review--SUPER TROOPERS

SUPER TROOPERS is the worst movie ever made.

interlude-THE GREATEST TELEVISION SHOWS THAT NEVER WERE

About halfway through this ABC program, I had an epiphany. I realized two things:

A) There are not nearly enough hours in the day and

B) Television producers suck ass for greenlighting crap like Boston Commons and rejecting such gems as Wishman.

I also came to the conclusion that this "reading" thing I've been getting into is lame and a waste of time and I need to watch more TV. And also, television viewers in the Eighties never had it so good. And also, Scott Bakula made a lot of career missteps.

THE GREATEST TV SHOWS THAT NEVER WERE was a clip compendium from tv pilots that for some reason or another were never picked up by the networks. Most of them looked like they'd totally kick ass, and some I totally remember watching when they originally aired, because back then my taste wasn't nearly as discriminating. Case in Point: BATES MOTEL. Starring the strangely round-headed Bud Cort from HAROLD AND MAUDE, this 1987 creep-fest had mental patient Cort reopening the Bates Motel, given to him by fellow inmate Norman Bates. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Cort fixes the place right up with fountains and flowers and matching guest towels, and stuff happens and it's not at all scary. I totally watched this. Why, I don't remember. I think I may have thought Bud Cort was cute in a round-headed kind of way. And Jason Bateman was in it. GET IT!?!?! BATEMAN!??! Oh, and Lori Petty was in it too, young and innocent and not yet in POINT BREAK. And the redhead from HEAD OF THE CLASS was in it, and Dr. Hologram from Voyager. I know his name is Robert Picardo!!! I was just checking to see if you remembered.

Another one I totally remember watching was WISHMAN. Linda Hamilton stars as the wife of a scientist who steals a genetically created kid with big eyes and electric antenna on his head. And they go on the run from government people. As they all do. I would need to count on all my fingers and toes the number of shows involving people "on the run from government agents." THE PHOENIX was of course the best of the genre, followed closely by THE POWERS OF MATTHEW STARR, MISFITS OF SCIENCE, STARMAN, and THE A-TEAM.

One that totally should have been greenlighted was THE CHAMELEON starring Bobbie Phillips (Dr. Bambi Berenbaum from X-Files season three episode War of the Coprophages) where she plays a robot that can change her appearance to blend in with her surroundings. Apparently this takes place in a nudist colony because from the preview "blending in" requires a lot of removing of clothing. If crap like SHEENA and WHATEVER THE HELL IT WAS 2025 got greenlighted, this totally deserved to be more than a series of lame TV films.

My breath was literally taken away when they featured the pilot film GOOD AGAINST EVIL, which I own on DVD. Not on purpose, mind you; it was part of the GREATEST INVENTION SINCE TOILET PAPER (and those who know me know how much I love toilet paper so this really means something), Best Buy DVD two-packs called HORROR CLASSICS which supply the discerning viewer with up to 11 hours of movies for FIVE NINETY-NINE. You heard me: for less than a ticket to an afternoon show, you can have eight movies at your fingertips. Chances are they all suck ass, but you're not paying for the Hope Diamond, you're paying for Marie Osmond's entire QVC doll collection.

That's not a very good analogy. I got a 1020 on my SAT. I think that means I flunked analogies, but I got my name right.

Anyway, in GOOD AGAINST EVIL, hunky Soap Star Dack Rambo is in love with the chick who is destined to bear the Child of Satan. She of course doesn't realize what her destiny is so she just thinks she's "bad news" (Honey, "bad news" is when you love them and leave them, not when you love them and they are mysteriously run over by rolling logs out in the middle of a cornfield because Satan doesn't want his bride to be defiled) so she leaves Dack but he can't forget their undying love that grew out of an auto accident involving a parked car and about a week of eating picnics and posing for street artists, so he hooks up with an exorcist to chase after her. Presumably the show was to involve the two of them traveling cross country to battle satanic cats and exorcise the children of Dack's old girlfriends. At least this is what happened in the movie. Dack's old girlfriend is played by SEX AND THE CITY's Kim Cattrall in one of her first roles. She looks good as a brunette. Playing Satan's minion is Richard Lynch, a name you don't recognize but I swear if you saw him you'd be like, "HEY! Isn't he that guy that played Satan's minion in that movie *fill in the blank*?" He's totally satanic looking. The exorcist is played by real-life exorcist Dan O'Herlihy. Not really, but with a name like that, he should totally be a real-life exorcist.

Finally, a couple of quickies. The people who brought you BAYWATCH really wanted to bring you DAYTONA BEACH, a show about a cop/lifeguard/race car driver/priest/pizza delivery guy dating an air force pilot/wannabe astronaut. The astronaut chick was played by Alexandra Paul, the one chick on BAYWATCH who looked like she could actually save your life should you be unlucky enough to nearly drown on that particular beach. And Lee Majors was in it, I guess hoping to hit the same comeback jackpot won by David Hasselhoff.

GEEZ, KNIGHT RIDER vs THE FALL GUY? Ask me to gnaw off my own arm instead, why don't you?

