Living in a horror movie, one day at a time

Eight months ago

Bullshit, I thought. No way. I've prepared for this. There is no way this could happen.

But there it was, plain as day, staring me in the face. Not literally in the face. Figuratively in the face. If it was staring at me in the face, I'd have horked up my lunch by then.

Then there's the pathetic fallacy, given the word "staring". Mouse shit can't stare. It has no eyes. I has no nose, mouth, ears. It just sits and performs the verb to be. It is. It has no functions. It is the result of a function. Of a cheeky little bullshit mouse running around a kitchen countertop, shitting its merry away around my toaster, dishes, frying pans...it skips and jumps and pirouettes using its ass as the worst pez dispenser in the world. 2 years of my living in one place, brought to pieces within 30 seconds.

It wasn't just the mouse shit on my counter that gave me pause.

It was the evidence that it had come and gone, and would come back.

There in the corner, where the counter was flush against my stove, was a bottle of cooking oil. The label had been partially scratched off. Little flakes of the label were gathered in front of the bottle in an almost ritualistic fashion. It had tried to claw its way into the bottle. It had left an offering of paper and grease, at the doorstep of Ma Canola. It wasn't cute. It wasn't a gift.

It was a message.

If there is a mouse god up there - sitting atop a throne made purely out of peanut butter, making little noises as he is attended to by tiny squeaky concubines tend to his every whim - he is the John Carpenter of human home infestation. As we all know, some of the best horror fiction (whether film or prose) thrives on atmosphere. Actually seeing Rosemary's baby is never the point. The point is the allusion to the fact that she may or may not be Beelzebub's baby mama (spoiler alert: she totally does. They didn't call it Rosemary's "Unfortunate" Fall Down Some Stairs While Her Husband Looked On), with evidence pointing towards either the affirmative or the contrary throughout the movie. The Turn of the Screw may be a slightly overrated short story with an ending that at least spurred the invention of Child Services, but the story keeps the reader on edge constantly. The payoff for successful horror or suspense usually isn't seeing the monster itself, but the little traces of the monster the reader or viewer sees along the way. This is crucial, for when we actually see the monster, the payoff is greater.

I had a small, furry, disease carrying monster in my apartment that I wouldn't be able to see because it's too quick, knows corners of the building I'll never see, and whose poop can kill.

Killer poop. It doesn't help that the poop looks like charred rice. Easily picked up by a sponge. Transferred to a plate. Food also transferred to a plate. Soon enough, you're dead, and there's a mouse having a belly laugh over your bloated corpse as his kids use your eyesockets as washtubs.

Washington DC and Virginia trip

I would post the "greatest hits" of the photos from my recent DC trip...but much like any old maid aunt in your family with far too many cats at her disposal, I'd like to regale you with ALL vacation photos. Enjoy!

...in which I hopefully conclude the previous diatribe on pop culture badasses

Part 1

The fictional "badass" from the 20th century, carrying forward to the 21st, is a shiny upgrade of the classic Byronic hero; you could go so far as to say that the anti-hero archetype created by Byron is not mutually exclusive to the badass of today. All the signs are there - moody, anti-establishment, cynical, vaguely sexual - I could either be describing Snake Pliskin or your last work supervisor. You know the one I mean. Ol' Handsy.

We may deride action oriented anime for presenting over-exaggerated exploits of anti-heroes, but American film has been equally guilty of presenting such characters too. The interesting phenomenon nowadays is how the over-the-top silliness of stoic badasses from 20 or 30 years ago is looping back into current film. Except now, we're not entirely sure if the Michael Bay-ism of anti-heroes in modern fiction is meant as a cheeky homage to the naive bombast of the 1980s, or is it over the top just for the sake of it?

Did Crank 2 really happen? Are The Darkness a real band? Who knows.

