New Year of the Same Old Shit

You always want to return from your vacation, or holiday, wanting more. I know this 'cos twice now I've been on vacation longer than I wanted. The most recent of the two was this Xmas.

I work at a K-12 school. We get the last two weeks of the year off. Most people mistakenly think this is awesome; it isn't. The reason, no one else has those two weeks off with me. There's nothing like being off while the people you want to spend time with have to work. Oh, wait, yeah, there is something like it, unemployment, which, as it turns out, sucks too.

Don't get me wrong, the first week off is fine. The second week is when things get tedious. By week I had watched all the movies and TV shows that were back logged, books, comics and/or magazines had been read, the house was clean, and my video games had been beaten, twice. This is when the walls started closing in.

I would have "just got out" if we had two cars; we don't. During the week our car was in use taking my lovely fiance, Vicky, to work. I couldn't justify, nor afford, taking her in each day. The drive, one-way, is right about 20 miles. We live in the suburban armpit of Bumfuck, Egypt.

So, come Monday, January 2, 2012, I was all too ready to return to work.

Naturally, my alarm failed to go off. I woke at 7 a.m., which allowed me fifteen minutes to get ready and get out the door. Surprisingly, I managed, with a couple minutes to spare.

Vicky's daughter had an extra-curricular event to attend, so I was dropped off at the bus transit center. I waited 30 or 45 minutes before I realized that the buses weren't running. A quick visit to their website on my iPone confirmed this. With a sigh I called Vicky to come pick me up.

The traffic on the ride into work was surprisingly light for Monday morning rush hour. Before I knew it we were pulling into the empty parking lot where I work. Had I been early, this wouldn't have been surprising. As I was nearly an hour late this was quite distressing. All of my morning had been for nothing. Sigh.

Worst of all, after all of this, all there was to do was return home. There's always grass to watch grow.

31 Horror Films, 31 Days, 31 Words

A friend of mine over at The Lost Highway watches a horror movie a day for each day in October to celebrate Halloween.

Hey, I thought, I can do that! To make things a bit interesting I decided to go a step further and write a micro review of each of the films I watched. Here then are my Halloween Horror Film's for 2011:

Day One: The Evil Dead

What do you need to know about The Evil Dead that you don’t already know? No amount of clear coat varnish can prevent really nasty splinters when trees sexually violate you. 

Day Two: The Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn

Chuck Norris ain’t got nothin’ on Ash. Ash is short for Ashley and despite this he will still wreck your weak shit, with a chainsaw fist! Hail to the King, baby.

Day Three: Demons

The final boss fight scene takes place in a movie theatre, hero and heroine on a dirt bike, fighting using a samurai sword, with special guest appearance by a random helicopter.

Day Four: Demons 2

Lamberto Bava and Dario Argento foresaw reality TV's popularity. Magical God-cams follow the "unsuspecting idiot teens" who "unwittingly" re-release the demons, broadcasting the hilarity to an eager primetime audience.

Day Five: Hellraiser

Poor Uncle Frank. Whereas in life he was a womanizing jerk, when resurrected he got what was coming to him; He was reborn as item A-4, sweet and sour jerky. Yum!

Day Six: Dead Alive

Has a swarm of blood thirsty zombies overrun your house? The quickest, albeit messiest, solution: the lawnmower. Strap it over your shoulder and go. Just make sure the blades face out.

Day Seven: Chopping Mall

In 1986 lightning had wildly varying effects on robot electronics. When it struck mall security units they became ultra-violent killbots, when near Steve Guttenberg designed military hardware, they became Johnny 5.

Day Eight: Dreamaniac

80's horror film with excessive naked man-action and awkward sexuals that would turn off the horniest 16-year-old boy (heinous faux pas). Saving grace: the big kill is a cordless drill decapitation. 

Day Nine: Ghoulies

This film is why I ALWAYS check the toilet bowl before I commit to a constitutional. Super Secret Trivia: voted best break dancing, after Breakin' Two: Electric Bugaloo, by Alfonso Ribeiro.

Day Ten: Blades

Almost exactly like Caddyshack, except the lack of a stellar ensemble cast and it's a slasher flick about a killer lawnmower. Brought to you by the always subtle people at Troma.

Day Eleven: Videodrome

Ah, the naiveté of the 80's. VCR's still had cords connecting the "remote" to the unit, yet somehow television waves are able to reality altering changes to the physical world. 

