PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Comic cons

Last saturday I went to a small local comic convention. I hate calling a six hour, one day thing a con but there ya' go.  That's what they called it - Twin Cities Comic Book Convention. It was more like a dealers room, a small dealers room, with no other convention stuff going on. It didn't cost anything, so I shouldn't complain. I came to spend some money and leave. I had a plan.

There were a bunch of comic dealers all crammed together in a small room. Someone with a huge ass could barely get through some of the spaces between the tables, especially if there were customers pawing through long boxes of comics. I got there just after the 10 am start and people were already leaving. In the tiny dealers room there were a few more customers than dealers, and there weren't very many dealers. Customers kept poking me in the ass with their purses, oh, and a baby. Hopefully attendance, and the purse to ass ratio, will improve over time. They probably didn't get enough dealers to sign on to rent a bigger space. This lack of event was held at a Best Western in Eagan. This is a rarely travelled to suburb for me, it's east and south of me, below St Paul. I really didn't think to look at the odometer but it can't be more than 15 miles from my house as the road flies.

There is a big comic convention in October, the MCBA's imaginatively named FallCon, and they actually get guests to come. The MBCA also hold a MicroCon in April, which seems to have many more dealers than this new upstart. Back in the late 80's and early 90's was the last time I was at any comic conventions. They are different than sf conventions. More dealing and less staying in a hotel and partying, although the partying happens at the big regional and national cons.

I was going to the con to check out the stock of a local shop. Chris Budel, the owner, has been in the business for a long time. His shop, The Nostalgia Zone, is in the same site that various comic shops have been in over the last 20 plus years. It's the best back issue store in town, just a ton of stuff, especially older material. It's where I send people, both looking for back issues and trying to sell stuff. DreamHaven doesn't buy back issue comics anymore, haven't for quite a while. NZ's really the only place to get a large assortment of back issue Disneys in the Twin Cities. The other shops occasionally have some but not very many titles and hardly any old ones. There hasn't been a good market for them in the last many years. Chris says that might be turning around, with a little more interest of late. Damn, competition, good thing I have many of the "key" issues. I was at the Nostalgia Zone shop last wednesday and learned that Chris has a different batch of comics he goes to conventions with, stuff I had not seen. Sure enough I managed to pick up a nice little pile, leaving a few for later. Pick those up at the Fallcon, if there are any left.

Since I was in Eagan I figured I'd eat at the Culver's and check out the other two comic shops that were a bit south of the Best Western. Both shops are on a street called Cliff Road. Is a road a street? It hadn't taken me too long to go through the Disney comics in the convention and it was bit early for Culver's so I headed south to Cliff Road. I picked turning right as the thing to do on exiting 35E and after a bit, there it was, nestled in a strip mall. Cedar Cliff Collectibles, it's a fairsize store with a mixture of toy and action figures, old vintage comics, some tapes and movies, a shit load of video games of all types. I looked through the Dell and Goldkey comics which were all tossed in long boxes randomly. At least there were only two. I found a couple of Disney's, a Boris Karloff Thriller Dell Giant comic with what could be a Richard Powers cover, and a Jet Dream comic from Goldkey. I remembered the cover to Jet Dream and her Stunt-Girl Counterspys. It's from June 1968 and it was the only issue and it's awful. Here's a funny review of it from some guy named Unca Cheeks. It was before Charlie's Angels and to my 15 year old eyes those were some cool chicks, kickin' ass in their tight white suits. It's pretty awful.

After finishing up at Cedar Cliff I went back the way I came a few miles and found the other shop closed. It was close enough to lunch timeto go to Culver's and get a butterburger. I don't go there very often, it's not in the neighborhood and it's pretty greasy. Still once a year isn't too bad, and that butterburger is pretty damn yummy, ummm. After scarfing down that bb and them crinkley cuts I retraced me trail back to The Mind's Eye Comics. It was open and it was a bust. It's one of those newer comics shops that only really has stuff from the last few years. No oldies. I went home to read comics. It was a nice day, pretty much.

Friday Night Movie 22

We watched The Pacifier with Vin Diesel and Man of the House with Tommy Lee Jones. I talked about the former June 28 and the later July 19. I still liked them both. Tommy Lee got more laughs. Both had mentions of The Sound Of Music.

