I Hate Twitter

Here's something I'm shocked that I haven't written about yet: my intense hatred for Twitter.  Over the summer I wrote about how I have long harbored a distaste for Facebook, but this is worse.  As vapid as Facebook often is, I can still understand its usefulness as a tool.  I also have to say that Facebook, unlike Twitter, has provided me with some entertainment and worthwhile distraction in the past.  Granted I pretty much lost interest in in Facebook two or three years ago, but at least there was a period in my life when it did have relevance.  On the other hand Twitter has never had any relevance in my life.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to understand Twitter.  It's something that a large number of people find compelling and enjoyable and I would love to share in their joy.  But I've tried and I ultimately just can't get into it.  Not only do I find the website dull, but there are a lot of elements to its design/popular use that I find actively irritating.

Firstly, and most obviously, I hate the 140-character limit.  Yes you can consume thoughts more quickly when they are packaged in tweet form, but more often than not I find that such writing sacrifices depth for brevity.  Much of the pleasure of reading for me comes from getting comfortable with the author's voice and becoming absorbed in their words and ideas.  I find this type of enjoyment missing from the world of tweets.  Before I can get really absorbed into the author's argument, they've already switched to a new topic.  While some might argue that such writing allows for a larger scope of topics to be covered, I rarely see Twitter users take advantage of the medium in this way.

Also I despise people who use Twitter to broadcast their "witty" thoughts and observations about the people and events occurring around them.  Even worse are the users who attempt to compose snarky commentary about the people around them.  I have seen way too many people post inane tweets about "fashion don'ts" and the like that they observe in the world around them.  The passive aggressive sarcasm contained within these posts pisses me off.  It's so pathetic to write judgmental comments about someone from behind your computer screen instead of saying something to that person's face.  In this way I hate how Twitter acts as an enabler  for the mindless negativity of society's cowards.  On a less severe note I'm also bored with all the fake Twitter accounts that chronicle the lives of fictional characters.  They were amusing a year or so ago, but the joke's been done before and now they're simply tedious.

A rather small component of Twitter that absolutely drives me nuts are the short biographies that users write about themselves on their Twitter page.  I hate them because more often than not they are hellishly pretentious.  You know the type of thing I'm talking about, "student.  artist.  writer."  (I made that bio up, but the format and content is very closely based off many real user biographies I have seen on Twitter).  If I have to describe to you why such self-indulgent self description is loathsome then you'll never get it.

Lest I be too negative (oops, too late) I would like to close my post with a mention of the one thing I love about Twitter, the infamous Fail Whale.  I love it because it's ridiculously cute.  I love the serene expression on its face as the multitude of birds strain to lift its massive whale body.  It's a fantastic image.

Kinji Fukasaku's Graveyard of Honor

This afternoon I took the time to watch Kinji Fukasaku's 1975 yakuza film Graveyard of Honor. Fukasaku is perhaps most famous amongst youngsters as the director of Battle Royale (2000), the film in which schoolchildren are pitted against each other on an island and forced to fight to the death. Before Battle Royale went into production, though, Fukasaku had already had a lengthy and productive directorial career. Fukasaku was particularly well-versed in the crime genre. His five film series The Yakuza Papers (1973-74), in particular, stands as a landmark moment in the yakuza genre for many film historians and critics.

All that being said, I was pretty unawre of Kinji Fukasaku's pre-Battle Royale output before this year. I first became interested in his sixties and seventies films after watching the relatively obscure Blackmail Is My Life (1968) on Netflix. Though I watched it on a mere whim, I walked away impressed with the incredibly stylish and amoral world presented in the film. Despite being over forty years old, Blackmail still felt fresh and hip and I became interested in seeking out similar fare.

Which leads me, of course, to Graveyard of Honor. I viewed Graveyard today with moderate expectations that were exceeded by the wild and frenetic ride that the movie presented. Regarding plot Graveyard of Honor is basically your standard rise and fall story, though the movie places considerably greater emphasis on the protagonist's fall from power than his ascent. But with a descent this spectacular, bloody, and dramatic, such a choice is difficult to argue with.

The film's self-destructive protagonist is Rikio Ishikawa (played by Tetsuya Watari, who might be most recognizable to American audiences as the lead in 1966's Tokyo Drifter), a hyper-violent yakuza with a severe lack of impulse control. Ishikawa sees himself as a balloon, which continuously rises through the air until it inevitably pops. The balloon metaphor is echoed multiple times in the film's visuals. At various points in the movie there are shots in which a singular red balloon is prominently displayed on screen. Far from being cheesy, I found the balloon motif to be an effective way of creating a visual link between all the different various events in the film. Shots of the balloon serenely floating in the air also made for a chilling and effective juxtaposition against the chaotic violence of the rest of the movie.

Speaking of the violence, I was impressed with how disorienting and frenetic the film's moments of violence were. Blood flows freely here, in shockingly vibrant shades of red. True, the blood on display in Graveyard of Honor looks very garish and 1970's, but to me that only adds to the brashness of the action and the retro appeal of the film.

Rikio Ishikawa, the film's aforementioned lead, is the most frequent and unpredictable perpetrator of the bloodshed. As such he's a difficult character to sympathize with fully, but he's a thrilling figure to watch. Ishikawa moves with an animalistic intensity, cutting and gutting anyone who dares get in his way. From the outset it is clear that Ishikawa is on the fast track to complete self-destruction, but one might be surprised at the havoc he will cause and the trials he must endure before getting there.

Those in the market for bold films with style to spare should give Graveyard of Honor a go.  Watching this film fueled my desire to further explore Japanese crime movies, and, as always, I look forward to learning more.

The Kid Whisperer

The book I'm currently reading is entitled The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence and is written by authors Henry A. Giroux and Grace Pollock. Mouse That Roared is a rather dry academic diatribe against Disney's corporate ills. Academic ramblings aside, I did find one interesting bit of trivia regarding Disney's corporate research team in my reading. In the authors' words, "On way in which Disney discovers 'emotional hooks' that lure boys into the 'wonderful world of Disney' is to hire child psychologists, anthropologists, and other researchers, such as Kelly Peña, also known as the 'Kid Whisperer'".

First off, what an awesome nickname. Second, I love that somewhere in the world there exists a group of full grown adults whose job it is to observe and study children, all for the sake of Disney's bottom line. I was intrigued by this sentence in Mouse That Roared, so I decided to do a quick bit of supplementary research on my own online. After a speedy online search I came up with this awesome New York Times article on the aforementioned Kid Whisperer.

A quick summary of the article for those not interested in reading it: basically in an effort to try to seize the attentions of the lucrative 6-14 year-old boy market, Disney hires researchers to study young male test subjects. These researchers assemble notes on their encounters and hand these notes to Disney, who uses the research in the creation and marketing of their media properties. The investigative work these teams do, according to the New York Times article, involves researchers going through the boys' closets, watching them shop, and conducting one-on-one interviews.

I found this story fascinating. It provides a tantalizing look behind the scenes at the marketing machine that is Disney. It also sheds a bit of light on some interesting individuals I'd love to know more about. I want to know what makes the members of this research team tick. I mean, how surreal would it be to get paid to go through a 12-year-old's sock drawer?

