p e n g u i n d e v i l

I guess I’m not watching enough movies lately, as I seem to feel the need to fill this space up with general complaints. Today I picked up the current issue of Street Roots (for non-Portlanders, it is the local “street newspaper” sold by the homeless) and while I was reading the article about how Oregon landlords can refuse tenants solely on the basis of them using Section 8 vouchers (that seems like it should somehow be against the rules), there is a review of a new movie that is another one of those “things you know about, but don’t really want to know too much”. The film is “Taxi to the Dark Side” and it’s by Alex Gibney, who made Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.. This one though is about the subject of Detainees.

The article states that there are 83,000 of these people, which I found to be a surprisingly large number. Probably 10 times what I had assumed. And it also covers the always charming subject of torture. Now, while I doubt that many Americans (though I tend to be proven wrong in these things) support the practice of torture (After all, even convicted felons are “protected” against cruel punishment, so why would people who haven’t been found guilty of doing anything wrong receive cruel punishment). But I wonder how many support the notion of detainees. I tend to assume that the vast majority of the detainees have done nothing wrong, otherwise, why would they need to be secretly and illegally detained with no legal recourse? I realize that most of these folks are “foreign” (though I imagine that some are US citizens) and it reminds me of what I think the low-point tends to be for American administration’s. Yes, we can complain about how bad the president treats the economy or health care or the middle class or the lower class, but the people who really suffer from American presidents are foreigners nationals. It seems like every administration kills (or is involved with “standing by and letting die”) thousands of foreign civilians. Yes, the Republicans tend to kill more (and I doubt that even the well-thought out and highly successful road to riches and power laid out by this 5th term of the Reagan Administration [aka GWB] has killed as many as did Nixon/Kissmyassinger with their “extend the Vietnam war trick), but all the president’s get involved in that dirty business… I guess it’s just part of being the chief of the worlds self-appointed fascist police force. It is funny how it works that even if you aren’t completely fascist in your homeland, you can still get away with being that way in other peoples homelands…

Here is an area where Obama could really show that he is a positive force for change.

What is that strange language of “distance support”? Sometimes it seems as if they don’t really pay much attention. This morning I woke up to a screen from my dsl box stating that my password and email do not match anything on record. Of course they do, as when I went to sleep they did. After some minor fussing, I rebooted the computer, reset the dsl box and went in via dial-up to the “set-up your dsl” page to ensure that all of the settings for the DSL were correct. After all of that failed, I logged into webmail and my account homepage to ensure that the credentials I was using were fine. Then I made the always lame mistake of going into a support chat session. I was wondering if there was an unreported outage or some kind of problem with my account.

Sometimes it seems like I’m talking to myself on a bad day when going through things like this. I basically stated what had transpired. They said they would walk me through resetting my password. I said that my password is just fine, as I have just logged into to the account portion of their website with it. They asked me to login into webmail to make sure, so I logged out of webmail and logged back in and all was fine. They then asked me what the status of lights on the dsl box was. I said that I had power, ethernet and dsl, but no internet light. They gave my a link to the “set-up your dsl” page. I said that I already went there all the settings were correct. They said good.

Then they asked what the status was of my “internet” light. I said that, as I had just said, it was off, that was the problem. They then said, “Well, your PPPoE isn’t setup, this page has the instructions on how to set you DSL modem.” and directed me to the “set-up your dsl” page. I said, yes, I had already done that.

Sadly, as I needed to go to work, I had to sign off. I assume that whatever the problem was will fix itself today, as these tend to anyway.

Anyway, it’s 9:00, and I should clock-in and get to work… Luckily it’s “speaker Saturday” and not one of those “headphone weekdays” here…

I was over at Stupid Evil Bastard where I found him dissing on the anti-fluoride crowd. While I had to punch out a (not-too-brief, of course) comment to that, it also got me to thinking… What are my pet peeves with humanity. And could I come up with ten? Then, if I could, should I list them politely? Or not-politely? Anyway, as a last minute, late-night list, here they are in (approximate) order of precedence:

1)  Religion. No, I don’t mean “organized religion” or Christianity… I mean any kind of belief in: a supernatural world, a “creator”, life after death, reincarnation, omnipotent immortal beings, other planes of existence… Anything that ignores the reality of the physical universe or that insults or undermines the great (potential) powers and abilities of humanity. I don’t like it. I can’t stand it. Though I find it funny when used as a tool to control or profit off of naïve people… Go Trinity!