Day Twelve: Hellgate

Ron "Arnold Horshack" Palillo is the lead. In case you find it incredulous, watch for the license plate at 29:34, which reads THEHERO. And, for the ladies, he has a nude scene!

Day Thirteen: The Video Dead

Most umm-tarded interpretation of zombies, EVAR. Kill 'em just like anything else, yet because they're not really dead: "They must not be buried. Left, instead, to be reclaimed by mother nature."

Day Fourteen: Blood Hook

MST3K's Jim Mallon directs this Troma flick about a serial killing fisherman, who uses a special fishing lure to kill his victims. Wonder why it never got featured on MST3K? Hmmmmmm...

Day Fifteen: Against the Dark

Steven Seagal just managed to squeeze his fat ass into a black leather trench coat for this cheesy vampire/zombie hybrid film. Oh, and for extra smeg, his name is Tao. 

Day Sixteen: Birdemic Shock and Terror

This movie has forced me to rethink my stance on reincarnation. James Nguyen is obviously channelling Ed Wood Jr. so as to torment yet another generation of the film going public.

Day Seventeen: Sinful Dwarf

A horny dwarf who runs a boarding house with his mother... what could POSSIBLY be wrong with that situation? This film is the reason midgets are illegal in most industrialized countries.

Day Eighteen: Zombie Women of Satan

This movie is why, despite the “politically correct” socialist agenda Steve Jobs promoted with iMovie, Thirty-seven year-old dorks who live with mom should NOT be able to make movies.

Day Nineteen: Let the Right One In

A vampire movie with PRE-pubescent teens that are actually teens, not skinny twenty-somethings in leather. The film's real horror is the poor Nordic boy's constant emasculation by his girlfriend.  

Day Twenty: The Return of the Living Dead

The irreverent punk-rock zombie flick! For the fellows, the punk chick that dances butt-naked in the cemetery is SMOKING hot. As this is an eighty's film, she stays naked!

Day Twenty-One: Silent Night Deadly Night 2

This movie picks up right where the original left off, as you would assume from part two, or sequel, in the common vernacular. All you need to know: Garbage Day! 

Day Twenty-Two: 30 Days of Night

Why base so many movies on comic books? ‘Cos Hollywood writers suck. That’s why this vampire movie is awesome, the only sparkles are light reflecting off blood, as it should be!

Day Twenty-Three: The Burning

A Weinstein Nightmare on Elm Street/Friday the Thirteenth hybrid with very young Holly Hunter, Fisher Stevens, Brian Backer and Jason Alexander. Yes, ladies you do get to see his butt.

Day Twenty-Four: Popcorn

William Castle knows gimmicky b-movie have a way of coming back and biting you in the butt. But make a marathon of gimmicky b-movies and you’re asking for trouble!

Day Twenty-Five: Intruder

A close-net group of teenaged night-shift grocery store clerks are picked off one by one by the store’s forsook co-owner. Beware Wall Street, this might be your fate.

Day Twenty-Six: Terror Firmer

Everyone knows making a film is all blood, sweat and tears, but when it's this Troma film, it's also tits and fart jokes and a guy sporting a serious moose knuckle.

Day Twenty-Seven: Oasis of the Zombie

Zombie Nazis guard six million dollars of gold hidden in a North African desert oasis. When their commanding officer comes back years later to recover the gold hell literally breaks loose.

Day Twenty-Eight: The Exorcist

Split pea soup. (Yes, technically that’s not thirty-one words, but what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of The Exorcist that doesn’t involve intercourse with Jesus?)

Day Twenty-Nine: Poltergeist

Let’s see, stay trapped in another dimension with the angry spirits of a dead Native American tribe or “come into the light” to Zelda Rubinstein? I think I stay with Tonto.

Day Thirty: Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter

Surprisingly thoughtful and engaging movie that explores the subtle metaphor of blood as used in the Bible and that in the Vampire genre.  Ok, not really. Mostly fart jokes, and lesbians. 

Day Thirty-One: Psycho

After fifty one years Alfred Hitchcock’s immortal classic is still the golden standard, and so much of that comes directly from Perkins gliding so easily between naive momma’s boy and psycho.

Have a happy and safe Halloween.

When Did Frank Miller Decide to Suck?

Answer: His movie, The Spirit.

Sin City was the best live-action adaptation of a comic book. By that I mean that he, Tarantino and Rodriguez perfectly translated what was so visually striking about the graphic novel into the motion picture.

This, unfortunately, brought Miller back to filmmaking with a renewed sense of self-importance. What it failed to do was teach him the very simple lesson: every god-damned fuckin’ movie shouldn’t look exactly like Sin City.

