Sunday, February 27, 2011

PSA: You're such a tees.

So lately, instead of blogging, I've been obsessing over t-shirts. Not all of them are 100% white-person approved, but most of them are extremely limited-edition, and that adds on a few percents. (Wear them to farmer's markets and I'm sure you can still manage to be the right kind of white person.)

I figure I'll tell you about some of my favorites.

Hands down, I think my best discovery has been Megan Lara's Princess Peach nouveau-style shirt, which can still be purchased here, though I bought mine in a different color from teefury.com. Teefury has a new shirt every day, which then descends into the "gallery" never to return again. While that's pretty awesome, what's even awesomer is getting to see Megan create art nouveau prints of all the fave Nintendo and otherwise-geeky princesses (think Zelda and Samus, and Phoenix and Mystique) on her facebook fan page.

I also love "Wicked Mess," a shirt.woot shirt, which can also no longer be purchased, though shirt.woot keep shirts up for at least a week before they're "reckoned" off the site. (If you're interested in the inspiration for my "Poe's answering machine" post, see the "reckoning" page on shirt.woot and note how long the "Nevermore" shirt has been on the charts...as well as the Poe bird-face shirt, depending on when you read this. Apparently the "Nevermore" shirt has been selling like hotcakes for years now, every single week. I just don't see it, personally.)

I excitedly ordered three random shirts for myself from 6dollarshirts.com, which turned out to be this one, this one, and a "Sabre" logo shirt (haha -- The Office). The first two were actually identical (except in color) to the shirts I ordered as a surprise for P.C. at the same time. I also purposely ordered this one for myself, as an Arrested Development fan. (Note also the Human Centipede shirt, though if you're squeamish, please don't note it.)

And when I left for Baltimire last weekend (typo intended), I issued a challenge to P.C. -- that he purchase me a shirt that I would like, as a surprise.

P.C. being the Prince Certainpersonio that he is, he ended up getting me five. I won't link to all of them, since I don't know where most came from, and most are TV-related (since I heart TV).

But here, finally, is a shirt you can order for yourself -- for now -- and one that I think does an excellent job of being hilarious, poignant, and instantly recognizable all at once.

If only all tees were as good, designations like "white-person approved" would cease to have meaning, and we could all live in cotton-poly blended harmony.

Accusations XVII

Extreme stupidities found in the online training I had to go through to be certified in safety, and prevention of abuse, neglect and exploitation of disabled individuals:

1. the multiple-choice question that asked examees to select
A. [answer]
B. [different answer]
C. both A and B
D. only A

That's right: A is A, and D is also A.

2. the closed captioning for the audio files that didn't work on my computer, which occasionally read "a direct service provider telling about a time when safety was an issue on the job. Preferably someone with an ethnically diverse voice," instead of giving an actual transcript of the selected audio file.

3. the chapters of the training in which the closed captioning actually advised trainees to "listen to the clip below and then go to the next page." In a training for people learning how to interact with those with various physical and mental disabilities, assuming that anyone who needs to use closed captioning to access the test can still hear the voice clip calls into question your right to teach the material.

Poe's answering machine, 9:30 p.m.

*Beep*

"Hey, it's Lenore. I'm calling at a time I know you're going to be out at the bar to leave this message on your home machine, because I want you to stop calling me. It's over, Ed, and if you show up at my house again, I'm going to call the cops.

I'll come by tomorrow to pick up the volumes of lore I forgot. I'd like you to put them in a box and set them outside your door if you can manage that through the drunken haze, but otherwise just leave your chamber door unlocked when you go out and I'll collect them myself.

Also, if you see Nevil, please just feed him, and I'll get him when I come by, too. He should be fine out there unless the weather's too bad, in which case you should let him in. You know how he loves perching on people's heads, though, so don't complain to me if you've got bird shit in your hair in the morning, because I'm not going to clean it up. I'm done cleaning up your messes.

Seriously, Eddie, don't call me again, and don't be at home tomorrow afternoon when I come to get my lore and pet raven. This is the last you'll hear from me.

Good-bye forever. [Mumbling] Good riddance."

*Click*

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Valentimes: Horrorfest 2011, a review

Horrors: Dead Silence, Dawn of the Dead (2003), Subject 2

Reviews: Well, gentle readers, this was by far the best of the three years' worth of horrorfests. Some of you may remember last year's disastrous run-in with a terrible, terrible remake of the 1958 classic House on Haunted Hill. So many of the horror films I've watched in the last year have also been remakes of good films -- ones that should simply have been rewatched rather than redone -- and even ones I didn't know were remakes disappointed me. (Finding out The Collector was a remake, for instance, explained why the plot wasn't as clear as I wished it was, and why there was such a focus on the kind of gore that only modern technology can focus on.)

As a result, I was skeptical about including a remake in the lineup for Monday night. I was also skeptical about including Dead Silence, a movie by the makers of the Saw movies, since it was about (evil) dolls. I was torn on which of these potential disasters to inflict on myself and P.C., but shored up the choice by including Subject Two, a quiet, spare horror film I've seen twice on my own.

So we embarked on the horrorfest early, starting with Dead Silence.

True, it was a movie about evil dolls, but let's face it, dolls are creepy -- and the evil doll subgenre has been well established by Chucky and other shorter horror vignettes. True to the word of the back of the DVD box, this one did end with what I can only assume (because I haven't seen them yet) was a "Saw-like twist." There was some gimmickery, but one expects a certain amount of that in an evil-doll movie, and it really wasn't enough to remove the enjoyment of the twist at the end. It was also cleverly placed directly alongside the twist at the end, so that similar to the "spoonful of sugar" principle, you hardly even had time to groan in recognition of "what they did there" before you were once again enjoying the twistyness.