And then there's poor Scott Bakula. He had two doosies. The first was I-MAN, where Scott plays a cab driver who smells space gas and is able to heal really fast, so he fights crime but still gets hurt but can heal really fast so he...um...doesn't scar as bad? According to IMDB, this was his first big role carrying a series. This totally reminds me of the greatest movie ever made, MODERN PROBLEMS starring Chevy Chase as a guy who gets dowsed by nuclear waste and gains telekinetic powers. Seriously, I saw that movie fifty bagillion times in the movie theater. And keep in mind I was ten when this came out, so that was quite a feat. And also I think the "theater" was actually the drive-in next to my house. My point is that some suffering relative had to take me and sit there with me through the fifty bagillion times. Also suffered through by a relative was ZAPPED, the greatest movie ever made by the then love of my life, Scott Baio. I remember my dad took me to see this at the drive-in and slept through the whole thing. It was a double feature with PARADISE starring Willie Ames and Pheobe Cates. This was totally a BLUE LAGOON rip-off, and also where I learned about sex. I'm kidding, I totally learned about sex from watching monkeys at the zoo. Wait, that was Homer Simpson.

Anyway, Scott Bakula starred in the small screen adaption of GUNG HO before landing the lead in THE INFILTRATOR, where he's a crazy scientist guy who makes a teleporter and teleports himself right into the space probe in the sexy scientist's office next door. So then when he gets mad he totally transforms into a super robot. And stuff happens.

There were more goodies. The STAR TREK spinoff ASSIGNMENT: EARTH looked promising, although it appears this is just considered episode 55 of the series. And then there was THE PEOPLE, about space alien Amish people, which was first season X-files episode Gender Bender, featuring an appearance by actor Nic Lea before he was cast as recurring character Kyrchek.

Not that you wanted to know that.

But see, the point of all of this is that if only they'd do away with the makeover shows and the LOOK, HONEY, I SWAPPED OUT THE KIDS shows, there would be way more scripted shit for me to watch and memorize minutia from. And really, that's what life is all about, isn't it?

That question's rhetorical, by the way.

PS I totally forgot to mention the DAREDEVIL TV show starring SOLID GOLD host Rex Smith. Thank God that failed, or else Ben Affleck would have had something to live up to. By the way, the black Solid Gold dancer with the hair was Darcel. She was in XANADU, in the musical bit with The Tubes.

Not that you wanted to know that.

review #11--THE CRAZY ASS DREAM I HAD LAST NIGHT

So last night I slept on the couch. It was hot as hell upstairs, so I went to the living room to read (A SEASON FOR THE DEAD by David Hewson and it KICKS ASS) for a little while, and then I got tired to I went back upstairs, but then I still couldn't get to sleep so I gave up and went downstairs and slept on the couch. I was out like a light as soon as my head hit the pillow. And then I had a weird dream.

I dreamt that I'd just had gastric bypass surgery. My mom and dad and brother were with me at the clinic. I'd just woken up and they were preparing me to go home, giving me instructions on how to take care of my wound. It was a small incision above my pubic bone, and it was from there that they'd apparently taken out my intestines and fooled around with them. The nurse was telling me I couldn't take any medication until I healed, but my incision was starting to hurt. And then we had to go talk about my insurance coverage; the surgery was only $6000, and I thought that was quite a deal because that was about what our car cost.

So then my parents were taking me home, and I was SO HUNGRY but I wasn't allowed to eat, because if I did I would get sick. And I was really worried about causing some sort of tear in my abdomen that would cause me to bleed to death. And the nurse had told me absolutely no soda because the carbonation would cause problems, and the first thing I did was drink a Dr. Pepper, so I was freaking about about killing myself by doing that. So then I started freaking out and crying because I had the surgery in the first place, and now I would never be able to eat normally ever again. But the worst was I got home and had to tell The Husband that I'd had the surgery; I'd never told him I was doing it. I was too embarrassed that I needed it and that I was having it done to tell him, so he was angry. And then I woke up.

What the heck was up with that?

ten little reviews--THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW

SPOILERS!!!

When I was little, I was terrified of the Emergency Broadcast System. I have a traumatic memory of running through the house screaming my head off while that buzzing filled the house, my dad shouting from the shower for me to shut up. I used to keep a pillow case of my favorite stuffed animals under my bed in case we needed to head for the basement to hide from a tornado, or if a fire broke out and we had to make a run for it. I was neurotic from a very early age.

Now I have to be afraid of Overnight Ice Ages. Great.

The Day After Tomorrow was the spoonful of sprinkles on top of an evening that left me wishing it was the day after tomorrow. This has nothing to do with the movie, but I must share that The Husband and I went on another of our trademarked Dollar Movie and Taco Bell dates, and not only did the movie suck ass but the guy working the pick-up window at The Border tried to pick-up me. While my husband was sitting next to me in the car. He fondled my hand as he gave me my change. And then he was so preoccupied with Rico Suaving me that he forgot to give us some of our food, necessitating a trip inside. AND I was very sick to my stomach after eating the food, but that may have been the Grinders from earlier in the day but I'm not willing to believe that because Grinders is awesome.

In other words, WHAT A NIGHT.

The Day After Tomorrow is one of the worst movies ever made. I feel I can say that unequivocally. In fact, I could not watch it without giggling and thinking of motifs to lift to improve my own Flush Point. Because they are the same movie. But with hail instead of toilets. The Day After Tomorrow is also exactly like Godzilla without Godzilla and Matthew Broderick and Independence Day without Will Smith's pecs. Because seriously, Dennis Quaid is the new Bill Pullman.

