The DVD of the movie version of Stephen King’s The Mist came out this week. I think it is interesting that Stephen King is such a brilliant writer, yet his work does translate to the screen. It is rare that a good book can become a good movie. I think the key is the remarkable sympathy in Stephen King’s prose. I find it difficult to read his work because his characters are so likable and understandable. And then, of course, horrible things tend to happen to them, it being horror and all. Having horrible things happen to bad people can produce a certain schadenfreude, but watching bad things happen to people you like, people who make sense to you, can be painful and sad. King seems to have a unique comprehension of the human condition, which allows him to make people see what makes others tick in a sympathetic light. You always know why a Stephen King character would do the things they do and there is a certain strong and unusual comfort and appeal in that.
The movie version of the novel The Mist maintains a good sense of tension, as terrified townfolks try to figure out what is menacing them from inside the fog and try to make sense of why monsters would be after them. As neighbor turns on neighbor, The Mist asks the age old question of who the true monsters are. Bonus points for creepy religious zealotry. Triple word score for casting Emmy award-winner Andre Braugher, known for his role as Det. Frank Pembleton in Homicide Life on the Street, as Brent Norton.
Writer/director Frank Darabont has also done the successful adaptations for Stephen King’s The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption, Nightshift Collection Volume One: The Woman in the Room, and a variety of …
I’ve known Blue Blood Photographer Carlos Batts for what seems like a few lifetimes at this point. Our paths first crossing in the pre-internet zine scene, East Coast comic book conventions, and a million other points of common reference in the sexy cool artistic realm along the way since then. Looking back, some of those scenes seem like different worlds these days. We both live in Hollywood now, coincidentally a few blocks away from each other to be even more specific. But, maybe it’s not coincidence at all. A lot of interesting cool creative types end up in Hollywood. That’s one of the reasons I really enjoy it out here, being such a sort of heaven for eclectic creative types driven to document and enhance or otherwise decorate their public existence.
There are always a million things to do in Hollywood and it’s rare (or unfortunate anyway) to do everything within one sort of scene. Instead, people tend to party hop, swinging from velvet rope VIP to drug addled loft gatherings, trekking from inspiring artistic exhibits in every media imaginable to legendary dive bars to see the latest and hopefully greatest bands before they break big or break up.
Carlos’s latest video project, Young Hollywood, presents the cacophonous meld of cool glam youth and seedy glitz, the edgy music mixed with erotic pop art and nightlife craziness that is the young Hollywood experience today, all through the eyes of an artistic pornographer. The party to celebrate it’s release very much reflected this jumbled elemental mix as well, and although I couldn’t party quite as long as I would have liked, everyone seemed to be having a really good time. The shindig was held at the relatively new Safari Sam’s …
As a holiday, St Patrick’s Day has dubious origins but fabulous iconography.
Although the holiday tends to serve as both an expression of Irish pride and an excuse to get thoroughly blotto (Hi Funkatron), the origins of Saint Paddy’s are neither in drunkenness nor Ireland. Although observation of the holiday in the Americas was recorded as early as 1737 in Boston, the first serious St Patrick’s Day parade took place in New York City on March 17, 1762 as a celebration for Irish soldiers in the British military. That would be the British military whose asses we kicked in order to become a sovereign nation and pursue happiness and freedom and stuff. Nonetheless, over the years, the St Patrick’s Day parade in New York City grew into a bigger and bigger event. A lot of the first Irish immigrants to the New World were Protestant, but the 1845 Potato Famine lead to an influx of Catholic Irish population. Although grisly prejudice against the Irish in general and the Catholic Irish in particular lead initially to negative media coverage of the parade, when President Harry Truman attended the festivities in 1948, many people felt that prejudice was really something that the US of A was finally putting behind it. This was perhaps overly optimistic, but still a step in the right direction.
Actually in Ireland, St Patrick’s Day was celebrated as a religious holiday, even though St Patrick was a pretty lame saint. Patrick was essentially a trust fund baby from the 400’s. He was kidnapped from his parents’ estate and held captive for six years, during which time he, go figure, got kinda religious and started hearing voices. When he escaped, he is said to have walked 200 miles to …
I did not have a television for many years. Then, when I had one, it was only used to play videotapes; I didn’t even know for sure whether it failed to get reception or I’d never tried to get any on there. In the process of getting myself the Hell out of Georgia, I hocked the aforementioned television and used the proceeds for moving expenses (paying off a truck tow driver not to tow away the moving truck cab with almost everything I was moving inside.) I did not miss my hocked television.