2) Violence and killing. By which I mean primarily war, but also any other stupid hostile antic that people do either for profit, glory, self-edification, or because they don’t know how to control their frustrations, from bar-fights to street gangs to organized armies. Of course, this also includes killing animals because you think that they taste better than things that don’t have to have their heads cut off and be bled dry (admittedly, this all relates back to my “insulting the potential of humanity” issue in problem 1. Well, I guess that all of these points do).

3) Non-personal pride: Nationalism, ethnic pride and stuff like that. The tiring debate between people on other sides of the hill saying “our side of the hill is better than yours, so we’re going to throw rocks at you” is very annoying, especially with how destructive modern violence has gotten.

4) Homogenization of business and culture. The lazy desire to have everything and to have it all the same everywhere you go (aka, the spread of Starbucks, and the demise of small-town businesses so that people can save some money on crap that they don’t need at Wal-mart).

5) Always kowtowing to the “official” line and then criticizing people who dare to question what those in power say. This goes along with letting the government and businesses engage in practices that are damaging to our people or environment and not at least questioning their motives. Especially relevant in the era of Bush Jr and his endless misleading of people, which seems to be eerily effective.

6) Official hypocrisy, by which I especially mean the American hypocrisy of “don’t question the government”, “the president is for jesus”, and all of that other crap that violates both the letter and the spirit of what the “founding fathers” put in place.

7) “Fashion”, fixation on entertainment celebrities, commercials and anything that makes pop culture the wasteland of irrelevant, irresponsible, mind-numbing, maturity-slowing crap that it is.

8) Unneeded movie remakes.

9) Racism, sexism, homophobia and anything that entails judging people on some made-up criteria that ignores who they actually are.

10) Homeless people who sit on the street all day (generally waiting for handouts that involve making them sit through christian sermons) and throw garbage down on the ground for others to pick up, when there are garbage cans just a few feet away that they could just put their crap in, if they had the respect for themselves and the society that they live off to actually stand up and utilize them.

As an added bonus, my remaining pet-peeve relates to so many issues above that I figured I’d just keep it separate. It is “colonialism” and “domination of already occupied territories”: Ireland, Tibet, Palestine, “Kurdistan”… I don’t understand the desire to go somewhere where people live and claim it as your own (well, I understand the motives behind Israel, but…). It leads me to understand why America was as thorough as it was in annihilating the native populations, because there isn’t really a large enough remaining native population to give the America’s back to, or to make a big enough stink about it. But it is a ridiculous and crazy idea, to go to someone else’s land and claim it as your own.

A couple of days home with a sick family led to a couple of OnDemand movies, both of which were alright.

Secondly, I watched Bucktown. A blaxploitation film that I hadn’t heard of, but on viewing it I find that rather surprising. No it wasn’t particularly good, but it had a great cast and story. Featuring, of course, Pam Grier and starring Fred Williamson (and also Carl Weathers in a supporting role), this was a wacky story of racial troubles and corruption. “Duke” (Fred) comes to town from the big city to attend the funeral of his brother. There he meets a cold reception from his brother’s ex Aretha (Pam) and an icy reception from the gang of corrupt racist white police who run the town. Though he plans to just head back to the city, he finds out that he is his brothers sole beneficiary, so he inherits his club and his house. When the lawyer tells him that it will take 60 days for him to take legal possession of his brother’s property, some locals convince him to re-open the club. On doing so, he realizes the shakedown that the police demand from all business owners. Duke won’t stand for anything like that! He hooks up with Pam (of course), and calls in his pal from the city (and some muscle) to get rid of these good ol’ boy police and to clean this town up…

The lame police aren’t hard to get rid off, but once his friends see what a good thing that the police had going for themselves in “Bucktown” they decide to just take over and keep things going! Duke, of course, opposes this, and things stay hot as as the two friends begin fighting and then warring over things! Plenty of gun action and dead bodies, crazy racist dialog and machismo fill this movie with great unsavoriness. Not great but certainly a must-see if you appreciate the genre.

