Being an info junkie can be a real drag, y’know?  I subscribe to zillions of mailing lists and online newsletters.  Sometimes I even read them.

Out of the swarm I got this morning, this popped out at me.  Remember back in the 80’s, when there were rumours of a Star Trek movie about Kirk and Spock as teenagers in Starfleet Academy?  Remember all the groans and trash talk over it?  It turns out that Ain’t It Cool News has found the script for that project.  And according to them, it’s not as bad as everybody thought.  Beam down a landing party and check it out.

Oscar Ratings Drop 8 Percent From 2005

That’s all?!  Jeez, we’re slipping.  Remind me to care even less….

Chattling online with friends a few weeks ago, the topic of horror films came up.   One of the few modern ones that we all agreed on was “Shaun of the Dead.“   People who normally don’t like gore flicks, like everyone else in the chat room that night, glommed onto this one.
Naturally I was the only one to get half of the references to other horror flicks.  Partly for laughs, I offered to write up a list so everyone else didn’t have to watch the other films and risk getting sick.  And then curiosity became growing interest.

Besides, I wanted to do a Halloween kind of blog entry anyway.

Disclaimer a la mode:  This is just a compilation, probably not a complete one at that.  I make no claims on the data beyond my fairly reasonable certainty about accuracy.  I tried to double- and triple-source where I could.   If I couldn’t find something else to support it, I left it out to be safe.

My key sources were the audio commentaries on the Shaun of the Dead DVD, the Internet Movie Database, the Easter Egg Archive, and good ol’ Wikipedia.

I did my best to put this into order of appearance in the film.  I figured fans tend to fall down when you don’t put things in chronological order. (Incidentally, sorry if it’s messy or rushed. I twisted my ankle the other night, so I’m hobbling all over the place trying to get things done.)

* The music playing over the company logos is library music selected for the airport scenes in the original Dawn of the Dead.

* The ska number playing as we first see Shaun (Simon Pegg) is “Ghost Town” by the Specials.

* The title sequence, intentionally or not, touches on a recurring theme in George Romero‘s Living Dead movies, of the working classes reduced to a mindless automated state.

* Shaun’s lumbering, half-awake entrance after the titles is a nod to the final scene in “Day of the Dead.”

* The game that Ed and Shaun are playing is “Timesplitters2.”

* The game voice announcing incoming/outgoing players is actually that of Peter Serafinowicz (Pete).

* Gratutious fanboy trivia (what, like the rest of it isn’t?):  Peter Serafinowicz is more widely known as the voice of Darth Maul.

* The shock-cut montages are reminiscent of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead movies.

* On his way to the corner shop in the morning, Shaun walks by a road sweeper.  Its radio is tuned to a news bulletin about the Omega-6 space probe exploding in the atmosphere.  This is one of the theories offered in “Night of the Living Dead.”

* Bub’s Pizzas, next door to the corner shop, is named after the trainable zombie in “Day of the Dead.”

* Foree Electronics is named for Ken Foree, one of the actors in the original “Dawn of the Dead” (1978).

* The music heard while Shaun is taking the bus to work is “Kernkraft 400” by Zombie Nation.

* Shaun tells his co-workers that Ash isn’t coming in, a reference to Bruce Campbell‘s role in the Evil Dead movies.

* Director Edgar Wright took inspiration from the 1978 “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” especially for strange business going in the background of an otherwise normal scene.

* Fulci’s Restaurant is named for Italian horror director Lucio Fulci, best known for his own zombie movies.

* When Shaun leaves the bloodied corner shop, the news report on the radio is apparently saying in Hindi either “The dead are coming back to life,” or “People are waking up from their graves.”

* Mary, the first zombie to attack Shaun, worked at the Landis Supermarket, a nod to director John Landis.

* A poster for the controversial Japanese film of “Battle Royale” can be seen while Ed and Shaun fend off the one-armed zombie.

* Of course the TV reporter’s advice for would-be zombie slayers is taken from “Night of the Living Dead”.