But then they invented TiVo, On Demand, UnBox, instant download, renting DVDs by mail, and high quality TV shows with long, complex, and well-written story arcs. My two biggest objections to television in the past were always that (1) I couldn’t see planning my schedule around when a television show was on and (2) I’m not exactly the average person, so I was pretty sure that no show aimed at the lowest common denominator was likely to appeal to me.
The Sopranos sucked me in on DVD and I watched the first few years in an absolute orgy of television consumption. Even though The Sopranos often dropped whatever storyline had made me push play on the next episode, the show was still a whole lot of cuts above what I thought of television as capable of being. Prior to The Sopranos, my mobster fetish had only been satisfied by movies and real life.
Since then, I’ve come to strongly prefer the format of the long cable drama over all other video media. It’s funny that I don’t even really know what the name for it ought to be, but it is definitely a new structure …
As part of the run-up to Doomsday, which opens in theatres on March 14, the Doomsday team has created an online video game called the Marauder Massacre Game. The Doomsday game is a first person shooter reminiscent of Quake with the lights off. I’ve never been particularly good at Quake, so you can probably easily kick the ass of my high score of 56. Play and let me know how you do!
Incidentally, I’ve been getting a lot of messages on MySpace pointing out that Doomsday has some similarities to the movie Escape from New York. Writer/director Neil Marshall said, in an interview with the New York Daily News, “Our heroine, Eden Sinclair, was sort of inspired by Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken in ‘Escape from New York.’ And, by the way, we do have a cage match, a gladiator fight, with Rhona Mitra using lots of weapons.” Ya gotta respect anyone who can make something cool and acknowledge their inspirations at the same time.
As I rode back from the airport yesterday, my car passed a bevy of Blue Blood hotties including Roxy Contin and others, all decked out and waving Doomsday signs. This reminded me that I wanted to tell you all about the upcoming flick. (These two things are related; they were promoting the movie, not predicting the end of the world in their underwear.)
Doomsday is a movie of a dystopian future. In a present day United Kingdom, a fatal viral epidemic has broken out, so a portion is walled off to quarantine the infected. Fast forward 25 years in the future and the disease appears again outside the quarantined zone. The authorities realize that there are still people living within those walls, so they dispatch a hot chick to go see if she can find a cure. The hot cure-hunting chick is played by Rhona Mitra whose accomplishments off the silver screen include being expelled from boarding school and booth babe appearances as Lara Croft at trade shows. I actually thought she was Kate Beckinsdale when I first viewed the trailers for Doomsday and apparently I’d make a good casting director because she is starring in the upcoming Underworld: Rise of the Lycans vampire movie.
At any rate, once inside the walls of the quarantined city, Rhona Mitra’s Eden Sinclair has to go up against an army of citizens who appear to be rather justifiably pissed off about being walled off and then asked for help. The inhabitants of the walled city include a forceful Malcolm McDowell playing a character named Kane and the Golden Rule seems to indicate to me that the outside world doesn’t really deserve a lot of help. The preview images and videos show some very appealing …
I handed Gene Simmons his laundry once. This was more than ten years ago, so my memory is a bit murky, but, as I recall, I may have both handed him his clean laundry and picked up his dirty laundry to run back to the stadium. It was one of my last gigs as a stagehand. I was a runner. A runner is someone who will work for stagehand wages but has a working and ideally presentable car. At the time, I had already mostly transitioned into doing contract design work, corporate presentations and that sort of thing which paid better. My car actually was not terribly presentable, but some of the staff for the KISS tour recalled a nicer-looking (but less reliable) car I had owned at the time of an earlier gig and they liked me. I took the job because they had specifically requested if “the girl with the kinky zines” was still available. Plus working at a rock stadium was generally pretty sociable and fun, especially at a job which, unlike many I’d done there, was unlikely to cause injury.
I was never a member of the KISS Army or anything and my parents felt the KISS logo was unacceptable Nazi regalia and boys who wanted me to like KISS (and them) had always played me “Beth”. I guess guys always think the chick will like the power ballad better than the rocker, but it always struck me as really ill-conceived to try to seduce a girl with a song about blowing off your girlfriend. (Talk about “Lick My Love Pump” being in the saddest key!) I did think KISS had some fairly listenable music, but I was not crazy familiar with them either.