We also watched Dolores Claiborne. I hadn’t seen it or read it before, so it was all new to me. As far as King movies go, it wasn’t bad. One of his few non-supernatural tales, it is the story of a woman who may (or may not) have killed her husband years ago and now her boss has died and there is a witness to her being a party to that death. The local police detective, Christopher Plummer, is eager to pin this death on her, as he feels like she got away with murder all those years ago with her husbands death, so he pursues her relentlessly. Dolores is played by Kathy Bates, so there is a good energy of great hostility and edginess on her part, leading one to never be quite sure how capable of murder she might be. There is also a second angle to the story, that of her estranged daughter who has come to town due to her mothers situation. The daughter is played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who foists upon us another irritating and phony soundly “fancy” accent to bother us with (not as annoying as her accent in The Hudsucker Proxy, but annoying still). So there is lots of fighting between them, as they try to come to terms with the 20 years of bad blood between them. Though hearing Leigh talk is almost too irritating to take, otherwise the movie isn’t bad. Lots of flashbacks, neat colors of the sky and great scenery of a small town in Maine.

Surprising to see this logo, in this day and age. Especially in color. But following up on our viewing of (what’s left of) Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons a few months back, tonight we took in The Magnificent Ambersons, the 2002 A&E version. I hadn’t realized that it was made from Welles’ original shooting script. That made it fairly easy to compare the two. Though I liked the 1942 version in a lot of ways, this one excels it in terms of having an intact story-line. The 1942 version suffers from the sinking feeling that you’ve missed something that was supposed to be there. This one doesn’t, things are much more clear with no more of that “referring to that which didn’t seem to have happened” that was rather annoying in the original.

Regardless, the same story of  wealthy family at the end of the nineteenth century and at the end of their fortunes. We follow about a quarter century from their peak to their miserable ending with plenty of unhappiness (and some death). But it’s not just the story of the family’s fall, it is more the story of the grandson of the family, what an arrogant and naive ass he is and had he not been such, how much of the misery could have been avoided. This little twerp is played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who is all too convincingly unlikable, I couldn’t tell if he did a terrible job, or if his character was as uptight and cardboard as he came across (I’m thinking the latter). The rest of the film is filled with quite charming characters, especially Uncle George (William Hootkins, from both Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark) and the young love interest Lucy Morgan (Gretchen Mol). It also features Jennifer Tilly as Aunt Fanny who I quite enjoyed as, while maybe not the best actress and the character was not particularly charming, she was well suited to the role. Sadly, the great James Cromwell is under-used as the family patriarch, The Major.

that familiar sinking feeling

Though it doesn’t have particularly exciting cinematography, (I did like the arial shot of Paris) the movie does looks good and after watching the washed out grayscale of the Welles dvd we saw, the colors seemed particularly exciting. So I would say that both versions are quite worthwhile as a historical dramas. The Welles one if you are interested in seeing the fine remains of what could have been a potential classic, and this version if you want to watch a nice little drama.

I’m a sucker for Lovecraft movies, especially if they come from the talents of the Gordon/Yuzna team. Dagon, their most recent HPL adaptation, is nothing but fun! As long as you can stand the lead character… Like most Lovecraft movies, it is a loose adaptation (being not a solely a film of the Dagon short story, but a blend of it with The Shadow Over Innsmouth) and I am sure there are some purists who will turn their heads away in dismay, but I think it’s a great and creepy ride. The story of a some young well-to-do’s who are sailing around in the Mediterranean when a storm and accident befall them. Luckily, they are not far from shore where a quaint little town rests. They make their way to the town in a little raft to find no one home. Well, they are home, they’re just a bit hard to find at first. And sadly, our heroes do find the townsfolk, all of whom seem to have something wrong with them… Strange deformities, lack of speech, loud chanting in the church basement and unfriendly attitudes (be sure to catch the great, but subtle, pitchfork scene) all serve to give us the idea that something unsavory is going on here.

Naturally the couple let themselves get separated and then it is every fish for themselves! The lead character Paul, is unpleasing played by Ezra Godden. His uptight and continually freaking out manner is very unconvincing and tiring to watch. And he has an annoying catch-phrase that is irritating the first time you hear it, and just gets worse and worse as he piles it on. His girlfriend is well played and there are some other good roles, but what makes this movie is the town (always dark, creepy and very rainy), the townsfolk, some great makeup effects (creepy, slimy and well, rather disturbing), the crazy story and some fun action scenes! Oh and some gratuitous plugs for the old Miskatonic U.