The Day After Tomorrow is all about a catastrophic climate change that results in destruction not anywhere near as cool as the White House getting torched by space aliens. Instead it snows. A lot. And gets really cold really quick. Which for a person like me--who right now in the midst of mid-80s temperatures is wearing a t-shirt and black fleece pullover--is true horror. But stuff happens to people we should give a shit about but don't, and Dick Cheney is an ass even as a fictional character, and hey, isn't the president that guy that ran a detective agency off of a boat and homo-erotically palled around with another guy and a geek who's best friend was a robot?

Dennis Quaid knows something bad is going down, but no one will listen to him because for some reason everyone but Bilbo Baggins hates him. It's probably because he has a job that takes him away from home for months at a time but he has the smug audacity to own house plants AND come home acting all pissed because they're dead. He's divorced/separated from a doctor who cares more about her patients than herself, which should be an endearing quality but instead made me wish all the more for her Tragic Onscreen Death. They have a son who's WICKED SMART and has A CHIP ON HIS SHOULDER, so he's totally going to redeem himself by knowing what the hell's going on and building out of a tub of recycling and a roll of scotch tape the spaceship that will take everyone to another habitable planet. Not really but almost. So then it snows some more, and people burn stuff to stay warm, and then it snows, and then everyone goes to Mexico and lives happily ever after, YAY AMERICA!!!

Just to warn everyone ahead of time, THIS MOVIE IS FICTION. Although it is based on the non-fiction work of two crazy people, "The Coming Global Superstorm" by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber (SIDE NOTE: I have all of Whitley Strieber's books and I used to listen to Art Bell's radio show, until he left the air after the Government threatened him and his family with death for SPEAKING THE TRUTH), you recognize it as fiction when at the end of the movie the Dick Cheney character APOLOGIZES FOR BEING WRONG. This would never happen in real life, and totally breaks the fourth wall and ruined all illusions I had about the movie.

Although I do not have any trouble believing what I've now decided is the GRAND PLAN OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION. See, they are intentionally screwing with the climate in order to bring about a global environmental catastrophe in order to bring about radical positive changes in family values. Because in this film it is once again proven that there is nothing better at bringing about the reconciliation of a failed marriage like catastrophic global catastrophe. Because everyone lives happily ever after, even if they are in refugee tent camps in Mexico.

And everyone does live, because apparently no one dies during such catastrophic events unless they are smarmy or misguided, and even then it happens off screen so we don't care. Seriously, like, these people thought snow was the worst thing they had to contend with, when days before they were swimming in CHEST-HIGH NEW YORK SEWER WATER? I must have missed the memo sent out congratulating humanity on totally wiping out cholera.

I do have to admit I felt some affinity with those heartbroken at having to burn books to stay alive, although if I were them I totally would have been like, "Anne Rice books first!!!" That would have kicked ass.

All, though, is not lost. There is a moral to this story: Nature proves that God loves Monty Python as much as we do, as a tanker floats through downtown Manhattan, just like at the beginning of The Meaning of Life.

Unfortunately for us, The Day After Tomorrow lacks a plot, plausible acting, realistic dialogue, and a machine that goes "ping."

Cloud Nine--THE PLEASURE OF MY COMPANY

This one will be short and sweet.

I read. I know that after seeing my other entries, this is difficult to believe. You probably think, all she does is watch TV and go to the movies, but that fact is if I try real hard I can read at around a college level, and I occasionally do.

I should be reading around the college level research for my thesis, but instead I'm working my way through everything that's been recommended on Salon.com in the last couple of months, and some shitty books "YOU'LL LOVE IF YOU LIKED THE DA VINCI CODE!!!" Which I have but haven't read yet, but I'm a sucker for a conspiracy, especially if it involves the Illuminati or some variation of, so even though Angels & Demons sucked ass I'm totally going to read the Da Vinci Code. But I refuse to try to figure it out for myself!!! I may even read the last page first.

But I felt compelled to write. I just finished a book that had me crying so hard at the end that The Husband awoke from a deep sleep next to me in bed and told me to go blow my nose. That book was Steve Martin's newest novel, The Pleasure of My Company.

Granted, I cry at everything. I cried at the end of Shrek because it was so happy. I cried when they first showed the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park because it was so damn cool and real. I BELIEVED the dinosaurs were real!!! Seriously, it was awesome.

This book made me cry because it was very melancholy, and then very happy. I sound like a four year old talking about my favorite My Pretty Pony, but you must forgive me as I'm still blubbering.

Daniel is trapped in the throws of OCD. His weekly walks to the local Rite Aid to stare longingly at Zandy the Pharmacist take 45 minutes because he can't walk over curbs. On a lark he enters an essay contest, "Why I am the Most Average American." His fascination with his therapist, Clarrisa, is rivaled only by his obsession with Elizabeth, the real estate agent showing apartments across the street. Despite his shortcomings, Daniel thinks very highly of himself, with some disastrous results. Eventually he comes to find the tightly ordered routine of his life coming apart at the seams, and instead of retreating into himself, he reaches out to grasp onto the passing sleeves of those around him, a child guided over the curbs of life.

