Revising a Draft

It's been a good long time since I first published the "Clarity in Amsterdam" series here, and I've been revising and revamping it for a while now. I wanted to post the updated changes. There will be another part added eventually (part five is no longer the conclusion). So, if you've read it before, take another look and see if you like it better. If you've never read it, give it a first look-see. I'll be posting the conclusion soon.

I always sermonize to my students about the value of revision, so I'm doing my best to practice what I preach.

The series is posted in the sidebar or you can start reading here.

Other Developments in Local Stage Horror

Time's rapidly dwindling to see Operation Infiltration at the Factory Theater. Just like my previous acting experience with the Factory Theater, I've immensely enjoyed the ensemble, the cast, and the process. It's been a welcome balm in a frustrating year. The past twelve months peppered life with heights and plummets, but the Factory shows stand out as powerfully good times.

Come and support my local mental balm.

Voodoo Moon: My First (and possibly last) Requested Review

About a month ago, Mel Marchesseault from Anchor Bay Entertainment contacted me to see if I would give a little advertising and write a review for one of their new releases, Voodoo Moon, starring Eric Mabius and Charisma Carpenter. I'm very pleased that my little blogzine has attracted a bit of attention and I'm flattered that Mr. Marchesseault would contact me for my opinion on the film. I received the advance DVD copy a little over a week ago and gave it a look-see.

Here's the plot: a brother and sister are the only surviving members of Merrifield, Tennessee, a sleepy town that was wiped out twenty years earlier by a demonic onslaught. Brother Cole (Eric Mabius of Resident Evil) and sister Heather (Charisma Carpenter of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel) both have cloudy and somewhat unexplained psychic powers that they use to fight the devil (Rik Young), a dapper black-goateed fellow who is, as usual, preparing to unleash the apocalypse on poor old earth.

As for the production, I'm instantly in doubt anytime the opening credits finish with "Written, edited, produced and directed by [the same person]." That's a lot of hats to carry. The multitasker in this case is Kevin Van Hook, known for visual effects supervision in big-budget films, I, Robot and Daredevil to name just a couple. Voodoo Moon certainly has fancy light shows and the special effects level exceeds most low-budget horror fare. I got a particular kick out of a possessed priest flicking bullets out of mid-air to dispatch his hapless victim. Creating imaginative effects and scenarios to facilitate those effects are a strength of Van Hook's. However, writing and directing are not among Van Hook's strengths at this point; possibly the work load of four job titles was too much or nobody bothered to resolve the glaring script and directing problems. There are too many characters, too many unexplained and/or unnecessary plot lines and the pace is jerky and uneven. The smoothest parts of the movie are when the computer-generated effects are commanding the action, but effects without effective people and compelling stories to drive them ultimately don't satisfy.

In terms of performances, the clearly well-experienced cast delivers solid work, for the most part. Carpenter is her usual enjoyable bratty princess self. The psychically connected rag-tag group of supporting fighters also have accomplished resumes, Jeffrey Combs and John Amos especially, but their connections to the plot are spotty and their characters aren't developed enough to warrant investment. Mabius, the lead defender against the apocalypse, is too monotone, seemingly relying on his (also unexplained) facial scar to emote tough and rebellious so he doesn't have to relate to his scene partners. One happy exception to this is a quiet healing scene, notably with no fancy effects whatsoever, that he shares with the very accomplished and horror-friendly Dee Wallace Stone (The Howling, Cujo). Stone understands that less is sometimes more and fancy sound and light shows will only carry an audience so far. Stone, seemingly like the script development and directing process, is unfortunately killed off far too early and her grounding influence is missed.

Van Hook is clearly an able filmmaker and the amount of talented and accomplished actors in this film speaks well of his connections and workability within the industry. Van Hook should share the storymaking and storytelling workloads for his next project so that he can focus on his truest strength: crafting cool visual imagery. I admire the workload that Van Hook gave himself and I credit his ability to assemble an impressive ensemble, but he needs to fill in his writing and production ensemble as well as he does his actors. That way, the sounds and lights will have finer storytelling surroundings. Anyone who understands the technical requirements for CGI effects ought to translate that dedication of resources to writing and directing. Address the full process and good results will follow.

Awakening

The large gap of time between the last post and this one comes from the many happenings during the gap. Late August-early September means classes start again and I have to write new syllabi, go over tons of classroom reading, ready quizzes, and basically take all my time to prepare for the Autumn quarter. Classes started last week: I'm teaching two writing courses and one reading course. Having a year of teaching under my belt really helps. I'm glad to be teaching the freshmen and also glad I feel less like a teaching freshman. It's an honor to meet and teach these young adults on their first day of college.

In addition, I've been cast in my second show with the Factory Theater, Operation Infiltration, a horror movie on stage. This is very much a work in progress. I'm interested to see how it develops; it's a bold theatrical move that'll be hard to pull off, but these are very creative people. I'm meeting some new folks and working again with some wonderfully familiar friends. It'll be an interesting ride, one that's been in the works for a while.