As “Paul” runs around town in the rain like a chicken who should have his head cut off, he meets an old crazy drunk who fills him in on what the heck is going on. See, many years ago, in times of great need, a strange man came to town. He promised bountiful harvests to the town, if only they would turn away from their christian god (who never answers their prayers, anyway) and worship his god, Dagon. Of course, they go for it and they get those fish, but after a while, great exalted Dagon wants a little bit more. And the town tends to rely on visitors to do their part. On the positive side, the price the town has to pay leads to a great creepy atmosphere, some great sets, lots of action, a creepy romance, human sacrifice, weird dreams and more.

Of course, you can’t take on Dagon, but oddly, after all the dead are forgotten, it has a happy end, of sorts.

After pondering it for a while, I finally got around to watching Deadwood Park, it was one of those days. For some reason, I had always thoughts that this horror film took place in a trailer park. Well, that’s not the case. Deadwood Park refers to an abandoned amusement park, which may have got me to watch it earlier, had I known.

One of those cheap, eagerly acted, “super indie” movies that people make after work, it isn’t bad. The “current day” scenes were well paced and the story is a good one (though with too much exposition from the characters). Our star is a fellow who, years ago, inherited his abandoned grandparents home in a small town in Missouri and now, in the midst of a personal crisis, he goes there to clear his head. While he is warned by a local that the house has been in great disrepair these many years, there is also the unsettling fact that an extensive series of unsolved child murders occurred in this town, decades ago. These murders not only ended the towns fortunes, symbolized by the closing of the amusement park where the first victim was discovered. And, of course, his twin brother was also a victim. He has not come to investigate this, but it proves hard to avoid, especially when a young lady takes a strong interest in him and in the murders. Of course, the ghost story aspect rears its head quickly as he begins “seeing things” at his house and he and the girl head to the old amusement park to look around.

It s a nice quiet movie. The sets are good, especially the amusement park, which is quite catching with its overgrown roller coaster and other attractions. The story is nice and has a pretty good twist towards the end. Though this part (as with a lot of the movie) is a bit overloaded with background flashbacks. Especially the one that starts right when you think the movie has hit its climax, then goes on for nearly 15 minutes before returning us to the story…

But Deadwood Park is a nice independent horror movie; not too cliched and it moves at a nice easy pace and manages to maintain its sense of mystery.

And continuing in the vein of things better left buried, we also watched The Tommyknockers. The story of a bunch of concrete blocks discovered in someone’s backyard that shine green light on people who then begin hearing voices telling them how to make groovy inventions, that all include little gizmos with green lights, and everyones eyes glow green and there is even a lipstick tube that shoots green light that can turn things into green slime. Yes, there are “tommyknockers” around, infiltrating everyone with their green and getting them to do things that they wouldn’t normally do. Though I imagine that seeing Jimmy Smits and Traci Lords as stars would lead you to think it is film-making of a high caliber, it is similar in it cheap corniness with the other slew of Stephen King TV movies but, alas, even more boring then the rest. This is one that won’t be giving me the urge to see it again.

Following Kurty’s lead, I took the “What Science Fiction writer are you?” test. Sadly, he scored a much cooler writer, and I got stuck with one that I don’t even care much for the writings of…

I am: Frank Herbert His style is often stilted, but he created what some consider the greatest SF novel of all time.

Getting up at 6:30 on Monday morning, it seemed like the perfect time to watch The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It seems odd that I haven’t watched this already in the years of this blog, because it always feels to me as if I’ve recently seen it. Maybe I’ve just watched it too many times! Of all of the movies carrying the chainsaw brand, this is probably the only one that anyone needed to bother making (yes, part two was overblown enough that it was fun, but just a bit too hokey). Admittedly, the most recent one that I’ve actually seen is 1990’s Leatherface: The Saw is Family, but that was so embarrassingly bad that it turned me against part 2, which I had previously liked. The new ones? No go.

avoid hitchhikers outside of texas slaughterhouses?