I'm hesitant to use the term "protagonist" when speaking of badasses, because the two can be mutually exclusive. A badass could be the "hero", an ancilliary character who may only be seen briefly, or the true badass could be the villain instead. No matter which character occupies this storytelling space, you have to admit there is something oddly inhuman about typical badasses. You could even say he or she is a non-human, removed from humanity by a degree the writer deems interesting enough for the story (or their own personal projections). He or she keeps a Vulcan level of reserve on their emotion and even when they do let emotions slip, it's usually quickly followed by someone getting shot or exploded via thought; almost like an apology on behalf of the writer for a moment of wussyness. They have shattered, distant or dead families. They get shot or stabbed but keep coming back like stubbly, cigar smoking zombies. A night of heavy drinking doesn't leave them with the emotional and physical resolve of a baked potato; if anything it just makes them angrier and even better at killing you. They have odd sauna etiquette (2:10 onwards).

My pores are going to be so open while I beat the shit out of you.

Maybe that's just it: the almost alien just-off-center nature of fictional badasses make their stories appealing to people. Either someone wants to live through that ridiculousness or the post-human roadshow is too entertaining to leave alone, you just have to see what they do next. What is even more bizarre is that badasses are around us in real life, and get movies based on them, a distillation process which makes them a lot more glamorous.

What is with the obsession with a central character who is cartoonishly strong and resilient? I can see how it can be easy - in real life or fiction - to lay all your trust in one person, or a group of people for that matter. Either that, or we just enjoy living vicariously. A badass is a surrogate for our unrealized fantasies and aspirations, whom we can live through without all the consequences his or her actions bring. How much red tape does MI-6 have to go through to smooth over all the property damage and paternity suits Bond leaves in his wake? There's no way Bruce Wayne and Lucius Fox by themselves manage to get all that gear configured for use; as noted in The Dark Knight, someone's going to notice when a jet's gone missing from Waynetech. But the point isn't to ask "What happens afterwards?" The point is to enjoy the ride as it's en media res and imagine yourself in the place of the protagonist. There is a beginning, a middle, not necessarily an end. Even if there's Ragnarok, your hero is still slated to come back and repeat all the stories again and again.

Cyanide and Happiness

Cyanide and HILARIOUS



Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

...in which I discuss pop culture's obsession with badasses

The skinny on Batman:

• richer than America
  
• can kick your ass while eating breakfast
  
• more gadgets (mostly superfluo
  
• detective skills up the wahey
• probably banged zatanna, catwoman, talia al ghul, some stupid socialite here and there
• great car
• ridiculous but fantastic villains
  
• looks awesome crashing through a skylight
• has beaten the shit out of Superman. Sure it was probably with Kryptonite gloves/while Superman was under some magic spell/sleepwalking, but still, he beat the shit out of someone with super speed. Which begs the question why he can't just dodge real quick, then zip into the atmosphere and zap the gloves off with heat vision, but eh...
• Has a penchant for young wards. IT MAKES SENSE IN CONTEXT, DAMMIT.
  

The skinny on James Bond:

• great car and it probably handles turns better
• he has a gun and has/will kill you. he's probably killing you now.
• will probably look like a chump crashing through a skylight
• banged more women (and probably classier ones to boot) than god and every rock band ever, put together
• he can kill. i can't stress this enough. he will put a bullet in your face if you so much as get his drink order wrong. He has no moral code against killing. He has a license to do it. Some of us wait at the DMV for hours just to get a license to drive some shitty hatchback with vomit stains on the seats. A visit to Bond's DMV (Department of Murder and Violence) involves taking a number, getting impatient and banging every single woman while murdering his way towards the lamination machine. He probably looks way better in his ID photo too.
• Also, he has a gun. Holy shit.
• Everything around him explodes.
• He's British. Can't all be winners.

I really don't know who's better. It's amusing how both sides of the Atlantic have their own long-standing celebrations of bad-assery in the form of a condensed paean to male adolescent fantasies, that's for sure. Although Bond starts out as more of a semi-autobiographical analog to Ian Fleming's experiences as a naval intelligence officer, he is as much a product of a national imagination (read: aside from Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who, Britain sorely needed an amalgam of manliness to counter their long-standing image of being tea-drinking nannygoats) as Batman was in the late 1930s.