Autumn brings many shifts for students, teachers, and performers. This is full gear time and things are changing. Strange that so much comes to life at this time when the leaves fall, the flowers die, and the earth readies for winter slumber. I don't want the winter to be a big sleep. Luckily, with all the wonderful work going on, I feel like I'll be awake for months.

Back into Horror

Can't get away from it, especially after seeing a truly fine example of the horror genre in The Descent. I've been moaning about the current state of horror movies as I see them and talking about some new developments in the genre, mostly from Asian cinema, but it had still been a long time since I genuinely got scared watching a movie. Not after this weekend.

When I first heard a commercial for The Descent, I thought it might be another shlockly gore-fest along the lines of Hostel or the remake of The Hills Have Eyes. The deep-voiced voice-over guy who reads copy for most horror commercials opens the commercial with (paraphrased), "People are concerned that amount of blood and gore in The Descent goes too far." The basic premise is that a group of young women into extreme sports adventure get together to try exploring a deep cave system in the remote Appalachian Mountains. The caves contain a few surprises (creepy creatures being only one of them) and so do the interactions between the characters. It is true that there is plenty of blood and gore, but, I know it sounds silly, the gore is purposeful. I'll continue to write about this while trying not to give too much away.

Along with purposeful gore, a reason The Descent works is because it successfully combines four primal human fears: enclosed spaces, heights, darkness, and monsters. The scariest parts of this movie don't even involve the monsters. While the beasties are scary (and provide the best jump moments), what is truly frightening is the suffocating feel that the caves create as the women delve further into the earth. Another reason the movie works (and this is where Hostel and The Hills Have Eyes remake failed miserably) is because the characters aren't stupid. They are people out of their element and their vulnerabilities are clearly exposed, but they don't have inconvenient stumbles while being chased or have overly convenient lapses in judgment. Furthermore, the protagonists are all women and they are all strong women, which I found a welcome approach. Writer/Director Neil Marshall gives his women just enough development into their character and excels at building the fear through vulnerable surroundings. The caves are dark, there are numerous places to fall far down into deep pits and narrow cracks where slim bodies can barely squeeze through or easily get stuck. Those surroundings are scary enough. Spice in some shadowy crawlers that tear flesh with their teeth and there are four deadly elements to create plenty of shivers and jumps.

Finally, to return to the gore, the movie works because the characters fight for survival against the elements and frightening predators that pitilessly kill just like any other animal or element. Animals eat people. When people get eaten, gory things happen. Thus, purposeful gore that is ripe for horror fodder, especially when paired with elemental combat against nature and somewhat supernatural nasties. The fight for survival is thrilling as the women descend into savagery to match their creature and nature antagonists. There is more than one Cro-Magnon moment that's very satisfying. The icing on the cake is the interactions between the characters and how their relationships break down or strengthen in the circumstances, especially between two characters with a history. I won't say more as it would spoil the richness.

So go to this movie. See it in the theater because you can share the inevitable titters with those around you as you experience fears and jumps together. If horror is your love, this is an exotic romance in a rich land with an alluring partner. Enjoy your night together.

Inbetween Days

It's just about mid-summer, so it's an appropriate time for me to think about my own intervals. Mine is a heavy transition period: between jobs, between shows, listening to so many people complain about turning 30 when I've been past that for years, waiting on family, and being in the process of figuring out what to do next. As seen from earlier posts, I'm a big fan of nostalgia, especially since I'm transitioning right now. It's good to look back and think happily about recent history. To think of past and present, I'll occupy myself with text analysis of a contextual work in order to practice for the upcoming school year. Here's the opening stanza of a piece that I've liked for many years:

Yesterday I got so old
I felt like I could die
Yesterday I got so old
It made me want to cry

Text analysis: this piece is moving back and forth through time. Notice that the author says "Yesterday I got so old," meaning yesterday was the first day of getting so old that there's such a feeling of grief. There's the disconnect between the time of actual aging and the experience of aging. Feelings of yesterday and feelings of today can be radically different. Regardless, this experience creates a strong emotional response. For me, getting older is a process of letting go, something I hate to do. Youth, friends, possessions, expectations, philosophies, and many other things leave us through time. Getting older is about both growth and loss. Could this piece be a simple matter of acceptance or is there something more? What caused this sudden knowledge of age, and what will the feelings of tomorrow be? A later stanza of this piece shows more grief of loss:

Yesterday I got so scared
I shivered like a child
Yesterday away from you
It froze me deep inside

We're still moving through time while talking about what happened yesterday. The author, while getting older, still feels the extreme fears of youth. Older, wiser, more experienced folk still shiver like children. So some things remain constant through our time. Past and present can still collide violently. We're also introduced to the "you" here. The loss of "you" (whatever that may be, person, place or thing) created this longing, and this loss may have come from choice, or perhaps a series of choices. Other stanzas talk about decisions and longing:

Go on go on
Just walk away
Go on go on
Your choice is made
Go on go on
And disappear
Go on go on
Away from here

