On The Fence, Not To Offend

I used to like the Dave Matthews Band. There, I said it. Under The Table And Dreaming was great. So was Crash. Before These Crowded Streets was terrible, though it seems some people liked it. I know that every band changes, and not every fan will like every album, but this was too much. So I stopped listening. I removed the CDs from my stereo (I still owned CDs in 1998). I threw out the baby with the bongwater. But it wasn’t just because BTCS sucked so aggressively and completely. It was because of Dave Matthews Band Fans. Between 1995 and 1998, DMB had become popular. They had a heap of airplay and, yes, videoplay. Consequently, they were exposed to a larger audience, and as you expand the number of people in an audience, you increase the chances of including douchebags. Some of these douchebags chased the band around the country, collected bootleg recordings of live shows, forced you to listen to said live shows, and acted offended when you denied that DMB was the one true musical way. Others just thought that the band was some great music to listen to while they got drunk and high. Either way, these kids were some serious douchebags. And I don’t like to hang out with douchebags. I don’t like to share my time, my space, or even my tastes with douchebags. So I stopped listening to Dave Matthews.

As it turns out, some of God’s biggest fans are some our biggest douchebags, too. It makes it hard for me take religion and faith seriously when I see some of its most visible proponents advocating assassination, endorsing bigotry, and lauding the deaths of US servicemen for no other reason than they are sure it is what God wants. I'm troubled by the certainty with which so many of these men and women speak, as though they know beyond a shadow of doubt that they are right, that they have a direct line to God. I suppose that’s what is so maddening about being an agnostic. I’m only sure of my inability to know, with 100% certainty, anything beyond my observable world. There may just be a natural level of skepticism built into some people, the way others have faith. I don’t know. There’s a lot about faith that creeps me out, and there’s a lot about religion that just plain pisses me off. It’s something I’m working on.

In the meantime, I’m trying to tune out ground interference and remember that Ants Marching is a pretty good song after all.

The Late Night Double Feature Picture Show

Here’s another long-ass post. And we’re in a bad news/good news scenario.

Bad news: Voodoo Moon. Voodoo Moon is a simple tale, universal in its nature. A young man spends twenty years studying the religions of the world in his quest to vanquish the charismatic evil beast that corrupted his small town and killed his parents. Along the way he encounters and saves a bunch of people who join him and his psychic sister in a final apocalyptic battle with the physical manifestation of evil on earth. Like I said, a simple story.

This movie has so much going for it on paper. It’s got ancient evil with a British accent. It’s got the dude who played Weyoun as an undead detective. It’s got that chick that’s been in every syndicated scie-fi show in the last 15 years. It’s got Jon Amos and Charisma Carpenter. But it’s also got Eric Mabius dressed up like Mindfreak’s body double and a special effects department with more dollars than sense. I wanted to like this movie, but I just couldn’t. Put plainly, it is bad.

It gets several things wrong. First of all, the pacing is off. This movie is equal parts rushed and monotomous. I had to rewatch several sequences because I got bored and quit paying attention. Distracting from the already unwatchable editing were the needless computer-generated visual effects. They looked good, and if I were playing a videogame, I might think, “whoa, that was cool." Instead, I thought, “wow, someone else learned how to masturbate with AfterEffects.” It also didn’t help that the script had some ridiculously bad dialog and a storyline that felt like a sequel to Children of The Corn. Now the actors in this sad story have, between them, decades of experience delivering bizarre and unnatural dialog, but even their considerable talents were useless against this script.

Now, what did they get right? Well, they got zombies, so that’s good. They got decapitations, Charisma Carpenter, and a nice twist with the undead detective. Unfortunately, that’s about it. I would only recommend this for Mystery-Science-Theater-It’s-So-Bad-It’s-Hilarious scenarios. Any attempts to enjoy this film simply on its own merits are ill-advised and will result in frustration.

Good news: Left In Darkness. I liked this movie. I liked David Anders for being so damned creepy and charming. I liked Monica Keena for being so damned hot and clever. I also liked this movie because it wasn’t afraid to kill off it’s lead in the first act. Shortly into the story, Keena’s character dies of a GHB overdose while a skeevy frat guy rapes her in a bathroom. Classy. The rest of the film centers on her trying to stay out of hell and keep her soul from being eaten. Again, it’s a simple tale, universal in nature. I don’t want to get too deep into the plot, as it really is the heart of the film. Unlike other entries into the “Sci-Fi Saturday” genre, this film does not rely on alien dinosaurs fighting Bigfoot in Vancouver.

Left in Darkness owes more to Night of the Living Dead than Carnosaur 3. Horror and suspense are created through characterization, through what’s unsaid and unseen, through the unknown. And instead of relying on flashy special effects, this film uses nothimg more high tech than colored lights and spooky makeup. But it works. The producers create an amazing bit of atmospheric terror, analogous to the original Resident Evil games. I was impressed, I was engaged, and not once was I bored. I enjoyed it. It wasn’t The Bicycle Thief, and it was not some otherwise transcendent experience, but I recommend it. And, if you buy the special edition, it glows in the dark.