Titus not Andronicus

It just occured to me yesterday that dvd's are the new syndication. Do-it-yourself syndication. Syndication at your beck and call. I love it. Watch what you want to watch when you want to watch. I could make a joke here about "we don't need no stinkin' schedules!" but, you know, if I hear that riffed on one more time..."One of these days, zoom, bam, right to the moon, baby!" That's old school comedy, and I rarely have any interest in it anymore.

I picked up the new Titus dvd. This is not the movie from 1999 but the tv series from 2000.  This is new school comedy. It's a molotov cocktail of  a sitcom, filled with an explosive mixture of fear and anger and violence. It's these things that fuel the fucked-up relationships of this wonderfully funny dysfunctional family. The series ran three seasons on Fox. I don't know how it did in the ratings, I was a regular watcher and thought it funny, then it got cancelled. On the dvd Titus says it debuted in the top twenty. Joined by regulars Stacey Keach, Cynthia Watros, Zack Ward and David Shatraw, Christopher Titus tells stories about family fun based on his real life. Here's his site, there's a bit of a bio on his bio page. Here's a nice interview that came out just before the show premiered. Here's a piece on his car. Here's an interesting piece from Bankrate.com. Here's an older mini bio for the rest of the cast. The cast is great, especially Stacey Keach as Ken Titus. He's a hard-drinkin', skirt-chasin', fun-lovin' guy, married five times, with more to come. He's a complex guy, that the series lovingly, but scaringly unfolds to us week after week, and Keach is simply brilliant.

What I like about the series is the over the top unreality of the show, while all the while still able to catch you up in an realistic and humorous look at relationships. The core of the series came from the Titus standup show Norman Rockwell is Bleeding, in which he explores his father's  alcoholism and his mother's mental illness and eventual suicide. One of the co-creators/producers described Titus as a caged lion, prowling around the stage in his stand up show. The stage is bare, except for a chair made from 2 by 4's. It looks a bit like an electric chair. It's a prop for a restless man, something to sit on, something to lean on, something to hide behind. The chair is used in the series. Titus in black and white in a small room with the chair. It's his personal space. The place he's telling you the story from. Done like a play each week, the show mostly takes place in one room, it a rather traditional sitcom format. The stories are anything but traditional. The level of violence is high. People die, and not all of them imaginary. Mixed in with this comedy cocktail is a healthy dose of discomfort. It makes the comedy funnier.

Craptastic

And I don't mean that in a good way. This bar ruins the whole Oreo taste thing for me. It's chocolate is bland and slightly bitter. There is little of the normally tasty white filling and I can barely taste it. The cookie crunches too much and doesn't taste right. There is an after taste in my mouth, mostly from the inferior chocolate. All in all a waste of a buck for two of them. I tried one yesterday and another just now, and I could not eat either one all the way to the end. Yuck.

Bunny Suicides

Here's a ton of 'em. Made me laugh.

Friday Night Movies 21

Sperhauk emailed, warning me, but I wouldn't listen. I went and bought a copy of the bare-bones Sin City dvd, even though I had been warned there was a Special Edition coming out in a few months. I followed the link Sperhauk sent me, I read the IGN  interview with Robert Rodriguez, it mentioned the Special Edition. Still I bought it, and I'll buy the Special Edition when it comes out. Maybe I'll sell this first one, or not. There are a bunch of links to other articles about RR after the main IGN piece, some of which were ok reading.

I did like the movie. It a dark, violent revenge story filmed in black and white with spot color. Frank Miller has such a violent take on the world. Find a copy of his Hardboiled. Scripted by Miller but drawn by Geoff Darrow. It's pretty entertaining, but I bought it for the Geoff Darrow art. I don't care for Miller's comic art, especially in the Sin City comic. It doesn't appeal to me, all I see is flat black. It's like a roschach test with spot color. "It's a corpse in pool of blood and urine." "That's a sandwich in a pool of mayo." Here's a nice piece from the Skeptic's Dictionary on those ink blot tests. I just found this site a few minutes ago, I didn't know anything about it. Are these tests bogus in some way? I don't hear about them much anymore, but I might not have been listening.