2011: A Year of Nostalgia

Last month my dear friend El Lobo wrote a post titled "2011 Has Been Boring". Besides having a fantastic title (simple, straight forward and charmingly negative), he made a rather convincing argument that 2011 pretty much sucked in terms of pop cultural output. And while I'm not one to disagree with him, there was one trend in 2011 that I absolutely bought into, and that was the way in which numerous Hollywood films capitalized on our collective nostalgia.

I'm not going to produce a comprehensive list of every nostalgia inducing theatrical release, but here are a few I can think of off the top of my head: Super 8, Winnie the Pooh, The Muppets, Hugo, and the re-release of The Lion King. These titles used different strategies to capitalize on nostalgia. Pooh and The Muppets promised to reunite audiences with beloved characters, but in the context of all new storylines. Super 8 and Hugo expressed nostalgia for bygone eras and, more generally, the emotions and relationships of childhood. And as for the 3-D re-release of The Lion King? Well, that was pretty much a straight up cash in, but it was one I bought into and thoroughly enjoyed nonetheless.

I've read before that nostalgia for the past is indicative of a deep dissatisfaction with the present and a fear for the future. Perhaps then the current interest in nostalgia-inducing movies stems from the economic hardships many face in today's weak economy. Another possible reason for the plethora of nostalgia pictures is that they appeal to a broad range of people. Not only does Pooh bring in the kiddies, but it also appeals to childless twentysomethings like me who grew up with the franchise and would love an opportunity to revisit the Hundred Acre Wood. And obviously a larger Pooh-watching demographic means more cash for Disney.

And that brings me to another point, that from a spectator's standpoint I'm really loving these films. I suspect I'm not the only one. During screenings for both The Lion King and The Muppets I have watched the audience spontaneously burst into applause as the final credits rolled. This is something I don't see everyday, so I always find it touching to witness collective applause when it happens.

Good news for the nostalgia fans is that the such releases show no signs of stopping as we approach the new year. The first half of 2012 alone will see 3-D theatrical re-releases for the late nineties blockbusters Titanic and Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. While it's scary to me that the we've come far enough away from the 1990's that the decade can now carry nostalgic clout, I have to otherwise reiterate that I'm kind of loving this trend. Granted studios can, and probably will, end up taking this trend too far and run it into the ground, but for now let's all bask in the warm nostalgic glow of clever marketing.

Links I Loved: Madonna's Acting Career and More

As I've written about in a number of my previous posts, I have a love/hate relationship with the Internet. On one hand, it can be a glorious treasure trove of knowledge, but on the other hand it can be a mind-numbing time suck. During my late teenage years I could spend every waking minute on the web without incurring any sort of boredom. But as I have aged I've grown considerably more picky about how and where I spend my time online. I wouldn't call myself an information connoisseur, but recently I've found myself getting bored with a lot of the miscellaneous crap that floats about on the Internet.

Instead of contributing to the problem, though, I thought I'd try to contribute to a solution. I wanted to start sharing more links on my blog of random Internet shit that I think is actually worth your time. Now not everybody's going to be interested in every link I post, so feel free to browse them at your leisure. Depending on how this post turns out and how you, dear reader, respond to it, I might make these types of posts a regular part of my blog. So please leave me feedback.

So without further ado, stuff on the Internet that I have recently enjoyed, along with my own personal commentary on each item:

The Conversations: Wong Kar Wai - I recently used this article as a source for a final paper for school, but don't let that turn you off. Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard's comprehensive discussion of five films (Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love, 2046, and My Blueberry Nights) from director Wong Kar-wai is an entertaining and engaging read. While the article is intelligent and critical, the back and forth dynamic of the conversation keeps it from drifting into dry or boring territory. Yes, the article is lengthy, but that's part of the charm for me. In a world of "tl;dr", it's nice to read something online that's got a bit of heft to it. In regards to the article I was particularly amused by their descriptions of the (over)acting within My Blueberry Nights, "...no one is working harder than [Rachel] Wiesz, who by the time she runs out of ways of portray drunken rage and despair is only halfway there", and I enjoyed their debate over the merits of Chungking Express. Overall this article makes for an entertaining and accessible companion piece to the films it discusses.

Madonna's 5 Best Moments on the Big Screen - As it says, this is a quick and timely rundown of the greatest moments in Madonna's acting career. Yes I am well aware that many will find the last sentence to be an impossible contradiction. Still I am of the opinion that Madonna's film career tends to be a bit unfairly criticized simply because people see her as an easy target (I have had this conversation on more than one occasion with my good friend El Lobo!) I also love how this article craftily builds upon and capitalizes off the hype for W.E. That said my only problem with the article is this, where's Evita?

Crestwood House Monster Books - I ran into this article a few months back and loved it, but I couldn't quite find a good place to mention it on my blog so I'm sticking it here. This is a fantastic rundown of a popular children's book series by author Ian Thorne (real name Julian May). Each title in the Crestwood monster series was dedicated to the films of a different monster. Personally I have a nostalgic fondness for this series as its where I was first introduced to Godzilla. While the series was published in the 1970's and '80's, my elementary school library was terribly antiquated so I grew up reading this series even if it was technically before my time. Reading this article and gazing at the accompanying photos brought back so many fantastic memories for me that I just had to link to this one.

Book Review: Film Music

Somewhere between Thanksgiving break and the always hellish and homework saturated final weeks of fall semester, I was able to squeeze in a reading of this slim 160 page text.  Film Music: A Very Short Introduction is, exactly as the title says, a short guide to and history of the use of music in movies.  The title is part of a massive series of books put out by the Oxford University Press.  The Very Short Intro series covers a whole range of topics from the massively broad (history, drugs, the meaning of life, etc.) to the slightly more defined (Aztecs, Kabbalah, The Tudors, etc.).  Prior to picking up this title I had some slight knowledge of the series, as I had read Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction for a class.  Truthfully I found Postmodernism to be pretty dry, but I took a gamble and picked this title up because the subject sounded interesting to me.

Like Madonna, I find movie soundtracks compelling.  I am interested in how image and sound intersect to create meaning and feeling.  I love those moments when the image and music work together to create the "perfect storm" of glorious emotional manipulation.  But while I am interested in how music works in narrative film, I had read very little on the subject before I picked up this title.

Kathryn Kalinak's Film Music is primarily comprised of theory regarding how and why music works in conjunction with film and a history of how music has been used in film.  My favorite part of Kalinak's text was actually the theoretical stuff.  As a movie fan I love to hear people muse about the effects of film, even if such theorizing is abstract in nature.  I know this sort of musing is an acquired taste, and some people straight up just don't like it, but those who are interested in film analysis should find Film Music's first few chapters to be full of compelling ideas to mull over.  I also appreciated that Kalinak steered clear of hardcore academic speak in her chapters on theory.  While her writing carries an air of formality she keeps pretensions at a minimum and is upfront about the limits and sometimes contradictory nature of film theory.  I also thoroughly enjoyed her analysis of the infamous use of "Stuck in the Middle With You" during the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs.  It almost makes me wish she'd included more specific case studies of music in film, though I realize this would have invalidated the "very short" part of the title.

I wasn't as enthusiastic about the history side of the book, though I did think it was solid enough.  Kalinak covers the history of film sound from its inception as live accompaniment to silent film all the way up to Slumdog Millionaire composer A.R. Rahman's 2009 dual Oscar wins.  I appreciate the large swath of time Kalinak covers, as well as the global range of history that the book covers.  My only problems with the historical aspects of the book were that the text in this section tended to be a bit dry and, again, I was left wanting to know more.  Perhaps this latter criticism isn't valid, as this book is intended to be solely a simple introduction.  Still I couldn't help but be a tad frustrated at the book's brevity.

