Creepy Pedro Reviews "Splinter"

What if you create a monster that is too scary to even film?

If you create this monster from the mind of your wickedness and also the wickedness of mimes and gymnasts, and on the set when it's time to record the movie you say to your cameraman, "Film the creature!" and the cameraman says "It's too scary! I can't even look!" and all you see are the edges of the creature and maybe some flickery light?

It's no use! No matter how much you yell "To the left! The creature isn't what you're filming! That's a shelf in a gas station!"

And not to be sexist, if also you have a female woman with a camera, and you say to her "Film the creature, already! Be brave!" and she screams in fear and in the editing room the footage is shaky like shot by a schoolgirl, one too afraid, who becomes all a'shivery-shakey in the sight of your creature?

What do you do? You must simply make the movie anyway, as the "Splinter" director did, and perhaps you throw up your hands and say "You really should've seen that creature!" and laugh ruefully...the rueful laugh of an imagination too wicked even for horror films, the laugh of a man without footage. He wishes, we think, that someday in the future -- maybe even in a sequel -- his crew will be braver and will look his wicked creature straight in the eyes...then we'll see it and we will believe him!

Until that day the Splinter creature is something seen only with Pause, and even then when it is a blur of spinning in front of the shelves or sometimes beside the shelves. On Pause, the creature is almost caught in a perfect moment. On Pause you cannot hear the dialog of the characters who suffer horrific transformations: the wimp into the hero, the tough girl into crying and all a'shivery-shakey, the heartless brutal villain who is actually not understood by us or even by the writers until we find his whole purpose is to HELP PEOPLE, but we never understood, we didn't stop to wonder until his whole arm was gone, so now we must care?

A man puts a thermometer in his mouth and stumbles coldly in a parking lot for ten minutes with bags of ice against his chest, as a climax, and they sure got enough footage of that part.

The Eldritch, Stygian, Cyclopean Horrors of H. P. Lovecraft

I have been slogging my way through a giant 1000-page collection of H.P. Lovecraft's better (or at least "more significant") stories. This is the first time I've read his work in many, many years.

I realize now that I actually didn't read as many Lovecraft stories as I thought I did, and that the ones I DID read I tended to skim. Patience, experience, context, and age are allowing me to better enjoy his strengths and tolerate his weaknesses...but I still have to restrain that skimming urge.

What have I learned so far? Lovecraft was far more creative than I ever gave him credit for. While he tended to use the same techniques over and over again, his actual IDEAS -- the "hooks" in the stories -- show a lot of variety.

I'm also surprised at how GRUESOME his work was. The stereotype of Lovecraft is that his protagonists always faint before they can fully describe the final horror (he even manages to turn Harry Houdini into a shrieking wimp in "Under the Pyramids"), but for the most part this isn't the case. Stories like "The Outsider," "The Shunned House," and "Cool Air" pull no punches when it comes to the climax, and "In the Vault" is one of the few stories I've ever read that has managed to shock me.

He was extremely creative, yes, and he doesn't entirely deserve the "tease" label he's been saddled with...so why is this compendium of stories so often infuriating?

A few reasons. Lovecraft's racism is well documented, and though his eugenic beliefs were more-or-less of his time, it's still maddening to read about the evolutionary and cultural "degeneracy" that his characters keep harping about.

Something else his characters harp about is the oh-so-scary "cyclopean masonry" in virtually every story. It comes up so often -- and is presented as so disturbing -- that I wonder if Lovecraft was confused as to what it actually WAS: big hunks of rough limestone built into a wall. Disregarding the fact that there is nothing intrinsically sanity-blasting about that sort of architecture, you really have to wonder how all his characters knew what the style was CALLED. Did YOU know what "cyclopean" meant? Did more people in the 1920s know what it meant? Somehow I doubt it.

Anyway, this ties into the prevalence of Lovecraft's lasting legacy: the ubiquitous Necronomicon, the supposedly-rare arcane book of evil and forgotten knowledge...which at least one character in each of his later stories has managed to read at some point. And we're not just talking about occultists and folklorists, we're talking about ORDINARY people. In "At the Mountains of Madness," both the geologist and the BIOLOGIST in the doomed Antarctic expedition have read the book cover-to-cover. Rather than provide atmosphere and depth, the constant citing of the Necronomicon just makes it seem increasingly pedestrian; who can be intrigued by a Book Of Forbidden Knowledge that everybody has read?

My final criticism only applies to two stories so far: "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Shadow Out of Time." While most of Lovecraft's stories contain a fair amount of movement and action ("The Shadow Over Innsmouth" in particular), those two stories appear to be flimsy excuses for Lovecraft to say "Look at this detailed biological and cultural description of these monsters I made up!" They're dull expository sandwiches: two thin slices of plot surrounding thick, fifty-page examinations of the life and times of creepy pseudo-vegetables. Somebody should have just given Lovecraft a sketchbook for his birthday.

I started reading this collection with low expectations, so despite some extremely long and dry sections I am pleasantly surprised by Lovecraft's work. I am particularly in love with "The Colour Out of Space," which I think is the perfect collection of all of Lovecraft's strengths.

But for your own sake I recommend -- as always -- that you do NOT read all of his work in a row. You may find yourself turning into a fish-monster, losing your sanity, and screaming "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!" in the night, which would be too much for even fearless Harry Houdini to bear.

Torchwood Season 3

I thought that Torchwood season one was generally bad, and that season two was downright terrible, but I've stuck with the series because it has potential. I felt that if the writers would only recognize the strengths of the premise -- and brutally stomp out all of the self-introduced weaknesses -- they'd end up with something truly great.

