Christians" and their "lifestyles"... if you know what I mean.
It was when Gresham began signaling out President Obama with particularly nasty rhetoric - and defending the preznitcy of George Dubya Bush! - that I started to wonder if Mr Gresham had played a little "switcheroo" of his own on his new legion of fans.
I started thinking to myself, how does some unknown entity post a video on Facebook, where only one's friends can see it - and NOT on Youtube, where anyone can see it - and somehow immediately manage to "go viral"? And I'm talking seriously viral, here, folks. Just do a search for "Wayman Gresham" on news.google.com and check out the hundreds of results from every media platform imaginable to see how far this virus has spread.
How, in the span of less than a single month, can one man's private video reach not hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, but MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of people, without a little... outside intervention? A little help? A little boost of some sort?
Something about this stinks to me. It stinks to high heaven. In fact, it stank so bad, I decided to ask Mr Gresham about it in response to one of his most recent anti-Obama Facebook postings.
He initially replied with a good natured, "Well, I receive your comment with respect and love, but you're wrong! Have a blessed day!" When I attempted to reply to his reply, I found that he had de-friended me. When I attempted to see if he'd removed my comments, I found that he'd also actively BLOCKED me. So now I can't see his account anymore, which is why I wasn't able to link to his original video, or to any of his comments that caused me to question his motives and/or provenance.
And so we are left to ask ourselves... who might these "helpers", these "boosters", these "interveners" be?
Let's think about this one for a bit. Might there anybody out there in the Big Bad World with a vested interest in having a nice, respectable, allegedly "Christian" Everyman, who also just happens to be black, with millions of followers on social media of all sorts, publicly attacking President Obama?
I can see them all now, sitting in leather armchairs around a big redwood table, in a dimly-lit think tank meeting room, the air thick with cigar smoke, reasoning: "They won't be able to call him a racist, because he'll be a BLACK GUY!" And they all burst into cackling laughter that eventually devolves into uncontrollable phlegmatic hacking coughs.
And now I ask you, Mr Gresham... who is pulling your strings? Who is behind the multi-million viral success of your video? Who are they, and at what point did they step in? Did they approach and buy your soul AFTER you had achieved some measure of success? Or have you been a bogus, manufactured propaganda product from the moment we first laid eyes upon you?
I have one last question for you, Mr Gresham, in case you're reading this AND you're a real person, and not just some kind of right-wing think tank propaganda regurgitating Manchurian program puppet. When Christ fasted in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights, and Satan approached and offered Him dominion over all the world, and Christ refused... was He wrong to do so?
1. At first glance, the above image - dubbed "the mystery photo haunting Reddit - doesn't seem especially horrific. But look again... deeper this time. Peep the details... all those eyes and snouts and... stalks. Well, according to this article, the above image (as well as a whole bunch more at the link) is how Google's "image recognition neural network" sees the world... like a Lovecraftian fever-dream. Personally, I am reminded of some of the more intense and extreme visualizations sparked
by the use of various psychedelic substances, such as DMT, Salvia Divinorum, LSD and Magic Mushrooms. For another think-piece on this peculiar visual oddity, here's The Guardian's take.
2. Have you ever wondered to yourself what books could be used to rebuild civilization after its inevitable and swiftly approaching collapse? No? Well, no problem, because a bunch of other people have, and they're generously choosing to share their lists with the rest of us. Everyone from musical wizard Brian Eno to cyber-guru Stewart Brand. Personally, I'm not 100 percent convinced by the lists presented here, but they do make for interesting reading... the lists, and most of the books on the lists.
3. And, finally, in keeping with the "lists" theme, here's The Guardian's list of 1000 novels that you should read before you die. That's 1000... three zeroes. And they're all novels... no biographies, or true crime, or works of history, or anything like that. The criteria:
Selected by the Guardian's Review team and a panel of expert judges, this list includes only novels – no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems – from any decade and in any language. Originally published in thematic supplements – love, crime, comedy, family and self, state of the nation, science fiction and fantasy, war and travel – they appear here for the first time in a single list.
And so, here it is, broken down into a bunch of categories. Get cracking!
Ah... Youtube. Strip away all the copyright-busting "shares" of music, movies and TV shows, remove the infinitely recursive, neverending reposts of Charlie-bit-my-pants-fell-down "viral" videos (and has a phenomenon ever been so aptly baptised?) and we're left with what the site's creators hilariously claim was its raison d'etre, all along... people communicating directly with other people, via the medium of their desktop video cameras.
After all, everybody's got something to say, right? Millions upon millions of teachers, all in search of a pupil or two. The science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon famously opined that 95% of everything is crap. Had he lived to experience the exquisite folly that is Youtube, I'm fairly certain he would have had to revise his estimate upwards by a few full percentiles, at least.
But lurk long enough in some of Youtube's dark, neglected corners - creeping carefully past the idiot bastard stepchildren of conspiracy theorists long dead, hours-long videogame "walk-throughs" and loving close-ups of pimples and blackheads being popped in slow-motion - and you'll occasionally stumble across a nugget of purest gold.
