Stuff: My bloody shower time?

If you're anything like me, you like your hot morning shower, but wish it could somehow be more ominous. Hygiene is all good and well, but where's the menace?

And if there could be a sort of visual "shower/gas" holocaust gag embedded into the experience, all the better.

Screamers and Screamettes, we're in luck. I give you Chris Dimino's Gas Mask Shower Head!

Link Proliferation: There will be bloodsuckers.

Okay Screamers and Screamettes. Even an "underemployed" hobo like yours truly gets to have a vacation – and by vacation I mean that I'll be spending the weekend in the Brooklyn jail as part of a slightly diminished sentence for vagrancy. ANTSS would like to thank the Honorable Victoria S. Lippmann for being a real sport and showing the sort of compassion for the Forgotten Man that is apparently well beyond the capacities of NYPD Officer Cedric Russert.

Sigh.

While I do my time in "The Brick, " as I think I'll try to convince the other inmates we call it, I leave you with the following links for your weekend amusement.

Vampire Economics

The Econocomics blog asks "Are Vampires Good for the Economy?". Although they don't get into the unlikely economics that drive HBO's voap opera True Blood, they do cover the comics continuation of the Buffy show, which has apparently gone semi-True Blood and started normalizing the vampires of their world.

The post starts with arguments from comedian Michael Ian Black:

In his book, My Custon Van, he argues that cape manufacturers, garlic farmers, coffin makers, and angry villagers (by this he means suppliers of tools such as torches, spikes and crosses) would see net growth. Furthermore, he discusses the notion of a "vampire tax" or the idea that vampires would be more likely to attack individuals of lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who have less adequate means of protecting against an attack. This, he argues, would serve to reduce spending on social welfare programs, such as Medicaid, since more lower-income individuals enroll in these programs.

Although he predicts net losses to the makers of fake plastic and wax vampire teeth as well as the travel and tourism industries, he concludes that a small to moderate vampire army would be beneficial for the economy in the long-run and offset any potential short-run losses.

From there blogger ShadowBanker goes on to discuss vampire insurance, changes in the entertainment industry, and the question of what happens to Social Security when a section of the eligible population is immortal.

We're Here, We're Insincere, Get Used to It

Over at the Daily Beast, contributor Michelle Goldberg takes up True Blood's queer/vamp metaphor and finds the show's vampires as gays conceit lacking.

From her post:

What’s fascinating and disturbing about True Blood are the weird, seemingly reactionary politics underlying much of the mayhem. True Blood doesn’t share Twilight’s Victorianism, but in a way it’s even more anxious about sex. Indeed, the show’s universe is like the right’s worst nightmare about post-gay-liberation America come to life.

Based on a series of books by the mystery writer Charlaine Harris, True Blood draws a clear parallel between vampires and gays, one that at first seems reminiscent of the X-Men. As the show begins, vampires have “come out of the coffin,” demanding a proper place in society after endless years of existing in the shadows. A Japanese company has manufactured a synthetic blood substitute—called True Blood—removing the need to hunt humans. But not everyone is willing to accept vampires as equals—in the opening credits, we see a sign saying “God Hates Fangs,” while throughout the series, newscasts and magazine covers reference the fight for vampire marriage.

This conceit is cheeky and clever, but it has troubling implications, because the vampires, political rhetoric aside, aren’t really interested in joining human society. Unlike the misunderstood X-Men heroes, most of the vampires we meet are arrogant, perverse, and cruel—everything the far right believes gays to be. True Blood is set in the marshy milieu of small-town Louisiana; the local vampire headquarters is tawdry, decadent nightclub called Fangtasia, where human tourists come for the kink and some are ensnared and corrupted. The vampire leaders are voracious and vain; in one of this season’s most darkly funny scenes, one of them dismembers a man while getting foil highlights, then frets about the blood in his hair.

She later proposes an alternate motivation on the part of the show's creator. Perhaps, she theorizes, the entire show is a bizarre satire of efforts to normalize homosexuality from the position of a romanticized notion of homosexuality's rebel/outsider status.

Underlying much antigay literature is the unspoken assumption that homosexuality, while disgusting, is also unbearably tempting. And so, in True Blood, is sex with vampires. Sookie aside, those who crave it are somewhat pathetic—they’re referred to, derisively, as fangbangers. Human-vampire carnality is often rough and humiliating. When there is love involved, it’s laced with darkness, tragedy, and pain.

