YAY!

Always good to have something to do on this holiday, and this one should be extra good.  We've got plenty of these stickers to hand out, I'll be taking my camera in hopes of getting some good pics from the stage, and I'm tempted to just wear my costume all day today.

Happy Halloween!

Sigh

Just not feelin' it these days, hence the lack of post yesterday and the lameness of this one. 

Hopefully Halloween will have more momentum.

Monday

The show was a success, regardless of the fact that I spent a lot of mental energy being roped into the technical madness of the venue before confusedly making my way through the set.  There were tons of people who had never seen Wups who were drunkenly dancing before us and also giving us money, which is kind of new.  I'm ready for the Halloween gig now.

On a lesser note, I am still unemployed.  I got the call today that I was going to miss out on the latest opportunity.  I was one of two outstanding applicants and I feel a little better knowing that the decision was hard.  It does sound like I've secured myself a place in the company when the next opening comes around, so that's good.  The question is what will happen to me in the meantime.....

Tonight

Wups takes the stage when the game ends. 

I expect all of you spambots to show up.

What A Day It Was

All missions accomplished plus a little extra.  I've got my ticket to the Meat Puppets show, I saw Gravity in 3D LieMAX, I played the new Metallica pinball game as well as a Popeye game that was new to me and topped it all off with RiffTrax.  

Oh wait, no, I topped it all off by watching The Tingler when I got home.  Boy, without the gimmick, that movie is really all over the place.  A lot of the things that happen in that thing don't make any sense and if your seat doesn't start to vibrate when the screen goes black and no one is screaming near you, it doesn't mean much.  But I saw it and can now move on.

Today

I'll keep my mind good and distracted today with multiple tasks.  I need to get an affidavit notarized and then head to the library to make copies to put an end to all the time invested into clearing up this ID theft fun that I'm experiencing.

Then it's off to Eugene to snag a ticket to the Meat Puppets show next month, probably some pinball, and ultimately the RiffTrax Halloween riffing of Night of the Living Dead!  That's sure to be some good fun.

All of this is to keep me from ruminating on the job that I still have not heard back about.....

The Trip

No doubts at all that this was a fully-rounded success story.  We started at a new pinball joint with the latest Star Trek game to kick the tires on, as well as tasty pizza slices and tender beer.  We got evacuated out of the Metreon with credits still lingering in another game.  We got to sit through two horrible movies with the great Cinematic Titanic....

I should fill in some details here.  First, it was bittersweet knowing that this was the last time I'd see them, yet I was so happy to have the chance. Josh was still unable to perform so Gruber stepped in and I've got to say was frickin' hilarious, as always!  This was another give and take because Josh has elevated himself in my eyes from when I first saw him do standup with Joel on Halloween of 1988 to becoming one of my favorite riffers in this group.  So it was sad not to see him, yet Gruber was awesome, and there were some poison sprinkles in there somewhere.

There were definite technical difficulties throughout the first movie The Doll Squad.  The audio for the movie itself was horrible so that it had to be cranked to hear the dialog over the shitty sound effects, and when the sound effects revved up you lost the riffs.  Many people were unhappy about that.  But then along came Astral Factor and almost all of that was gone and instead we had one of the most solid riff experiences I've ever had with this ensemble.  There was one special effect that tended to get too loud and in the way, but this movie was the perfect cap to the whole experience.  The Doll Squad became a chore for me at times, but this next one just blew all of that away.

I stood in line to give my thanks to the crew, have my Amazing Colossal Episode Guide signed, and get the pic with Joel in the previous post.  Oh yeah, FATGUY SEZ EXCLUSIVE REPORT:  JOEL WATCHES EVERY EPISODE OF ADVENTURE TIME AND ENJOYS IT!  I made sure to ask that question while nervously getting my camera ready for the shot.

The rest of the trip consisted of a day of downtime with lots of lazy football watching followed by a day on the mountain before heading back to where we started for more Star Trek and pizza before I got on that ol' flight home.