* Ed’s line “We’re coming to get you, Barbara!” echoes a line from “Night of the Living Dead.”  Ironically George Romero himself didn’t get the reference.

* The music under the montages for Shaun’s plans is “Zombi” by Goblin, composed for the original Dawn of the Dead.

* Shaun tells Ed not to say “the zed word.”  In fact most, if any, zombie movies don’t.  This is also considered a nod to director Danny Boyle, who pointed out “28 Days Later” is not a zombie movie.  (If you say so, Danny boy….)

* Shaun’s muttering of “Join us” touches back on the undead creatures in the Evil Dead movies.

* One of the flower prints in Liz’s apartment was done by Fred Deakin from Airside and Lemon Jelly.  He also designed the “Battle Royale” poster in Shaun’s flat.

* Shaun’s jump from a trampoline is often compared to the final scene of “Army of Darkness.”

* The pool cue battle is often compared to the surreal scenes of gang violence in Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange.”

* David’s death scene closely resembles the death of an antagonist in “Day of the Dead.”

* The characters’ retreat into the basement calls back to “Night of the Living Dead.”

* An elevator platform figures prominently in the film’s climax and that of “Day of the Dead.”

* Co-writers Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright compared several scenes to “Doctor Who,” especially the soldiers’ charge and attack in the climax.  “Doctor Who” was also shot at Ealing Studios, the same as this film.

* The interrupted news item about infected monkeys is a dig at Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later.”  Director Edgar Wright did the voice work for the segment.

* The music at the very end of the credits is “The Gonk,”  written by Herbert Chappell for the DeWolfe Music Library.  That track was used as Muzak for a zombie-infested mall in the original “Dawn of the Dead.”

Bamf…sorry for disappearing.

As I’ve said elsewhere, work and illness conspired to eat up what little free time I had left for the last month or so.  It got kind of daunting after a while.  Writing—doing—anything, anything at all has been a physical drain.  It’s getting better.  At least now it doesn’t involve as much caffeine to bluff the flesh and spirit.  Each forward lurch becomes less half-hearted.  Eh.  Whaddaya do?

Speaking of half-hearted, this li’l entry probably won’t be too coherent.  I’ve got a few points, so I’ll be jumping all over the place.

Weather

While the supposedly liberal media lauds the virtues of Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, the weather is getting strange out here in the real world.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, it’s dry as a bone, pushing the mercury up to the 75-degree Fahrenheit mark.  Down south in California, it’s raining to the point of flooding.  North and south, glaciers and the polar icecaps are getting smaller.  Melting.

I’m on a marginally regular basis with several people across the country; my wife, with several more people worldwide.  Why are so many people complaining about how weird the weather has been?  It seems as if everyone’s climate is acting screwy.  Granted, anecdotal evidence isn’t entirely useful.  And yet there is a great preponderance of said evidence.

If there’s no such thing as global warming, what the hell’s going on with the weather?

I’ve stumbled on a few reviews and articles that shed light on Crichton’s latest, but this line from David Roberts’ review at Grist Magazine makes a telling point:

But what’s the reality at the core of State of Fear? Crichton’s not asking
us to believe that environmentalists really run a ruthless transnational
cabal, of course. But he is asking us to believe something more fanciful:
that in the real world, they have engineered a global scientific and
political consensus on climate change without one.

Two Girls in Need of Lemons

You’d have to see the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie to follow my meaning.

Jamie and I went to see it last night.  We have to watch it again.  Not because we liked it.  I mean, we did.  But the whole experience was ruined for us—for everyone else in the theater, for that matter.

Except for two girls.

Well, they sounded like girls.  Giggling, immature, cute in voice if not in conduct, jailbait girls.  Jamie told me (and now you) that only one of them was.  The other one was a grown woman.  I didn’t look.

Much as I try not to contradict my esteemed freckly better half, I must in this case.  Girl #2 might have looked Jamie’s age, but I’m judging it was a girl, an immature female, based on existential instead of phenomenological evidence.  In other words, the airhead sounded too vacuous to be a grown-up.