Come back come back
Don't walk away
Come back come back
Come back today
Come back come back
Why can't you see
Come back come back
Come back to me

The contrast in these words (go on, come back) all feels familiar to me: fear, longing, looking back, coping with aging, hoping for a greater future, and so on. The remaining stanza helps give clarity and specificity:

And I know I was wrong
When I said it was true
That it couldn't be me and be her
Inbetween without you
Without you

There's a confusing line to follow here: "What I said before about how I couldn't be without you and have 'her' between us and something else: that was wrong." In my mind, the author is saying, it was wrong to think that I needed something from the past with me as I go to something new: I can make the transition to the future without holding on to everything from the past. At this point, I'm left wondering what "her inbetween" refers to. Could this "her" also be the "you?" How else could this piece be interpreted? Are "her" and "you" people or something else? These questions would be the homework assignment. End of lesson plan.

Yes, that's the song by The Cure (a past favorite of mine in 1985, a very good year) somewhat out of order from its original format. I'll happily use The Cure or whatever else for text analysis in my class. We can read Plato, Shakespeare, and Hemingway any time. The classics have their worth, but so do many contemporary works of multiple genres. The past and present both have their place. So does the time in between.

Pulp Friday Actually on Friday (PF9)

I may actually stick to the Fridays, but we'll see. Pulp episodes continue...

Previously on Pulp Friday:

PF 1
PF 2
PF 3
PF 4
PF 5
PF 6
PF 7
PF 8

”It’s the last thing you did in Maui.”

H.P.’s words are still ringing in my head as he and the goons leave the court. I’m still not quite sure what he means yet, but I’ve got a nervous jitter in my veins that says it’ll come to me soon.

I’m still thinking about this when something obvious jolts me out of my reverie. As I watch H.P. and the goons walk across the baseball fields, it occurs to me that I should follow them.

I leave the tennis courts and walk toward my apartment and then stop behind the largest tree near the courts, hoping I’m stealthy enough.

I look out from behind the tree and see the three figures heading toward the gym parking garage. I walk parallel to them, but away from the sidewalk. The dusk has settled deep enough that the purple-pink glow from the sidewalk lampposts becomes the only available light in the park. I hope this will keep me unnoticed.

Keeping what I think is a safe distance from H.P.’s group, I follow for several minutes toward the gym garage. As they reach the garage, the three trench coats disappear into the stairway entrance. This allows me to make up the distance between us. I run up to the garage and enter through the vehicle entrance, running up the exit ramp as fast as I can.

It’s times like this that I’m thankful Jenny made me quit smoking. My lungs only burn slightly as I head up the first floor ramp to the second level. I listen for the stairway door’s echoing slam that’ll tell me when H.P.’s group has re-entered the garage. Hearing nothing yet, I decide to head up to the third level.

Seconds later, I hear a resounding creak of door hinges on the floor above me. They’ve moved faster than I expected. I move as fast as I can up the ramp to the third level.

As I near the top of the ramp, I hear the boom of the stairway door on the opposite side of the garage and the clopping of what seems like three pairs of feet. I get to the third level and head for the concrete dividing wall between the entrance and exit ramps of the garage, trying to tread lightly.

I reach the dividing wall in the middle of the garage and move quickly to the opening that will allow me to get to the entrance ramp on the other side of the garage where H.P. and his goons are. This will hopefully allow me to see where the getaway vehicle is parked.

Sure enough, I peer through the opening and see H.P. and the goons walking along the opposite wall of the garage. The parking lot is mostly full so I have plenty of vehicles to shield me.

There’s two lines of cars between me and the goons. I crouch low and follow parallel to them as they make their way to the corner of the garage. They stop at a glossy black sedan and H.P. takes keys out of his trench coat. I cross over one line of cars toward the group as H.P. fiddles with his very large key ring. I take up spying position a few cars down. Finally, the sedan gleeps twice at H.P., its slitted red taillight eyes flashing in sinister greeting.

Then, the car starts to lurch from side-to-side in a gentle rocking motion. The goon with the heavy, inexplicable accent barks out a laugh.

”I gersh that she’s avake nuw.”

”You’ll have some lively company for the ride back, then,” H.P. says in his soprano tone.

Weird Accent Goon opens the left-side passenger door and a pair of bound feet immediately appear through the opening. I can’t tell if they’re the same feet that were being dragged through my apartment door earlier today, but it seems like a safe bet.

I watch Weird Accent Goon palm the heels of the thrashing feet and gently lift them back into the car as he sits in the passenger seat. H.P. gets in the driver’s side and Lispy Trenchcoat enters the car opposite him. The three car doors shut simultaneously with a muffled thump and the black sedan is still.

Then the red slitted taillight eyes come to life again as the engine roars. The sedan whips backward toward the line of cars shielding me. I expect the sedan to come to a stop and make its exit. Instead, the sedan accelerates and smashes into the car parked in the row behind it, causing significant damage. Moving forward, the sedan takes a wide turn to the left as the accelerator roars again. The turn is wide enough to clip two more cars, leaving scratches and glass in the sedan’s wake.