Usually my prayers go unanswered, but season three of Torchwood is absolutely amazing. They've darkened the tone, chucked the juvenile sexuality, trimmed off the extraneous character complications, and written within the budget. It is five episodes of perfectly-maintained suspense, anxiety, and outright horror. The aliens -- known as the "456" -- are the most terrifying creatures I've seen since...well, Alien.

In true Russell T. Davies style, however, the focus of the show -- and the REAL monsters -- are the buerocrats and functionaries who serve to represent humanity at its worst. It's bad enough that the 456 exist...what makes it TRULY bad are the petty foibles of those we expect to protect us.

If you've never watched Torchwood, go out and rent season three. Skip seasons one and two entirely; don't worry, you'll catch on quick enough. You might squirm when John Barrowman does his obligatory crying, but this time around it's kept to a tolerable level, and he really DOES have something to cry about.



PS: Actually this was very similar in tone and theme to a 1998 British mini-series called "Invasion: Earth." You might even accuse Davies of (perhaps unconsciously) copying it. Still, the particulars are different enough to make both series' distinct AND worth watching.

Videodrome

Videodrome was one of those movies that I saw when I was far too young. It was, in fact, the basis of a memorable power struggle between my parents when I was twelve years old, my father forced to put his hands over my eyes during the disturbing parts, while my mother yelled "He's PEEKING! Even a BLIND man can see he's PEEKING!"

She was right, I was, and I probably shouldn't have been because "Videodrome" is a nasty piece of work. It's arguably David Cronenberg's most excessive movie, riding on the then-current wave of "snuff films" and media prophets and arguments about censorship and exploitation. What did I know about that stuff before I'd even reached puberty? How could I possibly understand the explicitly-filmed sexual sadism? And believe me, that's probably the MOST normal part of the movie.

I've mentioned before in this blog the way that certain things -- songs, books, movies -- seemed "magical" when I was a child, because I didn't understand their context and therefore I couldn't think critically about them. Nowhere is this more true than with "Videodrome," with which I was forced to draw connections and conclusions that were wildly off the mark. Now, when I watch the movie, I still get a whiff of those bizarre and inarticulate thoughts that I had as a child, and no doubt that's one reason I love the movie so much.

But more than that, it's just a really spectacular film. Not in a visually-impressive sort of way -- though seeing James Woods with a giant vaginal Betacam port in his stomach is pretty shocking thing -- but in the overall tone. It's detatched and alien. It LURKS. Everything about it is totally unexpected. It is, in many ways, the way that cities like Toronto must look to the lonely and the lost.

Then there's Howard Shore's music, often a droning analog synth without any accompaniment. And the dead-eyed looks in all the actor's faces. And beyond the frankly brilliant premise, the slow realization that evil technocratic horror does not originate in Malaysia...and not even Pittsburg...but rather in the little eyeglass shop next door.

Yesterday at Gen-X we were wondering why David Cronenberg stopped making good movies. We decided that he's just getting older. Thank goodness we still have this film to make us feel awful.

Horror Movie Cliches That I Simply Will Not Take Anymore

Next time you're watching a horror movie -- particularly one from the last ten years -- consider this a "cliche checklist" that will spoil your fun.

1. The pre-teen in peril, the anguished parent.
2. The spooky pre-teen, the frightened but loving parent.
   
3. Flickery things -- usually heads -- that shake around in an unnaturally fast way (thanks, Jacob's Ladder).
   
4. Montages of disturbing images and sounds with transitional cuts that look rusty, accidental, and degraded (thanks, The Ring).
5. Heavily desaturated visuals, usually blue-grey or slightly yellowish (Jacob's Ladder again?)
6. Death by ubiquitous technology (The Ring, ringing).
7. Impending death which can only be averted by unravelling mysterious backstory (The Ring, The Ring, The Ring).
8. Nonsensical, poorly-written script which exists solely to display a handful of visually-striking set-pieces (thanks, Dario Argento).
9. Nonsensical, poorly-written script which exists solely to display people getting tortured (thanks, Saw).
10. The collection of strangers who must kill each other in order to escape (Saw again).
11. Sudden shocks accompanied by audio sting (since movies began, probably).

Luis Buñuel's "The Exterminating Angel"

Twenty guests arrive at a posh dinner party, from which the servants have mysteriously vacated. After eating, they retire to the music room, and they remain there long after they have outstayed their welcome. Instead of leaving, they lie down around the room and spend the night, and it doesn't take long for them to realize that they're trapped; they cannot leave the room.

What makes "The Exterminating Angel" so chilling is that the barrier PREVENTING them from leaving is not a physical one; it's an extremely human PSYCHOLOGICAL barrier composed of rationalization, convention, and lack of initiative. When somebody tries to enter or leave the music room, they do not bump up against some sort of invisible force field. They simply come up with reasons to NOT cross the barrier, or with reasons to prevent others from doing so, even though they realize on various levels that none of it makes any sense.

We've all seen variations of "The Lord of the Flies," wherein a small band of people tries to survive -- physically and psychologically -- in an inhospitable environment. In "The Exterminating Angel" you get rich women in expensive gowns forgetting how to comb their hair, and rational people falling back on religion and masonry. As the days go by the situation becomes increasingly hopeless, desperate, and -- since this is a Luis Buñuel picture -- surreal.

I'd previously watched "The Exterminating Angel" about ten years ago on a grainy multi-generation video cassette. The fact that I could barely see what was going on added to the movie's terror. But now that it's been lovingly restored on a Criterion Collection DVD I can safely say that it's even MORE disturbing when you can see every aspect of their deteriorating room, and every blemish on their wasted faces...