There are a couple of odd things that come up right off the bat. In the opening narration, the narrator (yes, John Larroquette) refers to their trip as idyllic. Driving across Texas in the summer heat to see if your grandfather’s grave was one of the ones that has been burgled at the old cemetery hardly sounds like an idyllic summer afternoon drive. And of course the title. As everyone has seen this movie, I don’t feel like I’m giving anything away to say that the title is a bit misleading. Only one victim in this movie is killed by chain saw, not much of a chain saw massacre. It begs the question, where the name? Well, I figure that they finished the movie and sat around one night trying to think up neat names. Maybe if I could ever get around to watching special features I would know.

too close for comfort

The story of 4 cool kids and a disgruntled, wheelchair-bound brother, who have come to these parts to see if their grandfather’s corpse was one of the victims of a recently discover spree of grave-robbing. Since they’re in the neighborhood, they decided to go and visit grandpa’s abandoned house. One of the friendly locals advises them not to, but they do anyway, which turns out to be a bad idea. As we all remember from Scooby Doo, a van load of teenish kids are too curious for their own good, especially without the dog to get them out of jams. The neighbors that they end up encountering are a three generational household of men who make a killer barbecue and are really better left alone, as they have very, very bad habits. Though it is well known to have taken its idea from Ed Gein’s activities, the household stuff is where the Gein really comes through, and it is all pretty great. taking about using every part of that which you slaughter. They really take it to heart!

The movie really benefits from its low-budget and that gives it a very strong air of reality as in, if you wanted a pile of bones, you went out and got a bunch of bones and piled them up. It’s all quite convincing. The action is great too, if you can handle what seems to be endless screaming during the last part of the movie. Though I love grandpa and I love when Leatherface slams his metal door, the best parts are when the father (a brilliantly perfect Jim Siedow, reminding me of someone my mother might have dated) drives Sally out to the house in his pick-up… And the ending. Which is so fantastic there are hardly words to describe its glory! But the movie is one of the most perfect films of all time. Tobe really got everything right in this, his almost-first effort, and at over 30 years old, this movie still more than holds its own.

Well, some news browsing over lunch led me to some “news” stories that bear repeating. From my main news source again, Slashdot, there was a sad piece of information from my younger days… Gary Gygax has passed away (if you don’t know who he is, don’t bother looking him up, you probably won’t want to know who he is…). A pivotal influence over many of my teen years, and those of a good number of folks I knew. Its not a shock or a tragic accident, but I still felt the urge to bring it up.

Also and more sad and tragic, a legislator in Florida, recoiling from the state requiring the teaching of, of all things, the theory of evolution, is pressing for a bill that would allow teachers to have the “right and freedom to present scientific information pertaining to the full range of scientific views regarding biological and chemical evolution.” Basically, to be able to teach whatever they want. Of course, it shouldn’t allow that, since I believe that “scientific” is generally held to mean investigating through evidence and reasoning, both of which are missing from creationist dogma.

Read here: Will the battle on science and evolution move to the Florida Legislature?.

Sure, there may be some issues with the evolution theory, but the concept is quite undeniable… After all, many creatures have been observed to change in accordance with their environment in recent memory (flu virus, anyone?)… The truth is hardly deniable, regardless of its stature as a “scientific theory”, as opposed to a “stupid theory” like these “(ahem) intelligent design (amen)” fans keep wasting everyone’s time with…

Hmm.. I suppose every teacher should be able to teach every subject exclusively in accordance with whatever personal beliefs they have, or have made up. Personally, if I am going to live in a fantasy land, I’ll make it up myself (or borrow it from Gygax) and won’t be concerned with what the courts and the public schools say about it… And I certainly won’t try and force it on school children. But on the positive side, I like to take i.d. as a sign that the christian creationists have finally come somewhat to grips with reality. After all this time of saying that Adam and Eve and the garden where true stories (even though they were just taken from the Babylonian myths anyway), the i.d. factions among them have basically agreed that those stories aren’t true after all (or maybe they are trying to pull another fast one on us non-believers, like Jehovah did with those dinosaur bones).

And, then finally (as my lunch break should be over now) from the Sunday Herald, this tidbit on how email is for old folks and too formal… “For most South Koreans, email is fit only for addressing the elderly, or for business and formal missives.”…

Read here: Why e-mail is so old-fashioned.

Sure, e-mail may be for old people now, but I must challenge the “too formal” claim. E-mail is way too informal, to say nothing of the crud that gets texted. I already have a hard time with how sloppy and informal e-mail is (in a hundred years will capitalization just be a forgotten theory?), the thought that people are going to get worse and lazier…

While I see the truth behind their points, I think (of course, speaking as an old person) that those are some sad truths. But I guess that society always changes and moves forward (technologically at least) and those of us who have already grown up tend to like to keep things that way that they were. Like Still listening to classic rock radio now, 30 years after the fact…