Now I'm trying not to twiddle my thumbs away waiting to hear whether I got this job I just applied for.  Really, really want this one.....

I'm Back

The trip was fun, the show was awesome, I'll post more later but I need to go file a report with the cops.  Until then, here is me (with lingering Astral Factor) and The Master:  Joel Hodgson-

We Prefer The Term Waxologist.

Felt the sudden need to post that somewhere.

Another Wups

Tripping

Tomorrow I head for California to say goodbye to Cinematic Titanic, so there may be a dearth of postings here.

I would say more, but my mind is nearly blank. Self-imposed reading deprivation will do that...

THIEVERY!

Someone has stolen my identity.  That's weird to say.  What I mean is that someone has access to certain information about me that allows them to criminally interact with financial institutions in my name.  They are not dressing up as me, they are not in my email, they are not on my facebook account, and they are not here posting fake posts.

What they did, however, is confusing.  They opened a credit card account with a large department store, immediately charged something that included delivery and then paid it off before I got the bill.  I'm not sure if they thought it would be such a minor blip that I wouldn't notice, but of course I did.  I spent a long time on the phone filing a complaint and bringing bars down on my whole credit situation.  I'm not spread very far, so there isn't much for them to tap into.

I'm pretty sure that I know where the leak sprung from.  They did not use my real credit card to purchase anything, so they did not tap into my network connection to collect the data.  The only place I've recently revealed the piece of info critical here, my SSN, was when applying for a job with an international company called Lionsbridge. What they do is still beyond me and apparently beyond many who apply.  However, it was not Lionsbridge who collected the data, but a third party that they use to screen applicants.  After going through about four pages of various hoops to apply for a job, they start digging into the questionable areas, claiming that they are going to check your credit rating to verify that you are not a scumbag.  When you are out of work and spend that much time trying for a job, you tend to be ready to do things you normally wouldn't.  I remember taking some time to consider, but in the end failed the test, I gave them info that has led me to this.

I really wish that I was the one running down this investigation, what with all of my TV and movie criminal justice experience.  It should be easy to track down the perp, what with both the delivery and the payment, but instead of nailing them I'd offer them a chance, seeing as how they paid for what they stole.  If they would cough up where the info came from, and I could run it back to that company that I suspect, I would then put out feelers to find out if anyone else has had the same issue.  If that were the case, I'd start looking into malfeasance on their part.  If they are knowingly lax in their security procedures, I'd bring the big hammer of a very expensive lawsuit down on them, either forcing them to clean up their act or get the hell out of the business altogether.

Instead I get to fill out forms and affidavits and such, wondering what the hell happened.

Lesson learned.

Caryations

I Just Saw This..

and I must share right now!

Color pics from The Residents' unfinished film!

Movie Time!

Gearing up for Halloween, here's my favorite Dracula death:




The music, the sprint across the table and leaping for the drapes...I'll never forget the first time I saw it and I've been dying to see it again.  And such a nice, fully restored clip, YAY!

And if you were ever wondering how to make a chimp look like a gorilla, this may or may not hold the answer:

That seems to be either a kid or little person in the place of Chaney there, filmed on miniature sets. This is from The Unholy Three, a movie that I had only read about until recently, made by Tod Browning of Freaks and Dracula fame.

Also....

I can never get behind all of the animosity towards the disadvantaged.  It's as if the folks most hostile can't see that this version of the world has been set up to guarantee that there will be losers. Perhaps they like to imagine that they've worked hard to get what they have and are oblivious to the unacknowledged advantages that allowed them to start from where they did.  The lower you go, the less your chances, if any, no matter your "American Dream", folks.  There but for the blah blah go I, don't you know.  Luck of the draw isn't much to be proud of, in my opinion.  You never pass GO if you don't get to play.