...and then the camera pulls back to show you that they're simply standing on the other side of an open doorway, and you get an even bigger chill up your spine.

The Boys Who Follow

I have previously mentioned the boys who explode, but I find that I'm increasingly needing to deal with The Boys Who Follow.

These are the guys who sort of latch onto me in a straight setting, and then insist on following me around all night. Sometimes they'll try to grab me on the way to or from the bathroom, or they'll just keep asking me for my phone number. Tonight was the first night that a boy ran after me and tried to follow me home, no matter how many times I told him it was awful and creepy. "I'm not trying to pick you up!" he kept shouting, grabbing my shoulder until I finally ran back and had to wait for an eventual cab. "Why are you acting like this?" was his (hopefully) final comment.

I don't believe that most men behave this way. Whenever I decide to walk home from Club Abstract, I always check carefully to make sure I'm not being stalked by some little possie with baseball bats. But tonight was the first time that I've been grabbed repeatedly and followed even while I protested, and I wondered why this is happening now and not ten years ago.

Maybe it's because I'm better and more confident at drag than I used to, but I really think that it's a double-edged sword of acceptance; once upon a time that sort of man would be too frightened to be a nuisance, but now that it's sort of "okay" for him to be attracted to me, he feels more confident about treating me (perhaps) like he'd treat some other girl. Which makes me, as always, appreciate in some small way what women deal with in bars.

What I find most interesting was his shout of "Why are you being like this?" I'm trying to decode what he was thinking when he said it. He obviously was accusing me of being suspicious and of over-reacting, and yet the guy was aggressively grabbing my shoulder and trying to pull me away. I wonder: would he REALLY do this to a girl? Or is it only okay because it's me? And if that's the case, is it okay because he can pretend he's just "a guy walking with a guy," or because my sexuality is largely unimportant, or because he was so repressed that he believed that he honestly, really, TRULY wouldn't do anything awful once we turned the corner?

It's a weird situation: cut-and-dried for me ("Get lost!") but muddy in its motivation.

Doctor Who Season Four

For the last few months, friends on Facebook had been dropping hints at how wonderful season four of the new Doctor Who was. With each episode broadcast, they'd update their status: "This is AMAZING!" and "I can't BELIEVE it!" and "Better and BETTER!"

In the meantime I have been totally in the dark, waiting for the DVDs to arrive. Now that I've watched the complete season -- and the commentaries -- I can only say...

...well, yeah. It's pretty incredible.

For some reason these new Doctor Who seasons always fail to grab me for the first five episodes. During the process of introducing the new companion, and "seeding" the story arc, and exposing us to gobs of Russell T. Davies' envelope-pushing wonkiness, the initial stories always seem a bit DESPERATE. And coming on the heels of the previous year's Christmas special -- in which we learned oppressively heavy-handed truths about the Great and Wonderful Goodness of People Who Will Sacrifice Themselves For The Greater Good -- well, I found it hard to swallow the season four setups.

Part of the problem was that I couldn't watch Catherine Tate without thinking of the "Go On, Just GUESS!" woman.



So even though I had a tough time taking Tate seriously as Donna -- not just her, but also the season's somewhat desperate theme that she is the Most Important Person In All The Universe -- and even though the first "two parter" was pretty rotten (as usual), suddenly there was...

..."The Unicorn and the Wasp." The Doctor and companion find themselves in the middle of an elaborate murder mystery which involves Agatha Christie and a giant wasp, and the wasp is actually an illegitimate love-child who tends to "buzz" his esses when he gets very angry...

...and it's just about the funniest thing I've ever seen. Next comes the "Silence of the Library / Forest of the Dead" two-parter, surely one of the SCARIEST Doctor Who episodes ever...until the NEXT episode, "Midnight," which is not just terrifying but also an enormously risky dramatic venture which Davies refers to as "The Goblin in the Corner." I'm amazed that "Midnight" ever got made, and I'm even more amazed that it worked so perfectly.

After that the totally bleak "Turn Left" -- complete with nuclear destruction, refugees, and concentration camps -- and the season finale that brings past companions and spin-off characters together for an amazing punch-out with Davros, and Sarah Jane looking her worst nightmare right in the face...

...and then, to finish it all off, the most tragic and depressing companion farewell in the history of the series, as she is sentenced to forget all of her triumphs and once again become the shallow, pathetic, doomed and blinkered person she started off as...

Wow. Brilliant. Far too often it's wanky and ridiculous and WAAAY too confusing -- the final episode in particular -- but at its best, season four is some of the most amazing television I've ever seen. If you don't feel I've spoiled everything for you, you really should check it out.

PS: Want some great fun? Listen to the commentary for "The Doctor's Daughter." It features Catherine Tate and Georgia Moffett, who have an absolute blast remembering the filming of the episode...but sitting on the same couch with them is the poor guy who conducts the orchestra for the musical score. Tate and Moffett totally exclude him in a way that could be interpreted as deliberately cruel...by the end he goes completely silent, steamrollered by the overpowering girl-party "no boys allowed" estrogen bond. It makes you want to cry.

"Two Tribes" and Waiting To Die

It's amusing to look at the number one hit singles in the United Kingdom between 1982 and 1983. The songs are all relatively fluffy, along the lines of "Come On Eileen" and "Uptown Girl."