As the sedan speeds off in a semi-straight line toward the exit ramp, I look at the license plate. There’s only three red numbers on the white plate: 924.

Normally, a license plate with only three numbers would be unusual, but not altogether strange. Instead, I ponder the weirdness of those three numbers being the same street address numbers of the apartment that Jenny and I bought just before we married. As I make note of this, the nervous jitter in my veins turns to a full jump when I realize what H.P. meant in his parting words to me.

The full implication of these words weighs down on me as I make the slow walk to my apartment, trying to decide what to do next.

This will continue…

Show Wrap Up

Bittersweet weekend as the very successful run of GI's in Europe at the Factory Theater came to a close. Boy, did I enjoy that show. One of the best casts I've ever worked with, a killer crew that made everything on stage look good, and nice crowds throughout the run. I'm sad to be losing it. I'll miss the people and the exercise, but this show was a damn fine way to get back into the theater. Appropriate that there was a surreal ending to our celebrations on Saturday: upon closing Chief O'Neill's around 3 AM, all of us stumble outside to see Elston avenue drowning in a sea of bicycles heading northwest. Most likely this was an opening event for the Chicago Gay Games, but I never found out. There was no end in sight to this line of people whirring by. I don't know how many thousand people went past us, but we stood for several minutes while this river of cyclists clicked by at a leisurely pace, stirring the early morning air into our faces. The constant, high-pitched hum of thousands of bike chains and gears sounded almost like water running past. Maybe this was my need for a romantic moment of nostalgia, a unique snapshot to burn an image into my mind so I could hold on to the experience of the past few months and hold the people in my show a little tighter in memory. The evening was a swirl of the heartachey celebration of accomplishment and sadness of moving on to other things combined with quite a few vodka tonics: a guaranteed recipe for heavy maudlin. Still, this was a unique and happy moment, a feeling that moving on from this show is not a loss, and other fun, weirdly composed, and good experiences await. I must have been drinking happy vodka.

Factory Theater's next project: a horror movie on stage called Operation Infiltration. Oh yeah. See a trailer for the show here.

My next project: traveling to Minnesota and a taking a long winding road home through North and South Dakota. The Black Hills, Badlands, and Deadwood await. Then comes the final month of summer, new work for the fall, and who knows what else. I hope my next show comes soon and I'm so glad my spring and early summer were filled with GI's in Europe and the people of that show. There will always be happy memories and I suspect I'll still quote lines out-loud while at work and crack myself up. My co-workers have gotten used to my crazy person behavior of snickering to myself while saying non-sensical things. They know the source and they know why I laugh. A few of them even came to see what makes me laugh. It's enough for now for me to hold the memories and say the lines to myself. I hope there's more soon.

Greedy Hearts

Reading one of my favorite blogs, I noticed my buddy and uber-successful blogger Deej write about greed touching the hearts of all men. Specifically, Deej references the train-wreck show "America's Got Talent" and comments on how the Screen Actor's Guild strike of 2000, the strike's resolution and subsequent writer's strike helped facilitate the boom of reality television. Deej points out some artists believe that network execs are to blame for the dumbing down of entertainment because train wreck reality shows have much lower talent fees since people voluntarily expose themselves to potential fame and/or humiliation. Deej also opines that creative unions and guilds make artists as corrupt as everyone else. These writings come on the blog's "Open Thread Thursday" and I believe Deej may create a fascinating discussion.

Two events in the year of the actor's strike stick out for me. The first was an offer to audition to be a Toyota spokesperson for a cool $50,000 for a few months work. This offer came from an agent who spent two years ignoring me, my work, and my mailings. As non-union talent, I was on a much lower rung, but I suddenly got the attention I'd been craving. After a good deal of thought, I turned down the audition, feeling that I would be less of a person if I took advantage of an actor's strike to further my career. After turning down this audition, I did not get any more calls from any agents. A few weeks later, the second notable event was upon me as I listened to a union actor friend of mine go on his soapbox about the trials of the striking actors. He bemoaned the fact that he actually had to get a temp job to support himself now that he was an actor on strike. I'd been supporting myself on lousy temp jobs for over five years while I tried to get paid acting work. It was a rude reality that I was very familiar with and I didn't appreciate the distaste that this actor showed on becoming a part of my reality. I certainly knew that it was wrong for the entertainment industry to try to make millions of dollars through shady deals and using new technologies like the internet and cable to take revenue away from working talent. However, I had no sympathy for striking actors who told me how awful my level of reality was and told me to fight for them so they could return to their higher plain and I could stay on the unpaid lower non-union rung. Supporting the actors on strike took potential revenue away from me, as well. Still, crossing the line to take advantage of labor unrest isn't something I could do. By the third month of the strike, I had dislike and distaste for both sides. Over the next few years, I focused more on theatrical acting; voluntarily unpaid work without messy labor issues that allowed me to further explore the craft I love so much.