And there was some guy who talked about all of this once, about how wealth was not the end all and how helping those without was a noble cause. After he died they made him into a superhero. Some even call him their "Lord"...had some good things to say...few care to listen, apparently.

An Idea

Once I got started on this one I could not stop until it was done.  I had thought I could get him to play guitar, but once I saw the original image I realized that it had to be the skins.

And....

I have to admit that this whole suffering thing is where I kind of break from my usual Eastern theology/philosophy leanings.  I understand that to stay sane in a world in which there will always be suffering you have to embrace it, experience it, and somehow understand and maybe even love it.  But I fear the cop-out that might follow, that if there is to always be such tribulation we should not care, that we shouldn't try to lessen it in the face of its permanence.  

Personal suffering is one thing.  You can get some growth out of that shit.  Other people suffering because we've fucked this whole thing up is another category.  I'd prefer we did all that we could to alleviate that flavor.  

But that's me, I care, perhaps too much, which leads to personal suffering which leads to growth. However, it does not lead to anyone else's suffering if I can help it.

So accept that which you cannot change, yet attempt to change what you hate to accept, for the hell of it.

The Game(?) of Life

A long, long, long time ago I took this Political Science class at a community college during what was to be my senior year in high school.  The instructor was some odd variation on a "right-winger", somewhat Libertarian, and a Reagan worshipper who would drop such wisdom as, "You can't enjoy a hotdog in Red Square."  I did mention long, long..yeah, covered that.

Anyway, the dude was kind of an idiot but neither I nor any of the other students ever really challenged him when he said stupid things. However, one of those stupid things has stuck with me throughout the eons and it always bugs me when I think about it.  He posited a hypothetical situation in which we were given a choice before entering this world between everyone having the same amount of... well, I guess wealth or stuff or something, or some having more than others, with the tantalizing bait that we could be one of those who have more.  He was pretty sure that most would choose what I would call that "game" version, rolling the dice and hoping to come out on top.

What bothers me most about this is that, yeah, if you kept your little scenario as simple as you state it, folks might go the way that you've said, but that's not at all fair to the decider.  Let's look at the consequences of the decision a little before we choose.  For one, if you chose the "game" you have guaranteed that there will be losers, and not just you if it blows that way but who knows how many other people.  You are condemning people to lose.  Play a game, there have to be losers. This isn't one of those everyone-wins-by-playing things (as far as we know), this is a real game here.  And it'd be nice to know just how much things suck for losers before you made your choice.  People with little to nothing suffer, and suffering in this game sucks with a capital S.  Knowing that you could, and certainly others will, end up in the suffering camp just might affect how many folks choose to play the game.

Now, I'm not saying that life is about wealth and the accumulation of stuff.  Many argue that it's simply not the case, which would be fine if we knew that while playing the game.  I hate playing games where I don't know the ins and outs, the rules and how to win.  Without that knowledge you are hobbled and more likely to lose.  Fuck that, I'm not playing, not fun.  If we knew for sure that suffering in this life would mean nothing once we leave, then perhaps we could just suck it up and look forward to the next round.  If only.

There are many who live this life in "game" mode who are fine with having a zillion losers and a handful of winners.  They have distanced themselves from the suffering, sometimes even their own, because of this.  Fine.  Dog eat dog, apparently.  But would it really be so bad if, knowing we've set all of this up in a way that there will be losers, we made losing not so horrible? Does losing really have to engender as much suffering as it currently does?  I say no, but who the hell am I, shut up.

I've certainly entertained the idea that before we start this life we've entered a big magic arcade and dropped our quarter in this machine to play.  What sucks is that once we do, we lose the perspective we had before doing so.  Once playing the game there is nothing else except hypotheticals as far as if there is anything but the game.  I can easily see us finishing the game, suddenly being back in the arcade, and our friends standing around expectantly asking if we won.  The score would tell us, and if we blew it I'd think we'd be frustrated at how every time we play this thing we forget what the hell we were trying to do in here. Did we save the princess, get all the gold coins, find the hidden key?  Shit, I totally forgot about that, I was so in the game.