And, speaking of “more of the same,” whereas I can forgive the film faux pas, Holy Terror, Miller’s latest comic creation, is a blasphemy I can’t forgive. As I read it I kept thinking, “Seriously? What the fuck?”

The Fixer: Stickin' to the Fans

I read somewhere Miller pitched Holy Terror as a Batman story, to which DC rightfully said, “UHM... Maybe this is a better fit elsewhere.” Keep in mind, the brain trust at DC thought that killing Batman and then have him return via time travel douche buggery to become Team American, I mean, Batman Incorporated, was a good idea. Despite their intellectual deficiency, even these yahoos that recognized that Holy Terror was crap.

Legendary Comics, a subsidiary of Legendary Films, on the other hand, thought Holy Terror was a great idea. They took this bucket of diarrhea and produced a beautiful, $30 hardcover graphic novel. The book aesthetics is the only nice thing I can say about Holy Terror.

What I can say is, normally when I get fucked in the ass, I like a bit of preparation, some wine and some sort of lubricant, even if it’s just spit. Holy Terror provides none of these requirements.

Holy Terror is so belatedly obvious a Batman story that I pee blood when I think about the gall with which this is passed off as something else. It’s a story that’s changed the names to protect Miller from copyright infringement. The plot: Batman (The Fixer) and Cat Woman (unnamed cat burglar) have joined forces to fight off the biggest disaster to threaten Gotham (Empire City) since The Gays, i.e. Muslim Terrorists. 

Done right, this could have been an interesting story. Too bad Miller just wanted to blow patriotic smoke up our asses.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the art is such a straight re-hash of the Dark Knight comics, inked black and white with a splash of color like Sin City, that I could only stand to read the graphic novel a couple pages at a time before my blood pressure cooked up to critical. 

Thirty bucks for what’s basically a re-imagining of Dark Knight, inked and colored like Sin City. Hmmm. What a creative genius that Miller is. I remember when Miller's panties were all in knots when the powers of hollywood screwed up his Robocop? I guess it's OK when Miller does it.

No, you know what? Fuck you, Miller! I want my $30, and my time, back.

Miller said that this is "bound to offend just about everybody." I’m sure he thinks it’s because he’s pushing the political correct boundaries with his “piece of propaganda.” Reality check, dumbass. People will be pissed off because it sucks.

So, if you haven’t purchased a copy of Holy Terror, don’t. I can’t imagine backwoods red-neck idiots liking this garbage, even with the “kill the muslim bastards” zeitgeist crap he espouses. Miller isn't making a Dirty Harry tough guy who's stickin' it straight to the bad guys, he's just lining his pockets by fucking over the audience that rightfully expects so much more.

Hide and Go Find My Friends

Are you looking for a new drinking game? Would you like it to incorporate the latest tech gadget or app you just spent too much money on?

Well, if you're one of the hundreds of people who purchased the iPhone 4S, or are one of the thousand-some-odd people who have iOS 5, then you're in luck, there's an app for that!

Find My Friends

Find My Friends allows you to search for you friends, which have allowed you to do so, with the simple tap.

How It Works

What happens when you want to locate your friends is the Apple Faerie™ within your iPhone mounts its unicorn and speeds off on a rainbow interwebs magic to your friends' iPhone. The Faerie™ returns as swiftly as their little unicorn's wings can move them to display a point on a map locating your friends who have Find My Friends turned on.

Neat, huh?

One note, this is NOT a live tracking system. That is, you can't watch your friend move around in real-time. You just get a quick snapshot of where that person is at that particular moment when you checked. This, presumably, is to help save the life force of the Faerie™ and steed becuase real-time tracking would require a constant connection, which would run them into the ground but quick.

Now, enough of that technical jargon, here's where the fun really begins. The drinking game.

Hide and Go Find My Friends 

1. Get a group of friends together, you know, the "good" ones who've purchased Apple devices.
2. Choose the boundries for your game (e.g. downtown, a particular neighborhood, whatever).
3. Make sure everyone has friended one another in Find My Friends.
4. Rock, Paper, Scisors (or whatever) to see who is "IT" first.
5. IT will then leave.
6. After a ten minute head start, IT will turn on visibility in Find My Friends, group text everyone "Game On" and start IT's stopwatch.
7. The rest of the group will attempt to locate IT. The first person to find and tag him/her is then IT.
8. Everyone comes back together and return to step 5.