Youtube user MoviesAndGhosties' review of the 1986 classic "Crocodile Dundee" is one such nugget, which I hereby present to you, complete with my own complete transcription, because it's just... that... good. I hope watching and/or reading this review gives you a fraction of the pleasure I got from transcribing it for you. Of particular value here is M&G's insightful and heartfelt remembrance of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, near the end of her review.
Enjoy! - YOPJ
Okay folks! Now for another movie that, well, it's older than the last movie I reviewed. It's almost ten years older than... uh... the last movie I just reviewed. This is one of my husband's favorite movies... one of two of his favorite movies.
Uh, this is, um... you know, it has a sequel, which I have one of the two sequels for this movie. The other one I don't have. I would love to be able to find it on DVD. This is actually a cute movie, and I recently discovered that the star of this movie is basically being held hostage in one of the countries he shot this movie in, for back taxes, uh... and, you know, I haven't heard if they've resolved it or yet, or not. I'm assuming not, because I haven't heard different.
Anyway, this is actually one of those movies, I mean, it's adorable. Um, and it's got, uh... Paul Hogan, who is the one that's being basically held hostage, in his... (GLURMP) ...excuse me... in his.. in Australia, at this time, to my knowledge, um... I can't say of course if he ever got let go, and Linda Kowal-Zasky, who plays Sue. It's, of course, Crocodile Dundee. It's the, you know, original one.
This is... I've seen this in the theater, um, and of course I obviously own it here on DVD. This is an adorable movie. I mean, it's so funny, because it's a comedy, and you... (MINI-QUAKE!) ...you can watch this with your friends, or your kids, because I mean it's funny enough to where, you know, you can... you can so tell it's, like, set in the 80's... the 1980's?
This was released, of course, like I said, in 1986. It came out on September 26 of 86... so 1986. Um... and, I mean, it's just... it's so cute. I mean, it starts off with Sue Carlton, who is, of course, played by Linda Kowal-Zasky, like I mentioned, um, you know, talking on the phone to her editor, who is played by Mark Bloom. Um... Sue Cook is telling Richard that, you know, hey, look, I'm gonna go meet this Michael J. "Crocodile" Dundee, who is played by Paul Hogan, um... and... see... about... him... who... you know... see Dundee, because he supposedly had lost a leg, you know, in a crocodile attack, um... in outback... in an OUT BACK settlement.
Um... you know, when Sue arrives... to... uh... you know, the... town... where... uh.... Dundee lives, um… it's called Walkabout Creek. You know, it's a fake town in Australia. Um… but, when Sue gets there, you know, she finds out that the crocodile story is exaggerated, that Dundee’s leg is still attached to his person, and he’s got a bite scar where the crocodile actually bit him! And of course Sue meets Dundee and Walter, who is Dundee’s aide, um… and the three of them go out in the wilderness, and… you know, Sue watches, uh, Mick – as Dundee is called – using a vo – a version of horse-whispering to subdue a wild buffalo, and then, you know, Dundee kills a crocodile that attacks Sue. (HEAVY SIGH)
And, of course, one night Mick and Sue are sitting around the fire and an Aboriginese person named Noho Bell, played by David Goddopoli, who is the son of a tribal elder, have to leave to go to this meeting, and um… you know, Mick and Nav then go to this tribal band ceremony, um, where it’s, you know, the object is to pay respect to the father and to the land. Sue, of course, being a woman, can’t participate in this ritual, but she follows behind and hides in the bushes to observe it. And, you know, while she’s hiding there, she spots Mick through her camera’s telescopic lens. And… you know, um… Mick… notices… or, Mick lets Sue know that he spotted her. And… you know, it kind of drives him the fact that he’s, like, in touch with nature.
And, you know… um, you know… and Mick tells her, you know, tells Sue later that, you know he, you know, knew she’d follow, because, you know, that she was naturally curios- CURIOUS! Because Sue is a woman and a reporter. Um… of course, as they’re going, and they show, Mick shows Sue where he was hurt and everything, and they, you know, they talk about… all that.
And, you know, one of my favorite parts is when Sue convinces Mick to go to America with her in New York. Of course, you can, you know, you can tell this is definitely pre… what I call a pre-9/11 movie, because you actually see the World Trade Centers in the movie. It’s like, I don’t know why, but it’s like… ever since 9/11 happened – 9/11 2001 happened – it’s like, you can definitely, like, if you’ve, you know, watched the mov- the shows and ever- or, shows on television and everything, or you lived there, like, if you were to watch, like, movies like this, actually show, like, the Trade Towers, you know, you think “Those ain’t there anymore!” Well, you have to kind of, you know, put it in perspective, and, like I have to remind myself that, like, hello, this film was shot, you know, a good… 15 years maybe before 9/11 2001 happened. You have to like, you know, wait a minute, time out! Back it up!
Um… but this movie, actually, it’s, like I said, it’s adorable. And it’s cute to watch even with your kids and stuff, um… it kind of makes us want to go pay Australia a visit, like, during the American… North American winter, you know, because it’s summer down there? Um… I do highly recommend this movie to watch. I mean, it is, yes, very cute. Now, hang on, I’m going to do another movie review, and I’ll get right back with you, alright? Hang on.