So, the book is fantastic. Did you ever see LA Story? It's like that, funny and yet bittersweet. You never saw LA Story? DAMN YOU!!! Go and see it!!! But please, at some point read The Pleasure of My Company. It's only 162 pages long, a three hour read at the most. And it's awesome. I think it may be up there with Microserfs, my all-time favorite book.

I'm off to blow my nose, take a couple of Excedrin, and try to calm down a little. Sometimes a good cry feels really good, you know?

eight--I, ROBOT

SPOILERS!!!!

So the brother and I were on the phone a few weeks ago: he was thanking me profusely for emailing him a link to the new Alien V Predator movie, and I was telling him to have a good time seeing it without me because there are TOTALLY going to be Things Popping Out of People in the movie and although I have gotten a bit better with watching things that tangentally can be considered Things Popping Out of People (like Ron Weasley vomiting up slugs in that Harry Potter movie that I can't remember which one it was specifically) Alien is the Numero Uno Things Popping Out of People experience for me and so it will always be avoided at all costs.

Even watching the trailer for Aliens V Predator is a big step for me. I should be congratulated.

So anyway, the brother and I are on the phone a few weeks ago when I ask if he's seen the trailer for Will Smith's movie, I, ROBOT.

"Yeah, and it looks like it's going to suck," he says. "When did you want to go see it?"

So it was with extremely low expectations that I entered I, ROBOT. In the end I was pleasantly surprised. It's not all that bad, although the brother hated it, but he's still into wrestling, so take his opinion as you will. It's decent enough for a summer movie, with lots of stuff blowing up, and a decent enough story that makes sense until you think about it later, but by then you're so struck by the coolness of the movie you don't care but you still do because yeah the plot holes are pretty big. But then again you don't care because you saw it in the afternoon so you didn't pay full price.

Will Smith stars as Will Smith, a cop with a grudge/secret emotional pain/bad attitude/chip on his shoulder/cynical streak/problem with authority/hatred of the world. Pretty sucky stuff happened to him that seriously messed him up, but of course he immediately goes back to work because it's better to be messed up in the head when you're at your cop job and have access to perps and guns, rather than recuperating at home where the worst you can do is eat a lot of Cheez-Its and watch Maury's "I'm fifteen, I was pregnant at twelve, You are the father of this baby" show. Will Smith hates robots and unfortunately for him this is Chicago 2035, where the cars don't fly but there are fifty kagillion robots running around. Everyone has one, because it's obviously better to dump that annoying illegal immigrant you can barely understand and who costs five dollars a day to scrub your toilets when you can pay ten thousand in one lump sum and get a robot to do it.

Seriously, just to jump in here: there are like NO HOMELESS PEOPLE in Chicago in 2035. I'm assuming they've all been killed and converted into Soylent Green. Because when you've got robots working at Fed Ex and tending bar at your local dive, where are all the people who used to have those jobs going to go? Bush is behind this, I just know it.

Just to jump in again: The aforementioned local dive in the movie is the OVALTINE, which even though is supposedly in Chicago is actually in Vancouver, and was featured in the third season X-Files episode "Jose Chung's From Outer Space." I am not a geek.

So Ephram Cochran is making robots, his discovery of warp drive apparently a side project he thought more of as a hobby. At the beginning of the movie he does a Greg Louganis out the window of his 20th floor lab. His hologram calls Will Smith in to investigate, and of course while everyone else is quick to write it off as a suicide, Will Smith knows that it's murder. Because the chip on his shoulder whispered it to him. He immediately fingers a suspect: Sonny, a Robot with Feelings. At first, Will Smith thinks Sonny killed Cochran just to see what it'd be like to kill someone, but Sonny keeps calling Cochran "Father," and I think this was supposed to have Jesus overtones, but I just kept thinking about Data on Star Trek and his evil twin, Lore. Which this is sort of like but not quite.

So then there's this hot chick and she's a psychologist working to make the robots more humanlike. Which of course is ironic because she's a severe, stone cold bitch. Get it? This movie is FILLED TO THE BRIM with ironies, like Will Smith hates robots who are marginalized in society and he's black so his people have been marginalized so you'd think he'd relate and then the chick has no feelings but she studies the human mind and tries to get robots to seem like they feel things. It's deep. Seriously.

So then the movie is kind of like a weird buddy-cop movie, because Will Smith is kinda working with the bitch scientist (because after overcoming an initial period of hate and distrust they grow to like and respect one another and recognize their own faults and attempt to overcome them while working together to achieve a common goal), but then he's also kind of working with the robot (because after overcoming an initial period of hate and distrust they grow to like and respect one another and recognize their own faults and attempt to overcome them while working together to achieve a common goal). And then the robot kicks ALL SORTS OF ASS!!! And Will Smith says some smart ass things which is incredibly endearing and everyone comes to realize that he was right all along and actually has a heart of gold and was working for the betterment of man- and robot-kind. And then there are more Jesus allusions. THE END.

Which is really sad because this movie would have been awesome had it been like Alien Nation, and Sonny and Will Smith become partners on the Chicago police force and get into zany adventures which are predicated upon some misunderstanding arising from an inadvertent miscommunication. And then there'd be homoerotic overtones.

