Saturday, December 3, 2011

Day Five: Killarney

I don’t remember much about the next morning, because I was hungover. I remember wanting a Perrier and settling for the Ireland equivalent. Our first stop of the day was a quick stroll round the quaint village of Adare, chalk full of thatched roof cottages. Most of our time in Adare, however, was spent trying to find dental floss. There was none to be had, at least in the sense there was nothing like the spools of thin waxed string that we crazy Americans are used to. We did manage to buy a sack of individual thick threads that the lady at the apothecary claimed would be exactly like our dental floss, only it wasn’t at all, and I could barely get it in between my teeth.

For the first time ever, I managed to doze on the bus. It was that or get even more nauseous from the constant twisting, winding coastal roads. At last we stopped for lunch, in the most whimsically named town ever: Dingle. Needless to say, Dingle was a real delight.

If you’ve ever heard of the town of Dingle, you may know that it the city has a mascot. That mascot is Fungi the dolphin. Fungi is actually a real dolphin who likes to hang around the bay in Dingle. He first showed up in 1984. In case you hadn’t checked a calendar in awhile, it will soon be 2012, which makes Fungi a few years past the typical twenty-five year dolphin lifespan. Our tour guide pondered the question of what Dingle will do when Fungi is no more. Along the wharf was a charming statue of Fungi. Somehow I managed to bamboozle my mother and Evelyn into taking comical pictures with the Fungi statue. Joy is had by all.

I have to say the only downside to Dingle was the dog poo that seemed to be all over the city, in spite of the numerous signs posted telling people to clean up after their dogs. Did the people of Dingle just not care? Maybe they didn’t have as strict of fines as they do in Los Angeles. Or maybe the dogs are all jealous of the attention Fungi gets, and aims to ruin Dingle tourism. All I know is that it took fifteen minutes, several puddles of rainwater, and a very thin twig to clean off my mother’s shoe.

After saying goodbye to Fungi and the good people of Dingle, we continued down the coast, expecting to wind our way up to some famous rock or something up on a hill. Perhaps if we’d actually made it up to said rock, I’d remember the name, but we didn’t so therefore I didn’t. After the previous day’s downpour, a coastal bridge had washed out, denying us access to this mysterious rock and the picturesque landscape leading up to it. You could literally look across the enormous hills and see the long strips of brown where the rain swept the dirt from the mountain top down to the sea. What was most impressive though, was the skillful way our bus driver Mickey managed to turn the bus around on a narrow coastal road without falling off the edge, or running down one of the various sheep or cows meandering around the place.

All in all, it wasn’t the most exciting day, but it was a nice break. We arrived in Killarney that evening and had a bit of time to just relax, take a hot shower before we dined at the hotel on horribly salty mackerel. If you can imagine the texture of cooked fish, only instead of a meat or fishy taste, it’s like you dumped an entire container of Morton’s onto your tongue. I believe it was that evening that I vowed to stop trying to eat in Ireland and just stick to the Guinness.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Day Four: Ennis

The next morning, I awoke too tired to even feel angry anymore. It only took four days to break my spirit. You win, bus tour. You win. We actually managed to get downstairs to breakfast early, only to find half the old people from our tour were already milling about the lobby, getting cranky that the hotel hasn’t opened their breakfast buffet yet. Probably because they all went to bed the previous night at 7am.

Our first stop of the day is a little town called Knock. There wasn’t much in Knock, other than a rather large shrine to the Virgin Mary and a surplus of religious themed gift shops. Apparently, back in 1879, an apparition of the Virgin Mary, Saint John and Saint Joseph appeared to about seventy people in this very spot. This made me think of when I was little, and my catholic nanny would tell me all sorts of miracle stories about holy statues coming to life and saving kids from fires. The statues in Knock, however, did not do any of this while I was there, but maybe that’s because I’m not a Catholic. It was all a little awkward to watch people trying to go to church when you‘re just a tourist who wants to snap a few pics and then use the bathroom.

Previous in the trip, we’d experienced a bit of rain, but nothing that made me regret the absence of a Disneyworld poncho. Then we got to Galway for lunch. My mom and I took refuge in a delightful little crepe restaurant where we drank tea and gorged on sugar and dough.

The rain did not stop, and in fact, seemed to intensify, almost as if it knew where we were going next. The Cliffs of Moher. (Which, by the way, is pronounced like ‘more’ not like ‘mo-hair’…I think) Our guide made a point of telling us how many people either jumped to their deaths or accidentally fell off every year. This would not be the last time we received such a warning. I’m not sure if this is a statement about the stupidity of tourists or the dangerous quality of Irish national landmarks.

Even with the rain and the cold and the hail that eventually stabbed us in the eyes, I think this was another of my favorite places of the tour. I know there are beautiful landscapes in California, but so far, Ireland repeatedly beat any coastline I had ever seen in the states. We hiked as far as we could along the path, thankful for the large stone barricade that stood between us and a long plummet into the ocean. I think I could have wandered back and forth along the cliffs all day, but unfortunately, the rain had managed to permeate every layer of clothing I was currently wearing, which was a lot. We hopped back on the bus and over to our hotel, where we could blow dry my coat for our fancy castle dinner.

Fancy castle dinner?! Say what? Have you ever been to Medieval Times, or even a renaissance festival? Well, going to Bunratty Castle was sort of like that, only about a million times better because you were in an actual castle with authentic Irish people. We even had to climb an authentic super creepy and narrow spiral staircase. They really ought to have let us climb the staircase before they started dishing out the mead, or honey wine for you non fantasy nerds out there. As I sat on our long bench, trying to get my mom drunk on white wine, I pondered what would ye olde lord of Bunratty think if he knew back then what would become of his home hundreds of years later? And will we eventually suffer the same fate? Will our boring modern houses one day be visited by moon children of the future? Will they sit in mock-Ikea furniture and try to imagine what it was really like to live in the 2010s, back before they had eyelid TVs and colleges on Mars? Keep in mind, I pretty much consumed an entire pitcher of red wine myself, not to mention the mead. I think I remember at one point yelling at my mom, taunting her that one of our new friends was cool because she was drinking more than my mom. Needless to say, we all had a really good time.

Before each course, a chap in what looked like Shakespeare pumpkin pants would present a dish before an old couple they’d chosen to be the lord and lady of the house, so they could deem it worthy or not. The traditional singers and musicians were all quite skillful, even if their costumes looked like something from a Halloween shop. And because you can’t go anywhere as a tourist without audience participation, one of the lads from our tour was thrown into a dungeon and made to sing in a comical fashion for the amusement of young and old, but mostly old. The evening ended with me attempting to go to the bathroom in the disgusting, toilet-paperless bus toilet, giggling to myself that I could add “castle” to the list of historical places I’d gotten drunk in.

END OF DAY FOUR

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Day Three: Sligo

Another cheerful morning! Thankfully, I’ve already given up on any semblance of looking attractive, which really streamlines this getting dressed process. I figure in a week, I’m going to smell like Irish hotel anyway, so why not take the pressure off right away. Down at breakfast, we were delighted to find that in addition to the heart attack Irish breakfast special, this hotel offered croissants and tiny wrapped blocks of cheese. Later, my mom will reveal to me that she has shoved some of each into her purse for us to snack on later. I don’t know why this amuses me as much as it does. It makes me feel like I’m in Lord of the Rings. Characters in fantasy books are forever walking around with wheels of cheese and loaves of bread in their satchel. It’s a fitting metaphor, especially if you know my relationship with my mom, dutifully dragging me around while I whine and collapse from exhaustion. It kind of happens a lot.

I was truly quite excited for our first stop of the day, the Giant’s Causeway in County Atrim. According to my trusty guidebook, the Giant’s Causeway is a natural phenomenon of these crazy looking hexagonal rocks formed by a volcano fifty billion years ago. Our bus dumped us out at the little rest stop where were told to await another bus that would take us down a short drive to the rocks. After standing in the cold for an eternity, I decided to ditch the oldies and the bus and walk down myself, because that‘s what hip, rebellious young people do. We don’t play by the rules! And then my mom came along after me, probably to make sure I didn’t faint and accidentally fall into the ocean, because that’s what mom’s do. Take care of their idiot, rebellious children!

Though it was windy and cold, within a few minutes I could no longer see the small visitor’s center and gift shop. On one of me was a tall, rocky hill. On the other, the coast. I had this feeling that I didn’t want to blink, I wanted to somehow freeze this image in my mind. There are not words for it, other than it was all very Lord of the Rings, right down to the bread and cheese in our purse.

http://i.pbase.com/u47/jflogel/large/33978808.GiantsCauseway7.jpg

The actual site itself was even more stunning, and I can easily believe how people thought it was a magical place. I began to climb out onto the rocks pillars of rock, toward the ocean. There were a few other tourists there doing the same, so I figured at least I wouldn’t be the only moron who plummeted to my death. There, on the edge of the water, feeling a wind that was literally strong enough to knock me down if I wasn’t careful, I had either a transcendent or cheese ball thought, depending on how you look at it. It was a reminder of how puny and weak we are, that we can build our skyscrapers and are compuphonepads and they all mean nothing up against a wind that was strong enough to knock the air out of my lungs. No joke. For a few seconds, I held my arms out Titanic style and just let the sea spray hit me. Later, I would find that while I was getting my mind blown by the destructive beauty of nature, the oldies safe on solid ground snapped some very comical photos of me looking like a jackass.

And on we went! We stopped in Derry for lunch, where I had my first of what would many bowls of seafood chowder on this trip. Unfortunately, the first place was the best, and I proceeded to lament that most wondrous original bowl for the remainder of my trip. None other could live up to it’s precedence. If you’re ever in Derry, the restaurant was called Fitzeroy’s. I warn you now, if you go there, be prepared to give up ever eating chowder anywhere else again. It was that good.

We made one more stop in Donegal as we continued on toward Sligo. By then I was starting to get antsy on the bus, so I decided to prove our guide’s claim that there were eight million sheep in Ireland. Thus, my mother and I began to count the sheep. Ironically, we did not fall asleep at all, but became very agitated when the bus was moving faster than we could count, which in turn led to a lot of hysterical laughing and screaming of “Quick!!! How many over there? Twenty? Fifty?! HOW MANY?!” Eventually, this devolved into a lot of rough estimating and upon reaching eight hundred, we gave up. In conclusion, there are in fact, a lot of sheep in Ireland.