Now, to the point that greed touches the hearts of all men. I've spent over fifteen years trying to find the job that balances the realities of artistic fulfillment and living wage income. I've yet to secure a permanent position in teaching, the job I believe best balances the realities. I would dearly love to be paid for the theater work I love so much. I would happily take paid TV, movie, radio, theater, or teaching work. I'm not willing to use labor unrest to further my acting career, nor do I want to debase myself for agents, casting directors, or the American television public to make a living. I'm greedy for the attention and fulfillment the theater world gives me. I'd love to be watched and adored by millions of people. I want to make as much money as possible, regardless of my career path, and if money and career were being taken away from me, I'd fight to keep it. However, for every single career, success depends on who you know. Every single long-term job I've gotten has come from a personal connection to the company or successful name dropping. So yes, greed does touch the hearts of all, but your level of greed depends on who you know.

UPDATE FOR 2009: I'm happy to say that I've found a theatrical home in the Factory Theater and that I've found some balance working as a writer. No way of saying for sure that these are the final paths and places for me, but for the past two years, it really feels like it was worth all the time (15+ years) spent searching. There certainly has been less personal labor unrest and a great deal of fulfillment. I'm glad I know who I know at the Factory and I'm fortunate to work where I do. Stay tuned.

The Joys of the Fringe

Opening week has come and gone. The cast was spectacular, the crowds were good except for Sunday, and the theatre was hot. Really. Hot. The AC broke and we all had to sweat. This didn't dampen any enthusiasm and our audiences still laughed. One of our actresses nearly passed out after a particularly frenetic scene, but after a little heaving and some water, she was right back at it. Did I mention that I love everyone in the cast and crew? This past week only increased those feelings. Everyone threw themselves into their work with dedicated abandon, and I'd like to think that the results were really good. I'm really looking forward to the rest of the run. The AC will be fixed this week, friends and others are coming to see the show, and this has been as good a return to the active theatre as I could hope for. Find info on the show at this previous post, or go to the Factory Theater website directly by clicking on this bit of bold text. I'll have to update another previous post to document what's true about me online. Busy times, but I'm having a good time with these outside interests of mine. Now if only I could have some steady paycheck from a career I love (be it from teaching, writing, acting, or some combo of the three), a lack of anxiety every Monday morning, a successful & consistent composing ability, and the ability to have everything nice and orderly in a disorderly world. Yes, that unrealistic greed gets the best of me sometimes, but right now, I'm getting some satisfactory life time. This comes from mainly from rejoining a previous lifetime on the fringe non-union Chicago theatre, but as I attempt to create a career or two outside of the practical money-making career I used to have, and stubbornly believe that I can have a well-paid day job doing something I love, I feel like I'm making the most of life's outside edges. I'm also very grateful for what the fringe gives back to me. This will serve as my reminder post for when I get cranky and dissatisfied with the inevitable future fringe frustration. Here's hoping I'm cheering myself up in the future.

Pulp Friday Continues (PF 8)

And it's actually on a Friday this time, just like when I started.

Previously on Pulp Friday:

PF 1
PF 2
PF 3
PF 4
PF 5
PF 6
PF 7

“Any worse?” I ask. “My wife is dead, I’m broke, and you and your goons just trashed the front part of my building, so how’s it going to get worse?”

“Oh, you should know by now never to say that, silly,” H.P. says. “You’re a desperate man. Desperate people do desperate things; things they would never normally do. You’ve already proven that.”

“So you say.”

“You’ve got the documentation right there in your hands. Don’t you think that a judge and jury wouldn’t come to the obvious conclusion? You killed George Dean, disposed of his body somewhere in Kihei, stole his checks and credit cards, perpetuated the fraud just long enough to finish your honeymoon and scram from Hawaii before you were discovered. It’s black and white, dear. Admit it.”

I’d really like to have a response to that.

The goon to the right of H.P. pipes up: “Yes, and there’s plenty more evidence besides that, sailor.” He speaks with a heavy lisp. I’d comment on how hissy he was if he couldn’t break my bones so easily.

The goon to the left of H.P. reinforces their point: “Yersh, ve harve burxes and burxes of errvidunce.” His accent is so thick I can’t tell what part of the earth he’s from. But again, faced with easily broken bones, I keep quiet.

“Be good little silent henchmen now,” H.P. says with a trace of irritation. “We have business to finish.”

Here comes the boom. I say, “Fine. What do you want?”

H.P. casually puts his left hand out and Lispy Trenchcoat puts a cigarette into his palm. “To clean up your mess, of course.”

As H.P. lights his cigarette and takes a long, comfy drag, that same smoke craving from this afternoon jumps right back on me. I swallow and try to hide my envy.

H.P. exhales a jetstream of blue-gray fog. “Since it’s your mess, you’ll be doing most of the cleaning. We’ll keep close to make sure that you’re being thorough. You’ll be going through each of your transgressions individually, gathering the pieces, and putting them to rest. Think of it as a labor-intensive confessional.”

“Does it matter that I haven’t done everything you claim I’ve done?”

“Come now, dearie,” H.P. says, “we’ve done our homework. You’ve done it all. It’s best to cease the denial and focus on the cleansing. Don’t you think Jenny wants that?”