Because you know this whole time you've been thinking about sex robots.

On a side note, the showing I attended featured a trailer for RESIDENT EVIL : APOCALYPSE. Apocalypse is my favorite word because it makes me think of Acapulco. Which makes me think of The Love Boat. Gopher was so hot. Anyway, this trailer made me realize that giving up smoking was the worst thing I could have ever done because

A) Killing zombies is cool, but killing zombies while you're smoking is even cooler and

B) You never know when you're going to have to set something on fire, and you're guaranteed to have a lighter on you if you smoke. Imagine, just for a minute, if zombies actually did take over the world and you had just doused a warehouse full of them with gasoline and you're standing there wanting to set it ablaze but you can't because you gave up Camels and threw out your "Life's a Bitch and So am I" disposable lighter. I'm just saying.

Lucky #7-SPIDER MAN 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

Before I begin, I just have to preface my review by saying that I have no right whatsoever to talk ill of comic book geeks. I collect my fair share of crap; why, just this afternoon I was at The Laughing Ogre, screaming at my brother because I couldn't figure out in what order to read the various books of 30 Days of Night (soon to be a Major Motion Picture) and lamenting the fact that the new Neil Gaiman series, at $3.50 a piece and eight issues total, would run altogether far more than the $22 I'd originally estimated. Funny side story: the brother looked at me askance and was all like, "You did see how much they cost right?" And I'm like, yeah, three fiddy. And he's wheels turning in his head and smoke coming out of his ears and he's like, "That's...more than twenty-four dollars, not twenty-two!"

Math is hard.

But as I was saying, I have no right to talk about people. Why, just this afternoon as we drove to the theater, we were behind a car with an Enterprise Car Rental sticker on the bumper, and I thought back longingly to the days when I wanted a Lariat Car Rental company bumper sticker for my car.

Never heard of Lariat? That's strange...because Lariat was the company Mulder and Scully always rented cars from when they were off on cases.

See. I can't talk about people.

HOWEVER, there was a group of people outside the theater after SPIDER MAN 2: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK discussing myriad ways the plot diverged from the comic continuity. "I don't remember Mary Jane getting married until much later," said one.

Actually, it was in AMAZING SPIDER MAN #392 that she first talked about marriage.

I'm evil. It was actually FANTASTIC SPIDER MAN #195.

Anyway, this is not why you're here.

Let me begin by saying SPIDER MAN 2: THE LEGEND OF CURLY'S GOLD is the GREATEST MOVIE EVER. This is not hyperbole. Although I will say now that it will only hold this title until BLADE THREE: RETURN OF THE KING OF VAMPIRE ASS KICKING comes out this winter, which we saw a preview for and which features shitloads of Wesley Snipes being a total badass and blowing a lot of shit up. That's one thing SPIDER MAN 2: 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS lacks in spades: ass-kicking Wesley Snipes. It also lacks a lot of shit blowing up, and when I say it lacks shit blowing up I mean shit does blow up a lot but it's not cool shit. It's like lame ass Necessary For The Plot shit. The Kelmeister only gives a stamp of approval to completely gratuitous sex and violence.

So why did I think Spider Man 2: The Secret of the Ooze was the greatest movie ever made? It made me cry. And I saw a naked picture of Tobey Maguire on the internet and he's hung like Seabiscuit and I couldn't get the mental image of him playing naked cards with Leo DiCaprio and David Blaine out of my head. But this was okay, because Kirsten Dunst had protruding nipples through the whole film, so my husband had something to think about instead of me thinking about Tobey Maguire.

Also, J.K. Simmons, who is Jameson, rocks. You might remember him from his star turn as the ass-kicking Dr. Skoda on Law and Order. I miss Dr. Skoda. Also he was on Oz, but I don't have cable and I would watch it on DVD but I have to keep myself pure until ALIAS season 3 comes out.

By the way, the season finale of Alias was awesome right up until the end. I still can't decide if it sucks ass or not.

So, anyway, Spider Man 2: On The Rocks was awesome. It was funny and sad and inspiring and made me Proud To Be An American. Although, dude if you're living in a shit apartment and your elderly aunt is getting thrown out of her house, you stay with her and give her some of your pizza delivery money. It doesn't take a super hero to figure out the best way out of that situation. I mean, Peter apparently still spends a lot of time there anyway. And if he's concerned about having his own place to attract the chicks...he wears a costume. The chicks would dig you more if you lived in your parents' basement. MJ only likes him because she knew him before the suit. And she probably knows he's hung like Seabiscuit.

Also, pay attention to the very end. It's weird. I think it was supposed to MEAN SOMETHING PROFOUND, but was instead a downer and non-sensemaking.

Looking back on my review, it may seem like I actually hated Spider Man 2: Back in the Habit, I'm thoroughly recommending it. You can't go wrong with Spider Man 2: The Quickening. My mother would totally love this movie, and that really means something. I'm totally looking forward to Spider Man 3: Revolutions, when Spidey battles the evil Hobgoblin, who will in the movie be the alter ego of Harry Osborn although in the comic he's Roderick Kingsley.
Also, as a shout out to Nala and Giga, we now know who does the super hero's laundry.