The bus arrived in Sligo for the evening. We would be staying that night in an old train station that had been converted into a Best Western. After settling in, I headed back down to the lobby to explore. On the way, I ran into one of the ladies from our tour, Alka, a doctor from New Jersey. “Have you found the computer yet?” she asked. I nodded and told her where it was. “I always know if I find you, I’ll find the computer,” she explained with a laugh. This was when I realize how crazy I’m going being disconnected from Los Angeles. I was so excited to get away, and yet my brain is still suck there. Clearly, I’m not drinking enough on this trip.

END OF DAY THREE

Monday, November 7, 2011

Day Two: Belfast

I was once told by a doctor that when you lose a night of sleep, you can never truly make up for it, no matter how much rest you get in the following days. Which is probably why in spite of having gone to bed at like nine o’clock our first night in Ireland, I feel like death upon waking up the following morning at 6:15am. As my mother reminds me I need to get my suitcase ready for the porter to pick up, I instantly regress to the state of angst-filled teenager, cursing the ill stars I was born under, and wondering how anyone could be so unlucky as I am at this moment, in Ireland on a vacation that I really didn’t have to pay for! Woe is me! Curse you evil world!

Eventually I get out of bed, and a little after that we’re back on the bus, now heading to Northern Ireland. Our first stop is in a city called Downpatrick, where St. Patrick is allegedly buried. You know, St. Patrick. The one of banishing snakes and green beer fame? Yup, that guy. They say he’s “allegedly” buried there because he died in roughly 460 AD, and I guess they didn’t have DNA tests back then so nobody‘s completely sure. While touring the cemetery, I made sure to take about fifty million pictures in case any ghost decided to reveal themselves. Unfortunately, the only thing that was revealed was my inability to take quality photos.

A few hours later, we make it to Belfast and stop near the city hall to grab a quick lunch. Over a delicious meal of fish and chips, my mom and I make friends with some of the other tour goers. Everyone we meet is beyond nice and inquisitive to my job and life, making me feel even worse for my judginess earlier. But there is always one downside whenever I meet new people. I get to explain all over again that no, I’m not in college right now. In fact, I actually haven’t been in college for three years, and that was grad school, and no no, I’m not a child prodigy, I just look like it. Yup, almost 30. Yes, I get that a lot. After lunch, I try to stand in the sun so maybe my skin will wrinkle faster.

We arrive at our hotel in Belfast, which despite being in Ireland was apparently assembled by Swedes, because our bedroom looks like an Ikea display case with modern furniture and a crazy computer console on the desk. The computer had a huge welcome message for Ms. Steinhoff (I assume my mom) and… Steinho? I am not kidding, it says Ms. Steinhoff and Steinho. HOW DID THEY KNOW???

A brief interlude. Shortly after arriving at this hotel, I almost fall down a flight of stairs and die, but am saved by our tour bus driver, a delightful Irish fellow named Mickey, who grabs me before I plummet to what could only have been a most painful demise. Mickey and I quickly bond over this incident and become best friends for life. I instantly become cooler for having an in-joke with the bus driver.

Next up, a tour of the city. The tour mentioned that Belfast happens to be where the Titanic was built. They showed us a bright, shiny new museum (not open yet, we drove by it) that has been constructed for the hundred year anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking on April 14, 1912. If you’re interested and have a bazillion dollars to burn, there is going to be a memorial cruise next April that will follow the Titanic’s voyage across the Atlantic, stopping on the spot it sank on the proper night, then hopefully continuing on what would have been its route to New York City.

ENOUGH ABOUT HISTORY! Now on to what Ireland is really known for. The drinking. The tour ended with a stop at the Crown Bar, a beautiful old Victorian pub filled with these tiny cubicles where guests can seclude themselves for a night of Guinness binging. The story goes that you can leave the door to your “snug” as they’re called, open if you wish to invite others in, but were originally built as a way for people to drink unseen. That’s Victorian morals for you I guess. It’s okay to be an alcoholic, just don’t let anyone SEE YOU being an alcoholic. We linger at the bar until our Guinnesses (Guinnessi? What is the plural of Guinness??) have all been quaffed, and then head back to the hotel. Somehow I manage to direct my mother and our new traveling companion, Evelyn, back to the hotel without anyone getting murdered.

We dine in the hotel restaurant and are seated next to a family from our tour. The most remarkable fact concerning this event, is that the family contains young people. YOUNG PEOPLE!!! They invite me to go walk into the city for drinks, and I very much want to join them on this journey. I’m a young person! I like drinking! I’m super hip! Okay, I’m moderately hip. I can pass for hip if I need to. If someone held a gun to my head, I could hopefully convince them that I maybe knew a few hip people in college. I really do want to go to bar and hang out with these young people…. But instead I pass out in the hotel at ten o’clock.

And so ends DAY TWO.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Day One: Dublin

Our trip to Ireland got off to a rocky start before we even left the country. Before we even left the state, actually. We awoke Wednesday morning to find our flight from Detroit to Philadelphia had been canceled, and after a phone call to the airline, they placed us on another flight at 4:15, a couple hours before our previous flight. This meant we had to race to finish packing and get on the road to Detroit, roughly an hour and fifteen minutes away. Arriving at around 1:15, we are informed immediately upon checking in that the four o’clock flight has also been canceled. Our last chance is a flight at 1:15. Oh wait, it’s already 1:15! Good luck catching it, because this is Detroit and we will absolutely not help you any more than we absolutely have to. Long story short, after begging a few kind strangers to cut in the security line and running halfway down a terminal in my socks, my mother and I are the last ones on the plane and make it to Philadelphia, where we have like four hours before our connecting flight to Dublin! Hooray U.S. Airways!

Cut to: Dublin airport. I’m delirious from lack of sleep. There are absolutely no red heads in the airport. I try to look as cool as possible, standing next to my mom and dragging my purple luggage. As I scan the crowd gathering for our tour group, a horrible realization dawns upon me. These are all old people. Old or at least middle aged. Young people stay in hostels. Young people go backpacking across Europe. Young people do not take bus tours. What have I done?!

We get to the hotel and are allowed a brief time to sleep before our trip begins in earnest. In our room, my mother and I are baffled by an inability to turn the lights on. We discover a key slot beside the front door. Apparently, to either save money or energy, you have to keep your room key in this slot anytime you want to turn on the lights. While I appreciate the effort to save on resources, it is rather difficult to stumble around in the dark looking for a keycard when you have to pee in the middle of the night.

After a lot of juvenile whininess on my part and a lot of Mother Teresa like patience on my mother’s part, we walk to a nearby café to enjoy a bit of breakfast. Now the traditional Irish breakfast is made up of the following: sausages (bangers), bacon (rashers), another type of sausage, fried eggs, a grilled tomato, and something that may have had mushrooms in it, and toast. So basically, a whole lot of meat and carbs. What they did not have was fresh fruit. This is the moment where I realize how incredibly spoiled I’ve become living in southern California. Not everyone lives in a magical world of sunshine and citrus. But a impending case of scurvy is a small price to pay for escaping the traffic and smog of Los Angeles.

So our first night in Ireland, I almost got my mom murdered. Okay that’s an exaggeration. After ditching the old people on the bus, we set out into Dublin, happy and carefree, ready to enjoy all that this beautiful city had to offer! Our first stop was at a Starbucks. YAY!!!! No, this was just a stepping stone. A coworker had recommended to me a good area to find tradition Irish music. We set off in what I thought might possibly be the right direction. Now, I’m usually rather good at following maps, but since I refused to take out said map because I didn’t want to look like a tourist, we ended up wandering into some sketchy area. I don’t know if it was actually sketchy but it looked and felt sketchy, so I ended up having to take out my map anyway and steer us onto safer streets. Afterwards, I realized we weren’t anywhere near where I had been trying to get us. The lesson of the day is acting like a tourist might be uncool, but so is getting murdered in an alley in Dublin.

END OF DAY ONE

Friday, October 7, 2011

I Like My Houses Murderery and My Mental Patients Charming

Last weekend, I saw the film Dream House. If you have seen The Amityville Horror, The Shining, Shutter Island, or The Number 23, then you have also seen the film Dream House.

My immediate thought upon exiting the theater: At least Daniel Craig got a wife out of the movie. And a hot wife, too!

As I’m sure I’ve said before, I’ll pretty much see any horror movie. There are only a few things that are beyond my tolerance level, and even those I usually end up watching anyway, because I’m a sick, twisted individual. I think there’s only ever been a couple times in my life I’ve been so disturbed by a movie image that I wondered why I was subjecting myself to this horrid torture. The first was during the opening of the film, Ghost Ship, where about forty people are cut in two by an errant guide wire, and then flop around for a few minutes before they die. Even writing that makes me want to grab my stomach and go “eeeee!” I think the second moment may have been during Piranha 3D. There were so many mangled legs and torsos and decapitated heads and dismembered members, that I had to stop for a moment and think, “Really? You couldn’t go on in life without seeing a piranha eat its way through the back of a porn star‘s head?” But other than that, I’m up for anything. Except maybe The Human Centipede. That's just nasty.

Dream House, however, wasn't nasty, or gory, or disturbing. It was just boring. Even the handsomeness of James Bond couldn't save it. SPOILER ALERT. I’m about to tell you exactly what was so bad about it, so if you’re going to ignore me and the reviewers who gave it a whopping 8% on rottentomatoes.com, then maybe you should go back to playing words with friends on your iPhone.

This movie is very difficult to describe, due to its awfulness, but I’ll give it the old college try.

Daniel Craig decides to give up his cushy job as a publisher to build a dream house with his family and write a novel. Only none of that is real! He murdered his family for no reason, and then forgot about it and was really in a mental hospital. But they had to let him go because there was actually no evidence he actually committed the crime. And now he’s seeing either the ghosts of his dead family, or just hallucinating because he’s crazy pants. Only that‘s not entirely true either, because some other dude killed his family, and he just forgot that, too! But not Naomi Watts’ character, the kindly neighbor across the street. She never gave up hope that her best friend Daniel Craig was magically not the murderer after all, which he wasn’t. The movie ends with Daniel Craig staring at a bookstore window, where his novel he wrote "Dream House" is now a bestseller. Really, Dream House? A published novel balances out family murder? This is almost as bad as A Beautiful Mind where they claimed love cured schizophrenia.

