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.