They Say It's All We Need To Keep Us Together

I’ve been a bad little blogger of late. Or perhaps absent. I didn’t realize how much time it takes to work a full-time job, take care of school work, try to write comedy, and still pay enough attention to a woman to make sure she remembers I’m her boyfriend.

A lot’s been going on.

I did take a break from myself this weekend, though. Friday was a unique experience, thanks to the Flaming Lips. It was like Studio 54 got wasted in Vegas and had unprotected sex with the Palms, and the sparkly but somewhat family-friendly love child just had its super sweet sixteen party. It wasn’t too substantially different from the last time I saw them, except no one was hawking a ridiculously slick pop album and the whole deal was outside. Oh, and there was a giant UFO. It was good, but when it ended I was ready for it to be over. I wasn’t ready for the half hour it would take me to get out of the parking lot, however. Shitty end to a great night.

The next day (yes, Saturday) I found myself in Norman, at school, at 8:30 am, considering a new career option. It turns out I have a talent for writing speeches. I think it’s the sort of thing that if I cultivated it, I could be really good. Anybody need a speechwriter? Let me know. That evening, I said goodbye to one of the people I’ve known my entire life. She’s going to rural Mexico for two years to help... someone. I’m not entirely sure. Of all the people I know, I would have expected her to join the Peace Corps and offer herself bodily to the effort to make our world better. I’ll miss you, Sarah. You’re an inspiration.

Less altruistic, but equally inspiring was Asian Night at the Riverwind Casino. My girlfriend called in to a local radio show and won two tickets (which I think is the least that corporate radio can offer as reparations for what they’ve done to music). So we went. And it was beautiful. There were three musical acts, which I enjoyed to no end. They sang in Vietnamese, with the occasional “Come on!” or “Let’s go!” and once, just once, “Let’s get this party started! Techno!” Then there was a comedy team. I didn’t get as much out of that. I did walk away with the impression that a tubby dude in a leopard print jacket and a skinny guy dressed up like a woman are Vietnamese comedy gold.

I was was struck by the wide range of people packed into the standing-room-only auditorium. There were toddlers. There were children. There were teens, adults, and the elderly. And they were all having a great time. They were there to see their culture, their people, and to hear it in their language. It was drenched with Western influences, of course, but it was definitely not American.

And I’m sorry for this mega-post, but I’d like to close by stressing the importance of culture. While social science grad students will go round and round with you trying to define what culture is, it’s much easier to simply go out and see it. And see it, we did. It made me think about my own culture, and how it is so vague and muddled in my mind. Part of that comes from the fact that I draw my culture from many lands, some of which like to go to war against each other. I wanted to learn more about my past as well as my present. Are there any Welsh Nights at Riverwind? Perhaps not. And maybe in a hundred years Vietnamese culture will be so intertwined in American culture that there will be no more Asian Nights.

Honestly, I’m on the fence about that one. Obviously, culture binds individuals together along ethnic, linguistic or national lines, but it also divides us along those very same lines. Can we really be together and apart? I don’t know. Any thoughts?

One More Time

More open micage. It might sound familiar in some parts. I think it's better overall. I also went first this time, which was kind of difficult. It was a good time, though. And thanks to everyone who came out to see me. I don't have a lot of words and stuff tonight. Hope you enjoy the podcast!

We Don’t Want To Know What’s Really Going On

I like Blade: The Series. I’m not ashamed to admit that. A lot of reviewers (and not just fanboys) gave the show a forcible textual colonic when it premiered. It has a lot going against it. It’s a television adaptation of a comic book movie that features none of the heavies from the movie. The emotional weight is carried by a rapper named “Sticky” and a chick that used to pimp for Mercury. It’s on Spike. Oh, and it’s about vampires. I don’t care. I liked it from the first scene (I hated the movie, by the way). I never could figure out why, until this week. And I’ll give you a hint: it’s not Jill Wagner’s oddly-tanned vampire booty.

It’s the subtext. The show’s creators have made, and I fear it was unintentional, a stylish commentary on fascism and totalitarian states. The vampiric aspects of the storyline reek of Will-To-Power, and the hierarchical nature of vampire society, plus the dehumanization of their prey, makes the vamps of Blade a great analogue to them crazy National Socialists from 70 years ago. The vampires care an awful lot about the purity of blood, of conquering the weak, and of controlling members of their own society through fear and violence. Sound familiar?

So, I watch. I pay $1.99 per episode on iTunes. It resonates with me.

It resonates with me because we’re entering a proto-fascist state in this country. We’ve allowed our fear to control us, and we’ve made some really bad decisions of late. We spy on each other, treat our enemies as less than human, turn to violence to solve our problems, and question the loyalty and judgment of those who would question our country’s course or attempt to change it.

The bloodsuckers do it because they’re evil, villainous caricatures. What’s our excuse? Is it fear?

The murders committed five years ago were planned to create fear, to spread that fear to every man woman and child in this country. For the most part, it worked. We were shown a brutal, violent, angry world that wanted to destroy us. And it scared a lot of us so badly that we stuck our heads in the sand. All we could see were the hateful fucks that had planned and supported the attacks, and all we could think about was how to punish and eliminate them. We didn’t see the bigger picture, how our actions, when lead by fear, would lead us into more pain.

Maybe in another five years we’ll see things differently.