It’s hard to tell what creator Alan Ball, who also made Six Feet Under, is up to here. He’s openly gay, so he could be simply tweaking conservative fears. Or, like Rupert Everett, maybe he’s reacting against the domestication of gay life. Speaking to The Daily Beast in April, Everett railed against gay marriage, saying, “I want to be illegal. I want to live outside the mainstream.” In this spirit, in True Blood, the attempt to mainstream the denizens of a nihilistic demimonde is, at best, a bit of a farce.

I'm not qualified to speak specifically to the issues Goldberg raises. After some initial attempts at watching True Blood, I found the series not to my tastes and haven't tried to keep up. However, I sympathize with the tone of the article. In fact, I would go even further and say that a vast majority of the political and social allegories in horror flicks are half-assed, shallow, fail to offer novel insights into the issues they purport to reflect, and are usually so poorly constructed that they force even less reflective viewers to assume the messages are simply insincere.

Why are the political messages in horror films almost always profoundly unsatisfying?

Sure, as Soon as There's Trouble It Suddenly Becomes MY Bloody Valentine

The music blog The Walrus has three mp3s of previously unreleased My Bloody Valentine tunes. From the post:

All 3 sound like they are from the Isn't Anything period, or the EPs in between that album and Loveless. As one member on the MBV forum points out, "Kevin Song" most likely never got past the demo phase. It’s a cool tune, nonetheless, as are "Bilinda Song" and "Cowboy Song". The latter of seems to be the most completed of the 3, and is reminiscent of "Feed Me With Your Kiss". Suddenly it's 1990 again!

Stay classy Interwebs. And all credit for the comic of a ninja doctor talking to Ben Franklin goes to the web comic Dr. McNinja.

(And don't worry, I'm really not going to jail: just Connecticut.)

Movies: My cruddy valentine.

I went to see My Bloody Valentine 3-D, the gimmicked-up reheat of the also-ran 1981 slasher of the same name, at a sold out showing in Union Square. In the seats ahead of me were two young men, drunk as lords. One, to my right, was a short and round Caucasian with thinning hair, a drooping expression, and a perpetual look of mildly frightened disappointment that made him look as if all the world was made of sharp objects and he was a drifting balloon, losing altitude and air pressure. The other, a lanky white dude with an angular face, thin lips, and a faux-hawk do, had a single conversational setting: spasmatic. His expressions were a toxic logorrhea of foul language, broadly played blackface usages, and awkwardly mixed sports/military metaphors: "Please nigga, that fuckin' bitch got to realize we're behind enemy lines, pushing into field goal position. True dat." Whenever the thin one gushed one of his spews of nonsense, he would lean hard towards the fat one, as if he intended to slip his companion the tongue or, perhaps, bite his nose off. The fat one shrank repeatedly from these repeated violations of his territorial bubble, until, by the time the previews were rolling, he was draped over the armrest of his seat in a posture reminiscent of Jacques-Louis David's slain Marat. His eager companion appeared to be shouting into his left armpit.

If, like me, you wonder just who Hollywood makes films like Miss March for, you may wonder no longer. The trailer for the film, which is a dumbed down Old School or a slightly smartened up Brown Bunny, seems to have been the single greatest aesthetic experience that Skinny ever had. Every joke elicited body-convulsing paroxysms of laughter. Every line pierced his very soul, illuminating the human condition and speaking truths long buried within him that he was no longer able to express. One half expected him, as the Elector of Bavaria did on hearing Mozart's Idomeneo, Re di Creta, to stand and proclaim to the heavens that the miracle of creation was now finally and well complete. Instead, of course, he simply menaced his companion's armpit with the roaring opinion that, "That shit was off the fucking hook, yo!"

This pair of cinema lovers continued this routine through the first twenty or thirty minutes of the film. Despite a steady barrage of shushes, Skinny would provide regular updates on the film's progress to Tons-of-Fun's hearing impaired armpit. When he felt that strict reportage would not adequately convey the emotional content of what was transpiring on screen, he would add some insightful personal assessment. Not content to simply remark that one of the women involved in the flick was attractive, Skinny loudly informed Chub Rock's pit that he would "pop her in her shit chute."