There was a half-hearted attempt to throw in some creepy visuals, like a millisecond shot of the two daughters blending into the wallpaper in a ghostly fashion, as he realizes they are in fact, either spirits or delusions. The house shifts back and forth from moldering pile of wood to cozy fantasy home. Other than that, the only scary parts of the movie was the horrid dialogue.

Oh, the dialogue! Not since poor Natalie Portman in the new Star Wars movies have I ever seen such a abysmal case of good actors gone bad. I don’t like to throw around the word atrocious, because it makes me look like a pompous twit, but the dialogue in Dream House was atrocious. And unnatural. I think maybe the film was written by a robot, and not David Loucka as the internet claims. It relieved me to learn that both Rachel Weisz and Daniel Craig were unhappy with how the film turned out and threatened not to do press for it. That’s scruples for you!

If there is one silver lining of this film, is that it made Rachel Weisz leave her fiancé, Darren Aronofsky, who I have never forgiven for creating the movie Pi.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Wash Your Hands After Reading

A lot of people have been asking me about the movie “Contagion,” which came out in theatres a couple weeks ago and directed by Steven Soderbergh (Sex, Lies & Videotape, Traffic, Ocean‘s 11-13). It seems weird to say I enjoyed it, but I did, though it certainly lacked a strong story arch of typical Hollywood films. It’s more of a factual timeline: what procedure would we follow if this sort of global health crisis actually happened. Who are the important players. How bad could this situation actually get? The answer seems to be pretty damn bad. The good news, you get to see Gwenyth Paltrow cheat on Matt Damon and then die. The bad news is, after watching it you will probably think you are going to die. I know I did!

The movie starts with a woman (Paltrow) at the airport in Chicago, talking on the phone to the man she just cheated on her husband with. She looks tired. If you walked into the theater without reading the title or knowing anything about the film, you’d think this was some sort of relationship drama or thrilling crime movie where a husband goes insane and kills his cheating wife. This movie is not that exciting… in a typical sense. Again, you’re fascinated to see how bad things will get before they turn it around, and the answer again is quite bad. But the film has a very slow pace and focuses more on presenting a ton of factual evidence than titillating us with gruesome death scenes.

In fact, they kind of gloss over the five billion people dying part. We see mass graves, lines of carefully packaged bodies (they mention they’ve run out of body bags so have to make due with taped trash bags) and empty streets with garbage piled up. We see many people die, but only one main character. This is Kate Winslet, who plays a young CDC worker in charge of organizing disease control in one city. As she tries to make the local government officials see just how terrible the situation becomes, she eventually succumbs to the illness herself, dying in one of the very makeshift hospital facilities she helped to set up.

The mystery of how the disease started and spread definitely added to the “excitement,” almost like it was a CSI episode, showing close ups on different characters as they encountered Paltrow’s character and in turn were infected. The waiter who picked up her martini glass. The Japanese business man whose dice she blew on in a casino. The British model-type who picked up Paltrow’s phone when she forgot it on the bar counter. It both fascinated and terrified me, even if you ignore everyone around you, you can’t ignore the germs they’re shoving in your face.

I think that’s what is most compelling of all. Not the film itself but my reaction to it. It has in the time since made me so conscious of how often I touch my face. There’s actually a line in the movie, we touch our faces something like two thousand times a day. That seems insane. But then you add on to that number every time you hold your phone up to your face, after you set it down on a table, or in a pocket, or dropped it on the ground. Not to mention if you eat something and use silverware, which unless you just washed it before eating has either been sitting in a tray or worse for hours before you shoved it in your mouth. It all takes me back to my History of Sickness and Disease course back at U of M. Remember the days when we didn’t know about hand washing? No wonder we all died from the flu. And movies like Contagion seem to suggest that sure, our science and our knowledge of hygiene has improved, but as humans, we’re still disgustingly filthy creatures. How many times have you been in the bathroom at a public place and watched someone half ass wash their hands after using the facilities? Enough to make a movie like Contagion seem chillingly possible.

Friday, September 9, 2011

If Rats Could Hold Scissors, This Is What Would Happen

From the man who brought you the Hellboy movies, and that freaky white eyeball hand monster in Pan’s Labyrinth, comes a brand new horror film based off of a 1973 TV program where the monsters are a hoard of tiny gray hunchbacks armed with scissors. That film is: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, written and produced by Guillermo del Toro.

I heart this man. He makes fun movies, and he makes lots of fat jokes about himself. What’s not to like?

So, the latest bit of awesomeness from Mr. del Toro is not only this film, but a companion book entitled “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark: Blackwood’s Guide to Dangerous Fairies.” Leave it to Guillermo to turn fairies into murderous beasts. It’s not the most original recipe for horror. You start with your average creepy New England house and throw in a supernatural creature that only one person can see. In this case the baddies are evil, teeth-eating “fairies,” who try to lure the young, mentally-unstable Sally into their fiendish games to chomp on her chompers. But del Toro couldn’t be average if he tried and the resulting film is anything but boring. (Though to be fair, the fairy attacks get a little redundant before the final girl vs. fairy battle royale.) Highlights include an old timey Victorian nature painter getting sucked into a furnace after he smashes out his maid’s teeth and Katie Holmes being thrown down some stairs. Weeee!

If you like the sort of flick where a person may or may not be getting her head ripped to pieces in a bear trap, then this is not the movie for you. If however, you enjoy suspense and creepy houses and insane historical figures, then by all means you should definitely see this film. I can’t compare it to the original, because in my opinion, the 1970s never happened, thus the original doesn‘t exist. Sorry to everyone ages forty-one to thirty two. YOU WERE NEVER BORN!

It’s a tricky thing basing a movie around a child protagonist. Even if the film deals with serious story matter, many adult viewers simply tune right out whenever they see a child in the lead. But del Toro certainly doesn’t seem to have a problem pulling it off. Pan’s Labyrinth proved that for sure, and I feel Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark fairs just as well in that track.

The movie is fun, but to be honest, the book is what gives it that added air of mystery. Remember that dude who got shoved into a furnace in the movie? Well, that’s the alleged Blackwood who “wrote“ Guillermo del Toro‘s book. Think Audubon, a.k.a. the dude who painted every single picture in every single bird book ever printed, ever. Imagine if that dude went insane after coming across some less than typical “creatures” on his nature hikes. Imagine that those same “creatures” tried to eat his face off, and then he wrote a book so that others might avoid the same fate.

Then he went insane and bashed out his own teeth before getting turned into an evil fairy himself.

Blackwood’s illustrations are beyond weird and disturbing, which is exactly why you should at least go leaf through the book at your local purveyor or lender of bound paper goods. The cover alone displays a terrified child, entwined in villainous, Poltergeist-style tree branches, being held just inches above a sea of dark, spindly, twisted claws, ripping forth from the soil to drag the child down to hell. You will want to tear out the page and tape it on your wall so it can haunt you and inspire you to write or draw something equally deranged and brilliant.

Oh Guillermo del Toro! What amazing thing will you do next? Wait, I know this one. The answer is help write the Hobbit movies and down the line do a Cthulhu movie.

And you all wondered why I wanted to name my child after him.

Friday, September 2, 2011

This Book Could Only Have Been Improved With A Batboy

As I’ve mentioned before, when I’m trolling the bookstore for new reads (and new nerd boyfriends) there are key words I look for when reading dust jackets. These are words like “wizard,” “viking wizard,” “airship,“ and “magic orb of doom.” Is this the best method for picking out a book? Probably not. Which is why I look at the cover, too. It’s a very serious process.

This week my literary fishing yielded me an excellent choice. The title: “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,” written by Ransom Riggs. I think the fact that the author sounded like a 1800’s cowboy was also a selling point. On the cover was a black and white photo of a girl dressed in a flapper-style dress… floating an inch off the ground. Peculiar indeed!

Here’s the story. Jacob, a modern day young man hears stories from his grandfather about escaping Poland before WW2. Leaving all his family behind, he went to stay at a safe house for children in Wales. Except it wasn’t just a safe house, it was a school for kids with weird abilities and powers. An invisible boy. Another with bees in his stomach. A little girl who can fly. Of course, like every obnoxious sarcastic teen, the main character doesn’t believe his grandfather, until LIFE CHANGING EVENTS force him to seek out grandpa’s alleged school of freaky tots.

Danger. Monsters. Thuggish 1940’s Welsh village folk. Other than the occasional awkward moments of teen romance between Jacob and one of the “peculiar“ girls, I thought it was an excellent story, surpassing the rather narrow framework of most young adult fiction. I liked the historical elements tied in, the attacks on the small island town by Nazi planes, the ideas of xenophobia vs. tolerance. I don’t mean to detract from the enormity of those real historical tragedies that occurred during this time period, but making Jacob’s family Jewish just added to the complexity of the work. We’ve seen over and again the Christ mythology creeping into the works of famous fantasy authors like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, so it’s interesting to finally see a character with a different religious background interacting with some fairy people. I’m probably reading too much into this idea, but whether or not Riggs intended this to be something of note, it certainly got me pondering. Let me clarify though, this is not a book about the Holocaust or Jewish culture. It’s just the story of a boy with Jewish ancestry who finds out his Holocaust surviving grandpa grew up to be a kin to Buffy the vampire slayer.

What really set the book apart though were the included pictures. Throughout the text, Riggs placed authentic vintage photos taken from various artistic collections to match characters being mentioned. Some were simply old-fashioned and creepy, and only gained greater meaning through their pairing with the novel. Some, however, were rather curious indeed, like the floating girl on the cover. Now in a world of modern photoshop, such pictures aren’t really remarkable, though Riggs insists that they haven’t been altered. Him, I believe, but what about the weirdos who shot the photos back in 1930 or whenever? Who knows. Maybe someone did have a second mouth growing out of the back of their head, or maybe there was a primordial dwarf who was so small they could fit her inside a mason jar.

If nothing else, real or not, the photos prove that people at the turn of the century were some real freakshows. For example, one picture shows two identical twin children in weird clown outfits with one pulling a rope out of the other’s mouth. Why was that photo taken? What does it mean? Is it part of a circus show? Or was Mommy and Daddy hitting the cocaine a little hard before family portrait day? Who knows? The book just goes to show you that even if magic doesn’t exist in our world, we will never lack for things that are peculiar.