Overall though, I think there's plenty to recommend in this text.  Film studies students or those with an interest in the field are the ones who are most likely to enjoy this title, but the writing is accessible enough that casual readers should be able to walk away with something as well.

Why I Dread the New Lorax

Now look, I'm not normally the type to bitch about remakes, redos, and reboots.  I find such behavior to be generally dull and pointless.  I mean we live in a capitalist society, it's obvious and completely understandable that people are going to want to capitalize on established brand names rather than take a risk on new properties.  That being said, the new Lorax movie kind of pisses me off.

Like most nerds with misdirected anger my annoyance stems from an intense personal identification with an aged piece of pop culture.  I was first gripped by the story of the Lorax through the 1972 animated TV special which used the original Dr. Seuss text to tell a story through dialogue, song, narration, and hand-drawn animation.  What has always intrigued me about The Lorax is the darkness of the story in comparison with other children's fare.  The audience is left with hope at the end of the tale, but there is no guarantee that everything will be okay.  It is encouraging to see a children's property that has enough faith in the intelligence of its audience not to hold their hands all the way through the end.

Another reason that I love the original Lorax story is the universality of its characters and themes.  On the surface The Lorax is a cautionary tale that urges the viewer to care for the environment, but the story isn't some mere public service announcement.  On a broader level the film also speaks about fatal human weaknesses such as greed and arrogance.  While the character of the Once-ler causes tragic environmental destruction on a massive scale, he is a sympathetic individual.  One of my favorite moments in the original cartoon occurs when the Once-ler experiences moments of self-doubt while sitting alone amongst his riches.  The guilt and denial that the character expresses in this scene illustrate the impressive complexity of the character, as well as his universality (after all, we are all flawed individuals).  The Once-ler is not a super villain who gets joy from destruction, but rather a well-intentioned but fatally flawed guy.  I also love how we never get to see the Once-ler's face.  The Once-ler's anonymity allows the viewer to project themselves onto the character.  Giving the Once-ler a face and identity (as the new Lorax film does) allows the viewer to disassociate with the character.  I wouldn't be surprised if this left the viewer with a less emotionally powerful experience as a result.

Another giant problem I have with the new Lorax film is that they seem to have molded the original's touching story of greed run amok into a trite "boy meets girl" tale.  According to Wikipedia, "The film follows Ted, an idealistic young boy, who tries to find the one thing that will win him affection of Audrey the girl of his dreams. To do so, he must discover the story of the Lorax, the grumpy yet charming creature who fights to protect his world".  Really?  If this synopsis proves accurate it will mean that the moral themes of the original film have devolved into a story of some guy trying to get into some girl's pants through a feigned interest in environmental issues.  I weep for the future.

Junji Ito's Gyo

About two or three years back I read a manga titled Uzumaki and I loved it. Uzumaki is a surreal horror tale about a small Japanese town that becomes overrun with spirals (one of the most memorable moments in the book occurs when a schoolboy slowly transforms into a snail). Uzumaki was my gateway into the world of horror manga and, in turn, the works of the horror manga maestro Junji Ito. Eager to reenter the surreal, grotesque and wildly imaginative world of Uzumaki, I've picked up and read a number of manga horror titles since, including Ito's Gyo. And while nothing has matched the nerdy high of discovering Uzumaki, Gyo is a solid title and is worth a read for any English speaking Ito admirers clamoring to read more of his work. I recently revisited Gyo during the downtime in my holiday break and I thought I'd use my blog to show this relatively obscure title a bit of love.

Gyo tells the tale of Tadashi, a rather ordinary guy who discovers a monster fish whilst vacationing with his girlfriend Kaori. This fish is attached to a bizarre metal contraption with "legs" that allow it to walk on land and, unfortunately for our heroes, is only one of many sea creatures of its ilk. Soon all sorts of sea creatures, including a shark and a whale, are rising out of the water on mechanical legs and coming ashore to wreck havoc on human civilization. The image of the whale is visually stunning - its body is so massive that its legs bend and collapse under its weight. The origin of the creatures is unknown. What is known is that they carry with them disease and an overpowering stench, a smell which one character compares to that of a human corpse on a hot summer day. After awhile humans catch the disease and become infected. Eventually the bodies of the infected humans attach themselves to the same contraptions that allowed the fish to walk on land (see the picture for a particularly awesome and grotesque example) and humanity is pretty much screwed.

Gyo, like Uzumaki, excels at darkly imaginative and witty imagery. The bloated and diseased human corpses riding on mechanical legs form a great visual juxtaposition between organic fragility and cold mechanized efficiency, while also spectacularly capitalizing on humanity's innate fear of disease and decay. Fish walking on land is another great horror image because it violates the divide between land and sea in ways that are both grotesque and fascinating. In other words, Gyo thrives on contradictions and juxtapositions, like fish that live on land and dead bodies that move. Along this same line one of my favorite moments in the manga occurs when the hero comes upon a circus in which diseased animals and people perform for a non-existent audience. A circus held during the end of the world...what an awesome concept!

But lest I sound like a drooling fangirl, let me point out that I still think this work is inferior to Ito's Uzumaki. The narrative here is less developed and less strong than that in Uzumaki and the characters are pretty underdeveloped. In particular, Tadashi's mad scientist uncle came across as silly and B-movie-ish (and not in a good way).

That said, Gyo's still a solid work, and I highly recommend it to fans of Uzumaki or the horror genre in general. The complete story stretches two volumes and is available in English courtesy of Viz Media. Volume two contains two bonus short stories by Ito, which are unrelated to the plot of Gyo, but nonetheless make for decent capstones to this wonderfully weird work.

Stuff I Wanna See: Moonlight Mask

I was doing some browsing on Facebook when I saw the poster to your left. I was intrigued by the retro-coolness of the poster design as well as the inexplicable yet awesome outfits on display (the turban and sunglasses combo, the tidy 1950's hat and suit, the dude with the skull mask in the left hand corner, etc.) I love offbeat Japanese movies and this was one that I knew nothing about.

So I did a bit of exploring using the vast resources of the Internet and discovered that the poster in question was an advertisement for a film in the "Moonlight Mask" series. Moonlight Mask, apparently, was a Japanese superhero from the late 1950's. Wikipedia (which, granted, isn't the best source in the world, but my resources were limited here) describes Moonlight Mask's appearance as follows, "Decked out in white tights, white & red cape, white scarf, yellow gloves & boots, dark glasses, face cloth and Indian-style turban (pinned with a 'moon' ornament), Moonlight Mask is armed with a whip, two six-shooters, shuriken and moon-shaped boomerangs. He also rides a motorcycle." Moonlight Mask made his debut on television in 1958. A film trilogy was released in the same year, presumably to capitalize on the popularity of the property. The poster I've included in my post is for the second film in the series, Moonlight Mask - Duel to the Death in Dangerous Waters. The series was apparently revived a handful of times, by way of a 1970's anime series and a 1981 film. There also exists a parody of the franchise titled "Kekko Kamen", which follows a topless and pants-less masked superheroine who incapacitates her enemies by shoving her crotch into their faces (?!?!).