The wise ones would start to figure out how to bring some of that goal info into the game. Perhaps they already have and are playing along side us.  But they are out to win, so they aren't sharing that info.  Maybe I brought some of it with me, but I'm not sure what it is.  Sometime I might suddenly remember.  I hope it's not too late to win.

About Those Things

So it seems Dario Argento has a new movie out.  It currently has an 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and The A.V. Club gave it a D.  Is it good bad or bad bad?  Hard to say.  It's in 3D but the reviews make it sound like it's not used well.  (If you're doing a bad 3D movie, you should really go the Count Floyd route with it, in my opinion.)  I really like some of his earlier stuff but consensus seems to be that he hasn't really made anything worth seeing in a while, and his penchant for shooting nude scenes of his daughter (!) in most of them is weird and confounding.

On the coincidence front, I had a dream this morning, one of many while drifting in and out of sleep contemplating an early rise for Wups practice.  Bill Corbett of MST3K fame gave me a piggyback ride across a footbridge in Madison while we were chased by a couple of kangaroos. Today I see one of his Tweets is:  "Too much coffee, need to box a kangaroo.  Internet:  deliver me a kangaroo, gloves laced, preferably wearing hilarious boxing trunks!"  This is the second time recently I'd wished I was on Twitter so I could respond, but what with the blogging and the Vimeo and all, I really don't need to add another venue where I do next to nothing.

The earlier instance of my Tweetlessness was when Joel Hodgson, creator of MST3K, tweeted a line from Adventure Time.  No one has since responded, so I will bring it up when I see him at the Cinematic Titanic shows later this month.  It's always fun when worlds you love collide!

Movie Time!

I really like bad movies.  Not the boring bad movies that come out all the time, but the really, really bad ones.  The ones that make you wonder about the people behind their creation, the ones that get you to yell things like, "What the hell?!?" while watching them.  Sometimes they take me back to a little unfinished project in the memory banks that I had a hand in, a horror film called Crawler about a giant worm eating people.  We certainly had a lot of fun working on it, but we knew we were shooting for bad.

This weekend I took some time to watch a movie that dredged up those fond memories, a total piece of junk called Blood and Lace.  Oh, Sweet Lard, what a movie!  This one, which came out in 1971, had me yelling and laughing more than I have during a movie in a while.  Heads up to the five or so people who might watch this in the next hundred years: SPOILERS are a-comin'.

The movie starts with what can only be called a Hammer Cam sequence, where a hammer that looks like it's from a kid's playset seems to be fastened directly to the camera as it moves around.  (Hammertime joke is required, no way out of it.)  I would guess the idea was to make the viewer think it was in the hand of the killer and we've got this POV shot to show what they are seeing, but if that were the case the killer would be holding that hammer up to their face and jutting it out from their cheek.  The thing never budges, so there is little to make you think it's in a hand, it's stuck to the camera, which doubly defeats the purpose of the shot.  Then the killing starts, but instead of showing the hammer being wielded by a human being, we are again watching some mechanical pivot contraption swinging it in a wide arc, intercut with images of the victims with that '70's paint-like blood on their faces as the hammer rests gently against them.  No, it's not hitting them, that's pretty obvious.  The now cam-hammer may be an attempt to keep us from guessing who's wielding it, but again it just takes you far from the idea that it's a human at all.  Oh, and the sounds from the victims make it seem more like they are enjoying a nice lunch than being killed.  Fucking gold, I tell you.

What comes next really takes it to another level, a dubbed scene where the main character, the daughter of the deceased, is voiced by the woman who most know as Rocky the Flying Squirrel from Bullwinkle.  I am serious.  I immediately recognized it, being such a cartoon loving geek, and could not believe what I was hearing.  I was suddenly in love with this insanity. However, love fades, in this case because that was the only scene dubbed in this fashion.  From then on the actress had the nerve to revert to her real voice.