6th in a series--THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK

So last night after much pleading and cajoling my brother let me borrow season two of ALIAS. If only you could see me rolling my eyes. At least Reporter Boy grew some balls and some sense and is actually keeping a low profile. I'm sensing he's a goner, in part because of his change of heart and in part because he finally shaved. It's not a good sign. Also, Vaughn needs to get laid so he and Sydney can stop spending 15.739% of the show making moonie eyes at one another. This also goes for Jack, who is not making moonie eyes at his ex-dead-wife-spy-woman but instead gazes upon her with a mix of pained heartbreak and constipation. But at least he still kicks some ass. And he actually has a heart to break. And finally Sydney, GET ANOTHER FUCKING JOB AND STOP YER BITCHIN'!!! Geez Louise, "Now I can finally be truthful to you about myself because you were tortured and had your face bashed in and some ribs broken and teeth pulled and I barely saved your life and now you're going to have to pretend to be a drug addict and your life is ruined but at least now I can be honest with you *sniff*." WHATEVER!!!! ARGH!!! And season three doesn't come out until September.

But this isn't why you're here. You want to know about Vin Diesel's rock hard abs.

Unfortunately you don't get to see them. He pretty much keeps a tank top on the whole time. But unlike VAN HELSING, this movie kicked a ton of ass, ran real fast over to where all the ass landed, and then kicked it again. It was a total immersion experience, with awesome art direction, a story and tone that harkened back to the brilliance of CONAN THE BARBARIAN, Nick Chinlund, and lots of ass kicking.

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, which is either a typo or an allusion to the fifty sequels sure to follow, begins five years after the end of PITCH BLACK. You'll remember--unless you've chosen to totally block that particular film experience from your mind--that PITCH BLACK was that movie with that hot chick from FARSCAPE. Which was how the film was known, THAT MOVIE WITH THAT HOT CHICK FROM FARSCAPE, before Vin Diesel became the huge star and media darling that he is today, because if they'd made PITCH BLACK today instead of back then it would be known as THAT MOVIE WITH THAT AWESOME BALD-HEADED ASS-KICKER, YOU KNOW THAT GUY I'M TALKING ABOUT, THE ONE THAT WAS IN THE MOVIE WITH THE CARS, NO, THE GOOD ONE ABOUT THE CARS, NOT THAT CRAP WITH NICK CAGE. So in that movie (PITCH BLACK) Diesel played Riddick, a total badass evil dude everyone was afraid of, but it turned out he had a heart of gold even if he totally denied it, because he was totally trying to save everyone even though they hated and feared him. And he kicked a lot of ass. The best part about the movie was that everybody got the shit kicked out of them and killed, even the people you totally thought would live. This also happened in the totally awesome Thomas Jane pre-PUNISHER movie, DEEP BLUE SEA, one of many underrated killers-from-the-deep movies that came out around the same time, including DEEP RISING, LAKE PLACID and VIRUS (these are crap, but they're AWESOME!!!) So at the end of PITCH BLACK, Riddick escapes with some priest dude (which I totally don't remember, so I'm going to have to watch it again) and this girl who was pretending to be a boy named Jack. But then she got her period which totally ruined the disguise and made her an easy target for all the menses-sniffing monsters.

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK (can you imagine the titles of the sequels? this is going to be insane; it's going to be like, THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, PART TWO: RIDDICK IS LARGE AND IN CHARGE and it's totally going to take forever to type all that out) starts five years later, with Riddick being chased by these mercenaries after the bounty on his head, placed there by the priest dude he saved to get him to come to the priest's planet to save it from an invasion of the Necromongers, a religious cult intent on bringing about a total conversion of everyone in the universe and the creation of something called the Underverse, which they never show but if you go there you get special powers, one of which is the ability to get your ass kicked and handed back to you on a platter by Vin Diesel. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Lots of stuff happens, and then it turns into a whole different movie, and then Riddick catches up with Jack who's now a badass hot chick with the very lame and unthreatening name Kyra, and then more stuff happens and then there's a big fight and Riddick kicks all sorts of ass.

But then the ending is very melancholy. Which you wouldn't expect from an action film. And that's what makes this film so awesome: it's a character study of a man reluctantly called to fill a role required by his destiny, who recognizes his role and his need to assume it but struggles with an inner conflict born of his antagonism toward all authority and his ambivalence toward taking his place within that authority. As I alluded earlier, these are similar themes explored in CONAN THE BARBARIAN, and then endings of both films are similar, as well. This is another reason why this movie is so awesome: it resuscitates a long struggling (if not dead) genre and reinvigorates it by situating it in another space/time. There are plans to make KING CONAN with Triple H from WWE, but after seeing this it's totally unnecessary, except as a visit with a favorite character.

Not to mention the fact that THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK gives you plenty of cool shit to look at. The costumes are AMAZING, as are the sets, with lots of screaming faces and statues of bodies writhing in torment. And it may seem like two different movies, but it comes together brilliantly in the end.