Anyhow, I'm getting off topic. The reason I posted this is because the old-school 1958 Midnight Mask stuff looks awesome (in a kitschy, campy way) and I'd love to watch it/learn more about it. Unfortunately, though, I'm having trouble finding info about the series in English. Are there any fanboys or girls who know where I could get my hands on a subtitled copy of the original 1950's TV episodes or movies? This looks like a piece of pop history that's too compelling to let slip by.

Best Music Writing 2010: The Highlights

I recently read, and thoroughly enjoyed, a book called Retromania by Simon Reynolds.  When I was done reading that, I hopped over to Amazon.com to grab some advice on what to read next.  Whilst browsing through the links I saw a compilation entitled Best Music Writing 2010.  I read a few pages online and thought it seemed decently engaging so I picked it up. 

I just finished reading the last entry the other day.  Overall, I enjoyed this title.  The book is composed of thirty-six different articles, each somehow related to music, that was published in 2009 (the "2010" of the title refers to the date the compilation itself was published).  The articles vary greatly in both content and form.  There's an impressive range of music genres and personalities covered, and the writing styles on display include interviews, profiles, personal essays, and investigative pieces.  I enjoyed the variety in this volume as it exposed me to stuff I would never normally read about, and thus slightly broadened my worldview in the process (always a good thing).  Anyway, for those who enjoy reading entertainment journalism, this is a solid read that, on the whole, is well edited and assembled.  Only one article, the needlessly pretentious "Lady Gaga in Hell" (which bizarrely compares the "Poker Face" video to poet William Blake's description of Hell), came across as a complete dud.  All the other articles were amusing or interesting or both.

Now with that said, I'd like to switch up my normal book reviewing routine.  Since this is a compilation of a number of different writings, I'd like to take this space to highlight the articles I found particularly interesting or worth-reading.  I've picked three (a nice, arbitrary number) articles that particularly clicked with me, though of course I urge any interested parties to pick up the book and decide for themselves what's hot and what's not.  With that disclaimer out of the way let's begin the countdown:

1)  "The Gossip Takes Paris" - Michelle Tea.  This article opens the collection, and it's a strong opening indeed.  "The Gossip Takes Paris" is a retelling of author Michelle Tea's experiences at Paris Fashion Week as she follows Beth Ditto, lead singer of The Gossip.  One of the reasons why I enjoyed this piece was because of its characterization of Ditto.  I knew little about her before reading this article, and truthfully found her outspoken persona a bit repellent.  Tea's writing helped humanize and endear Ditto to me.  Hearing about Ditto's anxieties (she makes the author leave the room during a photoshoot "because loomers make Beth nervous when she's getting her photo taken") helped to give the eccentric pop star a relatable vulnerability.  Also of note in this essay are the author's descriptions of the various fashion shows and parties that occurred during fashion week.  Now I'm not one for fashion, so it's a testament to Tea's writing that I was actually interested in the events described.  One of my favorite parts in the article was the description of Jean-Charles de Castelbajac's Muppet themed collection.  It sounded so offbeat and fun, with the zany clothing designs and the onstage antics (the models threw fake money into the crowd at the end of the show). 

2)  "Michael Jackson: An Appreciation of His Talent" - Jason King.  This is the second of two articles in this compilation that were written in response to Michael Jackson's death in the summer of 2009.  And of the two articles, this one's my favorite.  King's article is useful both as a quick overview of Jackson's career and as an analysis of his public persona.  The historical overview of Jackson's career as presented here is thorough yet incredibly readable.  I loved the comparison King draws between Thriller and the blockbusters of the 1970s, "...1982's Thriller defined the pop album as a blockbuster mega-spectacle.  It did for music what Jaws and Star Wars did for film, turning an art form into an event".  Also interesting is King's analysis of Jackson's public persona, which manages to be sympathetic while still packing a critical punch.

3)  "Vanishing Act: In Search of Eva Tanguay, the First Rock Star" - Jody Rosen.  I loved this article because it exposed me to a historical entertainer I knew nothing about.  Eva Tanguay, as Rosen describes in her article, was born in 1878 and gained fame in the early 1900's as a vaudeville star.  What makes Tanguay such a fascinating figure was her outspoken eccentricity.  Of particular note is Tanguay's dramatic fashion sense, described by Rosen as follows, "The costumes, which Tanguay claimed to have designed herself were avant-garde and architectural: hats that rose several feet above her head, constructed from ribbons, bells, leaves, ostrich plumes; gowns made of feathers, beads, dollar bills, seashells, coral.  A particular cause celebre was Tanguay's '$40 dress' - a garment fashioned from 4,000 pennies"   Tanguay's stage persona was brash, loud, and overconfident.  Her hit song was entitled "I Don't Care" and the lyrics painted a picture of a outspoken and supremely confident female star.  Rosen's article approaches the figure of Tanguay under the angle that her star is "...forgotten, but not gone".  In other words, while Tanguay's name may have faded into obscurity, her legacy lives on in the careers of modern, image conscious female pop artists such as Madonna and Lady Gaga.  Rosen's article is a compelling testament to how art is indebted (often unconsciously) to the pioneering works that preceded it.  Plus Tanguay seems like an unbelievably awesome character and I'm glad to know about her.

My Favorite Things

THESE ARE MY FAVORITE THINGSSS!!

*Audience of middle-aged women screams at the top of their lungs*

And so it goes.  Well, I know I'm no Oprah, but that doesn't mean I can't rip her show off all the same.  In the spirit of the departed Oprah show (and in the spirit of materialism and happy holidays) I thought it would be fun to blog about my favorite stuff.  Now, as I said earlier I'm no media mogul, so there's no free shit here.  If you're looking for complimentary cars, I can tell you that I have none.  But what I do have are a very particular set of geeky interests, which make for entertaining (if not self-indulgent and fan-ish) blog fodder. 

Okay, before I continue let's lay down some ground rules.  First thing, being that this is a petite blog post there's no way I'm gonna fit everything I currently like on this thing.  I'm not even going to try to make this a comprehensive list, so no tears if you notice that I missed something awesome/cool.  Life's not fair.  So with the limited scope of the list in mind, let me give you some further idea of how I've organized this list.  I've picked two categories: movies and books.  In each of the two categories I've picked three different things that I happen to like.  Now, these three things are random- they may be something current or an old favorite or just something in between.  Rest assured, if I mention something here then I think that it's pretty cool and it is given the Hedorah stamp of approval.

Now without further ado, let's get the party started.  These are a few of my favorite things:

Movies:
In Bruges - I have loved this movie since I first viewed it in a Chicago theater with my friend El Lobo back in 2008.  Recently I decided to revisit it after combing through my DVD collection during a fit of boredom.  And you know what?  It's still awesome.  Beautiful European scenery, unflinching violence, and an awesome cast of oddball characters are all selling points, but it's the darkly witty dialogue that really makes the movie for me (ex- "A lot of midgets tend to kill themselves. A disproportionate amount, actually...not the R2-D2 man; no, he's still going").  Not to sound like a snob, but a lot of modern mainstream comedy leaves me cold.  In Bruges was just dark, biting, and smart enough to break past my pretensions and make me laugh.  And the fact that the movie still entertains on the fourth or fifth time 'round is a testament to how well-written this film is.