This particularly ripe expression of his passionate attraction to the actress Megan Boone crossed the line for his neighbor his left, a stubby dark-haired woman who suggested that he should save up his comments until the end of the film and then, after the credits roll, give Fats Staller's armpit his complete and thorough assessment. He suggested that she should attempt to fornicate with herself. She suggested that her boyfriend would object to that and, in fact, he would object to the very idea of further suggestions. Stewed in Dutch courage and perhaps momentarily dazed by the distorting effects of his Buddy-Hollyish 3-D specs, Skinny announced that he would not hesitate to engage this woman's boyfriend in fisticuffs. At this point, the boyfriend intervened. He was a large, shaved-headed man slightly smaller than the state of Montana. Pointing at skinny with a hand the size and density of a frozen turkey, he enthusiastically welcomed the invitation to brawl with Skinny and added that if Skinny did not allow the film to finish sans commentary, he would introduce specific moves to the planned bout that were most decidedly not according to Queensbury. (Although, given the verbs and body parts involved, Queensbury's son, Lord Douglas, may well have recognized these proposed innovations to the sweet science.)

Never one to stifle innovation, Skinny stood up and requested that Montana and his female companion, whom he may have slandered when he insinuated that she was an accomplished exemplar of the world's oldest profession, join him in the lobby. All three left. As Montana slid his considerably mass past Heavy D, he offered the portly and silent man an undercard match. A lover and not a fighter, Chub Rock reacted with a sort of sudden recoiling action, not unlike the contraction of a slug that's been salted.

I bring this up because, at that moment, my companion and I had to decide whether to follow the combatants into the lobby or stay with the film.

We chose, after no small amount of hasty and whispered deliberation, to stick with the movie.

While not exactly a decision I'll regret all my life, I now think Dave and I chose unwisely.

The new Valentine, no longer all that thematically linked to the titular holiday, has been relocated to the fictional mining town of Harmony. The film opens with a montage explaining the origins of the flick's famed gasmask wearing slasher: Harry Warden. Warden, we learn, was the sole survivor of a multi-fatality accident in the Hanniger mines. The accident was the direct result of the incompetence Tom Hanniger, the owner's son. Shortly after Warden is pulled out of the mine in a coma, the montage reveals that Warden's survival was predicated on the fact that he pix axed the miners he was trapped with to conserve his oxygen.

Flash forward a few years. The now disused mining tunnel is a teen party spot. Our core cast - Tom, his girl Sarah, and the jealous Axel – join a largest number of relatively nameless slash fodder for this rave up on the site of Harmony's largest industrial accident/mass murder. On cue, of course, Harry Warden wakes up and goes all stab stab, slash slash, like you do in these pictures. After slaughtering everybody in the local hospital, apparently with his bare hands, the recently recovered from a multi-year coma worker suits up into his old mining outfit, dons a gasmask, and pix axes the crap out of about a dozen kids. However, before he can send Tom to the great mountain removal pit in the sky, the town's two police officers intervene. They shoot Warden several times and chase him deeper into the mine. Later, we learn, Warden is presumed dead in a mine collapse. Of course, the body is never recovered. Is it ever?

Flash forward again: ten years later. Tom, unable to deal with fact that every time he gets near the mines it means that a bushel of people will end up with fatal pix axe wounds, has returned to Harmony after a self-imposed exile. He's come back to sell the mine and bury the past. Unfortunately for Tom, and anybody who thought this puppy was going to clock in at a reasonable time, two things stop him. First, his relationship with Sarah (now wife of ex-rival Axel, himself the police chief of Harmony) shows signs of renewed vigor. Second, speaking of renewed vigor, Warden seems to still be twitching too. Tom's return to the town marks the kick off of a new spate of pix axe murders. The rest, as they say, is misery.

My Bloody Valentine - oh sure, once it starts sucking eggs it's suddenly MY bloody valentine – is a soulless rehash of a mediocre flick. More bland than bad, it's a movie so predictable, so obvious, and so safe that it mild success seems effortlessly secure and overtly cynical. Seemingly written by committee, it ploddingly hits every point on the You-2-Can-Write plot specs provided in Writing Classic Slashers for Dummies while unwisely adding all the worst elements – all the un-mystery and none of the leavening wit – of a post-Scream Era slasher revival film. The end result is a leaden bore of film that pads a straight-to-video hour-and-twenty minute slasher with an extra near-thirty minutes of domestic drama and mystery moments that will actually make you long for brisk efficiency and taut professional focus a Kevin Williamson flick.

Only two things spared this flick a Sci-Fi Channel premiere: an extended nude scene and 3-D. Neither is quite enough to save the film. Like the film's plot, there's a bit too much sag in the nude scenes. As for the 3-D, while technically quite proficient, it is a fairly unnecessary gloss that hinders, rather than liberates the film. The 3-D is crisp and pleasingly clear, but it gives everything a weird "diorama in a box look," ties the hands of the cinematographer and editor by demanding unnecessary long takes and goofy extreme close-up, and it rarely used to significant effect (and how could it be when the exact same film also needs to be screened in not 3-D formats?).