Then, in 1984, the music began to change. This was the year of "Do They Know It's Christmas," "Pipes of Peace," and "99 Luft Balloons." But sandwiched in between two goofy songs by "Wham!" was the rawest, nastiest, most unpleasant slice of zeitgeist for years to come: Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Two Tribes."

Anybody who pretends that the threat of today's "rogue state" and "terrorist cell" stuff is unprecedented is conveniently forgetting what it was like to live in 1984. We'd hit two minutes to midnight on the nuclear clock -- as Iron Maiden was happy to remind us -- and there was a terrible sense of impotent WAITING. Few of us -- especially not us kids -- felt like there was anything we could do about the world's situation: Reagan was daring the Soviets to strike, and the Soviets just weren't blinking. Nobody knew what would happen when the inevitable occurred, but we knew it would be awful.

While the media began increasingly reflecting our feeling of doomed hopelessness, somehow Frankie Goes to Hollywood scored a HIT SINGLE that summed up how many of us were feeling. It was cryptic and apocalyptic and packed full of ZTT goodness. And since ZTT were a record label who seemed to view songs as just an excuse to release a dozen excellent remixes, "Two Tribes" got reworked and toughened up by members of Art of Noise into the mind-blowing 12-inch single, packed with air-raid sirens and ominous instructions for tagging your dead relatives inside your shelter.

Holy scary sh*t. Buy the single and have a listen, if you can...it was released on CD.

I still think that the "Annihilation" mix is one of the most powerful remixes ever made for any song. We got REALLY distressed when an updated version of the mix was made into an extended video by Godley & Creme. Showing a bloody bout between Reagan and Chernenko -- cheered on by profiteering arms dealers and a mutant Richard Nixon -- I remember that the video was controversial for its politics and its violence. I was amazed by it and I still am.

Here it is, the "Video Destructo" version, for those who want to relive their childhood terror for a little while. And it isn't too hard to picture McCain in that ring, is it?



A far cry from "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go."

To Hell and Back

I've spent the last six weeks playing "Doom 3." Even considering the hugely inflated price I paid for the Mac version, that's a lot of value for money.

Having savoured each and every level to its fullest I was getting a little impatient near the end. Most of the game is played in tiny corridors, which gets tiresome, and after the joy of a wide-open "Hell" level it was a bit of a letdown to return to the corridors again.

So yeah, for a week or so I've just wanted to FINISH the damn game, and tonight I was happy to discover that the final Cyberdemon boss was a real wuss (Soul Cube, kill some minions, repeat). I'm finally done. And the epilogue cinematic was very cool.

I'm not much of a game player so maybe I'm just naive, but I've got to say that the Doom environment was BEAUTIFUL. Playing it on my 24" monitor with stereo sound blasting was almost too immersive for comfort. Yeah, most of the time you're creeping through dark corridors waiting for something to jump out at you, but the level designers knew enough to put breathtaking rewards in now and then...huge rooms, a blasted Martian landscape, a seemingly-endless elevator shaft. And even those corridors are pretty to look at, draped in steam and shadow.

Kudos also to the almost fetishistic approach to architecture, wherein the game REALLY seems like a microscopic tour of a working space-age factory...WITH MONSTERS! You sometimes get the feeling that the level designers spent more time building pipe schematics than they actually spent on the stuff the player USES.

Having finished the game without cheating, here are some tried-and-true pieces of advice for those having trouble.

1. Never open a door without your shotgun ready.
2. If something falls down in front of you, turn around IMMEDIATELY and kill the thing that was sneaking up behind.
3. A wide-open space? Get your plasma gun. Need to kill your enemies faster? Rocket launcher.
4. If a room contains little vents near the floor that you can't crawl into, that means trites are waiting.
   
5. Trites are enormously fun to kill with the machine gun. Two bullets and they pop. This becomes like a very easy shooting gallery game.
   
6. When you go through a door for the first time, run a few steps into the room and then back out through the door again. That way, whatever creatures your entry triggered will have to come for YOU. The level designers rarely accounted for this bit of sneakiness.
   
7. The chaingun sucks.
8. When facing imps and wraiths, just run right up to them with your shotgun and shoot them in the head.
9. Go as slowly as you like. The nice thing about the game is that there are no time limits. Of course you might take six weeks to FINISH it...
10. Mars really needed an affirmative action program.

Done, done, done! Back to more productive wastes-of-time.

The Universe - FOX News Edition

I'll watch any science DVD that comes my way, and I have a special soft spot for shows about space. Anything that helps me get a grasp of the vastness, complexity, and beauty of the universe is a good thing!

Except for this History Channel program called "The Universe," my disdain for which I cannot put into words.

But let me try.

The program is OFFICIALLY called "The Universe," but I suspect that the full title is "The Universe is Full of Scary Stuff and HOLY SH*T, WE COULD ALL DIE AT ANY MINUTE!" It's produced in the bombastic style generally used for self-serious war movies, full of loaded adjectives and contextual tricks to convey one thing and one thing only: THREAT.

The music -- which never ends -- is of the type used by TV stations to brand military offenses. The announcer's delivery alternates between doomed acceptance and self-referential downplaying...everything he says sounds like the promo for a cheesy TV show. Even when he's describing the atmosphere on Mars, he's saying it in the same tone he would use to say something like "Buffy is 100% man-killing hot stuff, but a bigger enemy is slouching over the horizon...and he could unleash the very powers of hell. On. EARTH."

I knew something was wrong in the very first episode, which was called "Secrets of the Sun" but was really "Secrets of How the Sun COULD KILL YOU." Despite all the overwrought gravitas about the power at its core and the turmoil on its surface -- complete with real disaster footage from earth, as though there was a relevant comparison -- the bulk of the episode was about solar flares and the predictions about the Next Big One.