Friday, August 26, 2011

Magicians Are Like Lying Wizards

This is not another attempt to talk crap about Christopher Nolan, I swear. I actually really liked his movie “The Prestige” when I saw it back in 2006. What was there not to like about this movie? Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale play two finely sculpted magicians in Victorian England AND David Bowie plays Nikola Tesla!!! Seriously, more famous musicians need to play famous inventors or scientists. I would now like to write the film where Tom Waits and Eddie Vedder play the Wright Brothers.

My point is, I liked “The Prestige.” It’s great. You should totally go rent it, or Netflix it, or however it is that people watch movies these days. “The Prestige” is an enjoyable movie. But do you know what was even MORE ENJOYABLE? The book.

Yup, it’s based off of a book, like almost every other movie in Hollywood right now. A fabulous book actually, written by a fellow named Christopher Priest. It reads sort of like if Jane Austen wrote a book about magicians trying to kill each other.

This is one of those stories that talking about it in too much detail kind of ruins the whole party, so I’ll try not to let slip too many spoilers. I think it’s safe to say that the book is a lot clearer on what the heck is happening than the movie. The movie is all mysterious and suspenseful, but the book relies more on possibly untrustworthy narratives and misinformation to hide its secret plot points. Still, I felt at the end I had reached a satisfactory conclusion, which is something Mr. Nolan seems hesitant to offer up in any of his films.

Wait, I promised not to talk crap about Christopher Nolan. Okay, back on topic. The book.

Priest’s “The Prestige” is far creepier than the movie. Again, it’s a matter of carefully revealing enough about… certain events… to make readers wonder what these characters are talking about, but never fully coming out or showing you until the very, very end.

Okay, enough of the vagueness. Now I’m just going to throw a bunch of buzz words at you so as not to ruin the experience but at least give you a little taste of what the story holds:

Racks of dead bodies.
Insane foreign inventors.
A ghost with a knife.
Dark family secrets.
Childhood electrocution.

If my memory serves me correctly, the movie only had two out of five, so my sheer math, the book should be better, right?

The book version also throws in a whole present day sub-story where the descendants of each magician meet up again to uncover their ancestors’ torrid past. At first it seemed like an annoying stutter step to the real action. But just when we think the magicians’ demises will never be explained, Priest snaps us back to the present, into a darkened cellar, for one final chapter. This chapter turns out to be one of the most intense, terrifying, parts of the whole book. Everything up to that is a character study, a mystery, but that last chapter is like a shot of adrenaline mixed with hillbilly moonshine: intense and crazy.

So this is why I like the book better, not because the director did a poor job, but simply because there wasn’t enough time to tell the full story. Nolan’s film runs two hours and ten minutes even after cutting out huge chunks of the book. But if you read it, you’ll see how readers are left with an entirely different feeling at the end of the book than at the end of the movie. The book is darker, more haunting, but in my opinion more satisfying in the end.

Friday, August 19, 2011

The 90s Were A Weird Time For Everyone

Over twenty years ago, a young Steinho got her own TV in her bedroom. This was partially due to wee Steinho having sleeping problems, which in turn was possibly due to dreams about man eating pigs and alien death worms, which is a story for a different day so back to the TV. It was an old TV without a remote, where you literally had to push buttons on the box to change the channel, and there were only eight buttons.

Some of the programs I liked to watch included “In Living Color,” “The Arsenio Hall Show,” and the home shopping network. I can’t explain these choices, other than that I thought Arsenio Hall was simply a newscaster, and then his opening monologue was not a series of jokes, but the same as watching someone like Peter Jennings. I remember after the whole Sinead O’Connor ripping up a picture of the pope situation, Arsenio had “the Pope” on his show to rip up a picture of her. I actually believed it was the pope, and was quite impressed that this holy man would take the time to amp up his cool image by visiting a late night talk show.

Anyway, in the grand scheme of evening television watching, I was exposed to a lot of weird programs in my battle with insomnia. Probably one of the strangest ones came in 1992, going on my tenth year on this planet. It was a post apocalyptical sitcom entitled “Woops!” It only aired I think nine or ten episodes, but the fact that it lasted even that long remains puzzling.

Here’s the logline of “Woops!” in a nutshell. Six crazy characters survive a nuclear holocaust and live on a farm. And it’s a comedy!

The show included such fascinating stories such as this golden nugget: the feminist plain jane discovers a magical crystal that makes her boobs grow bigger! See, that’s the good thing about starting with such a wacky concept for your show. Once you set the bar, things like magical crystals are totally acceptable! And how about this gem of an episode! The only black survivor happens to be a scientist, and the smartest one of the bunch. But when the former business man gets amnesia and believes he’s still living in a pre-apocalypse world, he thinks the sophisticated scientist is really his old black chauffeur! And he makes him sing Old Man River? Say whaaaat? These are the sort of wacky shenanigans you can only get on a one season failed sitcom. And on the Fox network no less!

Now, I don’t have a photographic memory, but I do have a pretty good one. I don’t know why “Woops!” stuck in my head. Yet, there it was. A shining beacon of bad TV. I can still picture the white dude being driven around on a tractor while poor scientist man sang Old Man River. I must’ve been only one of ten people to ever witness this scene, because I’ve been asking people for the last 20 years if they’d heard of the show, and no one ever said yes. And it was so crazy of an idea, no one could believe such a show could actually exist. I am not kidding when I say at some point, I wondered if I’d imagined it. After all, I’d been ten-years-old and prone to insane night hallucinations.

Then I read Phil Rosenthal’s book (blog post from March 23rd) and in a casual reference he mentioned the TV show. Oh, Phil Rosenthal, thank you! And not just for hugging me when I met you back in March. You gave me the gift of sanity.

You’re probably wondering, why the fizzle am I talking about a TV show that was canceled twenty years ago. Well, the honest answer is simply because it’s comical and I was thinking about it today. The intelligent answer, is that I’ve learned a lot about the television business in the last two years. The lesson of “Woops!” is how difficult it is to actually make a successful TV show. First you have to write an amazing pilot episode, and find a network/production company who wants to produce this pilot. Then if the pilot is good, maybe the network will pick it up for a certain number of episodes. And even then, if they don’t like the first ones you film, they can take those episodes back at any time. Twenty episodes can become thirteen can become six. If you look up “Woops!” on the internet, you‘ll see there were a few more they made that never aired. There are probably heaps and heaps of unaired shows, or shows that only ten people have seen before they were pulled. Most of these are terrible, but sadly some are really great, and were canceled simply because not enough people liked them. “Firefly” and “Freaks and Geeks” are two that I lamented the end of.

But there’s two sides to every coin. Yes, a lot of good shows get canceled too soon. Then, there are the shows like “Woops!” which lasted ten episodes. That’s ten more than a lot of scripts get and the fact that it got made at all just gives me hope. Because no matter how bad some of my ideas are, they’ve got to be better than “Woops!”

Friday, August 12, 2011

There Are Worse Imaginary Friends Than An Octopus Monster

I am very fortunate to work in a profession where my nerdliness is not only tolerated, but encouraged to grow like some kind of heinous, flesh eating monster plant. Such was the case this past week when the subject of conversation turned to H.P. Lovecraft, specifically the Cthulhu mythology. Much to my surprise, it would appear that far less people know about Cthulhu than I imagined. Shocking, I know! It’s sort of like that time my sister didn’t even know what a necromancer was! I thought doctors were supposed to be smart!

Anyway, who the heck is Cthulhu? Well, the simple answer is he’s a bad ass octopus-dragon-man being who’s trapped in a frozen underwater city, because if he wasn’t, he’d be busy taking over our dimension or at the very least, hanging out with his fleet of Cthulhu cult worshippers. Lovecraft first brought Cthulhu onto the literary scene in 1928 for the pulp magazine “Weird Tales.” A fairly appropriate title, I’d say.

I’ve always wondered, what exactly was going on in the brain of young Howard Phillips Lovecraft, considering just how weird his tales are. I mean how crazy does a man have to be to invent a maniacal squid alien monster living in an ice city? He certainly has an interesting history, riddled with despair and mental disease. With all that happened, I suppose the real wonder would be if Lovecraft had become a boring, stable investment banker instead.

The family madness goes all the way back to when little Lovecraft was only three years old, when his father, a traveling jewelry and precious metal salesman, was first institutionalized after going “acutely psychotic” in a Chicago hotel room. What on earth does that mean? Well, apparently it means he had syphilis and went mad from it. Sources are unsure if young Lovecraft ever knew the true nature of his father’s illness, though, so if you’re reading my blog, ghost of H.P. Lovecraft, sorry you had to read about your crazy father‘s STD on a web diary.

Thank goodness Lovecraft wasn’t completely alone after his father’s death. No, he had Whipple Van Buren Phillips to take care of him. Suddenly the name Cthulhu doesn’t seem all that weird. Seriously, I want to time travel back to this era just to meet Whipple Van Buren Phillips and say, “Hello Mr. Phillips,” and have him say, “Please! My friends call me Whipple!” Anyway, we science fiction/horror nerds should all say a little thank you to good old Whipple, for he was the first one to introduce young Lovecraft to the macabre and strange, telling the boy ghost stories he’d written himself, much to H.P.’s mother’s dismay. Well, dear old Ma had very little to say in the end. She ended up in the same mental institution as her dear husband did, though not necessarily from the same STD. And despite Lovecraft’s moderate success, he only continued to grow poorer and poorer the older he got, until finally dying of intestinal cancer, Bright’s disease, and malnutrition at the age of 47.

In conclusion, writers have horrible lives.

No, that’s not the point I’m trying to make. I would simply like to pose the question, was it the harsh circumstances of his life that lead Lovecraft’s mind to wander to these dark, disturbed worlds? Had he been wealthier and happier with more stable, less diseasy parents, would his lack of misery led to a lack in creativity as well? Or would his mastery of prose simply have churned out brighter stories and adventures? How fine is the line between genius and totally whackadoodle crazypants?

And if you have an answer to this question, I’d love to hear it. Because, I may or may not have written a story where some sort of demonic earth monster rips a bunch of gold prospectors to pieces before nailing their body parts to a tree, and I’d kind of like to know exactly how crazy that makes me.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Well, At Least The Title Wasn't A Lie

Listen, I know we all get old some day, but have you seen Harrison Ford in “Cowboys & Aliens?” He looks like King Triton after the sea witch turned him into one of those shrimp slug things. Seriously, he was two seconds away from yelling “Get off my lawn!” at Daniel Craig.