Sin City looks cooler than the comic. It has depth. I do like many of these recent films that break away from the traditional styles of film making. It kept me interested. I looked at the time counter after watching the movie a while and 55 minutes had passed. I couldn't make up my mind if it seemed too long or too short. There was so much detail that I felt I'd already seen a whole movie, and there was still gallons of bloodletting to come. The movie is 125 minutes. There's a wealth of detail on the IMDb trivia page. The dialog is great, you can read some here. It's not going to appeal to everyone. Sin City's stylishly dark and exciting with a blood spattered sense of humor, but peal away the skin and the hair and the toenails and it's really just a simple crime story like you'd find in many a mystery with noir roots. The rich guys are the villians, their power keeping them above the law. Which is good for them, they have some fucked-up proclivities. Along comes the tired, hardened, unstoppable hero/anti-hero, who smashes their secure hidden world wide open. There's death and destruction on the road to great personal sacrifice. Here we get to see a simular story told from the point of view of a cop and a criminal. Protection of the women. I really found this to be a fun movie to watch in the same sense Kill Bill is a fun movie to watch, or Pulp Fiction. There's a gleeful unreality to them, a cool speedy style, with great characters. I liked Bruce Willis's Hartigan, Benicio Del Toro's Jackie Boy and especially Mickey Rourke's Marv. Marv is a great character. A shambling hulk of a man. There was a Death Row Marv figure out in 1999. It vibrates and says, "Is that the best you can do, you pansies!" 

Our second feature was A Dirty Shame. I bought the NC-17 version, it has extra bear. A Dirty Shame is John Waters multi-media look at sex-addiction and the conservative backlash to the sexin' up of America, with full frontal male nudity. Twice. A little extra johnson for the ladies. An accidental blow to the head turns Tracey Ullman into a sex addict. She crosses paths with Johnny Knoxville, who leads a group of sexual fetishists and she is on the road to sexual healing. Tracey invents a new sex act. I don't think it will catch on. There is a constant chatter through the movie as characters explain to each other all sorts of sex acts, and their problems with them. Splooshing, fletching, rimming, all these perversions are dividing the neighborhood. Water's regular Mink Stole leads the group of "neuters" who are normal, thank you, and don't think about sex. I laughed pretty hard through the first 2/3 of this movie, then coasted to the end, still giggling. I had been laughed out. There are the usual gang of idiots, the regulars who work on John Waters films, several of them even get a commentary. Waters commentaries are pretty good. He talks a lot and has good stories. Besides the two commentaries, there is an 81 minute documentary. There is a deleted scene and a trailer on the menu but either button takes me to the documentary instead. There's always some crap going on with these dvd's. The movie harkens back to Water's underground days but still has a current professional look to it. The movie gets a NC-17 rating for "pervasive sexual content", that, and the couple of johnson's. Still, it made me laugh out loud several times, and it's visually one of Water's most ambitious films. There are all sorts of things going on. Animations, clips from other movies to indicate something, songs to do the same, superimpositions - both words and pictures, picture in picture flashbacks, and wire work.  Many of the weird images in the film were selected by Basket Case director Frank Henenlotter, who is involved with Something Weird Video. SWV is a treasure trove for exploitation film. A Dirty Shame all works pretty wonderfully if, like me, you buy into Water's vision, I could see where it could scare people off. Keep an eye out for the naughty plants, and the bears, they're mostly harmless.

Nick and Nora

I tell ya, just after I made all the dvd's from the laserdiscs I had of the Thin Man series they finally issue them on dvd. I bought them, it's too nice a set to pass up. Of the six films in the series, only the first The Thin Man has been out on dvd. I have a nice boxed set of 6 laser discs that I bought for 15 bucks on clearance at Suncoast. This was sometime ago, back at the end of the laserdisc age. The only extras on the laserdiscs, the trailers, nice box though.