Repeat this process until someone has been it for a set amount of time (e.g. 30 minutes), at which point that person is declared "winner" and gets all his/her drinks free.

Of course, this is just a rough idea for a game, and there are surely countless modifications one can make, like playing AFTER you're drunk...

Regardless, have fun killing your liver! And just think, after you've had all your fun and when the cirrhosis has crippled you maybe you can sue Apple 'cos it was them who made you drink in the first place.

A Shitty Experience

I absolutely hate when I shit in my pants. To add injury to insult, it always happens in public.

My friend and I were catching up over grande Caramel Macchiatos. It was a cool evening, and as we live in Houston, TX, on such a rare evening it would have been blasphemous to sit inside. Our conversation passed lazily over the wide range of events that had happened since we had last talked, when… 

I felt a rumble pass through the cavernous twists of my colon.

I have, at best, a very persnickety digestive tract. I have come to terms with it. Most of the people who suffer through my company have come to terms with it. For the most part, I know what will set it off, and prepare accordingly, and as I am an asshole, sometimes I prepare deliberately. 

This time was unexpected. Nothing alarming, in and of itself, just unexpected.

So, I did what I always do, I tried to let the malcontent sneak out. I figured that with the pleasant breeze to waft it away, and lack of other patrons, there would be no problem. It is unfortunate that I continually forget the frequency and severity of which I’ve spent my time pursuing nefarious deeds. Karma’s memory is long like the lines at the DMV, and like their workers, she is a horrible bitch.

This rumble was loaded, and not afraid to back up its boasting. And so, it was after a sneaky squeak, I found myself reclined comfortably in my chair with peanut butter butt. To keep matters interesting, according to my gut, there was more to come.

I sat there for a while, trying to convince myself that this had not, in fact, just happened. No matter how hard I wished it away, it was still there. Mind over matter, indeed! Eventually I knew I was going to have to do something, the sooner the better. I’ve never really been bothered to work within the confines of proper etiquette, but there is a certain amount of grace one has to use when excusing oneself from the table, where loaded drawers are concerned. My desire to end this as quickly as possible soon overwrote any fears of social faux pas, and I jumped up, cutting off my friend mid-sentence.

“Sorry. Gotta go. Coffee goes right through me.”

I would like to point out that it is much harder to move quickly, and in no way is it graceful, when one is clenching their creamy butt cheeks together. Alas, I made it to the bathroom. I flipped the lock to insure my privacy, as the bathroom was one of the big open jobs, and the clerks were cleaning up (it was near closing time). I peeled myself from the offending undies and finished the deposit in the proper receptacle.

While I washed my hands I toyed with the idea of washing off my underwear and hiding them in my pocket, but decided a bunched up pair of wet underwear wouldn’t be the most comfortable thing to carry around. When I went to throw them away, I found myself in another mess altogether.

As I parenthetically mentioned, it was close to closing time. The bathrooms had just been cleaned. The empty trash can sat by the door, all wide mouthed because it’s lid was off somewhere, possibly being washed. There was nothing in the bag. My friend and I were the only two customers. Even if there had been others, I was obviously the last one coming out of the bathroom. I knew, therefore, when the clerk returned with the lid, he was sure to know it was I who had deposited the shitty underwear. Furthermore, and more importantly, he would know it was I who had shit myself, and trying to hid my humiliation, had thrown the underwear in there.

Luckily, my pride can think very fast on his feet when faced with the prospect of being caught trying to dispose of incriminating evidence. I had a couple paper towels in my hand, from drying my hands after I washed them. I would just grab more, enough to cover the underwear completely. Brilliant. Not very green, but brilliant. Sorry environment, but you had to take yet another one for the team.

Whereas pride might be quick, it’s not very inconspicuous. I must have almost filled half of the container with paper towels before I felt safe enough to leave the bathroom.

This is where the walk of shame is the hardest. I had to walk as cool as I could, past the employee sweeping the floors and putting up the chairs, all the while thinking about how elegantly I had passed just minutes before. I should have clenched up and played it off as an unfortunate birth defect in my gait. 

Whatever. At this point damage control consisted of one option, Cheese It!

“Have a good night,” called the barista as I reached for the door. Jesus Tap-dancing Christ, the son of a bitch had to talk to me.

I looked in his direction and nodded, deliberately not giving eye contact. When I got through the doors I told my friend we should get going. They were closing and we should let them finish up. Thankfully, he agree and we left. Rather unceremonious a ending, I know. That is a good thing, in this case, cause now I feel pretty confident that I can mark one thing off my karmic payback list.