That film had a whole heap of potential. Cross genres are cool, and John Favreau is fresh off the success of two “Iron Man” hits. Though to be absolutely honest, “Iron Man 2” was a little bit of a shambles. Still, it had impressive action sequences and Mickey Rourke with a freaking bird. Made no sense, but it was entertaining. “Cowboys & Aliens,” however, was about as dull as a sixty-nine year old man who used to be in better shape riding a horse around the desert and yelling at people.

What a coincidence, that’s exactly what that film was! Oh, and just to warn you, if you’ve really got your heart set on seeing this film, it would probably be a good idea to stop reading now. From here on out, it’s all smack talk.

I didn’t have terribly high expectations going into “Cowboys & Aliens,” but I certainly expected more than what they offered, especially considering the cast and director. But as the film started, my gut instinct started gurgling up trouble when I noticed there were no less than six screenwriters credited to the film. For peeps not in the biz, this basically means it was passed back and forth between a multitude of creative people, which typically leads to one of two possible outcomes. 1. The script is overcomplicated and convoluted, with numerous plot holes and characters that come off as schizophrenic. Or, you get a film like “Cowboys & Aliens,” watered down, with possibly a clear plot, but no real depth, character or heart. As the movie progressed, I held out hope that at least Daniel Craig’s hotness could keep me entertained. Alas, no. Sorry Daniel, you are not quite hot enough for even that.

What makes it even worse is that “Cowboys & Aliens” started out so strong. It had one amazing action sequence when the aliens first attacked the town (most of what was featured in the trailer), and then after that it was chaos. Seriously, the final ultimate battle looked like they told a bunch of extras to just to ride their horses around in circles while screaming and firing their guns wildly into the air like Yosemite Sam.

The characters were stunted and vague. They went from apathetic to melodramatic with no build in between. And as for our leading lady, I never thought there would be a human being with bigger eyes than Elijah Wood in Lord of the Rings. Olivia Wilde seems to have him beat. I don’t remember her eyes being this gigantic when she was in “House” or “Tron,” but maybe they CGI’d them up a bit while they were working on the aliens.

And the aliens! Oh dear lord. Was there a sale on CGI aliens this summer? Please, someone who has seen both “Super 8” and “Cowboys & Aliens” this year tell me if I’m wrong. I won’t say they looked exactly the same, but they looked similar enough to me that my monkey brain made a subconscious note of it. Regardless if they look the same or not, the alien was not mind-blowingly original. I have not read the graphic novel this film is based on, (for inquiring minds, it's written by Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley) so possibly they were just copying what had already been established in the comic. Further research necessary.

“Cowboys & Aliens” is sadly another case of excellent premise and poor execution. They probably spent a lot of money on getting big budget stars and putting together flashy effects, without a whole lot of substance to glue it together. I am very quick to forgive films with lame plots as long as the effects and visuals rock off my proverbial socks. Heck, even if the effects aren’t good and the acting’s terrible and cheesy, a movie can still be fun! Instead I was left staring at Harrison Ford’s wrinkles and looking at my watch.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Even Gary Oldman's Mustache Can't Make Me Smile

Dear Christopher Nolan,

I saw Captain America today, and I finally discovered what I don’t like about your movies. They are not fun. Captain America was fun. I felt good watching it, even in the “dark moments.” It’s not that I expect comics, or comic book movies, to be cheerful romps through and through, but there’s also this little thing called depth. Complexity. Emotional layers. Not just sad and dark all the time. Am I getting my point across, or would you like me to pull out my thesaurus?

Yes, throwing a few jokes into the mix can lead to a certain amount of cheesiness in your film. I can’t count how many times in Captain America when Chris Evans flew or drove or punched his way through a room without getting hit by a single bullet. I swear, I could almost see the POWS and THWOKS superimposed every time he punched a Nazi super soldier in the jaw. Sure, Captain America was unrealistic and dopey at times, but do you know what it was NOT, Christopher Nolan?

1. Boring.
2. Broody.
3. Confusing.
4. Too long
5. Full of Katie Holmes.

So you can keep your dark, emo, tortured Batman, and I will keep my campy, brightly colored FUN Marvel comic movies.

Now, let me play the devil’s advocate to myself. Batman is about a guy who lost his parents to thugs. He’s a rich guy, who goes a little crazy being a vigilante. I can see where that storyline might make you want to play up these themes of “dark knights” who must sacrifice their own image for the sake of the stupid, innocent sheep of Gotham.

Now, let me play devil’s advocate to that devil’s advocate! The original Batman comics were as campy and cheesy and ridiculous as the rest!!! Do you remember the show with Adam West, Christopher Nolan? Do you?!?!? I believe I recall a joke about a ball point banana or something? I’m not saying they were good, I’m just saying, BATMAN DOES NOT HAVE TO BE EMO! In fact, comic book heroes can be both serious AND funny! You can use humor to lighten the mood, AND lull audiences into a sense of false security. Then, when something bad happens, it actually has an impact, and audiences actually give a crap about your characters! Shocking, I know.

And since I just saw it, let‘s use Captain America as proof of my argument. Starts off as a skinny, awkward nerdlington, then gets pumped full of magic juice by a zany German scientist! I’m laughing already. Captain America saves a bunch of people, looks really good doing it, says some cool lines, and he’s a hero! Weee! Next, Captain America gets his little wacky multi-ethnic team together, lots of laughs at their expense, ha ha ha etc. They win some battles, and the Captain delights us in some cheesy dialogue about not understanding women after his girlfriend tries to shoot him in the face. Then, after all that, something tragic finally happens, and we actually feel bad about it! Why? Because we haven’t been bombarded with sorrow and internal torment from the first second.

Maybe I should have just waited until you were asleep, Christopher Nolan, and Inceptioned this idea into your head. Or maybe I should just shut my trap since you’re the one sitting on a giant pile of money and acclaim and not me, but haters gotta hate. I left Captain America feeling excited and gleeful. Christopher Nolan, your Batman just brings me down.

Ironically, Heath Ledger, who was the only thing I did like about The Dark Knight, seemed to be trying to tell you the same thing. Why so serious?

Love,
Steinho

Monday, July 18, 2011

Harry Potter and the Franchise of Plenty

It’s been over ten years since I first climbed down off of the pretentious trolley and read the first book in the Harry Potter series. Like with many things, (Mac products, Christopher Nolan movies) I resisted it for a long time simply because it was popular and I like to be contrary. Then one day, I think it was my junior or senior year in high school, I was at my friends house baking a cake. I don’t know what you did for fun in your teenage years, but apparently we liked to bake. We must’ve forgotten some key ingredient because my friend had to run to the store. Why she left and I stayed when it was her house, I can’t tell you. All I know is that in the time she was gone, I read a third of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” which she had left on her dining room table. It was magical and fun, and appealed to the fantasy nerd in me.

Any fantasy scholar knows Harry Potter is not the first child wizard learning magic to come on the young adult literature scene, but it seems the first to resonate with such a massive audience. What could be more appealing to children, or any reader for that matter, than a story of a boy who had nothing, but grew to possess powers and great strength. A young lad faced time and time again with obstacles, but through his own abilities and good friends, always comes out on top, no matter how dark it may look at times. It’s probably the same reason why Star Wars is so popular. It’s the most basic hero’s journey of all time.

After that serendipitous baking mishap, I couldn’t resist any more. This was just after the fourth book had come out, and I went on to read all four within a week. Then the waiting began. Over the years I have eagerly anticipated the release of the remaining three books, and all eight Harry Potter films. I’ve dressed up for Harry Potter parties, lied to friends about social obligations to attend midnight screenings, and almost broke up with a boyfriend once after he questioned why it was so important I pick up “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” the night it was released. Like for many people, Harry Potter had become more to me than just light reading. It was a ticket to someplace special and joyous, both intensely captivating and surprisingly meaningful.

Yet I felt curiously empty of emotion when I finally sat down in a theatre to watch the final film adaptation of book seven, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” Maybe it was because I already knew how it was going to end. I remember reading book seven a few years back. I stayed up all night to finish it, finally collapsing on my friend’s bed, well after dawn. I’d been emotional then. Tired, and sad, wanting more and feeling dissatisfied. J.K. Rowling had given us such an elaborate world, so dense and detailed, and then it was just gone.

The film, less than two hours, was exactly what I’d expected of it. It had all the important parts, the glowing hero moments and the quiet tragedies. I enjoyed it, to be sure, especially when gangly, awkward Neville finally gets to kick some ass in Harry Potter‘s army of wizard teens. But still, it was a far cry from the frenzied joy I’d felt for previous Potter releases, and I don‘t believe it was due to any fault of the film. In the last ten years of Harry Potter films, I have been constantly asked how the books compared to the movie, and every time I had a rather difficult time answering. In reality, it’s never truly the book we’re comparing it too, is it? It’s our own imaginations. How did we imagine Hogwarts to look? Or any of the characters? To be honest, it’s been so long since that initial reading, the film actors have nearly drowned out my initial impressions. In the book, I loved that Rowling described Hermione as having bushy hair and buck teeth, and therefore resented poor Emma Watson’s prettiness from day one. This is the nature of the adaptation. No matter how good the film is, it can never be good enough.

So I implore you all, if you haven’t read the books already, and you’re interested in seeing the movies, read the books first. They’re terribly easy to get through, and at times make much more sense with all the little bits and pieces filled in. And I promise you, while it may not be the moment of literary nirvana I experienced in my youth, at least it’ll make you hate Hermione a lot less.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Good Cop, Extrasensory Perception Cop

At times it seems that the comic world has exhausted its store of superhero powers. Telekinesis, super strength, lightning speed, laser eyes, even some of the weirder stuff like mutant wings or feet or the lamest of all, talking to fish.

Well, someone finally found a super power that hadn’t been used yet. CHEWING! Yay originality!!!

How could masticating comestibles save helpless citizens from super villains? A little thing called cibopathy. And what the hell is that? It’s something I assume was made up by John Layman and Rob Guillory, the creators of the graphic novel “Chew.” Cibopathy is a extra sensory ability where a single bite of food can tell that person where an apple was grown, or how horribly a cow felt during slaughtering. It also helps the hero of “Chew” solve crimes…by tasting blood and eating pieces of bodies.