Anyway, a few rows behind us, at our four o’clock, two girls yakked through the trailers.  Through all three “please silence your cellphone” signs.  Through the whole damn movie.

When a trailer for a new movie about Herbie, the precocious sentient VW Bug that won’t fraggin’ die, was blasting past us, one of them bubbled, “Oh, I love Herbie!”  When a Vogan construction fleet comes to Earth with bureaucratic tidings of steaming hot doom, one of them giggled, “Yup, there’s the Vogons!”  When Marvin made his first appearance, they blurted out, “Marvin!”  Apparently they expected their amygdala-deficient ardor was going to make him wave or something.  At the sight of dolphins, one of them squealed, “Ooh, the dolphins are coming back!  Yay, dolphins!”

As I’d said before, I didn’t look.  Stopping myself from turning and making eye contact was the only way to keep myself from leaping out of my chair and eating their flesh.  I mean, that would’ve been the sensible thing to do, isn’t it?  So there I was, trying to leave such thoughts where they belong.

At work.

Clearly, these girls were convinced that they and they alone were capable of enjoying Douglas Adams’ master work properly.  They prided themselves on knowing the story, knowing where everything in it went, and knowing their knowing that they knew.  In the presence of such sagacity, only a heat-stricken wombat would fail to gouge out its eyes and wail in reverence.

And yet these Hitchhiker mavens didn’t sigh or cheer or praise God for answering that one teeny prayer when “Journey of the Sorcerer” made a triumphant entrance.  They didn’t seem to recognize the original Marvin or the original Arthur Dent when they appeared.  They didn’t wail when Douglas Adams’ face appeared in a semi-subliminal flash.  And they didn’t seem at all aware that some of us were Hitchhiker fans back when it was just a radio show, whose hearts broke when Adams died, who brandished our towels proudly in his memory a year later, and that we’ve been waiting for only 20 bloody years to see this movie.

A ten-year-old boy was also there.  He didn’t say a word.  He made them look stupid.  A gaming console wasn’t even involved.

Girls, word to the unwise.  Nobody in that theater thought you were cool froods who knew where their towels were.  But we did think you were morons.  Several minus billion for being rude, self-absorbed little twits.  j00 F4Il.

Last Refuge of the Scoundrel

            He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot,
but don’t let that fool you.  He really is an idiot.
—Groucho Marx

If you’ve been following my little bloggy rantings, you might remember a few mentions to the neocon mouthpiece Mark Levin.  Wretched little man, sort of like the opposite of a TARDIS.  Big on the outside, really small on the inside, goes absolutely nowhere…unless UN black helicopter territory is considered somewhere.

I was following his show for Media Matters for America for a while, but technical difficulties got in the way for a while.  When I wasn’t able to get captures of his radio show, I figured I could just leave him behind.  He was a big fish in a little pond out on the east coast, I thought.  He’s not like the Pope or Mitch Hedberg, somebody who’s been everywhere and left a positive mark on the world, however small.  I told myself he was best forgotten.

No such luck.  Here’s another far right wingnut with a book out.  This one is a collection of screeds pushing the myth of judicial activism, of liberals making law from the bench.

He can argue his way out of a wet paper bag, sure—but he needs fangs to do it.  His arguments stand up to the light of neither sun nor moon.  Heaven help him in the event of an eclipse.  Without cheap shots, name-calling, or factual distortion, he’d have nothing.  His answer to any caller he disagrees with, “Get off the phone, you big dope!”  When cornered, the best retort he can unload on a worthy opponent is, “Who cares?!”  His witticisms are limited to elementary school scatology and sound board buttons.  His answer to the first anniversary of the breaking of the Abu Ghraib story is singing along with the holiday song parody “Walkin’ Round in Women’s Underwear.”  His ethical and empathic muscles have atrophied.  They work only for call-in sycophants.

He has fans that worship him, people who think ad hominem attacks on his opponents make him a hero and a genius.  There’s the slimmest of chances they might find this single lame-ass blog post on a Google quest.  I doubt it, but they get seriously, painfully, mortally wounded by any slight against their guy.  I can only assume it really hurts them because they get really mad about it, wherever and whoever the source of that slight.  Anyone who fails to squint at the brilliance of their golden idol is called names.  “We called that lib ‘jerk,’ ‘moonbat,’ and ‘loser.’  Then we nailed him on his typos.  That’ll show ‘im.”