No doubt there are partisans of the previous incarnation of Valentine that will feel some affection for this uninspired reworking. One of the few slashers that didn't manage to wear out its welcome by featuring Fat Boys theme songs, kung-fu battles with Busta Rhymes, or outer space adventures, Valentine's box office failure and subsequent neglect must now look something like integrity. By never venturing to Manhattan or rapping in music videos, Valentine's killer – the wonderfully designed Harry Warden – never lapsed into self-parody. Still, this retroactive re-evaluation of the original had more to do with the decline of more famous slasher icons than anything else. It wasn't that Valentine (and other such flicks, like The Burning) is so great, but rather that they never had the chance franchise-up and flood the market with inferior product. (A chance that the remake, with its "set-up the franchise" conclusion, seems more than willing to rectify.)

That the original owes its cult status to simply not decaying into utter suckitude is fitting. The remake is a giant ode to fan settling and a refutation that horror, as a genre, has room for new ideas, innovations, or growth. I read an online critic that praised My Bloody Valentine for catering to tastes of the 40-and-over set, and he was spot on. The new Valentine is the Big Chill of horror.

Still, the 3-D glasses are kind of neat. I kept mine in the hopes that I'd someday be given something worth looking at.

Music: Whhhheeeeeeennnnnneehhhh – Whoooooooooooooohoo – Whhhheeeeeeennnnnneehhhh – Whoooooooooooooohoo . . .

This is nobody's fault but my own, but whenever somebody mentions My Bloody Valentine, the middling also-ran '80s slasher about a psycho miner that violently hates Valentine's Day, I can't help but start audibly wailing: "Whhhheeeeeeennnnnneehhhh – Whoooooooooooooohoo – Whhhheeeeeeennnnnneehhhh – Whoooooooooooooohoo . . ." I sound like some demented police siren.

It's a serious condition. Seriously. Quit laughing.

This wouldn't be a problem really except, for reasons totally obscure to me, everybody seems to have decided the coming MBV remake – in 3D nonetheless, the gimmick that made Friday the 13th Part 3 so indisputably the best in the series - will be exempt from the general directive requiring horror bloggers to be hating hard on remakes.

Worse yet, the original MBV is going through a widespread reappraisal by horror fans. Until recently, the flick enjoyed a big fat 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's IMDB rating hovered between 2 and 3. These days it has a 14% on Tomatotron and whopping 5 and change on the Database of All Earthly Knowledge. Never one to miss out on the latest geek circle jerk, Quentin Tarantino made sure to drop the title as his favorite slasher flick of all time or until Return to Horror High is ripe for rediscovery.

(I should point out that these are still utterly crap ratings and before people start wetting themselves over the prospects of a new MBV, they should reflect on the fact that this film needed a critical rediscovery simply to reach the dizzying ratings reserved for such genre landmarks as 2004's Van Helsing.)

All this means that people have actually been giving this flick some attention. Consequently, like some kid unwittingly left in front of a seizure inducing Japanimation show, I find my sell innocently surfing the horror-blog-o-sphere to suddenly burst into "Whhhheeeeeeennnnnneehhhh – Whoooooooooooooohoo – Whhhheeeeeeennnnnneehhhh – Whoooooooooooooohoo . . ."

Needless to say, this caterwauling is driving my poor wife mad. In an effort to get at the root of the problem, I've dug out the suppressed memory that causes this neurotic-compulsive behavior: the video for shoe-gazing legends My Bloody Valentine's tune "Only Shallow."



Now that I've fully recognized why I wail like a spastic electric banshee whenever the title of the movie comes up, we should put the results of this autotherapy to the test. Quick, somebody, mention you-know-what in the comments of this entry!

(Just for giggles, there's a wonderful youtube video featuring MBV – the band, not either version of the movie – that highlights one of the weirder features of this icy, moody, artsy, withdrawn group: They were unbelievably loud. Louder than more ostensibly rockin' outfits could ever hope to be. In his excellent 33 1/3 book on Loveless, Mike McGonigal describes the experience of seeing My Bloody Valentine live as the equivalent of standing in front of a jet liner's roaring engine. For an audio/visual illustration of that metaphor, here's a live clip of MBV playing "Only Shallow" live. You don't have to listen to the whole thing. Just listen for the point where, almost as soon as the band kicks in, this bootlegger's video recorder gets utterly overwhelmed by the band's noise.



Ouch. Somebody may have just blown out their camera's mic.)