Yeah, okay, so that’s pretty gross, but it’s also wicked cool. Such is the power of Tony Chu (haha, it’s funny because his name is Chu and the book is called CHEW! I love word play!) Tony Chu starts off as just a cop in the Philadelphia PD, until he uncovers a serial killer after eating a bowl of soup tainted with the murderer‘s blood.

Tony then gets a job working for the FDA, which in this world has expanded its reign of power due to a nationwide bird flu epidemic. Now, instead of busting drug rings or weapon smugglers, the regular policeman go after poultry dealers and chicken speakeasies, and the FDA trumps all other law enforcement officers.

Everyone thinks Tony is a freak, which I think is part of the appeal of his character. He’s a good cop, who would rather just play by the rules instead of eating decomposing human toes. His timid, awkward behavior irritates most of his coworkers, but makes him the perfect type of hero readers will root for. He’s truly a good guy, just socially inept, somewhere along the lines of a shyer, quirkier, Asian Peter Parker.

“Chew” is strange, dark and has been known to make me shriek with laughter in the middle of a crowded laundromat. For example, John Colby, Tony’s former partner in the Philadelphia PD, is an obnoxious renegade cop. Think every 1980s action film hero that played by his own rules. At the beginning of the first volume, Colby takes a butcher knife to the face. Normally, people die in that situation, but not Colby. No, he is too cool to die, and so he becomes a cyborg. I think Colby is probably the funniest character in my opinion, or at least has the best one liners. Like this little gem: After the now bionic Colby takes Chu to a bar, he warns him saying “Don’t go using your crazy hoodoo to tell me my drink has trace amounts of rhino snot or pterodactyl jizz -- or anything else that’s gonna ruin my good time.” If a man said that to me in a bar, I think I’d take notice. If that man was also a hot graphic novel character who was part cyborg, then I’d probably propose marriage. But I guess I’m just that kind of girl.

I don’t want to give away the entire story, so I’ll conclude by saying that you really ought to read “Chew” now, before Showtime turns it into a TV series and either does such an amazing job it ruins the reading experience for you, or does such a horrendously nauseating job that it ruins the reading experience for you. It’s allegedly being made by Stephen Hopkins, the director of “Predator 2” and “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers,” so make of that what you will. I’ll keep my snarky judgments until it airs. Until then, I have one more volume to read, “Chew: Just Desserts.” Sounds delicious.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

I Expect Perfection From My Props Department

There are people who enjoy the movies, who might refer to themselves as “movie buffs,” if you will. These people know a lot of trivia, enjoy discussing their favorite directors, and like to discuss with their friends afterwards what a movie “meant.”

I am not one of those people. If you work in the television or film industry, you may understand what I’m about to say a little better than everyone else. After years of going to see at least a movie a week in theatres, watching even more on netflix or DVD, not to mention the endless scripts I’ve read during class, internships, and in my own free time, I have nearly lost my ability to suspend my disbelief. For the layman, I refer to the act of letting oneself be completely absorbed into the story and can laugh, cry, gasp, and cheer with the characters as the journey on the screen progresses.

Flashback to:

Int. The Grove Movie Theatre - A week ago (Night)

Steinho sat alone in the dim movie theatre, irritated by the fact that the new assigned seating policy forced her to sit next to a couple on a date when there were five million empty seats available.

The film was “Super 8,” and on a purely superficial level, I enjoyed the film. No. The train wreck in the beginning was incredible and intense, and the teen actors were quite good. They were weird looking and funny and behaved more like normal teens than in any other movie I’ve seen lately. Do I think it was a classic? No.

Without going into an intelligent, analytical film review, I’ll get straight to the point. Towards the end of the film (SPOILER ALERT) the young hero, Joe, played by unknown actor Joel Courtney, watches with his roguishly handsome cop father, played by Kyle Chandler, as an alien being finally escapes the grim clutches of the government.

Wait, wasn’t there already a film with that plot line produced by Stephen Spielberg? Anyone? Anyone?

So anyway, they’re watching E.T., I mean the alien, prepare his ship for blastoff. This process apparently requires sucking up all the metal left lying around the street. Cars, skateboards, appliances, and Joe’s dead mother’s locket. Just as it’s about to be ripped away from him by magnetic forces, Joe snatches the locket in mid air, and it opens, revealing a photo of him and his dead mother. Joe and his father embrace, and at last, they’re both able to let her go, symbolized by Joe physically releasing the locket into the air.

What a touching moment! Except for the fact that the picture was upside down.

Wait, what? What nonsense are you talking Steinho?

Yeah, so when the locket flew out of his hand, he caught it with the charm pointing up into the sky, upside down. Yet when the locket opened, the picture was perfectly oriented for Joe and his pop to have their touching moment. So either Joe’s mom walked around wearing an upside down picture in her locket, or this was a conscious decision to fuel the emotional moment, which I totally get. We go to the movies for escape, not to face the harsh laws of reality and gravity.

The locket bit was so far into the film, and so minute, it certainly didn’t keep me from enjoying my cinematic evening. There were other things that accomplished that, like the overall anticlimactic ending. But I bring this up, because it was remarkable how quickly my brain picked up on it. I wonder, am I forever unable to watch anything without thinking of the number of scripts the production assistant had to copy? Or if there was a meeting between the director and the head of props concerning which way should the picture face in the locket? Have I become a freak of nature…or has my mind and powers of observation simply been honed to a razor sharp edge? Or, does this merely mean I have too much time and need to go watch some “Futurama” reruns?

All of the above.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

In Which the Author Proves the Full Extent of Her Nerdliness

Last Friday, at ye local purveyor of books, Messrs Barnes and Noble played host to one of my favorite actors, Simon Pegg. You may remember him from such films as “Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz,” and most recently, the grown up version of E.T. “Paul.” He was visiting the book store to promote his new biography, “Nerd Do Well.” Now, normally I am not a fan of the celebrity biography. Or regular biographies. Histories I like, but only when they’re written in the style of a sweeping epic fiction novel.

To be honest, the only part of Simon Pegg’s biography I’ve read since purchasing it five days ago was the few chapters I took in while waiting in line during the signing. No offense to Mr. Pegg, but the book was the equivalent of all that chocolate the little children ate in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” to try to meet Willy Wonka.

I purposely went by myself to the book signing, and I’ll tell you why. Having lived in Los Angeles for almost six years now, I’ve gotten used to running into Orlando Bloom at a breakfast place on La Brea or the guy who played Hiro from Heroes in West Hollywood. Celebrities are typically very boring, shorter versions of the people they play in the movies or on television. Except for when they’re your nerd hero. In that case, they are not boring at all, and in fact make you act like Renfield from Dracula. For those of you unfamiliar with this character, Renfield used to serve Dracula with undying devotion and later ate bugs. I did not do this when I finally met Simon Pegg, but there were a few minutes as I approached his table where I thought I might puke on myself.

I’m getting ahead of myself though. I’ve gone to a few of these book signings before. Basically you show up early, stand around for an hour or so, then spend five minutes oggling at the celebrity/writer in question before you are herded towards the front, someone slaps a book with your name written on a post-it note onto a table, and the celebrity/writer endeavors to make small talk with you in the time it takes them to sign your and their name and whatever witticism they choose to grace you with.

I arrived for the Simon Pegg signing about an hour and a half before he was supposed to come on the scene. The geeks, dweebs, nerds, and spazzes were all lined up in numbers. I’m very sorry to say it, but these were some of the least attractive people I have ever seen. I spend so much time trying to convince the “normals” that nerds can be attractive, functioning people, too. Unfortunately, none of those people decided to show up to the book-signing that night. There were a few normals mixed into the crowd, including one of the lovely accountants from another Disney show who I recognized. Still, this was definitely one of those situations where I felt out-nerded by the masses. There were girls giving him fan art. If you don’t know what that is, you’re probably too cool to be reading my blog.

At long last, Mr. Pegg arrived on the scene. Like always, he was shorter in real life. Most of all, he looked very normal. Like a normal dude I might run into walking around England. When the press started flashing his photo, he seemed rather pained to be standing there, holding a copy of his book. Not angry, or obnoxious or anything bad. He seems the sort that when he says he’s not doing this for the publicity and fame, you actually believe him. I was instantly charmed.

Back to the part where I was standing five feet from him and thought I might faint or hurl. The regimental bookstore employee passed my book over to the table and I shuffled forward, my mind blank. I was a writer dammit! Where was my banter? My hilarious quips? But every ounce of cleverness had evaporated into the ether.

The scenario went a little like this.

Simon Pegg: Hello, Amanda. Thank you for coming.
Me: Thank you for coming….. I like your hat.
Simon Pegg: Thank you.
Me: I’m sorry. I tried to think of something clever to say, but I couldn’t.
Simon Pegg: (Charmingly disarming) I’m going to tell you a secret about this hat. I’m only going to share it with you. It’s a Canadian hat.
Me: (Swooning) Your secret is safe with me.

Then we talked for two seconds about Vancouver and Mission Impossible:4 and then he shook my hand and it was all over. I walked away, clutching the autographed book like it was a notebook doodled with hearts. So thank you, Simon Pegg, wherever you are, for making this nerd feel even if just for a few moments, that I was a little cooler than I really am.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Camus Would Have Been More Interesting With Pretty Pictures

After submerging myself in last week’s death overload, I decided to cleanse my pallet this week by reading “Daytripper,” a graphic novel written and drawn by Brazilian duo, Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba. And, it also turned out to be about death. I hope the universe isn’t trying to tell me something.

Okay, that’s a heinous lie. To say “Daytripper” was just about death would be missing the whole point of the comic. It would be like saying Star Wars was merely about space, and Lord of the Rings was just a little tale about stolen jewelry. “Daytripper” is an existential piece of art. It was beautiful, both in its vibrant, skillful illustrations, as well as its meaningful themes. After a lifetime of more typical comics, with their over the top violence and hyper-reality, it’s nice to come upon something truly poignant and thoughtful. That’s not to say superhero comics are incapable of possessing weighty topics or heart wrenching, emotional storylines. Really, I was simply pleased that “Daytripper” was something unique, something I’d probably never have discovered had it not been recommended to me. I always like when I push myself out of my typical reading repertoire and am pleasantly surprised.