Western fictional badasses have a long-standing tradition of being male, white and angsty beyond repair - see also Beowulf, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, the Man with No Name). Thankfully Marvel comics broke some tradition in the 1970s with Luke Cage (aka "Power Man"; I'm sure the name "Honkey Puncher" was either taken by a non-fictional man of the time or deemed unsuitable by the Comics Code - which would figure, since the Comics Code Authority was invariably made up of old Honkeys fully deserving to be Punched). They also did the same with Blade, the black superhero vampire hunter. As far as Honkey Punching goes, Blade presumably punched a lot of vampires, which is about as white as you can get.

However, as with most well-intentioned groundbreaking of race boundaries, Cage didn't have an auspicious start since he was a walking, talking stereotype. He featured blaxploitation-era hallmarks like a bandana, afro, street-wise jive talk (cause, you know, he came from the streets, as all black folk do) and his catchphrase wasn't even comparable to "Hulk smash!". It was "Sweet Christmas". Apparently because his grandmother hated profanity. His grandmother.

Superman fought alien robots. Luke Cage apparently battled a jonesing Martin Lawrence

It's also interesting that as badass as Luke Cage was, he was also known as the Hero for Hire, a sort of superhero mercenary. Not too shabby, considering that mysterious mercenaries have been portrayed in glorious ass-kicking fashion before. Cage being a man of the streets as the comics never wanted us to forget, he wouldn't be pulling cats out of trees or punching Dr Doom square in the balls for free; that shit will happen once paper hits hand. Never mind that Cage rarely seemed to actually get payment for his heroics, or had to accept something in its stead (possibly late 70's booty or some shiny new pants), the man had his principles. However, I have to wonder if the fact that Cage remained a relatively poor superhero was either clever social commentary on the part of the writers (highly doubt) or a projection of what they thought eventually happens to African-Americans - you give them the ability to change their world and shape their own destiny and yet they remain tied to their socio-economic status (quite possible). Or perhaps Mr Cage just enjoyed staying in his neighborhood, kicking ass and nailing women. Hell, that's what I'd do.

Interestingly enough, the current revival of Luke Cage by Brian Michael Bendis has the character seemingly modeled after a younger, buffer version of Samuel L Jackson. Sam Jackson, of course, being the one and only embodiment of black bad-assery, after Wesley Snipes, according to comic book writers anyway. How interesting that it all came back full circle: Wesley Snipes went on to play Blade in Marvel's first big budget movie adaptation of one of their characters. Snipes will be back in 2010 to play Blade in Blade IV: A Steak Through the Heart of Tax Evasion.

Although this post didn't initially set out to be a treatise on race issues in comics (or as regards to male adolescent fantasies as played out in popular fiction), I think it's a worthwhile subtopic to explore on the general issue of consummate badasses in pop culture. I suppose the current understanding is, whether 4 or 40, males will always identify with the one (seldom two) dimensional, gutteral representation of their childhood aspirations: to be able to kick so much ass your grandchildren will be finishing fights for you, to bone more women than god and to drive vehicles with supreme firepower and questionable mileage. I'm certainly part of a generation of men who haven't been able to get past that adolescent stage; now more than ever, 20 somethings play the most video games, consume more comics and watch more animated fare than the average 14 year old. This is the result of several facets of the entertainment industry realizing where their income source truly lies. A kid will probably get money here and there to buy a video game, but will only see comic books as "for kids". The 20 somethings of my generation will see comics as the subversive countercultural art, just like their lit theory professors told them, and will positively eat it up. Plus, the 20 somethings invariably have jobs, so once they're hooked, they'll be back for more.

To be continued. I started rambling and now I think I've lost my point.

FEATURE UNLOCKED

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me: THAT FASCIST PROLLY THINKS UR COLUMBIAN

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Eye Witness and friends at Tammany Hall, Worcester MA

I made this flyer for Eye Witness and friends. 3rd September, Thursday, 2009 at Tammany Hall, 43 Pleasant St. Worcester MA.

You should be there.

It's going to be a grand little Thursday night.