There are seven discs in the dvd set, the six movies and a bonus disc. Each of the movie discs has a few extras, a short, a cartoon, a trailer. There are two radio programs on the After the Thin Man disc. The bonus disc has two documentaries, a sample episode of The Thin Man tv series with Peter Lawford, and another radio show.  The shorts are varied, there is a more detailed review of the series here. I did like the Robert Benchley shorts. I have enjoyed some of his shorts before, mostly from Turner, but I hadn't seen these. Benchley was a humor writer who made a lot of short films while he was in Hollywood. His life is pretty interesting. That's the Bob bio page from The Robert Benchley Society. Benchley worked for the New Yorker from 1925 to 1940 and was part of the Algonquin Round Table. Here's the page the Algonquin Hotel has on that famous eatin' trough. For a while in the 80's I was really interested in that literary scene. I had a previous bout with pre-WWII era humourists, starting back when I was still living in Winnipeg in the 7o's, after I discovered H. Allen and Thorne Smith at an early age. I don't read H. Allen much any more but I still read a Thorne Smith book every year or so. He's books are like screwball comedies on paper, just like P. G. Wodehouse writes musical comedies without the singing.

The movies are great. Well worth having in a nice movie collection. They are wonderfully rewatchable. It doen't matter who killed who, it's the characters that keep me coming back. Created in the Dashiell Hammett novel, it's William Powell and Myrna Loy who bring the characters fully to life. There are a plethoria of great characters actors in the supporting roles, some you might recognize. Maureen O' Sullivan, William Henry, Cesar Romero, James Stewart, William Law, Virginia May, C. Aubrey Smith, Barry Nelson, Donna Reed, Harry Davenport, Leon Ames, Keenan Wynn and Jane Meadows.  The scripts are great, the dialog snappy and fun, and the plots are just right for Nick and Nora. The mysteries aren't too complicated but trying to guess who dun it before the detective rarely enters my head. I'm the same way about books. I'm here to read a book or see a movie, not to solve a mystery. That is someone else's job. I already got two jobs.

Barry Trotter

Saturday Amazon dot UK barfed up a copy of the Barry Trotter Boxed Set. Currently a trilogy, Barry Trotter is the humourous parody of Harry Potter by Michael Gerber. You can read a Gerber bio here, or see his blog here. I got the British hardcover edition because they are nicer, and because they come in a shiny colorful box, and because the third book isn't out here yet. Those little hardcovers are so cute, and shiny. I can see my face in them. Gerber's FAQ has some more info about the series which has sold some 700,000 books. I am betting a lot of people haven't heard of them yet. I read the first one Christmas Day 2003, it's a fast read, and funny. Laugh out loud funny for me. Me like. I've since re-read them and am now on the third go around.

The first book is Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody. The UK edition is called Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody. And it lives up to both it's names. In the Barry universe, Barry's sold has his story to J. G. Rollins, who wrote the mostly fictional Barry Trotter and the Philosopher's Scone (Barry Trotter and the Magical Biscuit in America). With the help of the successful series he's become famous in the Muddle world as well as the magical world. Since Barry's fame helps the school keep enrollment up, he's now in his 11 year. A lazy, bored, broke and wicked Barry, he's certainly no Harry, sells the secret location of Hogwash to a tabloid. The two worlds collide when legions of unwashed Barry Trotter fans start showing up at the school, causing havoc. Headmaster Alpo Bumblemore calls Barry into his office and informs him he must stop the release of Barry Trotter and the Inevitable Attemp to Cash In, the film adaptation of the first book. That much exposure could lead to a fansplosion and possibly close down the school. Comfortable in their positions, neither Barry nor Alpo want that. Barry enlists Ron Measly and Ermine Cringer to help him. Ron, brain damaged during a brutal Quiddit match in their fifth year, is still Harry's best friend and school companion. His brain was fixed by the school nurse, dog brain was used. You can imagine. Ermine is now teaching at St. Hillary's Academy for the Marginally-Magical, a state run school in Hogbleede. Together again, our trio head off on a quest to find J. G. Rollins, to see if she can stop the movie, but she's not home. Learning the movie's producers might be the real people to talk to Barry, Ermine and Lon take a magical shark to New York City. They spend the rest of the book bouncing around America. Along the way they meet up with Ferd and Jorge, Serious Blech, and the Evil Lord Valumart. That last ones the evil bastard who gave Barry his interrobang scar. There's plenty of jokes, again with the laughing.