HOLY COW, WHAT'LL HAPPEN?!? Show us footage of stuff on fire, and rioting, and mass chaos! More CGI of violent solar winds and snapping magnetic force lines! ARGH! ARRRRGH!

But wait...here are the BRAVE NASA TECHNICIANS who tirelessly scour the sky in order to predict these solar storms! Thank goodness these selfless soldiers of the stars are there to protect us, with their fingers always on the button that...well, puts satellites to sleep for a few hours until the storm passes. BUT THAT'S REALLY BRAVE!

Then, of course, all the stuff about the sun eventually expanding and burning the earth "like a charcoal briquette." End of episode.

I kid you not. Any bits of actual, scanty SCIENCE is trampled by the whiz-bang visuals and endless depictions of disaster. The sun is even scarier than TERRORISTS!

I figured I'd give the show a chance and watch the second episode -- "Mars: The Red Planet" -- because I figured they couldn't make Mars frightening. WAS I EVER WRONG! The surface used to have this HUGE VOLCANO, and that volcano might have RIPPED A GIANT CHASM RIGHT ACROSS THE PLANET! And do you know what would happen if you visited Mars? YOU'D DIE! YOU CAN'T BREATHE THERE! How did Mars turn into such an inhospitable place? BECAUSE THE VICIOUS, DEADLY SUN RIPPED AWAY ITS ATMOSPHERE! AND ONCE PEOPLE THOUGHT THERE WERE EVIL ALIENS THERE, WAITING TO INVADE! MARS IS TERRIFYING!

You can imagine how the third episode -- "The End of the Earth" -- turned out, with its killer asteroids and exclusive focus on "The Big Rip" (SO much more scary than any of the other hypotheses), and don't forget about the VICIOUS, DEADLY SUN, and the same handful of earnest science-guys explaining that we're all gonna die...though probably not for another 50 billion years, shhhh.

As usual, though, there are Fearless American Scientists protecting us, "cosmic bounty hunters" who "refuse to be bullied by the asteroids." Jesus RETCH!

The fourth episode was "Jupiter: The Giant Planet." I managed to sit through fifteen minutes because I wanted to know how Jupiter was gonna kill us. Fortunately it doesn't appear that Jupiter -- "a giant ball of intrigue" -- is out to murder our babies and steal our freedom, but -- here you go -- it tends to draw asteroids into its own orbit...ASTEROIDS THAT WOULD OTHERWISE HIT EARTH AND DESTROY CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT! Cue disaster footage again, and CGI images of disintegrating buildings and fifty-foot tidal waves.

What the f*ck is wrong with people? Can we only engage with things if we consider them to be threats? Are events only interesting if they involve violent turmoil? Maybe I'm so disgusted because I grew up on a diet of Carl Sagan, for whom the universe was a big and comforting pair of breasts, but most of the problem is that I have NEVER seen an emotionally-manipulative, fear-mongering science show about SPACE before. I'd understand if the show was PROMOTED as such, but it's not.

I can't tell you about the atrocities in the rest of the show, but the episode list gives a few hints. Seriously, if I didn't know better I'd think this was a joke:

EPISODE SIX: "A survivor of one of the most violent 'neighborhoods' in the universe, learn how earth was created and discover what creatures hold clues to how life began. What evil forces threaten the demise of Earth?"

EPISODE SEVEN: "Scorched by their proximity to the sun, Mercury and Venus are hostile worlds; one gouged with craters from cosmic collisions and the other a vortex of sulfur, carbon dioxide and acid rain. Prime examples of planets gone awry, do they serve as a warning for ominous scenarios that might someday threaten Earth?"

EPISODE TEN: "Ignited by the power of the atom, burning with light, heat and wrath [?], stars are anything but peaceful. They collide, devour each other, and explode in enormous supernovas--the biggest explosions in the Universe."

EPISODE TWELVE: "Super massive black holes can figuratively 'lasso' the Earth out of the solar system. A clash between two galaxies can result in a barbaric ritual called 'galactic cannibalism' in which the dominant galaxy's super massive black hole eats the weaker one. Magnetars are a cosmic magnetic force so strong it could wipe out data on every credit card on the planet."

And on and on and on. These people should be ashamed of themselves.

Hell Is a Dark and Predictable Place

Last week, feeling that I was climbing out of my money-pit at last, I ordered "Doom 3" in order to treat myself. Money-wise that was a mistake but I'm still having lots of fun with it.

MadKevin told me that the game was derisively referred to as "The Monster-In-A-Closet Game," as in, "I wonder what's behind this door? ARRGH, SOMETHING HORRIBLE!" And he's certainly right...you don't get a feeling that the monsters are in any way intelligent. They just pop out at you when you step into certain areas, like bloody, gruesome jack-in-the-boxes.

But what MadKevin perhaps doesn't appreciate is that bloody, gruesome jack-in-the-boxes can be REALLY DAMN SCARY, especially when coupled by a fully-immersive environment. That's why we go into carnival fun-houses after all. The added bonus is that when a creepy thing jumps out at you in "Doom 3" you can shoot it in the head and watch its brain fly out.

"Doom 3" is ALL about the environment, right down to the far-off screams and the scraps of paper in the corners. It uses all the horror movie cliches because, when done effectively, they actually WORK. When I hear something moaning deep inside a maze of busted machinery, and when I have to relinquish my gun in order to pierce the shadows with my vulnerable flashlight, I get spooked something awful.