For now, I will completely ignore the one insanity (I'm sure there are more; I was just basking in the gloriousness of THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK) that if you're on a planet with a surface temperature of 700 degrees, parking your ass in a bit of shade ain't going to help you much. Not that I've ever been to a planet with a surface temperature of 700 degrees, but I have been outdoors in Ohio in the summer, which is pretty much the same thing, what when you take the humidity into consideration, because as we all know it is the humidity more than it is the heat.
I will have to watch PITCH BLACK again to see which one I preferred, but really, they're apples and oranges. PITCH BLACK is ass-kicking leaning toward horror, and THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK is ass-kicking leaning toward Society of Creative Anachronism reenactment. In a good way. If there is such a thing.

Now, my suggestion for THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK TWO: WHAT, DID YOU NOT GET YOUR ASS KICKED ENOUGH THE LAST TIME? More nudity. And they totally need to cast Grace Jones as a bad guy. It'd totally be like ALIENS VS. PREDATOR of the cool-as-hell ass kickers!!!

Review #5--MY LETTER TO SALON.COM

In anticipation of my upcoming review of THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK--which you know you are totally salivating at the very thought of--I am going to provide you with a review of my first ever published letter to the editor, which appears on Salon.com. It is not the first thing I've written to appear on the Internet (as evidenced by the blog you are now reading, and various and sundry pieces of X-Files fan fiction that you could probably find if you looked hard enough, but which I would advise you not to read because they are all classified "post-episode," which means you probably wouldn't understand what was going on unless you'd seen said episodes. And yes, I've written fan fiction. Can you honestly say you're really surprised?).

Also, this is not the first letter I've ever written to Salon. I think I've fired off about four total, one of which I was particularly proud of, a diatribe against a piece of fluff they'd printed implying that skin picking is a strange form of erotic foreplay. As a person who has suffered with compulsive skin picking for most of her life, it is neither erotic nor foreplay. It's disgusting and annoying and dangerous (I've gotten a few skin infections from it, and there's a case in a medical journal that you can google about a guy who exposed bone through a spot on his back he kept picking at). It's taken me a long time to get over just being embarrassed by it, and the writer equated it with grooming done by apes. Which is actually a theory proposed by some psychologists, that much like other types of obsessive compulsive behaviors it is a cleaning ritual taken to extremes, but in my case my therapist thinks it's a coping mechanism. The repetitious scratching is obscenely soothing, and the meticulous attention to scabs and sores provides a distraction from stressors. The theory makes a lot of sense even if the behavior doesn't. God bless The Husband and his infinite patience...what he must think when I come at him after my shower, thrusting a box of band-aids in his face and pointing at my back, promising I'll try to stop for real this time. But, I digress. The point of the story is that I fired off a letter to Salon calling them to task for mocking a very serious and very real mental disorder, and they didn't print it. I like to think that it was because it caused them to completely rethink their views on life and politics and PC sensitivity and they were so humilitated that they couldn't print it for fear of the public backlash, but it was probably because my letter was too long.

So my newest missive was in response to this article, about a man's dissatisfaction with Netflix. The Husband was a patron of Netflix when we first started dating. It was a total waste of money. Two people as lazy as we, coming together or acting of our own volition to even browse the web site--let alone place an order--was not about to happen. Also, DVDs had a tendency to sit around for...well, years it felt like, before we could be bothered to send them back. Needless to say, he cancelled once the trial period was over. The author of the article joined and cancelled over and over, until he'd finally decided that he'd try Wal-Mart's fledgling mail-order service. So I wrote a letter. Not to admonish him for even THINKING about using Wal-Mart for anything other than a conversation topic at which to direct derision and scorn, but to offer a modest suggestion. With that, I present...THE LETTER:

"A suggestion from a librarian: Try your local public library. You can reserve the new releases, they have lots of little-known independent films and -- best of all -- the movies are free."

Getting it out of the way, I work in a library, but until I finish my paper and graduate, I don't think I can technically call myself a "librarian," per say, but it's a hell of a lot easier than saying acquisitions assistant/copy cataloger, which is my actual job and which demands much convoluted explanation so I don't even bother other than to say "I buy books and put them in the computer," which still doesn't help, and I know I'm doing a grave disservice to the profession by not carefully explaining what I do to the uninitiated, but really would you sit there quietly and attentively while I outlined Dewey and LC and MARC tagging and whether or not the main entry is still relevant now that we rely more on keyword searching? I didn't think so. But getting back to the review...

This letter is AMAZING. It grabs you from the first word and delivers its message like well-placed devastating body blows to the psyche. It is concise without being terse, succinct without mincing words, and properly uses dashes. It is an opinionated ray of sunshine in an otherwise cloudy land of senseless demagoguery. It is brilliantly formulated and argued, and displays toward the author of the original piece tact which is wholly undeserving. It made me laugh, cry, and pee in my pants, and I wrote it. I can only imagine what patriotism and altruism it inspires in the heart of the casual reader.

ALIAS--visual crack

SPOILERS!!!

Of course I never watched Alias, how silly of you to ask. It was on at the same time as X-Files, THE GREATEST SHOW EVER ON TELEVISION (until halfway through season 6) so I could not watch Alias, although I had at other times watched other things while taping The X-Files and then watched it at a later date. Which I actually did on a more regular basis as the series dragged on, to the point that I think I (THE HORROR) actually missed watching a couple of episodes. But as I am now slowly working my way through the DVDs with the Husband, introducing him to the EXQUISITE PAIN AND SUFFERING that was The X-Files, I'll finally get around to watching them. We've just started season 4, back when it KICKED ASS. Ah, Scully's cancer, her lost ova, her dalliance in Philadelphia with the cute guy from Space: Above and Beyond . *Sigh* Those were the days.