Stuff like this used to depress me; to think, grown men and women resort to playground epithets and blind worship to feel good about themselves.  Now it’s just sadly amusing.  They’ve glommed onto the biggest, loudest bully on the block, offering their lunch money, their thinking, and their sycophancy to him just so that nobody else beats them up.  There’s no real concern for America’s future going on.  If someone is reduced to poverty, if a woman is beaten, if a dark-skinned man is tortured, if a child is made into a sexual slave, they don’t make a move.  But if their hero comes yelling into their homes, warning them about an evil conspiracy, they’ll call in and love him to death.

I guess I see the benefits.  It’s easier than hearing out a contrary view.  Easier than actually doing something.  giving someone a sandwich.  Easier than seeing a common darkness within themselves, something we all share.  Easier than holding a kid’s hand.   Instead they dismiss an electrocuted sand N1Gg3R with mockery and laughter, then sacrifice their compassion and their minds to a demagogue, all because they’re afraid of the world.  Poor things.

If they ever bother to approach a cosmic nobody like me, I’ll try not to laugh, I swear.

***

Let’s not end on a dark note, hm?  (For once.)

A quick shoutout to some nice folks.  First, my old friend Frank Shaw in San Jose.  I haven’t buzzed him in, like, a century.  But I think about you and Jeong Hee all the time.  The Mars Attacks! flying saucer toy helps.  Brrr-zap brr-zap!  Ack, ack ACK!  Ack ack!

Second, for my next trick, I’m gonna suck up to a fan.  Maybe not a fan, but it’s nice to know I have a few supporters.  And no money exchanged hands or anything, either.

A couple of months ago, I got an e-mail from a kind lady named Jessica who was wondering where I’d gone to.  She’d read the stuff on my old Blogger account, but lost track of me.  The way I flitted across two or three blogging services, it was bound to happen to someone.  She tracked me down to the Afterhell website.  Apparently that wasn’t enough to run screaming.   Anyway, I brought her up to date and sent her links to my other blogs.

Now, whenever I get burned out or frustrated, I sneak another look at her e-mail.  I try not to care what people think.  It’s a dangerous thing, especially for folks with pretenses toward art, truth, or individuality.  But it’s good to get some positive feedback, a little support, some warm human contact.

And one thing about e-mail:  You don’t have to worry about finding mysterious strands of long red hair in it.  I just don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

I’ll explain later.  Nightie night.   [thud]

People have called me weird all my life. I might have stumbled on further proof.

Like most couples at the end of the workday, yesterday my wife Jamie and I said our hellos and brought each other up to date on what happened to them earlier in the day. She told me about meetings, moving to a new cube, e-mail and memo exchanged re weekly reports. So what did I do that afternoon, she asked. I watched “Freddy vs. Jason” and offered my thoughts.

Boy, am I weird….

I blew off the movie for a long time. I’m into horror these days (in case you couldn’t tell), but I don’t have patience for most horror movie fare. Out of morbid curiosity, I’ve taken occasional glances at the “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Friday the 13th” franchises. Rolled my eyes. And moved on. In the end, curiosity got the better of my judgement. As usual.

My rationalization for checking out drivel of any kind often involves some combination of the following:

A) It doesn’t cost me anything to try.
B) A snap judgement means very little, but an informed opinion counts for something.
C) I might learn something.
D) Well, how bad can it be?

All four came into play this time. And this time, all four turned out to have some merit. Go fig!

A lot of these observations probably won’t be new or unique to me, but this movie turned out a little better than I expected. Hardly a classic, though. Compared to the nourishing psychic feasts of classic horror movies, “Freddy vs. Jason” is junk food. It’s mostly empty calories. But it has its moments.

Okay, spoiler warnings…in case someone actually cares!!!!