My favourite part of the game so far? The severed arm in the toilet. When game designers demonstrate that they have no class I REALLY start to worry.

Alas, Beckzy, We Hardly Knew Ye

I decided to drive to work this morning so I could pick up cat supplies on the way home. At the corner of Erb and Caroline, however, Beckzy stalled...and just wouldn't start again.

That intersection is a bit of a zoo during rush-hour and people were honking and waving at me, so I put on the hazard lights, got out of the car, and locked the door. For the first time I was acutely aware of not having a cel phone. I was alarmed to see tiny wisps of smoke coming out from under Beckzy's hood.

Just as I'd decided to walk to the nearby police station, a sweet guy named Ian pulled over and offered to call a tow truck for me. While we were debating who to call, Beckzy made up our minds by releasing an enormous plume of smoke, so Ian called 911 and asked for a fire truck; we stood and watched as Beckzy became obscured by a black, evil-smelling cloud, and then we backed up another twenty feet when the undercarriage began to burn.

So there I was, at nine in the morning, watching my beloved car catch fire with a sweet stranger who was kind enough to stick around. Policemen arrived and they blocked off the road. Firemen came with gas masks and smashed the hood open, spraying water everywhere. It was the most surreal moment of my life.

Once the fire was out I asked the fireman why it happened. "It just happened," he said, and gestured at the melted mess that was once the front of my car. Then he laughed. "You'll never know now!" The policemen were delighted because they'd never seen a burning car before. Ian remarked quietly that the policewomen were very pretty.

I felt a strange giddiness. While waiting for the tow truck we stood around and talked about mundane things, one of the policewomen occasionally running off to chase people who were trying to run the barricade. I learned that Wednesdays are quiet days for crime until 10am, when house thieves traditionally break into homes vacated by the 9-5 crowd. I learned that the police station is too small and that they send their criminals to the holding tanks in Kitchener. I became intimately familiar with the smell of burning toxic chemicals.

Then the old people started to arrive. Nothing makes an old man happier than a melted car. "It just burned up!" they'd say, peering through the windows and poking around underneath. "You won't be driving this one again!" Women brought their children to look. "What a car!" they'd say, and the children would stare, terrified.

The Practical Side of Things

A company came and towed my car to the pound for $269. Since they'd charge an extra $25 for each day the bill was unpaid, my boss was sweet enough to drive me to Breslau and settle the account. They told me to go to a scrap dealer and sign the car over to them, and my boss drove me there too. It was an amazingly cramped and greasy building full of "Beware of Dog" signs, where you have to sign in and wear workboots if you want to go past the counter. Lots of stubble in that place. They had their names embroidered on their overalls. They gave me $150.

I had declined the non-liability portions of my car insurance so I was unable to get any other money for Beckzy's burned-out carcass.

What I Think About the Situation

Thank goodness this didn't happen on a highway during a snowstorm with me in drag. And thank goodness for the kindness of strangers, the cheerful professionalism of the police and firemen, and the guy who ran over with a tiny extinguisher and volunteered to fight the fire singlehandedly. Thank goodness for the instinct that makes humans huddle up when something freaky happens. Thanks most of all to Ian, who calmly directed the situation until the police showed up, and then stood around to shoot the shit, and THEN called my work to tell them I'd be late.

I'm sad because I bought the car and then barely drove it...but the point IS that I didn't drive it very much. I bought it to take me to family functions and drag shows -- which rarely happen -- and to take me to bars, which I decided never to do. I also wanted to drive to remote places and perhaps go camping, but I was never totally confident that Beckzy could take me that far (with reason, it turns out).

I liked knowing that Beckzy was there in case of an emergency, and it was also nice to know that she could take me to places I otherwise couldn't go.

One group of people are now telling me to lease or buy a new-ish car...then I could feel confident driving it, and it would be more comfortable, and I wouldn't worry about people making fun of it or denigrating it. Another group are encouraging me to check out a car share instead...that way I could still get to out-of-town events when necessary...in an emergency I could always take a cab.

In a way, Beckzy's sudden end is a relief because I no longer have to worry about her; I lost enough money to make me sad, but I am no longer faced with thoughts of euthanasia; she can't be repaired, she's already scrap, she's gone. I will no longer sit here on weekends thinking "I should go out and USE the car but I just don't FEEL like it."

I like to think that Beckzy decided to go out with a bang. Instead of whimpering and stalling and dragging along, she burst into flame and created a fiery spectacle. It's how she wanted to die.

No Sleep

You should never sit up late at night reading a scary book, especially not one you know will escalate from "spooky" to "gruesome" to "utterly horrifying," without relent.

You shouldn't do this after a day when you've just rushed your cat to the emergency clinic. Then, later in the evening, you shouldn't read the book immediately before and after your cat does something gory and grotesque.

None of this should happen when you're recovering from a bad cold, when you have a slight cough that threatens to keep you awake anyway.

Downstairs, Zsa Zsa is keeping silent watch over the kitchen vent, hoping for more mice.

There is no way I'm going to fall asleep. This is a much needed Gravol night.

Sick Long Weekend Catch-Up

Since I am too ill to spend my night dancing and my head is too foggy for bloggin', here's a quick update.

1. My cat has not pooped as of yet.
2. One nice thing about having a spiffy new computer is that the old games -- which I could barely play on their lowest settings -- can now be played with maximum eye-candy. So "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" looks particularly good. I just have to remember that it's more effective to shoot enemies in the head instead of the groin.
3. Want to see a great scary movie? I highly recommend "The Ruins." Holy vegetable-infested cow!
4. Yesterday I decided I wanted to drive to a lake. I looked on the map for the one closest to me, then drove all the way to Floradale to find it. And guess what...there's no lake there! There's a tiny one, but the enormous one depicted on the map just didn't seem to exist.
5. I did NOT receive the "Record Save and Sell" this Friday, which is a good sign.