“Jenny’s not a part of this.”

“Still with the denial,” H.P. says, “but Jenny’s very much a part of this. Always has been. Haven’t you been feeling her on the back of your neck when your conscience hurts you?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

The Trenchcoats shake their heads and make tsk-ing noises.

H.P. says, “Don’t you? Well, you’ve only got your word. We’ve got more than that and it won’t be hard for anyone to connect the dots.”

No more use in arguing. Never was. I fix my eyes on the net and wait.

I hear H.P. take another long, crackling drag before he says, “Good. Now to cleansing. We want you to go back to your apartment and get something for us. We were trying to find it there when you barged in early. It was right at our fingertips. We even had someone who, though unwilling, was very helpful in the search. She knows a little about you and your life, you see. Still, we couldn’t very well transport both her and what we wanted with your badly timed return.”

“Who are you talking about?”

H.P. says, “Be patient, dearie. You’ll see. We decided to take her and let you transport what we wanted since you were so rude.”

That explains the pair of legs that were being dragged through my front door this afternoon. Doesn’t explain who she is, though.

“So, that means this little meeting is over. Time for you to be a porter.” H.P. and the Trenchcoats turn and begin to leave the court.

“What’s my cargo?” I ask their backs.

H.P. looks over his shoulder at me. “It’s the last thing you did in Maui. You'll know what I mean.”

Next on Pulp Friday: PF 9

I Gotta Be a Dope for Doing This...

It's so silly for me to try to encode anything, but hey, this is my playground. My friend Roach hooked me up on Flixster, which is supposed to be a meet & greet place spot for people based on their feelings about movies. The meet & greet doesn't work so much for me (the majority of Flixster users appear to be teenage Canadians) but the site also allows for posting movie reviews, which works GREAT for me. How nice to have a shared forum for my movie pontification! At this site, you can be your own Roeper and give people crap about their reviews: an idea I like. So, back to the encoding, Flixster allows for a way to post my movie reviews to Blogger. I'm currently at 667 ratings with 84 written reviews, so I should share this body of work which I'm rapidly becoming addicted to and will surely grow. See the sidebar to check if my encoding worked or if I crashed the whole blog.

Opening Weekend!

Yeah, baby! Here it comes. My first show in three years and it's gonna be a blast. It's been an exhausting and fulfilling week. I think everybody in the cast needed audiences a week ago and now we get them. Everything's going amazingly smooth, considering all the work and the set changes we learned this week. I gotta stop bungling shit up backstage when I move the flats and props. With a little more practice, I'll be like clockwork. I can't wait! What an incomparable thrill to be doing this again. It's my greatest love that I've missed so badly. The cast and crew are spectacular and I still laugh my ass off like an idiot every single night. We don't have a bad apple anywhere. Everyone and everything in this show kicks ass. Am I biased? You goddam betcha. But I'm also proud. Is this great American theatre? Hell, I dunno. It sure is fun, though. We won't open anyone's eyes to the AIDS crisis, we won't examine the critical undertones of the human psyche, and we won't be stirring up any political debate. But we're not supposed to. There are more than enough plays for that. This show is laughter and entertainment, which, in my view, are important and always relevant parts of the human psyche. Humor is critical. Well-made and smoothly produced theatre is to be emulated in other parts of life for its dedicated community, creativity, and skill. This is a show I hope many people see because they'll laugh, be entertained, and appreciate the fun. Kiss it, love it! If you see the show, you'll know what that means.

Nerd Note for Self-Serf

How many times have I lost this damned icon and now there's an easy way to re-create it!

How to re-create the Show Desktop icon on the Quick Launch bar

The Show Desktop icon is not an ordinary program shortcut. If the icon is deleted, the procedure for re-creating the icon is not obvious. To re-create the Show Desktop icon, follow these steps:

1. Click Start , click Run, type notepad, and then click OK.
2. In Notepad, type the following text on individual lines:
[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop
3. Click File, click Save As, and then save the file to your desktop as Show Desktop.scf.

Note Notepad may automatically append a .txt extension to the file name. Remove this extension if present. The file name should be Show Desktop.scf.

I'm not Douglas Coupland yet, but I've taken the first step in controlling my programming language future.
(I doubt there will be a second)

Old Time Radio

I'm so glad that I found two sites to keep my mind occupied. The first site contains hundreds of old time radio programs. The other site contains synopses of every indexed old time radio program. Most of these programs are from the 1930s through the 1950s. I enjoy this dated form of entertainment. This medium was a predominant distraction for a generation. It's fun to hear the stereotypical '50s voices and ridiculously inaccurate foreign accents. The organ music during transition makes for goofy kitsch. Plus, there's a different form of writing and overexposition at work to create pictures for the audience: It's history, sociology, and entertainment rolled into one. On the one hand, it's amusing to hear expressions like "dope" have a totally different meaning. On the other hand, some lines give a wince or two: "I'm inclined to agree with Schopenhauer that women are an unscrupulous race." Thus, the socio-historical study, both the good and the bad. And they really did use the word "buddy" a lot.