People tend to be most open-minded about trying new things when they are first being romanced. For example, most people are extra-likely to taste a new food or listen to a new band then they start dating someone new. By this scientific equation, I hope that readers perusing the erotic portraiture of BlueBlood.com will be feeling extra-receptive to new ideas.
One of the most important messages I would like people to internalize from Blue Blood is that having purple hair or a tattoo or a pervy wardrobe in no way makes a person a second class citizen. You are entitled to the rewards of the larger society. You are entitled to the same love as anyone, whether or not your sex is a bit kinkier than average.
The ancient Romans celebrated Lupercalia on the Ides of February by whipping hot girls with portions of sacrificed goat. (The Ides is the 15th day of a month, for those of you who have repressed your Julius Ceasar studies.) Historians can’t agree on the origins of Lupercalia or precisely which gods the festival honored. They are pretty solid on the format for the party though. If you wish to throw a Lupercalia event, you will need a variety of eligible maidens, two goats, and a dog. The idea is to sacrifice the animals and then hit the girls with pieces of them in order to ensure fertility, painless childbirth, and general sensuality. A match-making lottery is optional but considered to be part of the tradition. Sort of the bloody pagan version of a 70’s key party. Blue Blood is not really down with the animal sacrifice portion of the show because we love our dogs and goats far too much for that.
I know Blue Blood members are from all over the world, so this won’t apply to everyone. But, if you are an American, it is your patriotic and civic responsibility to vote. Please don’t forget.
I normally do not bother to vote in primaries, but 2008 has brought primaries with candidates possessing drastically varying policies and outlooks. This year, it really makes a difference which candidates get votes in the primaries. More than 40% of the Democrat and Republican delegates will be assigned today. The following chart will let you know if your state is part of the so-called Super Tuesday round of primary votes. Many states also have referendums on the ballot today on issues which may impact you directly. With the odd exception of West Virginia, most polling places are open until 8pm in the time zone where they are located.
Primaries:
Alabama Primary
Arizona Primary
Arkansas Primary
California Primary
Connecticut Primary
Delaware Primary
Georgia Primary
Illinois Primary
Massachusetts Primary
Missouri Primary
New Jersey Primary
New Mexico DEM Party Run Primary
New York Primary
Oklahoma Primary
Tennessee Primary 6
Utah Primary
Caucuses:
Alaska Caucuses
American Samoa DEM Caucus
Colorado DEM & GOP Caucuses
Idaho DEM Caucus
Kansas DEM Caucus
Minnesota DEM & GOP Caucus
Montana GOP Caucus
North Dakota DEM & GOP Caucus
Conventions
West Virginia GOP Convention
Total Delegates in Play Today: 1681 Democrat and 1023 Republican
Delegates Needed to Win Nomination: 2025 for the Democratic nomination and 1191 for the Republican nomination
By the way, if you are wondering what the difference between a caucus and a primary is, I don’t think most people know. A primary is technically a sort of preliminary election, while a caucus has a more general meaning which can encompass many gatherings of political allies to determine various courses of action. …
Has anyone besides me noticed that too many episodes of The Simpsons lately have the same theme: Marge is hot for some guy other than Homer but somehow ends up back with him.
One of the things which I felt always made The Simpsons really work was that Marge and Homer had a good relationship. Lots of sitcoms have had similar themes and jokes, but they were mean-spirited and short-lived. The Simpsons boasts more than 400 episodes, so they had to have something right to start off. The animated family at Evergreen Terrace was perhaps a bit of a menace to the neighborhood, but they loved each other. Marge kept Homer grounded and Homer gave Marge excitement. Homer might mess up extravagantly from time to time, but he’s still a good provider. How many men, in 2008, can support a stay-at-home wife and three kids and own their home and two cars?
Lately, Marge seems to be finding Homer more and more of an oaf. Tonight’s episode, rewrote the history of the Simpsons family in order to mock Kurt Cobain’s legacy. As part of the stupidity, Marge miraculously gets a retroactive college degree and a radically different set of values. And a crush on her womanizing womynist professor. She does this while Homer is working at his father’s Laser Tag establishment (which we’ve never heard of before) in order to pay for her college. For the moment I will leave aside the part where FOX’s send-up of the 90’s makes the VH1 I-Love-the series look positively academic in its depth and accuracy.
Just now, let’s look at how much Marge has stopped appreciating Homer over the last few years. In January, she had an affair while Homer paid for her …
I know Blue Blood members are from all over the world, so this won’t apply to everyone. But, if you are an American, it is your patriotic and civic responsibility to vote. Please don’t forget.