Lost Girl

This has been a very strange day.

A few hours ago I heard a man saying "Where's your mommy? Where do you live?" I wandered outside and saw a middle-aged man wandering around my parking lot, trying simultaneously to corral a little girl and attract attention to his problem.

"Is she yours?" He asked me. "I saw her crossing Union Boulevard. She won't talk."

Union is right around the corner from my house, and it is a very busy street with limited visibility; the thought of this two-year old tottering her way across it made my skin crawl.

So we quizzed the girl. She refused to say anything and kept diving toward the street. Meanwhile my neighbour across the fence was shouting "A little girl and you don't know who she belongs to? CALL THE POLICE!"

It was my theory that the toddler couldn't have travelled far, so I ran inside to put on my shoes and do a house-to-house canvass. By the time I came back outside the child's parents were running across Union Boulevard, terrified and shell-shocked, as the old guy half-heartedly berated them.

I suppose this story is only REALLY scary if you're familiar with Union Boulevard. *I* get nervous crossing it.

"Hothouse" by Brian Aldiss

The sun is going nova and the increase in temperature has rearranged the world's genetic balance. Humans have "devolved" into small, relatively brainless creatures who eke out survival in a small ecological niche. A few species of insects -- the "termights" and wasps -- have grown larger but remain relatively humble beside the immensity of...

...the plants, which dominate the food chain and comprise most of the earth's diversity. Struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile environment, the plants have become vicious predators and are constantly fighting each other. They also like to fight the humans, which is when most of the fun occurs.

This is the basic idea behind Brian Aldiss' "Hothouse," which I read based on two factors:

1. Brian Aldiss was a major booster for Anna Kavan, who I have a medium-grade obsession with. I figured it was time to read one of HIS books.
2. Killer vegetables scare the heck out of me.

I'm not an avid sci-fi reader these days but I USED to be, and my dissatisfaction with the genre is fully represented in this book: it is so in love with its IDEAS that nothing else needs development. Characters and style are chucked aside so that Aldiss can describe The Next New Vegetable Horror, which is always followed by a detailed historical explanation for how the Vegetable Horror came to be...an IMPOSSIBLE explanation, since none of the humans have any way of knowing such details. The book is a slave to its concept, which reminds me of so many sci-fi stories I read as a teenager.

Fortunately Aldiss' concepts are fun, if physically impossible. His vegetable monsters are ingenious, bizarre, and never repetitive, and -- yes -- some of them scare the heck out of me, especially the parasitic Morel.

Most beautiful of his concepts is that of the "traversers," mile-wide vegetable bags who spin webs from earth to the moon. Their webs add a magic touch to the squshy unpleasantness of the dying earth. I say "magic" because the idea is both imagination-stirring and totally wonked. But anyway.

Sometimes Aldiss dispels the books mystery with excessive descriptions of "how and why," but at other times he leaves us totally baffled, and that's when the book excels. At one point, some adventurous humans discover a long-dormant tool from the past, a flying bird-like machine that constantly shouts bizarre slogans ("Boycott chimp goods! Don't allow Monkey Labour in your factory. Support Imbroglio's anti-Tripartite scheme!") This machine achieves absolutely nothing for anybody but the humans enjoy having it around; they call it "Beauty."

Aldiss also writes excessive language for the annoying "tummy-belly men":

"Never before have we seen the stalker-walkers to take a walk with them when they go stalking-walking? Where were they when we never saw them? Terrible herder man and sandwich lady, now you two people without tails find this care to go with them. We don't find the care. We don't mind ever not to see the stalker-walkers stalky-walking."

This quote alone sort of sums up the book: it's a weird, annoying, funny hodge-podge of thoughts all jammed together. "Hothouse" is a mess full of abrupt endings and loose threads, maybe because it was compiled from a series of five novellas that Aldiss had written previously.

Mess or not, "Hothouse" is still fun to read. It is dense and impossible and silly, and I would go so far as to say it's poorly written, but the ideas and the crazy moments keep it going. You don't HAVE to believe that a bunch of mindless vegetable bags have colonized the moon by spitting bubbles of oxygen at it, you just have to be intrigued by the concept, and I am.

"Harriet Said" by Beryl Bainbridge

Sometimes I pick up a book in order to fill a gap in my reading habits. Recently I have been buying and reading random books by female authors, because I've realized that a disproportionately large number of the books in my collection were written by men.

During one of these "expand my horizon" sprees I bought "Harriet Said" by Beryl Bainbridge, knowing nothing about the author or the book. I'm happy to say that the book was brilliant and that I'll DEFINITELY have to read more of her work.

While reading all of John Barth's books last year I finally understood the benefit of a "show, don't tell" approach...but I've been wondering exactly HOW skilled authors manage to "show" without "telling." Bainbridge's approach in "Harriet Said" is to give us an unreliable narrator -- a painfully awkward 13-year-old girl -- and subtly reveal the disconnect between her perception and her reality. Since we supposedly understand the world a little better than she does, we can draw our own conclusions about the story based on what she tells us. Sweet.

This girl is the perfect depiction of a type of confused, malleable teenager searching for identity, ready to be influenced by anybody strong enough to guide her. In this case her unfortunate guide is Harriet, a brilliant, manipulative, attractive, popular, and borderline sociopathic peer.