Another good site is RadioLovers.com, where I first found old time radio programs. "Police Headquarters" is quite a hoot for its dated dialogue. But back the otr.net site, I've been listening to a lot of The Shadow for melodrama cheese, Sam Spade for the hard-boiled stuff and even silliness like "The Air Adventures of Jimmy Allen" and "Your Truly, Johnny Dollar." "Dragnet" is surprisingly dark, especially for a 1950s program that turned into a Dan Ackroyd-Tom Hanks buddy movie. Listen to shows like "The Whistler," "Hall of Fantasy," and "Murder at Midnight" and you can see (or rather hear) the roots of "Creepshow," "Tales From the Crypt," and "The Twilight Zone." It's a good distraction to go with menial work tasks. I don't know if I'm learning anything, but I feel a little like I'm in history class. It's still one of my favorite subjects.

Mind Text (Make Your Own Phrase)

Try reading this several different ways (across, backward, diagonal, non-consecutively, etc.) and see what comes up. I know what I made, and there's more than one message.

Horrible Horrors

Back to horror movies (a favorite subject):

What I want to do is think back to the primal and the viscerally terrifying within the cinema. That’s what modern Japanese horror movies have done. They're fresh. They draw upon the same instincts that make the older horror movies so scary: primal fear. Everything else is a copy or it’s gimmicky. Saw is cool, but it’s not based in primal fear: it's mind gimmicry. What makes The Exorcist so scary (like so many other successful horror movies, in my mind) is that it taps a most basic fear in many people: assault from the unknown and, even more, the unpredictable and unexplainable. Same with Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s a movie about dreams: something we can’t totally explain or defend ourselves from. Technology and Science have made so many things much more controlled and predictable. Ghosts and demons are still scary, but they seem to have lost the edge. Buffy and The X-Files made those things more accessible while still leaving them scary, but familiarity drained the mystique. Same with cars breaking down in extra-rural America (i.e., out of cell phone range) where there are murderous hillbillies or truckers. Part of Stephen King’s success comes from his ability to mine something that so many people have thought about at one time or another: what if I get attacked by a vicious dog, what if my other pets decide to become uncontrollable animals and turn on me, what if that funny looking clown is actually evil, what if a super-sickness wipes out all of civilization, what if someone could predict exactly how & when other people are going to die? And so on and further.

Recently, there have been a couple of new things in horror movies, mainly from across the Pacific. Sure, a videotape that kills people is a rather silly and kitschy concept, but it was new, and the execution was spectacular. It tapped into the primal fear of something strange and deadly, just like other Japanese films have done with basic concepts such as curses or angry spirits. I’d like to find something that is contemporary but still retains that sense of the primal unknown/unpredictable that yanks the basic fear right out of your guts. The slap of cold water to your face that makes your innards grind before you feel the ice on your feet. All my boredom-numb blasted mind can come up with at the moment is something evil lurking on the Internet, but that won’t work. Fear Dot Com had the chance to do internet horror and failed convincingly. The idea of a malevolent website won’t work now. But maybe something that goes back to the wilderness, the primal, while still having to do with modern technology (not something Terminator-esque) will do. Maybe that's the ticket to contemporary horror, but maybe not. With all the re-makes going on, society is begging for something else.

In case you're interested, there's previous musings on horror movies here. What can I say? I love 'em.

Oh, and here's an example of a really good horror movie that works well with the primally and viscerally terrifying.

By the way, Dee Snider will be hosting "Fangoria Radio" on Sirius satellite radio channel 120 starting June 25. I'll be interested to hear that, though Dee will have to prove his horror knowledge. Here's hoping.

UPDATE: I listened to Fangoria radio and I liked. Dee's got his work cut out for him, but so far, so good. It airs Friday nights at 10PM ET on Sirius 102.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The "response" to this post was almost better than the original post itself. See below. I left in a really long post from another anonymous douchebag that you don't have to read; just skip to my comment immediately after. I'm glad that this post was my most trafficked one, and I still don't know why this particular post would seem to be a great place to post links. Maybe there's more people online looking for good horror movies than I thought.

Is this a term?

Can one be "brain-fucked?" That's what I feel like staring at all of these cells of the spreadsheets that I compare/edit/contrast. For background on the subject, see this. The data is frying me brain. The cells are cooking the cells. I'm stepping outside now. God, I wish I still smoked. I need a different pollutant.

Curious. As I was writing this, one of the other temp workers here in the basement just had a meltdown with another worker. A meltdown over the terminology of "belt couplers." Either the spreadsheets are tainted with evil, or the company is pumping mind-altering drugs into our corner of the basement where this data project slowly strips all of our cerebral cells. Either way, fresh air will have to substitute for my comfort pollutant.

Quickie link

Here's another one of my favorite Strong Bad emails. I'm debating whether to buy a t-shirt or something from their store to support the website. It's been around for years and was just basically a few people screwing around with Flash Player and their voices. No advertising, no real means of financial backing for a long time. Now it looks as if the site will pay for itself. Strong Bad emails are usually hit or miss. But when they hit, they're really good comedy. The link above is one of those hits for me.