The story of “Daytripper” focuses on Bras de Oliva Domingos, a Brazilian man who is simply trying to live his life to the best of his ability, the same as any man or woman. He struggles in his writing career, he searches for love, lives, learns, all that jazz. The graphic novel jumps back and forth through time, each chapter showing Bras at a pivotal moment in his life. At age twenty-eight, when he sees his future wife for the first time. At eleven, stealing his first kiss. At forty-one, experiencing the birth of his son. Each chapter ends with Bras dying shortly after these momentous occasions, posing a whole fleet of questions. When does life really begin? Does it take a dramatic moment to stir us into true existence? What does it mean for us to die? How are we shaped by each tiny event we experience, each seemingly trivial moment? And how are life and death linked? Like I said, existential up the wazoo.

In the end, we make the biggest leap from reality. Instead of another chapter and another important moment in Bras‘ life, things take a turn for the dreamlike. For the first time, it seems to show Bras after his various accidents, contemplating his own mortality and asking the very questions the work hints at to its readers. Characters from different time periods appear side by side, Bras running as a child through the fields, only to come upon his own son, the same age. Throughout it all, Bras’ father, who happens to be a writer himself, explains to Bras that every story must have an end, just as every life must eventually conclude in death.

Dare I suggest that the point is not to focus on each chapter as an individual, because the worth of one life cannot be judged by any particular event, only the greater whole? I suppose I can suggest all I want, but books like “Daytripper” are not meant to be deciphered in clear terms. They are meant to be poured over and experienced. I feel like I need to invent more lovely and artistic words to even describe it.

Two chapters in, I worried that “Daytripper” would leave me in the same funk I’d felt after “Machine of Death.” The reality was quite the contrary. “Daytripper” made the process of death almost poetic. The stunning visuals and the real, human interactions between characters left me feeling, if not utterly blissful, than at least calm and contemplative. As far as existentialism goes, that’s all you really need.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Watch, Now I'm Going to Get a Piano Dropped On My Head

I really don’t know what I was expecting from a collection of short stories entitled, “Machine of Death,” but the name kind of says it all. I certainly shouldn’t have been surprised by how depressed it made me reading story after story about a machine that samples people’s blood and tells them exactly how they’re going to die. Never a specific time or circumstance, just a vague description, like “CRASH” or “HEART ATTACK,” or sometimes even weird things like “VEGETABLES.” Macabre as it may be that is the premise, or at least basis of every story in the book.

But who the devil would make a short story contest about death machines? The answer, is three gentleman of the monikers, Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo, and David Malki ! The exclamation point is not a typo. That is actually how he writes his name. I know this because David Malki ! also happens to be the creator of a whimsical old-timey online comic strip called Wondermark.com. If you enjoy steampunk, the Victorian era, Monty Python, talking dinosaurs, or any combination of these items, you might enjoy Wondermark.

I first heard about “Machine of Death” on a friend’s facebook wall. See? Facebook isn’t all just Farmville and drunken pictures from college! The link advertised that it was a collection of short stories, all on this specific theme, and this would be the collection’s second year. I thought to myself, considering my new found and somewhat ironic life goal of writing myself to death, it would be a cool writing contest to submit to. First though, I wanted to read the original “Machine of Death” to see what had already been done. The collection holds about thirty-four stories and most of them were seriously depressing.

As I said before, I knew given the concept there would be a degree of darkness in such a collection, but I guess I thought there’d be a little more humor mixed in there as well. Several stories dealt with a young person finally reaching an age where they could be tested, with mixed results of success. Some were horrified by their test results, while some were delighted with their unusual readings. Some were more concerned about how their death would affect their social status. Then there were the depressing ones. One man can no longer look at his wife, knowing “LOVE” will be his undoing. Another deals with finding the news that it’s his son who will kill him somehow. This brought about a very interesting existential topic. Were these authors all being melodramatic or is there something wrong with me for thinking they shouldn’t take death stories so seriously? In Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life” there is a short scene where a woman accidentally kills a whole dinner party by serving them bad fish. As death arrives, all she can say is “Oh, how embarrassing!” If John Cleese and Michael Palin can poke fun at dying, why can’t everybody else?

After awhile, I found reading the book to be a chore, but not because the writing was bad. Obviously some were better than others, but there were only a few who I felt relied on kitschy concepts rather than quality writing. The topic was just so damn depressing. Again, what should I expect from a book about death, but isn’t the point of entertainment to offer up a release from real life pain and sorrow? The more I read, the more somber I began to get. The more I started seriously thinking about my own death, and what I might pull if such a machine really existed. Now it’s my turn to be overly dramatic. Reading this book bummed me out in a major way.

But there were a few stories who shone out amongst the dark matter. My favorite tale was called “Prison Knife Fight,” by Shaenon K. Garrity. This one is about a young boy who’s wealthy, snooty parents are desperately trying to get him into a good prep school, despite his future death in a prison knife fight. Instead of making him a social pariah in his school though, his three best friends look upon him in awe. And as the boy grows up, instead of feeling trapped by his possibly violent future, it frees him from the structured, boring life his parents intended to force on him. It was comical and inspiring, making the best out of a bad situation to speak.

Now, let’s hope when I write and submit my own “Machine of Death” stories, I can breathe a little life into the genre. See? See me trying to use a bad pun to make light of serious topics? Anyway, you get my point.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

In My Heck, the Books Are All Just Copies of Twilight

I own three bookshelves, which doesn’t sound like a lot, three being such a small number and all. But compared to the vast armies of people who own zero or less bookshelves in their house, yes, three is in fact a lot of bookshelves.

Yet, no matter how many bookshelves I add to my supply, I am in a perpetual state of always having more books than space to put them. This means small stacks of reading material inevitably sprout up in every available crevice of space. Beside my bed. Next to my comfy pod chair. Underneath that little plastic tray thing my roommate’s mom bought me to work on my writing in bed but is more often used to set ramen noodles on while watching “The Simpsons” on Hulu. There are books everywhere. If there is an earthquake, and you can’t find me, check underneath the books. At least I’ll die surrounded by something I love.

Anyway, so I don’t have enough books. Why don’t you recommend some to me already? Seriously, forty unread books in my apartment is not enough. That’ll only get me to September, MAYBE, so get on it, people of the Internet. Send your suggestions to makesteinhoread@gmail.com

My pile dwindled by another book last night when I finished “Fibble,“ the next installment in one of my favorite young adult series, written by the always amusing Dale E. Basye. I’ve blogged about it before but honestly, it’s worth mentioning again. I speak of “Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go,” a tale that is not afraid to send children into the nastier parts of the afterlife.

In “Fibble,” our dead brother and sister duo, Milton and Marlo Fauster, face another round of dead historical figures who want to make their afterlife miserable. This time, Marlo gets trapped in Fibble, the level of Heck for kids who lie. The head of Fibble? P.T. Barnum, who teaches his inmates the finer points of product placement and market manipulation. Meanwhile, Milton goes to Hell-ywood, where he and Orson Welles plan the next season’s lineup on Heck’s own TV network. This includes a show called “Teenage Jesus.” Maybe it was just the comparisons between Hollywood/Los Angeles and that infamous fiery underworld, but I got a real kick out of young Milton’s attempts to serve as Production Assistant to a fleet of demon filmmakers. As if that particular occupation weren’t trying enough.

There were times in reading “Fibble” when I thought to myself, “If this weren’t a kid’s book, this would be pretty darn controversial.” Mostly though, Basye manages to skate around any serious issues by taking the South Park route, and giving all religions the same unbiased comedic treatment. He also includes a lot of jokes about cat poo and teenage hormones to distract readers from taking any of the heavier themes too seriously. I always have respect for authors who aren’t afraid to sneak a little thought-provoking material into their children’s reading material. It’s a lot easier than thrusting a copy of “Crime and Punishment” in their face and asking them to figure out those moral judgments.

I’m going to guess that considering the references in all Basye’s novels, he’s got to be a fairly smart fellow. Or else he’s good at researching. Or at making people do research for him. Therefore, I have to believe that the decision to include both Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst in this book was both deliberate and hysterical. I was really hoping that their paths would cross at some point in the book, but alas. Perhaps in the next one? Regardless, I appreciate any book that references both how fat Orson Welles was before he died, and how he had to make a Muppet movie to support his disturbing gravy habit. Okay, I made that last part up, but the guy was fat.

I will close by saying this. If there was an award for coming up with puns in the literary world, it would most likely go to Dale E. Basye. If colleges could give Masters degrees in punnery, Basye would be the Dean of the school.

Friday, May 27, 2011

If Ferris Bueller Could Kill You With His Mind

I feel a little shameful that it took me this long to read Patrick Rothfuss’ second book in the Kingkiller series, “The Wise Man’s Fear.” Especially since the book came out back at the beginning of March and I‘d been eagerly awaiting it since its original expected release date of fall 2008. To be fair, “The Wise Man’s Fear” is nearly a thousand pages long, and I am one tiny woman who works forty hours a week building toys for Christmas day.

There is a direct correlation between how much I enjoy a book and how little sleep I get during the time period in which I am reading it. Back in the days of “Harry Potter,” I did my best to finish the book the same day I purchased it, staying up once until dawn. I knew that if I didn’t finish right away, then I was doomed to days of un-productivity until it had been consumed. I admit, I was a little relieved to finally finish all 994 pages of “The Wise Man’s Fear,” because frankly, I was starting to get a little punchy from exhaustion.

If I were to go out on a crazy limb, I would guess that Patrick Rothfuss is as obsessed with reading fantasy literature as I man. He seems to know exactly what the nerd audiences are screaming for, as well as what’s been rehashed and reinvented to the point of decomposition. There’s nothing worth than storylines so boring and old that they smell like retirement home.

Rothfuss has drawn from the full spectrum in building his worlds and characters. The story follows a young red-headed lad named Kvothe. Don’t ask me how to pronounce that, because when I read funky names in books, I usually just change them to something boring like Kevin or something. So Kevin grows up with a band of traveling performers, his parents get killed by an evil spirit posse called The Chandrian. After living on the streets for awhile, Kvothe (Kevin) convinces the local wizard school to not only take him in, but also pay for his tuition, and teach him how to murder bandits using lighting powers, all before the age of sixteen. When I was that age, I was still trying to figure out how not to feel awkward in a tank top.