The second book is Barry Trotter and the Unnecessary Sequel. Barry and Ermine are married and they return to Hogwash to enroll their eleven year old son son Nigel. The school headmaster Dorco Malfeasance suddenly dies and the plot installs Barry and Ermine as the co-heads. Wackiness ensues. Lon's back, still brain damaged. He's slowly becoming my favorite character. In the third book, Barry Trotter and the Dead Horse, we learn how Lon became brain damaged. In a series of flashbacks Barry tells the story of his fifth year at Hogwash. It's an attempt by the school's psychiatrist to get Barry to face some of his problems, like growing younger. It's thought that the spell he's under is all in his head. Ermine is still head of Hogwash, she agrees and thinks it's a good idea. There's the added bonus, maybe Barry will be less of a jerk. He's not a very likeable character, our Barry, but he's pretty funny at times. There are lots of jokes in the series, there is some pretty silly stuff, which is okay with me. Unfortunately these books aren't for kids, unless they're the Jukes family kids. If you like the Harry books there is a wealth of material here that you'll get and some of it is pretty funny. If you don't like Harry you probably don't want to read these anyway.

Friday Night Movies 20

Our first feature in an All Godzilla Night was Godzilla Final Wars. It was the 50th Anniversary of Godzilla last year and this is the last of the Godzilla films. At least for now. They aren't making enuf money over at Toho. GFW cost a lot and you can see it on the screen. There's a shit load of monsters, some of which haven't been seen in movies for decades, all attacking all over the world at the same time. Many famous landmarks take a beating. The humans resources are taxed to the limit and it looks bad until some aliens show up and capture several monsters. None of which is Godzilla, he doesn't show up until the 63 minute mark, when he's released from his icy prison in a last ditch attempt to save the world. According to Sperhauk, this last film is a polarizer, fans love it or hate it. I can see why. Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura, the movie is a mishmash of Godzilla elements and blenderized film genre's. Not that I think that's a bad thing but I can understand why some fans who take things to seriously might have a problem.

The helpful aliens, can you trust them? Maybe. Maybe not.  One guy on the maybe not side is Captain Gordon, one of my favorite characters in the film. He's gruff and tuff, and he's got a great mustashe. Don Frye, who plays Gordon, is a martial arts champion. He's great. Look at those eyes, that's the same look he gives those aliens, before he kicks their asses. In the movie he has more clothes on, and a big sword.

Here's kind of a take on going to see GFW by Phillip Provencio for Monster Zero. I enjoyed some of his sentences. It contains spoilers.

He's a pretty good article by Mark Shilling from the Japan Times. His article has a nice mini history of the Godzilla series, mixed in with some personal reminiscence. I too would enjoy being Godzilla. Stomping with major property damage, who wouldn't want to have that kind of day? What's a few rockets in the ass between friends?

I picked up the Video Daikaiju bootleg, which is a 4 disc set. I don't know when the US version will be coming out. The movie is subtitled on the 1st disc, along with some trailers. Discs 2 & 3 have making of's, outtakes, trailers and a 50th anniversary documentary. Almost 4 hours worth of material and most everything is in Japanese with no subtitles. The 4th disc is a copy of the soundtrack with music by Keith Emerson and some other guys. I found the movie fun but mostly for the continuous references to other movies. I'm sure there is a list of them on the internet. Let me know if you find one. There is a lot of action, some great evil aliens, some goofy stuff, some cool stuff, and a great amount of property damage. Even at 125 minutes it doesn't seem overly long, there's always something going on.

Godzilla Raides Again did seem overly long, even though it was only 82 minutes. It's the second Godzilla movie, rushed out about 6 months after the first, which was very successful. Some fish spotter pilots spy a new Godzilla and a second monster Anguiras on a remote island. The monsters fight, fall into the sea, wash a shore in Japan, fight and wreck some stuff. Anguiras is killed and Godzilla leaves. No reason to stay, most everything is destroyed. Godzilla is later spotted on a southern island and he's buried in ice to be kept fresh for the next movie. This second Godzilla has the most goofy teeth. Their lack of pointin' down says hillbilly to me. All in all not too bad a movie, just a mite slow during the last battle.

Cattastico

Here are some cats leaping. For all you leaping cat fanciers.