I also didn't realize until the end that the weird cop character was played by a New Kid on the Block. I'll let you guess which one -- or imdb it.

So Dead Silence was a winner, in comparison to many of the other horrors I've experienced. Even better, it made a nice lead-in to the even more surprisingly solid Dawn of the Dead.

I haven't seen the original Dawn of the Dead, though I am a fan (in the way people can be fans of old films or swimming lessons -- it takes extra prep but once you're in, you enjoy it) of Night of the Living Dead. But not having seen the original in the past has not necessarily prevented me from seeing the gaping errors in a remake; in fact, I suspect that many directors/screenwriters/producers re-making a classic horror film may fall into the trap of assuming the audience knows the story, and then attempting to depart from it to "make their mark" on the story, or to "do something a little different" (which is to say, "make a bad film"). Re-makes should be able to do justice to the original and the genre while still standing alone as good films in their own right.

So while I can't comment on whether Dawn of the Dead is in any way true to the original, I can say that it does stand on its own as a good zombie horror flick. As in the original Romero zombie movies, no one ever uses the word "zombie" -- since before Night of the Living Dead, zombies didn't really exist -- and as in the original Romero movies, there are no explanations of how scientific madness or hubris created this disease (think I Am Legend and 28 Days Later). Those are also modern concerns, but Romero's concern was over consumerism, the anti-individuality of cookie-cutter houses and the cookie-cutter products filling them and the cookie-cutter malls around them, and the way people crumble when faced with even a slow-moving hoard of the undead.

The director of the remake pointed out that remakes were a kind of offense (an attitude I was happy to have him share), that they had attempted to make a significantly different movie with the 2003 version than the original, which he thought was "perfect," and that one of the differences was that in 2003, the war that Romero had placed between people's individuality and agency, and the consumerism and lifestyle represented by the suburban mall, had already been lost. Malls are now a part of the common suburban psyche; it makes sense to us that people would run to a mall for survival. (After all, it's stocked with all kinds of provisions, and it's really one of the only public places left in suburbia.) The question in 2003 is less about whether we will become mindless consumers, defined by merchandise, and more about whether we can escape that label and become something else in addition.

It was a well-done zombie film, with plenty of gore and plenty of plot twists. It had fewer people that you wish would just die than some other recent zombie flicks (though it was not free of them). And more than the typical number of characters were well-defined, yet flexible enough to adapt, which gave them (and in some cases their deaths) more gravitas than, say, the teens in 28 Weeks Later. Yet the writer/director did not give in to the temptation to either keep all the favorites alive or have the "best" character become an obvious Christ-figure. (There is no "best" character, which is the sign of a solid script in this kind of film.)

If you watch this movie, you need to watch it all the way through, including the credits. The ending, for me, was the best connection to Romero's movies, which are purposefully bleak. The end of Night of the Living Dead is unflinchingly cruel, and while the DotD remake flinches, it seems also to offer little asylum to the viewer. There is no "homerun Jesus" for the zombie apocalypse.

And finally, post-apocalypse, P.C. stumbled on to the cold, bleak mountain winter of Subject Two. A reimagining, in my mind, of the Frankenstein story, the gorgeous setting of the film -- a cabin somewhere in a snowy mountain range -- gives the story both an attractive smallness (the characters being stuck in a cabin for warmth most of the time, though there are never snowstorms, and no cabin fever), and a sense of the largeness of the universe and of the scientific pursuits that are changing parts of it forever.

It's difficult to describe this film without giving parts of it away, but I approach it like a meditation: watching every frame, but reflectively rather than with the trepidation of a Nightmare on Elm Street, and allowing the ending to sink in fully. The screenplay is tight and effective, especially in its ending, but the efficiency of the plot is balanced and at times overwhelmed by the setting and the melancholy of the story -- as it should be. The story of Frankenstein's monster, after all, was a melodrama about a single post-human; so it is with Subject Two, minus the cloying Victorian phrases that make you as likely to want to punch the monster as sympathize with him. The snow cools all that off, leaving just the awareness of being alone, acutely and irretrievably alone, in the face of infinity.

So it was an excellent Valentimes, and I would recommend any of these movies to horror fans.

Hope yours was good, too.

Friday, February 11, 2011

New Words: Evangelically

1. evanhellical: adj. any event, gathering or product, etc., that conjures up an atmosphere in which evangelicalism and beliefs associated with it are painfully inescapable.

2. exangelical: n. a person who used to ascribe to evangelical beliefs but now does not.

3. evangelican't: n. a person who wishes she or he could continue to ascribe to evangelical beliefs, but is no longer capable of doing so.

4. evangelicant: n. the dogma associated with evangelicalism, specifically as it is recited by true believers.

5. evangelicool: adj. any object or person that, despite being evangelical, remains sensible and able to be reasoned with, i.e., does not dismiss theories of evolution out of hand or offer to "pray the gay away" when confronting a homosexual person. *Note: extremely rare

6. evangelicall: n. the process by which a person suddenly becomes a conservative Christian; the compulsion to adhere to fundamentalist or conservative Christian doctrines, despite disbelief or misgivings.

7. emangelical: adj. a satirical twist on the word "evangelical" intended to draw attention to long historical inequalities between men and women in fundamentalist Christian doctrines.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Accusations XVI

The librarian who kicked me and the girl I work with out of the library last week, for eating -- which it turns out is against the rules, though we were never reprimanded in three years of eating lunches there, and there are no signs posted -- in the most rude and humiliating of tones. If you're being rude, ma'am, you don't get to also be humiliating; you should be ashamed, instead. For frack's sake, you're a LIBRARIAN.

The school bus driver today who took a left turn in front of me, while talking on his cell phone.

Carlos Mencia, for replacing Stella with his unoriginal brand of idiocy.