Outrage - Outrage is a Japanese yakuza flick from 2010.  I recently had the chance to see it in the theater and I thought it was a pretty solid picture.  Outrage tells the blood-soaked story of power struggles amongst members of modern Japan's criminal underbelly.  It's a pure adrenaline rush of a movie as betrayals and power grabs among the yakuza lead to inventive and increasingly brutal moments of violence (the film's unconventional use of dental equipment is unforgettable).  Couple these punchy moments of violence with some sharp black humor and you have a movie worth the price of admission.

Curse of the Golden Flower - I saw this movie in theaters way back when it first came out in '07, but I decided to revisit it recently after watching Red Sorghum (the 1987 film that marked the directorial debut of Zhang Yimou as well as the acting debut of Gong Li) earlier this year.  Despite some dated CG, I found that Golden Flower still thrills.  The movie's story is Shakespearean in scope and it's fun to watch the characters' tortured relationships play out as their dark family secrets come to light.  Plus, the elaborate costumes are spectacular and Gong Li is awesome as the Empress who tries in vain to defy her husband's rule.  The action scenes here are pretty rock solid as well.

Books:
Retromania by Simon Reynolds - Reynolds is a music critic/commentator who noticed a trend of recycling and repackaging in modern pop music and decided to investigate.  Reynolds spends 400+ pages mining the culture behind the recycling of old musical material and theorizing on why the nostalgia market for old musical acts/styles has grown so bloated in recent years.  The author is prone to go off on tangents, but for those with an interest in pop culture these tangents will be just another enjoyable part of the ride that is Retromania.  While Reynolds is specifically interested in music, his book will appeal to anyone interested in pop culture creation and consumption in a broad sense.  I found his chapter on Youtube to be particularly awesome.

The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman - I loved the Sandman series in high school and recently went back and read the first few volumes.  Guess what?  They're still compelling pieces of storytelling.  The Sandman series is so hyped that I feel like any praise I have to give is redundant at this point, so I'll just leave it at this: the series is awesome and you should read it if you have not yet done so.

Witchcraft Through the Ages by Jack Stevenson - a quick read that sheds light on an interesting though relatively obscure figure in film history - Benjamin Christensen, the director of the cult 1920's film Haxan.  While much of the book focuses on Haxan, it also details Christensen's life and career before and after the making of his most famous film.  Lovers of the obscure or the offbeat will delight in this slim, yet informative title.  It also makes a great companion piece to a viewing of Haxan.

Benjamin Christensen himself as Satan in Haxan!

Sweet Nostalgia

I yearn for a simpler time.  Get off my lawn!

About a month ago now my friend Juan wrote a post about nostalgia.  I've been wanting to respond to his post for a while now, but it was a topic I wanted to sit and mull over before I wrote about it.  You see, out of seemingly nowhere nostalgia has become the dominant emotion of the past year of my life.  Shit that I haven't thought about in years, like the Tony Hawk games or the Pokemon anime circa the early 2000's, has suddenly become of utmost importance to me.  Over the summer I'd indulge my nostalgic tendencies, spending long nights revisiting everything from my youth that was even remotely worth a second look.  The Internet makes it easy to find artifacts from the past.  I'm not going to lie, there were some empty summer nights that I wasted away gorging my senses on random Youtube  videos that had no value outside the sentimental.  Youtube totally has the nostalgia market covered.  Clips of old TV shows, movie trailers, video game footage, retro commercials, and seemingly every pop song ever recorded are all online and easily retrievable.  Making all that nostalgic crap available to Internet-surfing nerds is a cool and admirable thing, but isn't also a tad irresponsible?  Like a kid in a candy store, it can sometimes be hard for me to peel myself away from the Internet and avoid OD'ing on candy-coated retro pop goodness.  Too much of a good thing?  Sometimes.

Screenshot of Mr. Mosquito, a favored video game from my youth

As long as such nostalgia binges don't overtake my existence and completely stall my intellectual growth though, I'm fine with indulging once in a while.  Most definitions of the world nostalgia involve the word "longing".  And it's true that sometimes that desire to revisit that past can be strong, all-consuming and borderline painful.  I will never be able to revisit the past or entirely satiate that hunger to relive moments of my life.  What I'm trying to say is this: there can be a sharp bitterness to nostalgia that's hard to ignore.  But on the flip side of that I also find that there's a sweetness to the emotion.  Sure I'll never be able to relive my life, but sometimes it's precisely the unattainability of the past that makes it so desirable.  Also, because I can't go back and relive past moments in the flesh, I can continually tell myself tales about how great the past was without coming up against any hard evidence to the contrary.  But perhaps the sweetest part about feeling nostalgia is that it indicates that you've built a past worth feeling nostalgic about.  As Juan put it in his article, "I think the thing about nostalgia which I like so much is that demonstrates to me that I had so much fun at many times in my older years."  Amen, Mr. Lobo.

And like Juan, I too find that I sometimes feel a nostalgic longing for things I never personally experienced in my lifetime.  Sometimes I feel as though I've "borrowed" the nostalgia other people feel for, say, 1980's pop music or 1950's style a la American Graffiti.  Sure I didn't grow up in these decades, but after a lifetime of consuming other people's memories via film, music, and fashion, some of my elders' nostalgic feelings naturally rubbed off on me.  Now, obviously I'm not nostalgic for the real 1980's or the real 1950's, but rather the decades as they've been represented to me by movies and other forms of pop culture.  This is an small but important distinction to make.  Being that I didn't live through these times, I can't really say what my true feelings would have been on them, but that doesn't mean that I don't have strong feelings for some of these decades nonetheless.  Some particular exports from certain decades (ex-1950's monster movies, 1970's zombie movies, 1980's video games, etc.)  hold a nostalgic appeal to me, even if I didn't experience them the first time around.  Now let me be clear, the appeal of most of these cultural artifacts doesn't lie solely in their nostalgic qualities, but I'd be lying if I said that the retro factor wasn't a substantial part of their draw.

Juan, in his post, stated that "pop culture is what gives these memories significance or paints the palette of their context to me."  I couldn't agree with this sentiment more.  Seemingly everything I feel about nostalgia seems to come from pop culture in one way or another.  Whether we're talking about movies or music giving me a context for bygone eras (see the previous paragraph) or me having nostalgia for moments in my own life relating to the media I consumed in the past, pop culture seems to be the metaphorical sun that my nostalgia revolves around. 

In case you couldn't already tell, a lot of what I endeavor to write about on this blog stems from my feelings about nostalgia and pop culture.  I didn't necessarily set out to write this blog with that goal in mind, but looking back on the posts I wrote over the past few months a pattern of nostalgia is fairly apparent.  Don't get me wrong Zombie Baby's not a nostalgia blog, I just like to indulge in the emotion fairly often.

Book Review: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Being a single lady sans child I am not normally the type to pick up a book about parenting.  That being the case I should probably explain how I came to read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother to give you a bit of context.  Well, I first became aware of the title via a phone conversation with my good friend El Lobo.  He recounted to me the tales of a crazed Asian mom who bullied her two young daughters into classical music mastery.  The extremity of these parenting tales peaked my interest and I figured I had to read the entire book to (a) get the full story and (b) have a good laugh at the expense of two kids' wrecked childhoods.  So basically I was motivated by morbid curiosity and the faint promise of some sadistic humor.