This 18 year old character is then told that she must remain a ward of the state until she is 21 so she tries to run away.  She is chased by a creep in a car, very poorly, who turns out to be Vic Tayback, a local and very greasy detective.  If you liked him in the TV show Alice, well, I don't know what to say.  He totally sucks here.  The scene where he talks to her in the car while taking her back to the hospital seems like a rehearsal full of broken dialog and throwaway "ah well, just a rehearsal" moments.  And to add to what is already a gross and creepy movie, helped by that heavy dose of typical grime common to movies from the 1970s, dude actually starts showing a romantic interest in the poor "girl".

She is then sent off to some home full of kids, where, before she arrives, we see one of the residents attempt to flee, pursued by Len Lesser, that uncle guy from Seinfeld, who does what anyone would do when chasing down a runaway teen and grabs a meat clever on his way out the door.  At this point I should mention that this particular screening was brought to me by the Bosley Hair Club, which is so damn appropriate when you look at these actors.  He manages to chop off a hand of the escapee before the clever boy crawls under a bush and dies, evading capture.

Well, from there you get dead kids kept in a freezer and the info that the local doctor is running some scam feeding kids into this nightmare, which is run by poor Gloria Grahame. Slumming is too kind a word to use here.  At one point we see a shot of her shadow on the wall talking to someone we don't see who doesn't respond and you have to know what's coming. When she later says that her dead husband always advised her on how to run the home the movie simply catapults the later reveal right over the wall of Surprise Stadium.  Oh, she's kept his body around?  Yeah, we knew that movie.  You blew it.

Shit, what else...creepy and questionable romantic urges running up and down the age scale from 16 to 21..oh, and the sudden introduction of some flanneled apparent burn victim running around the grounds that really keeps you guessing because why the hell is that even necessary, what with multiple killers already running around and not burned?

Well guess what?  No?  Yeah, no surprise, it's Vic Tayback being really clever detective-wise, running around pretending to be a killer who is after our heroine just to make her bolt and see what happens next.  You wouldn't have guessed except that the bad rubber mask he wears, which he shrugs off as stage makeup, looks really Taybacky.

But we're not done yet.  Even though anyone would know from the start that the heroine is the one who softly bludgeoned her mother with a toy hammer in a robotic fashion, being chased by what is supposed to be the possible murderer makes her confess.  Vic then removes the mask and shows us all what an amazing cop he really is.

Then we go straight to hell as Vic offers to keep her guilt covered up if....ugh...she marries him! Just typing it..yeah, gross.  Bad enough yet?  One more:  Vic lets slip a bit of info that reveals...though he doesn't know it...that he's the girl's father!  She cackles an insane laugh and so do the filmmakers, as we are dragged with them into the most disgusting cesspool anyone could have ever imagined.  Those fuckers!  The end.

Oh, folks, if the people who had a hand in creating this magical medium could only have seen this, they'd have shitcanned the whole idea and pledged themselves to Jeebus for the rest of their lives.  It's just that disgusting.

Seven and a half thumbs up!  Don't ask where.

I'd Normally Be In California This Weekend

This tends to be the weekend of the Pacific Pinball Expo and occasionally the LovEvolution event, but not this year.  So I'm off to Blairalley in Eugene for Free Play Friday to commemorate.

I'll get my CA fix soon, though, when I say goodbye to Cinematic Titanic with a double feature of bad movies at the Castro Theater.  Wahoo!

Like I Said....

Hatters gonna hat.

On We March

So the shutdown continues...I hate to say it, but if it never came back...well, I hate to say it.

Also, it seems to be phone fundraising time, all day long, all night long, all week long.  Never pick up a ringing phone!

Hatters gonna hat!

Bill Murray Is The Human Torch!

http://billcorbett.tumblr.com/post/62611850946/browsethestacks-the-fantastic-four-ep-04


Also, some type of government bullshit today.