During a summer vacation in postwar England, Harriet proposes a secret project: to "humble" an unhappily married man who they call "The Tsar." We see everything that occurs -- including Harriet's ambiguous and multi-layered schemes -- through the eyes of the narrator as the three of them engage in increasingly dangerous games.

The brilliance of the book comes from the spot-on characterizations of all the characters, particularly as modified by the perception of the narrator herself. This girl's world is a terrible, changeable place, and though she herself doesn't understand the motivations of herself or others, WE do, and from this comes the sense of cloying menace that gradually builds and then -- at the climax -- crashes down. Particularly awful is the inability of the narrator to see the terrible events coming; she is far more concerned about other people's opinions about her than she is about the terrible things she's doing.

This book made me feel goosebumpy and sick, as it spells out all too clearly the reasons why certain types of people end up doing bad things. If you like a careful character study laid thickly over a thriller plotline, you should definitely find a copy of "Harriet Said."

But don't read it if you have a suspiciously-indrawn teenage daughter, or you might begin to wonder what sort of dark thoughts she's harbouring.

"The Mist"

As much as I'm annoyed by some of Stephen King's bibliography I'll be the first to admit that he has written a lot of memorable books. But my favourite King creation, by far, was "The Mist," a novella that I first read as a teenager in his "Skeleton Crew" collection.

The story continues to disturb me every time I read it. The idea of the mist alone is an innovative one, but on top of that the monsters are terrifying, the characters perfectly crafted, and the claustrophobic, slow burn setting is ideal. Most importantly, though, the actual reason for the mist phenomenon -- and the ending of the story as well -- was tantalizingly vague and open-ended. When you're finished reading the story you're left with a lot of wonderfully meaty possibilities that you can mull over all on your own. With the lights on.

People have continually promised to make a movie out of the story. The problem has always been: how should it end? I've told myself that no film studio -- at least not one with the budget to even ATTEMPT "The Mist" -- would ever allow the story's open-ended finale to stand...a Hollywood producer would HAVE to insist on a resolution, and that resolution no doubt would be super-happy and spoil everything. Better the movie never be made.

So I was worried about watching the Frank Darabont adaptation. And while I'm ultimately unhappy about the ending they finally decided upon, it's not for the reasons I'd assumed...and the rest of the movie is so wonderful as to render the actual ending almost unnecessary.

I've already said that the Stephen King monsters were unique and horrifying, but the film manages to make them even MORE bizarre. The scenes of graphic and grotesque body horror have been actually RAMPED UP in the film; maybe this disturbed me more than usual because I'd assumed the film would PLAY DOWN that sort of thing. I was very, very wrong.

What really makes the movie exceptional, however, is the pacing. The action sequences are slick and shocking, but the director knows when to pull back and just let everybody simmer once in a while, always with a barely audible score and understated performances. The Mrs. Carmody plot was a bit heavy-handed I think -- though it isn't hard to see why an American director under the Bush administration might feel particularly driven to bring such scenes to the forefront -- but even when the Carmody scenes started to drag, the quirky script and convincing performances kept me grounded.

The inclusion of Dead Can Dance's "The Host of Seraphim" -- no song is more beautiful or more heart-wrenching -- was an added bonus, though it must be one of the most overused soundtrack songs ever.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but: maybe the movie adaptation is actually BETTER than the book. I eat crow publically. If you love horror movies and you haven't seen it yet, you really really should.

Incidentally, I just realized that Darabont wrote the screenplay for the remake of "The Blob," another quirky script which went slightly "over the edge" in terms of gruesome body horror.

"Invasion" and Horror Now

My general dislike of Nicole Kidman aside, I think she can sometimes be an effective actress. And yeah, she's good in "Invasion." And she's so gosh-darn willowy.

Now that I've got that out of the way, I have to ask why every second horror movie nowadays must focus on a single parent and their single, traumatized, super-cute, intelligent, eight-to-ten year-old child. Are we so desensitized by violence against adults that we can only be frightened when CHILDREN are menaced, and only when those children appear old before their time?

This theme is an effective one in itself, but when spread across SO MANY MOVIES it becomes more than a little tiresome. Why just one parent? Why only single, lovable kids? What's going on here?

Anyway, I enjoyed watching "Invasion." I particularly like the "body snatchers" movies which involve large cities, because you get wonderfully paranoid shots of groups of menacing people standing in solidarity amongst bustling, chaotic, disconnected crowds.

It always seems necessary to provide a topical subtext for these movies, so I suppose this 2007 remake is about a distrust of government motivation -- the officials only invite reporters into press conferences so they can vomit in the coffee -- and the idea that we might be better off WITHOUT emotions such as jealousy, fear, and hatred.

So yeah, it was fun, but I have no urge to see it again (let alone watch the featurettes). And the happy ending was particularly blah.

If *I* were writing the next installment of this pseudo-series, I'd want to explore what happens after the body snatchers have taken over. I want to know what their television programs will be like. I want to know how they reproduce. Do pod-people have fights about money problems? Can a pod-person pay to have her husband "re-grown?"

PS: When I made a generalization about "half" of today's horror films being about single adults with single children, I intended to say that the other half tend to be about a bunch of unlikeable young adults getting abducted by a subtle, methodical, coldly logical maniac and then tortured one-by-one in a grimy institution that is strangely desaturated. This is very different from the slasher films of the '80s, wherein the maniac was simply out to kill people for little or no reason, and torture rarely occurred, and the colours were garish, and the kids were asking for it anyway because they were all having premarital sex (except for the lone survivor).