With these questionable motives in mind I picked up Tiger Mother as soon as a copy became available at my local library.  I began reading with a single minded intensity, totally eager to scan past shocking descriptions of heinous verbal abuse dealt out by a psycho stage mom.  And you know what?  I didn't get that.  Amy Chua (the author and self-identified "Tiger Mom") has been portrayed by the press as a cruel, unfeeling enemy of all children.  But I didn't get that impression from the book.  On the contrary Chua comes across as a woman concerned with providing her two young dauthers with a strong foundation for adulthood, a healthy dose of self-esteem, and a passion for the arts.  Chua attempts to accomplish these tasks the best she can, but sometimes she screws up majorly.  In other words, she's basically an average parent.  Everybody is doing what they think is right, but mistakes are inevitable.  What particularly endeared me to the author is that she acknowledges where, when, and why she went wrong.

As I read the book I got the impression that the text was written primarily for Chua's closest family and friends.  Yes, the text is perfectly fit for public consumption, but the book focuses almost solely with Chua's personal experience.  The book describes Amy Chua's experiences of raising her kids in the "traditional Chinese immigrant style" (aka, strict, no-nonsense, academically-focused parenting).  With that subject as the premise, Chua has the opportunity to research and explore the differences between traditional Chinese and western style parenting in a broader sociological sense.  But generally she skips over any broader explorations of parenting styles in favor of telling a smaller, more personal story about her own life experiences.  Which is fine.  Chua wrote a breezy, light memoir about her life.  This kind of book totally has its place.  I guess I'm just a little disappointed because when I read through the book I couldn't help thinking that it could be so much more.  Like the Tiger Mother examining a shoddily produced b-day card, when I look at this book I can't help but see so much missed potential.

Don't get me wrong, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is a decent, reasonably entertaining read.  And you can be sure that when Chua does lapse into moments of crazed mothering it is pretty hilarious (see the brief moment when she threatens to burn her daughter's stuffed animals as a punishment for a lapse in musical tenacity...comic gold).  Also it's a pretty slim, quick read so picking up Tiger Mother is not a huge time investment for anybody.  That said, I generally believe that the effort you get out of something is often comparable to the effort you have to put in (a sentiment that the Tiger Mom herself would probably agree with).  So with that in mind, Tiger Mother is an easy read, but it's not a particularly enlightening one.

In conclusion:
Three outta five stars.  A mixed bag.

The Way You Love Me: Musings on Fandom and Faith Hill

For your information I don't like the music of Faith Hill.  This kiss, this kiss, this fucking kiss!  Okay girl we get it, now shut up.  That said, the woman's music is ubiquitous.  It has been playing in the background of my existence since what seems like forever.  Nary a year of my college life has gone by without a sort of unprompted serenade from Faith herself.  Her songs are played with tedious repetitious consistency in movie theaters, restaurants, malls, and radio stations all across mainstream America.  Like the black plague in the middle ages, her music is unpleasant and difficult to avoid.

Or at least all of this is how I once thought.  But the thing is that over the years I've developed a sort of ironic appreciation for certain aspects of Faith Hill's music and persona.  Now, I hate to use the word ironic simply because of its hipster connotations, but it's true.  On a gut level songs like "The Way You Love Me" don't make my soul soar.  OK, to be fair on a gut level I find most of Faith's stuff to be vaguely annoying at best.

But that's cool with me because, truth be told, I enjoy hating on Faith Hill's musical output.  This isn't as negative or mean-spirited as it sounds.  Look, the joy I get from bitching about the latest Faith single blasting out into the public sphere is legit.  It is pure unadulterated happiness.

And the reason why such whining is so delightful to me is, I think, because I'm a fan.  I will illustrate what I mean by way of an example.  OK, so a few years ago Faith Hill had a song entitled "All I Ever Wanted" that played at the end of a mediocre Katherine Heigl romcom called Life As We Know It.  Both the movie and the song contained within basically offended every aesthetic sensibility I had.  Everything that I held to be valuable in art and entertainment was obliterated by these crass commercial products.

And that, in its own weird way, was a great thing.  If I didn't have stuff like Faith Hill's Breathe album to mark as the enemy it would make everything I like a little less valuable.  It is commonly thought that the joy in fandom comes from heaping praises onto your favorite artifacts or creations.  But I think another, equally essential, part of fandom involves marking and embracing things that offend your sensibilities.  You can't really know what you like until you know what you dislike.

Leopard Lady: A Tribute to Chicago's Chinatown

The time was two or three years ago and the place was a seedy little shop in the heart of Chicago's Chinatown.  My friend El Lobo and I stood in front of one of the most wonderfully absurd sights I have ever seen in my life: a holographic poster of a scantily clad J-Lo lounging with two feral felines.  The poster was encased in an over sized, elaborate frame.  A handwritten card next to the picture summed up all this weirdness succinctly, "Leopard Lady - $50."  The minute my eyes skimmed over this price tag was the moment I fell in love with Chicago's Chinatown.

When or if you look up info about Chinatown on the Internet, you'll see a ton of reviews and articles praising the authentic Chinese food joints that line the streets.  And honestly the restaurants are pretty awesome.  Heaping plates of rice, shrimp, chicken, and other assorted edibles await your consumption should you choose to step foot into one of Chinatown's many dining establishments.  Also it's a fact that any fruit smoothie you purchase in this town will be killer.  So yeah, by all means you foodies should check out Chinatown.  But with that out of the way I must confess that I don't love Chinatown for its food.  No, I love Chicago's Chinatown because its multitude of small shops provide an audio and visual experience of the highest order.

On Chinatown's main road you'll find dozens of these little shops that sell everything from posters of anonymous babies to pornographic VHS tapes to Hello Kitty memorabilia.  What makes these stores great is the sheer randomness contained within them.  One store contained more anime merchandise than a 14-year old's bedroom, whilst the store's next door neighbor sold antique trinkets and handbags.  In these stores American, Chinese, and Japanese cultures seem to mix and mingle in random and delightfully illogical ways.  One store sold picture frames, but they had inserted pictures of American celebrities into the frames.  Clipped images of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie sat inside dusty heart-shaped frames on the shelf.  Next to these frames sat glossy Chinese language magazines.

Perhaps the most delightful culture clash I witnessed in Chinatown came from a bin of $1 "surprise" items.  These items were wrapped in newspaper and the store patrons could pick up an item, take a gamble and buy it, and then unwrap it and see what they had wasted their hard-earned dough on.  In case you can't see where this is going, I was one of the suckers who reached into the dollar bin. Ultimately I don't regret the purchase because while I discarded the contents of the package (a small, stained cloth coin purse) I kept the newspaper it came in.  The newspaper was entirely in Chinese, but contained a large picture of Susan Boyle singing.  The juxtaposition of Chinese characters with a D-list English speaking celebrity cracked me up, and I have kept that newspaper clipping to this day.

With its weird mixing of cultures and illogical store layouts, Chicago's Chinatown is a delight for those who are willing to accept its eccentricities.

Youtube Cliches Part II: When They Cry

A few weeks ago in the comments of one of my posts, frequent Zombie Baby Nursery guest star Juan del Lobo pointed me in the direction of a Youtube video that is compiled of clips of Oprah yelling out celebrity names (click here to watch).  I found the video funny, partly because Oprah's odd vocal intonations are inherently humorous ("MARIAH CARE-EEEEEEEeeee!" being one of my favorites), but also because this video exemplifies a Youtube cliche.  The cliche I speak of, my friends, is what I refer to as the "celebrity tics video".  To assemble a video of this type you need to pick a famous person, find a relatively minor but consistent thing that they do or say, and assemble a video to highlight this verbal or physical tic.  In the case of the aforementioned Oprah video, it's her habit of wildly barking out the names of her famous guests that's being put on display.  Another video edits down Natalie Portman's Oscar speech to highlight her excessive use of filler words, whilst another focuses on Juno's habit of saying "you know".