1.This Rolling Stone Magazine cover story about legendary Canadian prog-rock power trio RUSH - the band I've seen live the most often in my own life (3 times) - is just excellent. Even those of you who aren't fans of Rush's particular brand(s) of musical mayhem should find the story of comrades in arms and decades-long best-friendships inspiring and uplifting. Cue up a playlist of "Moving Pictures", or "2112", or "Grace Under Pressure", and read this sucker from top to bottom in one sitting, like I just did. You won't be disappointed!
2. Another lengthy must-read story for today is Paul Ford's absolutely fascinating What Is Code? for Bloomberg. It's a beautiful bit of writing, exploring a poorly understood but incredibly important facet of our contemporary culture. Check out, for instance, what Ford has to say about "involuntary" coding...
When you “batch” process a thousand images in Photoshop or sum numbers in Excel, you’re programming, at least a little. When you use computers too much—which is to say a typical amount—they start to change you. I’ve had Photoshop dreams, Visio dreams, spreadsheet dreams, and Web browser dreams. The dreamscape becomes fluid and can be sorted and restructured. I’ve had programming dreams where I move text around the screen.
You can make computers do wonderful things, but you need to understand their limits. They’re not all-powerful, not conscious in the least. They’re fast, but some parts—the processor, the RAM—are faster than others—like the hard drive or the network connection. Making them seem infinite takes a great deal of work from a lot of programmers and a lot of marketers.
The turn-of-last-century British artist William Morris once said you can’t have art without resistance in the materials. The computer and its multifarious peripherals are the materials. The code is the art.
3.This excellent review of English Professor of Philosophy John Gray's thought-provoking new book - "The Soul of the Marionette" - serves as "a short enquiry into human freedom" that "exposes the follies, delusions and prevailing Gnosticism of our smugly arrogant times." It begins:
In these times the west, or what we used quaintly to call the civilised world, is threatened by two opposing perils, one actual and near, the other notional though becoming a reality at an ever-increasing pace. At one pole, there is the outright, unrelenting and often violent rejection of western modernity by fundamentalist movements, Islamic, Christian, Jewish; at the other is the seemingly limitless development of computer technology, which, as some highly intelligent people,Stephen Hawking among them, have been warning of late, may well end in producing machines much cleverer and even more destructive than we are. The future will be another country. John Gray, in his bleak yet bracing new book, once again addresses himself to the follies, delusions and willed blindness of our smugly arrogant times, in which, despite our arrogance, we cower before the twin menaces of old and new barbarisms.
Delicious and filling food for thought. I look forward to reading Dr Gray's book.
1. Tom Chatfield has penned a stimulating meditation on the role of technology in society and on the messianic concept of "the Singularity", in particular. It begins:
Lecturing in late 1968, the American sociologist Harvey Sacks addressed one of the central failures of technocratic dreams. We have always hoped, Sacks argued, that “if only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be transformed.” Instead, though, even our best and brightest devices must be accommodated within existing practices and assumptions in a “world that has whatever organisation it already has.”
As an example, Sacks considered the telephone. Introduced into American homes during the last quarter of the 19th Century, instantaneous conversation across hundreds or even thousands of miles seemed close to a miracle. For Scientific American, editorializing in 1880, this heralded “nothing less than a new organization of society – a state of things in which every individual, however secluded, will have at call every other individual in the community, to the saving of no end of social and business complications…”
Yet the story that unfolded was not so much “a new organization of society” as the pouring of existing human behaviour into fresh moulds: our goodness, hope and charity; our greed, pride and lust. New technology didn’t bring an overnight revolution. Instead, there was strenuous effort to fit novelty into existing norms.
It's a fascinating and thoughtful piece of writing that should give even the most dedicated techno-utopian pause. I urge one and all to read it and deal with it.
2. Discovering the comedy of Patrice O'Neal only after his death from a diabetes-complicated stroke in late 2011 has been a paradoxical experience. It's wonderful, because he's amazing to listen to, even when surrounded by the likes of Opie, Anthony, Bill Burr and Jimmy Norton. And, of course, it's depressing, because now that I've listened to all his O&A appearances as well as his concerts... that's it. There won't be any more new material from this man. Like the man says in First Blood: "It's over, Johnny." So when I ran across this beautiful New York Magazine tribute/feature on his life and times, I was glad to see that that the author of the piece, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, had done him justice. If you want to see why Patrice meant so much to those who knew and worked with him, check out the archive of his O&A appearances on Youtube (just search his name). There's like 100 hours of material. Unfortunately... that's it.
3. The Rialto Report, a website dedicated to exploring the early, "golden age" of adult cinema, answers the intriguing question: Whatever happened to Pat Barrington?Fans of the cinema of Ed Wood and Russ Meyer will instantly recognize this statuesque beauty, but the truth of her fascinating life is more astonishing than anything cooked up by the half-baked auteurs who made such mercenary use of her prodigious natural talents. I think my good friend Matt Pollack, the documentarian behind Run Run It's Him, will find this to be a particularly compelling narrative.