The twists and turns never end with Rothfuss. In typical fantasy epic fashion, poor Kvothe’s adventurous lifestyle never ends. In all 994 pages, I’m not sure you can ever go two chapters without someone wanting to stab, or drown, or mutilate the lad. Unlike, other fantasy series like “Harry Potter” or George R. R. Martin’s “Game of Thrones,” in two books, I can’t remember anyone important ever dying, save for a few key people at the beginning who start of Kvothe’s life quest. If I had to say something negative about the book, is that Kvothe is almost too good at everything. Even when he sucks at things, there really never is any consequences. Everyone always forgives him. No one ever quite succeeds in killing him, or cutting off his thumbs or sucking the life force out of his body. He’s like the Ferris Bueller of fantasy novels.

Something else that tells me this book (forgive me Patrick Rothfuss) was most definitely written by a nerd, is that all the women are incredibly beautiful, and Kvothe is constantly getting it on with all of them. His female school chums are hot. The warrior maidens who teach him ninja skills are hot. The villainous money lender who threatens to kill him is hot. Not to mention the super hot sex fairy that pulls young, virginal Kvothe into the fae world. Sheesh! At least Harry Potter had a little competition for Cho and Ginny!

Yet, like all these fine ladies, I suppose I have been charmed by young Kvothe, too. I only hope it won’t be another three years before Rothfuss puts our favorite red head’s life in danger once again.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

We Can Have the Wedding on an Asteroid!

Thor is a perfect example of what I was trying to explain to my mom the other night concerning why I will never find the right guy. All the good men are taken, gay, or living on another planet and only accessible by rainbow bridge.

My non-existent social life aside, let’s flashback to May 2010. A little film called “Iron Man 2” comes out in theatres. I really don’t remember that much about that film, other than it seemed to have five different story lines and Mickey Rourke had a pet bird or something? Anyway, what DID catch my attention was that two second bit at the end of the credits. There’s a desert, and a crater, and something in the crater that looks a hell of a lot like THOR’S HAMMER, because guess what? It is Thor’s hammer! To be continued…

I’m going to be totally honest. When that little snippet came out, I had never read a single Thor comic book. (I had read other Marvel comics that mentioned Thor, but never a Thor-centric comic.) Being a nerd, however, I was well acquainted with Norse mythology and Viking culture. So when I started to learn more about Thor, it was another one of those “This is exactly what I like, why haven’t I already consumed myself in this franchise” moments. Add in the fact that Henry V/Gilderoy Lockhart was directing the Thor movie, and I was pretty much sold before even seeing the first trailer.

Well, now that I’ve seen “Thor” I may have a new favorite sci-fi/fantasy sub-genre: space viking. If you don’t know anything about Thor, that’s pretty much what this series is all about. Thor and his peeps are all nearly-immortal beings that live in a place called Asgard. They have this magical rainbow bridge they can use to transport themselves to other planets like Jotunheim (home of the ice giants) and Earth (home of the fleshy not-quite-so-giants.) Thor has a punk brother named Loki, and a pack of multi-racial friends to help him when Loki starts to messing stuff up. Oh Loki! Will you ever learn that Thor loves you just the way you are? You don’t have to impress him by trying to set his friends on fire!

Likely this movie will have its share of haters. It certainly had a smattering of cheese ball moments. Early in the film, the king of the ice giants unleashes what looks like a whale with legs, a stegosaurus tail and some nasty, rock-grinding teeth. No problem for Thor! It’s really not even a fight. He simply flies through the back of the creature’s head, causing it to explode. That is how strong Thor is. He can punch a hole in the back of a ice monster’s throat. By the way, Thor can fly. It comes with the whole “God of Thunder” package.

Comic book Thor is tall and beefy with blond hair and a big ass hammer named Mjolnir. Movie Thor is pretty much the same, only he looks a little bit like Captain Kirk’s dad. (wink wink) Fortunately for movie Thor, he didn’t have to worry about that whole original comic book storyline of getting trapped in a crippled human’s body to teach him humility, which would have been a real drag when he was trying to make out with Academy Award Winning actress Natalie Portman. Heck, the film Thor was so entertaining, I was almost able to forgive Ms. Portman for participating in the atrocity known as “Garden State.”

This film really was one of those serendipitous cinematic moments. Instead of lamenting that a film completely botched the book adaptation, the movie version of “Thor” has gotten me even more geared up to plunge into Stan Lee’s comic world.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Because You Can't Learn Biotechnology from Dissecting Owl Pellets

I’m not usually a fan of Michael Crichton. But I’m not not a fan either, by which I mean that I don’t think his books are terrible or want him to get thrown into a volcano or anything. Confused? Let me put it this way. If books were classmates in an elementary school gym class, he would be the equivalent of the rich, nerdy kid who plays tennis. Probably not terrible at dodge ball, but he’s not your first choice either.

With that being said, I’ve actually read several of his books, most of them between the ages of twelve to fourteen. You see, my middle school science teacher, Mr. Zusak, gave extra credit if you did a book report on any of Michael Crichton‘s work. This extra credit came in handy when it was time for learning about aerodynamics and the model rocket I was supposed to build exploded. Okay, I made that up. My model rocket flew perfectly. But I did the reports anyway, because it was middle school, and really what else was I going to do with my time besides watch “The X-Files?”

Frankly though, I always found his books a wee bit on the boring side. Crichton likes to include a lot of science and techno babble. You see, I never cared if I understood the long and detailed discussion concerning how InGen cloned dinosaurs from the amber frozen DNA in “Jurassic Park.” Odds are my brain shuts off when I see those words anyway, leaving me with a text that reads something like, “Bla bla bla tyrannosaurus science science Ian Malcolm’s leg bla bla blood technology genetics science bla bla disemboweled lawyer.”

And really, isn’t that all you need in an entertaining novel? You get the story. You get the nasty fun science-fiction bits. Nobody’s confused and everybody’s happy! Everybody’s happy…. except for Michael Crichton because he didn’t get to tell you that, “bioengineered DNA was, weight for weight, the most valuable material in the world. A single microscopic bacterium, too small to see with the naked eye, but containing the genes for a heart attack enzyme, streptokinase, or for 'ice-minus,' which prevented frost damage to crops, might be worth five billion dollars to the right buyer.” Streptokinase, Mr. Crichton? Wasn’t this book about DINOSAURS???

Oh god, you don’t even know how bored I got at this very moment, sifting through quotes from “Jurassic Park” just to illustrate my point on how boring techno babble can be. It’s fiction. Science-fiction! Did Luke ever stop and explain in scientific terms how the Force allowed him to have better hand eye coordination? No, he didn’t because was too busy training with Yoda and making out with his sister.

But tons of people (who are probably smarter than me. Members of Mensa most likely) love Michael Crichton’s books. He knows how to tell a compelling tale of death and destruction, hidden amongst the “subatomics“ and the “polarizing xenon gas.” Exactly why I didn’t turn my nose up at it when a friend of mine recommended his 1999 novel “Timeline.” It’s about a group of historians who use a time machine to return to 1357 and rescue their lost professor. As you can imagine, what should have been a “routine” retrieval mission turns into an epic tale of chopping off heads with broadswords and people getting spliced in two by faulty teleportation devices.

Shock of all shockers, the opening section that takes place in modern day, involving the huge corporation that owns the time traveling technology did not amuse me a quarter as much as when they dressed the crew in peasant clothes and chucked them into the past. Less than five minutes into arriving in 1300s France, two crew members die, with a third possibly on his way. Now that got my attention in a way no description of “superconducting quantum interference devices” ever could. Unfortunately, none of that happened until page one hundred and sixty-three.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Maybe the Lamp Fell In Some Plutonium

Today we celebrate a milestone in Steinho history. Exactly one year ago (minus roughly a week) I sat down in my living room in West Hollywood, the air conditioning blasting on me to combat the heinous desert heat of my poorly insulated apartment, and I scribbled out my very first blog post. Coincidentally, this happens to also be my fiftieth post. Feel free to send me some gold or something.

In honor of that day, April 29th, 2010, when I first threw my sack full of rubbish onto the ethereal heap that is the Internet, I shall return to the subject that started it all. The author that taught me how to use swear words in the third grade. The man responsible for, if not creating, at least contributing to my deranged imagination. Uncle Stevie himself.

By the way, I didn’t make that up. That’s how Stephen King often refers to himself. Sometimes I wish he was my uncle. Then again maybe not, because if I did finally get successful as a writer, everyone would always be saying, “Sure. That Steinho’s pretty good, but her uncle, now there’s a real writer! What‘ll he come up with next?”

I’ll tell you what he’s coming up with next. On November 8th of this year, Stephen King will release a book titled, “11/22/63.” Having been born in the eighties, this date initially meant nothing to me. Fortunately, a google search brought up a little synopsis. “11/22/63 is a story about a man who finds a time machine in a friend’s garage, uses it to go back and save JFK from being assassinated, and ends up creating a whole new life for himself in a bygone era.

There was a joke on the show “Family Guy” where Stephen King sits in an office with his editor. The editor asks what his next novel will be about. Stephen King scans the office, picks up a lamp, and says “It’s about a couple who is attacked by a lamp monster!” “You’re not even trying anymore,” the editor says, then with a sigh, “How soon can I have it?”

The sketch is half right. If Stephen King isn’t trying, it’s only because he doesn’t have to.
It’s always funny when you hear authors or actors or anyone who is kind of a big deal talk about their days before anyone gave a shit. Even Stephen King got his share of rejection letters before they gave him his scepter and little orb and crowned him god of horror fiction. If I ever get the chance to meet King, I’d like to know what ideas he just couldn’t sell, that the general masses of the publishing world found too crazy or macabre or weird. Because let’s be honest. Today, he pretty much could come up with an idea about a haunted lamp and it would sell. It would make it to the bestsellers wall.

Consider one of his last bestsellers, “Under the Dome.” The book came out in November of 2009. “The Simpsons Movie” came out in July of 2007. Both had pretty much the same premise. A small town is trapped under a big dome, and everyone starts acting like feral cats. King mentions in an author’s note at the end he originally came up with the idea back in 1976, but found the epic scale of the novel too daunting. Or mayhaps the good people at Simon & Schuster just weren’t ready yet for a story containing a brood of sadistic, triangle-faced alien children. It’s just further proof that King can take the same story as a ridiculous animated movie and turn it into something dark and chilling. When I said he doesn’t have to try, I didn’t just mean because people will always buy his books. King doesn’t have to try, because no matter how silly the notion, he’ll find a way to make it shine like a sack of gold coins with a dollar sign on the side.