But to me the crème de la crème of the celebrity tics genre is this gem, the Julianne Moore crying video.  Three plus minutes filled with sniffing, weeping, and face contortions.  It's that kind of stupidly brilliant video that makes me say, "God, I love the Internet."

For the sake of clarity let me try to break down why I love this crap.  First off, they epitomize online culture.  While the web can indeed be a dark cultural abyss filled with such depraved human creations as lolcats, there is something genuinely funny about videos of this type.  They are one part observational humor and another part absurdity.  The existence of these videos implies a certain type of obsessiveness in both the video's creators and audience.  And this kind of obsessiveness is a big part of the appeal to me.

Horror Movies: My Take on the Genre

So I was reading this book called Shock Value by a guy named Jason Zinoman.  Said book is about the heavy hitting horror films of the 1970's and, "how a few eccentric outsiders gave us nightmares, conquered Hollywood, and invented modern horror."  It's a decent read, though it's neither as specific nor as expansive in its information as I would have liked it to be.  But that's OK because reading Shock got me thinking about horror movies I like, which got me thinking about the genre in general, which got me thinking about my friend El Lobo's blog post about horror movies.  In his post on the subject, Juan detailed the five reasons why the horror genre appeals to him.  I enjoyed Juan's post and I kinda wanted to do my own version of it.  After all, I am a child of the Internet age, broadcasting my opinions on such topics to the World Wide Web is something I can do.  So without further ado, here are the top three reasons why I love the horror genre.

1. Weird, fantastic, surreal, and grotesque imagery.  One the primary appeals of film is that it's a visual medium (duh).  Therefore, one of the greatest pleasures I get from watching horror movies is seeing what kinds of bizarro shit human beings are capable of conceiving of and visually representing on screen. Therein lies the appeal of gore for me as well.  I don't revel in gore because I'm a sadist, but rather because I enjoy seeing how people can maneuver innocuous household items to look like flesh, blood, and guts.  Plus I love how wild, loud, and vile horror film gore and imagery can be.  Subtle is nice, but sometimes you just need to unleash your imagination and revel in the excessive once in awhile.  Horror imagery isn't everybody's cup of tea, and I respect that, but my imagination flourishes in the excessive, grotesque, and oddball realms of horror film imagery and I know I'm not alone in that regard.

2.  Dark, offbeat humor.  Safe jokes don't make me laugh.  They make me smile out of politeness, but they do not genuinely engage or amuse me.  I despise most sitcoms and modern romcoms simply because they play it too safe and shoot for jokes that are cute rather than insightful.  Now I'm not going to pretend that the horror genre is always a fountain of insight, but the truth is that I simply find much of the humor in horror movies to be hard hitting and hilarious.  And yes, sometimes such humor provides satirical insight into our culture (take the undead mall patrons of Dawn of the Dead or the fake commercials of Tokyo Gore Police as examples).  But even when the humor is separated from societal commentary it often makes me laugh long and heartily.  What can I say, I just find slapstick funnier when gallons of fake blood are involved.

 3.  Iconic characters.  Sure every genre of film comes with its own recognizable stable of iconic characters and imagery, but it's the heroes, villains, and monsters of horror movies that really gain my admiration.  Part of the reason for this of course has to do with the grotesque and surreal imagery that horror films often employ in their creature design.  It's hard not to love the grotesque visual inventiveness of Hellraiser's cenobites, for example.  One also has to appreciate how iconic and instantly recognizable many horror villains (from Frankenstein to The Ring's Samara) are to modern audiences.  In today's image saturated world, the fact that people can pick Freddy Krueger's scarred visage out of a crowd speaks to how deeply integrated into our culture these movies are.

Book Review: Masters of Doom

As I said in one of my more recent posts, I'm trying to squeeze out as much reading time as possible as my final days of summer slowly pass me by. And if I read anything that I deem cool and/or awesome, then I'm obligated to write about it here for posterity's sake. So without further ado, here ya go:

Masters of Doom:
Masters of Doom (published in 2003) is about the creative partnership of John Carmack and John Romero, the duo that would play a major role in creating such computer game landmarks as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. While the book is a work of journalism, it is written like a novel with lots of dialogue, scenes, and lots of emphasis placed on characters. Stylistically it almost resembles a geeky version of Ron Suskind's A Hope in the Unseen. This emphasis on character is what makes the book so compelling and readable. I was never a big PC gamer myself and hadn't played the majority of the games mentioned in the book, but thanks to Masters of Doom's compelling character descriptions and brisk pacing, my disinterest in PC gaming was irrelevant to my enjoyment of the story.

The story of Masters of Doom is a typical American rags to riches fable with a modern tech geek twist. Both Johns emerge from their traumatic teen years ready to take the young computer game industry by storm. They pay their dues working up the ranks and eventually start their own game company. Their success accentuates their personality differences. Carmack's an introverted and brilliant programmer, whereas Romero is an extroverted video game celeb. These personalities eventually drive their friendship apart and push each in different personal directions. As I said, it's a classic American myth that trots out all of our culture's favorite cliches and archetypes (the kids who came from nothing and made something of themselves, the loneliness of fame, the eccentric young creatives, etc.) Far from making the story dull, these familiar plot points lend the story a timeless, mythic quality. Despite being published almost ten years ago, this book felt fresh and relevant to me as I read it.

Masters of Doom is also valuable for its behind the scenes info on the electronic gaming industry. I might of never been a big PC gamer, but I was all about video games back in the day, and thus I enjoyed reading about the behind the scenes workings of the industry. It's also pretty cool to read something that sheds light on the personalities creating the games. Compared to pop singers, Hollywood directors, or even bestselling authors, most game designers are relatively obscure. Thus it's interesting to read something that illuminates who makes these games and explores what makes them tick. You'll also absorb a mass of video game history as you read. While Masters of Doom is not a video game history book, gaming history provides the background to the main story and it is inevitable that the reader will pick up some trivia as he or she progresses through the story.

For gamers and geeks, Masters of Doom is a supremely entertaining read. If the subject matter speaks to you I recommend you pick it up.

Bill Gates Kills on Youtube

So I'm reading this book called Masters of Doom. It's basically about the rise and fall of the creative partnership between John Carmack and John Romero, the guys behind such computer game hits as Doom and Quake. It's pretty entertaining. I'll write a post about it later, of course, but for now I bring it up only because it pointed me in the direction of an awesome video. And I only bring the video up here and now because I know I won't have space for it later when I write my post on Masters of Doom.

The video in question (click here to watch it) is a short advertisement which was created for and screened at a Halloween party at Microsoft in 1995. As is detailed in the aforementioned book, Microsoft saw how much money computer games were raking in and wanted to grab a piece of the gaming pie. This video was created in an attempt to brand Microsoft as a viable and attractive platform for gaming.