SPOILERS
.
.
.
Now I’m going to use this token effort at a spoiler buffer to rant a bit.
.
<redguy>  Aw, is widdle widdums not in the mood of some stampin’ on the soapbox? Tough cheese, little snuggums. My blog, my rules.
.
Okay, so I watched too much “Cow and Chicken.” Not following the reference? Are we unable to keep up, hmmmm? WELL, THAT”S TOO BAD!!!! </redguy>
.
All the spoiler nonsense is endemic of Western civilizations adoption of the Elizabethan ethic of dramaturgy, where the unveiling of plot takes on greater emphasis than interpretation. On the other hand, the ancient Greeks had it the other way around, that the interpretation of the artist and the audience took precedence. You’d think from all the gratuitous remakes Hollywood pumps out so much, you’d think they must’ve hung out with the same Greeks. But whether it’s SF, sports, or soaps, spoilers are all that matter. Concern over spoilers are such horse-hockey, I swear. I mean, seriously! If people were this conscientious about all media consumption, we wouldn’t have to worry about impartial juries! F***ing nuisance.
.
.
.

Whew. That was fun. I’m almost too tired now to get on with the “Freddy vs. Jason” thing. Okay, okay! Lookie, I’m dropping the other shoe!

You can probably tell from the title, the film’s mainly a bone thrown at fanboys. “Who’d win in a fight, Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees?” That’s high concept for ya, folks.

But the writers threw in something else. A little psychological subtext. This is a carryover from the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies, where character motivations fed plot as well as token attempts at surrealism. The writers of “Freddy vs. Jason” kept that aspect. And that was a smart move. It lent some intellect to an otherwise pointless gorefest.

As established in earlier films, the parents of Elm Street have gone to extreme lengths to stop Freddy Krueger. Their conspiracy of silence, to conceal and prevent the existence of Krueger, has taken downright Stalinist extremes. Kids who know too much about him have been carted off to a private asylum, drugged to keep them from dreaming. (How they’re expected to get any rest without going into a REM state…is totally beyond me.) The town has censored any reference to Krueger in official records and newspapers.

But like most ideas, Freddy Krueger resurfaces. Now forgotten and trapped in Hell, he hatches a plan to revive the town’s memory of him and free himself. He chooses a fellow lost soul. A fellow killing machine.

…with all the personality of a defective Cuisinart. Enter–or rather, exit– Jason Voorhees, the hockey-masked, machete-swinging 4F nutboy of the “Friday the 13th” movies.

No, I don’t have much regard for this character. I mean, he’s not really a character, is he? Even Michael Myers, the equally anonymous and unstoppable knife-wielder from the “Halloween” movies, had more personality.

That’s where the cleverness in the original “Elm Street” concept salvages something from even the “Friday the 13th” movies. In this flick we see the true motivations, however shallow, of Jason Voorhees. We get a glimpse of his childhood (or at least Jason’s view of it): a mistreated Down’s Syndrome child, hounded and tormented by others, powerless to resist the soul-twisting influence of an oppressive mother during the late 1950’s.

Oppressive mother. The 1950’s. Did anyone pay Robert Bloch for this?

But anyway, this explains a lot. There’s no justification for his puritanical killing spree, but it does provide context. He’s acting on the lopsided ethics of his upbringing. He doesn’t know better. He didn’t have the chance. At heart, Jason is a victim. Without hope or direction. And out of control.

Of course I’m reminded of one of the better lines from Thomas Harris’ “Red Dragon.” To paraphrase: I feel for him as a child. As an adult, he needs someone to blow the sick f*** out of his socks.

And I couldn’t help finding a certain aptness to the vulnerabilities that inevitably brought these two monsters down. Oppressed and submerged by wills greater than his, Jason is always left at the botton of Crystal Lake. Sexual deviant Freddy Krueger is powerless against fire, the force that deprived him of his bodily existence, the only thing that gave his lfe meaning.

I’m sure a lot of the symbolism and Jungian resonance I find in this horror schlock-fest wasn’t intentional. But hey, when you’re watching crap–even good crap–you start looking for psychological footholds.