Pulp Friday's next (PF 7)

Yes, I know it's not Friday. I'm just maintaining the title for consistency of text, not consistency of time. I'm hoping to finalize the first installment of this series in ten entries (or so) here as a basis for something bigger. Again, useful comments are encouraged and appreciated from the three confirmed people I know who have seen this blog. Anybody new, you're also welcome to comment. Thanks.

Previously on Pulp Friday:

PF 1
PF 2
PF 3
PF 4
PF 5
PF 6

Knowing full well my dumb act won’t work, I ask, “What do you mean, what I did in Maui?”

“Please, dear,” High-Pitch Smirk says. He snaps his fingers and Trench Coats #2 and #3 withdraw manila envelopes from their coat interiors. They both whip the envelopes at me like Frisbees. They come sailing at me over the tennis court net so fast I barely have time to put my hands in front of my face. There’s a loud whack as both envelopes hit my hands and slap to the ground. I look at my hands, expecting to see puncture wounds.

“Pick those up and you’ll see everything you need. Be thankful the boys were tossing envelopes and not cinder blocks this time.”

At least now I know who to bill once my landlord Chung discovers the wreckage of his building’s front door.

I bend down to retrieve the envelopes, feeling very awkward. I stand back up and attempt to convey non-chalance.

“Fine, so you know everything about Maui. Why should I care?”

I try to rip open one of the envelopes and give myself a paper cut. My wince draws grins from the other side of the net.

“Honey, Maui was quite a mess. You’ve been getting away with murder since you got married.”

“Oh please,” I say, “If you really know everything about Maui, you know that I haven’t killed anybody.”

Smirkface keeps smiling.

”Fine, keep smiling,” I tone. “I’m no nun, but I haven’t committed murder.”

“You can keep that up as long as you want, but we know better. See for yourself. Hope your little finger doesn’t bleed on the evidence too much.”

I scowl and withdraw the contents of the first manila folder. Sure enough, they’ve got plenty of pictures. They’ve got pictures of me taking the cash out of safe deposit boxes, signing checks, and handing over credit cards for purchases. These pictures aren’t of concern until I get deeper into the folder’s contents. There are photocopies of bounced checks with my name and signature, rejected credit card notices (also from me), and copies of checks with questionable signatures. A long line of my payment and credit wreckage. The last page is a bank statement of a Mr. George Dean, showing a long list of fraudulent charges from Kihei (“Key-hay?” my neighbor Brian would say), Hawaii.

I stop sifting through the contents. “Good for you,“I say, still trying to affect aplomb. “You’ve documented my bad credit. I won’t charge any purchases to you.”

”You missed the last page, sweetie.”

I thumb back through the stack and discover what I skipped: a missing person’s report from Maui on a Mr. George Dean, filed three days after Jenny and I started our honeymoon there.

”Interesting coincidence that Mr. Dean disappears right around the time you started having money problems on your honeymoon. Even more interesting that you and Mr. Dean had a meeting the night before he disappeared and incredibly interesting considering you started using Mr. Dean’s checkbook and credit cards after he went missing.”

”That’s quite a stretch you’ve made there,” I say with no assurance.

“Open the second envelope, dear.”

I tear open the second folder without making myself look any sillier. Sure enough, the pictures in this folder show me and a man having an animated conversation; I’m gesticulating like a crazed Woody Allen character and the man has his arms folded.

High-Pitch Smirk sounds very smug. ”If Mr. Dean had known he’d have less than 24 hours to live, I doubt he would’ve been the calm one.”

I continue to flip through the pictures that H.P. Smirk and his Trench Coats have given me. They’ve been oily enough to include pictures of Jenny and me, happy and smiling on the beaches and patios of Maui, clinking glasses, gazing into each other’s eyes, Jenny jumping on my back and biting my ear, both of us sharing kisses with hands on each other’s faces, the surf wind blowing her hair through my fingers. Other photos paint a less happy picture: Jenny and I sitting far apart, worried looks on our faces, or Jenny and I engaging in angry conversation. The contrast between the honeymoon’s early-week and later-week photos.

”Looks like there was trouble in more than one place. Did Jenny know how bad your credit was? Did she ever find out how you solved your little money issues?”

They’ve got everything neatly arranged. I decide I’d better play along.

”What do you want?”

H.P. Smirk affects surprise. “Don’t you want to ask me about the photo that brought you here?”

”It’s a fake.”

”Actually, sweetie, it’s not. You should know that. We know you’ve been getting away with more than one murder. I just gave you the documentation of your first, and rest assured, we have plenty of documentation on the second.”

I take a few seconds to ponder this. “So what’s next?”

H.P. Smirk casually folds his hands together, demonstrating his own practiced aplomb. “I’m here to make sure your mess doesn’t get any worse.”

This will continue…

Next on Pulp Friday: PF 8
PF 9