That's the explanation as to why this vid exists. To watch it now though, on Youtube, makes for some true hilarity. From the video's corny Tron-like premise (Bill Gates running through the world of Doom...inside the game) to the terrible, wooden line delivery, this ancient piece of advertising should be unwatchable to modern eyes. But instead it's pretty awesome. How can you not love the pure surreality of Bill Gates selling his company whilst clutching a shotgun? How about the wonderfully gruesome title that starts off the video ("Microsoft: Who Do You Want to Execute Today?") And of course you can't forget about Bill exacting sweet vengeance on the video game character who dares to interrupt his speech!

Videos like this are the reason I love Youtube. I see the site as an awesomely expansive museum filled with the audio and video of our culture's past and present. And the weird, forgotten, or simply strange cultural images are the ones I gravitate toward the most.

Three Reasons Why Madonna Will Survive the Zombie Apocalypse

So a few days ago I was thinking about Zombieland. I don't know why, but I was. If you've never seen Zombieland there's a moment in the movie where Bill Murray shows up playing himself. He's survived the zombie apocalypse and is living in his mansion, relatively safe from the threat of the undead. This got me thinking about how the average celeb would fare in the event of a zombie apocalypse. On one hand, they've got plenty of resources and connections, but on the other hand they can be a bit pampered and soft. Of course any given celebrity's odds of surviving a zombie uprising would depend on their individual characteristics. Bear Grylls is significantly more equipped to deal with such a scenario than Ke$ha, for example. I had all this stuff running through the back of my head while I was reading my friend El Lobo's Madonna-heavy blog, which made me ask the question, "How would Madonna do in the event of a zombie apocalypse?" Well, I've done some thinking on the issue and I think that, given her disposition and attitude, Madonna could emerge victorious over her undead foes. Here are three concrete reasons why:

1. She is in prime zombie fighting shape
As she informed us via a rap in her song "American Life", Madonna is fond of doing yoga and Pilates in rooms filled with "hotties". While it is doubtful that there will be many hotties left alive come the zombie apocalypse, Madonna's training regimen should prepare her for life in a more hostile world. Plus, look at those arms. She's got zombie killing arms, my friends. With her special yoga training and muscle bound physique, one could picture Madonna engaging a horde of zombies in hand-to-hand combat, similar to the kung-fu priest in Dead Alive.

2. She has a strong personality
Don't get me wrong, strong and forceful personalities can sometimes be a detriment in situations like this. You push too many people around and sometimes they'll push back. So while I'll concede that Madonna's strong personality could lead to conflict in a zombie infested world, such a personality certainly has its advantages. Check out this classic Youtube video. See how she immediately starts barking out demands? That's totally a perfect demeanor for a leader of a group in a crisis situation to have. It may not be diplomatic, but you can't argue that such tactics get people moving and get stuff done. When Madonna demands that you find her a zombie killing shotgun, you do what she says because, well, who else are you going to turn to? Everybody else is a walking corpse at this point so you really have no other options.

3. She has the power of music!
If the Japanese movie Wild Zero taught us anything, it's that the power of rock 'n roll can be incredibly effective against a shambling horde of undead. And while Madonna's poppy dance songs may be a far cry from the distorted guitars of Wild Zero's Guitar Wolf, she's still got a musical soul nonetheless. They say that music soothes the savage beast, so perhaps Madonna's voice is really all that's needed to turn zombies away from human flesh.

Book Reviews: Arcade Mania and A Violent Professional

Since I just hit my summer break for college a few days ago, I was excited to have some free time on my hands to read whatever I wanted to. Yeah you read a lot in college, but it's not necessarily stuff you're fascinated by or stuff you're in the mood to read. So with the extra time on my hands I was hyped to read something of my own choosing. I decided to pick out two titles to tackle this week: Brian Ashcraft's Arcade Mania: The Turbo-Charged World of Japan's Game Centers (2008) and Kier-la Janisse's A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (2007). Without further ado, my opinions on these books/details about them, are presented below.

Arcade Mania:
True to its title, Arcade Mania details the types of games populating the floors of contemporary Japanese arcades. Sprinkled in with the book's descriptions of games are insights into Japanese arcade culture and interviews with game players, developers, and marketers. The book is split into different chapters and each of these chapters focuses on a different "genre" of arcade game (such as crane games, fighting games, shooters, etc.) Each section provides the reader with a brief history lesson of the genre complete with a myriad of pictures of old machines and screenshots. Each chapter also highlights a different player and/or game designer who is considered an expert in their designated genre. These profiles turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the book as they give the text a personal edge while providing insight into the way these games are consumed in their home country. It's one thing to know these games exist, it's another thing entirely to know the culture in which they are played. To put it another way, arcade games are the "what" in this context, but the people who play them provide the answer to the "why". It's a bonus that the author found such an interesting cross-section of characters to interview. From the mother of two who doubles as a crane game ninja to enigmatic game creator "Suda 51", the interviewees are nothing if not interesting.

If I had one complaint about the book it would be that it is not detailed enough. But then again, I don't know if depth was the goal here. In both its writing style and layout Arcade Mania resembles a magazine. I don't mean this as a criticism. The book's super fun to look at and is incredibly readable. It's just that those looking for substantial information on arcade game history or sociological insight into the gaming scene in Japan need to look elsewhere. With its light text and killer page design, Arcade Mania should provide those with an interest in Japanese pop culture and/or video games with an easy, entertaining, and factoid-filled read.

P.S.- Those who enjoyed Arcade Mania would be wise to check out Brian Ashcraft's more recent book, Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential: How Teenage Girls Made a Nation Cool. Utilizing a similar picture heavy design to the one found in Arcade Mania, Schoolgirl gives the reader a summary and history of the popularity of Japanese schoolgirls in popular culture (um, excluding porn of course). The book's fun and informative. It's also a great novelty item due to the obscure and offbeat subject matter.

A Violent Professional:
A Violent Professional is a book dedicated to the Italian character actor Luciano Rossi, who appeared primarily in bit parts in genre films during the mid-sixties to the early eighties. Talk about a niche title! I knew little to nothing about Rossi going into the book, but I still read it in the hopes that it could introduce me to some cool movies. This, along with the fact that the book was part of the same series as Mark Schilling's No Borders, No Limits convinced me to take a chance on Violent Professional. Ultimately I'm glad I picked this title up because it's a hugely entertaining and compelling read that also looks great.

Violent Professional is covered in pics of movie stills and publicity photos. And being that most of the movies in here are '70's Italian exploitation films, the photos in the book are soaked in loud, eye-catching, retro cool. The meat of the book is in the text though, and it is in this text that the book shines. Whereas No Borders, No Limits took a more dry and academic approach to its text, A Violent Professional contains much more personality and humor which makes the book easy to breeze through in a sitting or two. In the book's introduction the author explains her admiration of Rossi as an unsung hero of Italian cult cinema. She also describes her attraction to the actor, which leads to her rating each of his films on a scale of one to four hearts based on how hot she thinks he is in each film (she humorously explains her reasoning behind the system, "...I was reading Tigerbeat before I was reading European Trash Cinema.") The heart rating system provides the book with a fun twist that gives it an extra boost of personality without distracting from the facts and information it has to offer.

The descriptions of the films are also great. They make me want to track down a lot of the titles, which may prove difficult considering that many of these movies are a touch on the obscure side. On a final note, those reading Violent Professional should pay close attention to the English titles given to these films, which contain gems of titles such as Confessions of a Sex Maniac and Sex Slayer!