But this entry is about Alias, though you'd never know it. My brother, also a huge TV geek, has all of Alias on DVD and demanded that I watch it because YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE MISSING. And of course, I absolutely couldn't start watching in the middle.

---As a sidebar, I have problem which I have no problem admitting to: I CANNOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES begin ANYTHING IN THE MIDDLE. Case in point: comics. I have yet to read SANDMAN because I don't own them all, and don't want to find myself lost or stuck in the middle of the story. As Alias is really a soap opera in many respects, I couldn't just sit down one random weekend and expect to know what was going on.---

Getting into Alias was an uphill battle. The first episode SUCKED ASS. I watched it six or seven times, leaving in the middle some times, falling asleep once. The Husband recalled coming home to find the first episode playing in the living room and me taking a bath. It's really...really.....really.........boring. So this memorial day weekend we forced ourselves to sit in front of the TV and watch it because there was nothing else on and it was too early to go anywhere or mow the lawn. And it was still really...really.....really.........boring.

BUT THEN COMPLETELY OUT OF NOWHERE THE ENDING WAS REALLY REALLY AWESOME!!!! OHMYGOD!!!! It was like getting hit upside the head with a lead pipe. And then kicked in the solar plexus with a four inch stiletto. And then next thing we knew it was Tuesday morning and we had to go to work and we'd put behind us 12 hours of Alias. And the only reason we quit was because the cliffhanger didn't really involve anything blowing up. IT'S AWESOME!!!
But I still can't watch it on Sunday nights because we haven't completely caught up yet.

Alias stars Jennifer Garner from Daredevil and 13 going on 30 as Sydney Bristow, a woman way too emotional to be an effective spy. Yeah, she kicks a lot of ass, but then she'll have an existential crisis that jeopardizes the mission or the lives of other agents. Seriously, at least once an episode we were thinking, fuck this killing her because she's a mole--chick is totally going to get someone killed what with her crying all the time. Seriously, that can't be good. She's always going on about I'VE GOT so-and-so's BLOOD ON MY HANDS, like BOO HOO it's your damn job, go deliver pizzas or something. And she's in grad school on top of that for some degree we totally can't figure out, but like writing your doctoral thesis isn't hard enough without having to worry all about your Great Moral Dilemma. Although if she were writing on a new interpretation of Lady MacBeth, totally based on her own experiences, I bet that would kick ass. I'm totally going back to school and writing my dissertation..."OUT OUT DAMN SPOT: SYDNEY BRISTOW AS POSTMODERN REINTERPRETATION OF LADY MACBETH." It probably wouldn't be very postmodern, but with that in the title plus my non-ironic use of the colon, I'd totally pass.
So in the first boring episode her stick-in-the-mud doctor boyfriend gets killed, and she spends the next three seasons crying about it. It's all her fault he's killed too, which she conveniently forgets when she's completely focused on her Great Moral Dilemma. So she works for what she thinks is a covert black-ops branch of the CIA called SD-6 (which is a total ROBOTECH shout-out) but it turns out that SD-6 is actually an organization fighting against the CIA, started by these renegade dudes from various worldwide intelligence organizations. Or something. And so Sydney goes to work for the actually CIA as a double-agent trying to bring down SD-6. Or something. And her dad's a double-agent too, or maybe a triple agent working for the Russians, or maybe he's just an ordinary guy working for a bank who totally likes to mind fuck his daughter. Or something. But Sydney's got a hottie contact in the CIA and they totally want to have sex which they totally will because the First Law of Speed comes into play. But then she also likes her reporter friend who's getting too close to the truth which for some reason prevents him from shaving regularly.

All of this is incredibly confusing. Everyone in the show has a serious problem with LEAPING TO CONCLUSIONS WITHOUT EVIDENCE TO BACK IT UP. I mean, really, they could find a half-eaten hot dog in an alley and come up with the theory that Oscar Meyer is running an illegal drug cartel out of Bogota. It's almost exhilarating, the daring leaps of logic. But shit blows up, and the gadgets guy is funny, and the editing and storytelling are insanely awesome, and the BEST was that the reporter guy found this bug in this chick's car and had it tested and it was transmitting so he spends the episode sneaking off to talk to the bug and beg for the people on the other end to call him. So he's getting drunk with Sydney's roommate, and she's singing into the bug and laughing, and his cell phone rings and this mechanical voice says, "tell her to stop playing with the bug!!!" It was AWESOME!!!

So, yeah, last night the Husband and I both dreamed about Alias. And right now I'm totally jonesing for more. Because when we were forced to stop, Sydney's father was telling her that he wasn't the Russian spy in the family, her angelic dead mother was!!! What does this mean for Sydney and the already strained relationship with her father, seeing as how she was planning on turning him in to the FBI as a traitor? Will she totally sex up that dude from the CIA? What crazy new outfit will she be wearing next? And how the hell can Jennifer Garner sleep at night after telling the world she never works out and is just naturally skinny? OOO, I HATE HER!!!

But Alias is awesome.