Issue 203

News: The Results of my Roald Dahl reading.
It's been a strange, eventful semester, with problems ranging from having a Queeg-like professor in one class to having to take some time off for mental health reasons, but that's not what I want to talk about here. For a while, although I haven't actually written anything about it here, I decided to spend some of my spare time re-reading the 14 major children's books of Roald Dahl (excepting "The Vicar of Nibbleswicke", "The Gremlins", and "The Minpins,"), often on audiobook (to ensure a steady pace and some balance with my other reading queues), with supplements from printed books (with Quentin Blake's illustrations whenever possible; His books aren't the same without them). I started during some weekends reading/listening to some of the shorter books (7 of the books can easily fit on a single CD each, incidentally)

I may as well give some impressions of ten of the books I've read, with some of my opinions enclosed. If I didn't find one for the other four, just rest assured that it was because I didn't think of a catchy enough title for each of them:

#1) The best: Matilda.
This is not only my favourite book by Roald Dahl, but it may probably be my favourite kids' book, (sorry, Tom Sawyer, and Phantom Tollbooth). Maybe it's because of the fact that, apart from the neglectful parents, finding an understanding kindergarten teacher, stopping my cruel teachers through telekinesis, and, of course, the telekinesis, it's pretty much the story of my early life. But that's not just it. It's simple wish fulfillment fantasy which just happens to truly reach its apotheosis in this particular form. Dahl's writing for kids truly reaches its greatest level of refinement in this book, just as Hemingway's reached its own in "The Old Man and the Sea." It's a love letter to reading, and a story about child abuse which doesn't weigh itself down in sentimentality, horror, or just plain meanness to any real degree. If "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is like his "Seven Samurai", "Matilda" is his "Ran."

#2) The worst: The Giraffe, The Pelly, and Me.
It was a tough call trying to choose between this and The Magic Finger, but the Magic Finger is merely short and unremarkable. I chose this because, even though this is one of those books he wrote that could fit on a single audiobook CD, it still feels like it's long as Hell. It's about a boy who meets up with a giraffe, pelican, and a monkey, and they start up a window-washing company. They wash a Lord's windows and they move in with him. That's it. It feels like Quentin Blake sent him a drawing of a boy standing next to a giraffe, a pelican on his head, and a monkey in the pelican's beak saying "The Ladderless Window Washing Company" and told him, "Write a story about that," and failing to do so, wrote this.

#3) The most overrated: The BFG.
Apart from the fact that the name recalls a weapon from "DOOM," the story doesn't really go anywhere for much of it, and, unlike some other books, it's not really that fun; it's just some explorations of human (and giant) nature that's not particularly deep. The BFG isn't particularly endearing, even with his dialect, and given that he's half the size of the other giants, his name "The big friendly giant" doesn't make much sense, and the climax of the "Story" includes the most inexplicable cameo by the Queen of England since Axe Cop and Light and Dark: The Adventures of Dark Yagami. The worst thing is that it seems to be his third most popular book, right behind Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Matilda.

#4) The Most Underrated: The Twits.
What can I say? It's simply a fun little book. Sure, Dahl might have used it as a way to vent his prejudice against bearded guys like me (and possibly another group he has been known to be prejudiced against), and sure, there's not much of a proper plot, and sure, the Twits have no redeeming qualities, but the book still remains a contender for the most fun I've ever had reading a book. The early, prank-centered section of the book is hilarious; especially listening to Simon Callow read the character of Mr. Twit, and it's simply amazing to see how the Twits are so mind-bogglingly stupid that the minute they return to see their furniture upside-down, they stay upside-down until they shrink into themselves. And, because Roald Dahl included a questionnaire for hairy-faced men in the early chapters, I'll answer it.
I wash my face twice a day, once after I wake up and once during my bath. I shampoo it during the bath. I don't use a hair dryer (unless you count a towel) or hair tonic, although I might consider it, and I trim it using scissors in a mirror.
 
#5) The most WTF: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.
The book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory hasn't held up as well as the movies, but I think a lot of the flaws I found in the book are directly tied to the fact that it contains a sequel hook for this book, and boy, is it a messed-up book with very little of the charm of its predecessor. But there's still quite a few things about this book that are just bizarre, and not in a good way. Like how the first half of the book seems to rip off two of Kubrick's films: (Dr. Strangelove and 2001). Or how Charlie's grandma is suddenly American. Or how, while they try to flesh out the grandparents, Dahl couldn't think of anything better than chew toy of the universe. Or how Willy Wonka has an elevator to "minus-land." Or...

#6) The Book I'm ashamed to admit I accidentally ripped off for a story: George's Marvelous Medicine.
The book itself is a pretty good short novel. A boy tries to fix his nasty grandmother by making her a new medicine made from all the medicines in the house. She grows to a gargantuan proportion and, in an attempt at replicating the effect, shrinks to nothingness. Where I come in is that, for my fiction tutoring class, I decided to rewrite a story I had written earlier which involved a girl who bludgeoned another girl to death with a turkey leg (I ripped off one of his more adult stories in the process, but that was intentional.) The book comes in because, after rewriting the story, one of the details I added included a scene where she tried to remove the blood from the kitchen floor using any chemicals which she thought might be useful, which is, incidentally, the M.O. that George uses when trying to create the Marvelous Medicine. My tutor complained about it (more on grounds that it might not end well: Bleach and ammonia create mustard gas), and I decided that, later, I would word it better when finishing it.

#7) The darkest book even by Roald Dahl's Standards: The Witches.
This is one of Dahl's longest works, but it's pretty dark even by the standards of Roald Dahl. Even in the case of Matilda, The Trunchbull is never shown to have killed a kid. She may have killed Miss Honey's dad, and she may cause permanent damage to kids for mild offenses, but she's never stated to have killed any kids. The witches, on the other hand, seem to live for killing kids. Hell, their plan essentially amounts to genocide of all kids.  And even then, when the protagonist gets turned into a mouse, he's never turned back. Unlike any of his other books, this doesn't really have a happy ending. The happiest thing about it comes when 500 witches (turned into mice) get decapitated. Not only that, but the protagonist's grandmother states that, as a mouse-boy,  he had less than ten years to live, and he's actually okay with this, because they're going to spend the next couple years doing one thing and one thing only: killin' witches.

#8) The best early draft of a film treatment masquerading as a fully-drafted novel: The Fantastic Mr. Fox.
This is one of his shorter works, and it's okay, but I don't remember reading the book as a kid, but I do have the DVD of the film. Reading the book, it just feels like a dry run for the film version. Wes Anderson evidently put a lot of meat on the bones of the script, from fleshing out the world to putting a lot more personality into the characters, and even giving it the ending that the book never had.

#9) The most Jarring book in the Roald Dahl canon: The Enormous Crocodile.
Unlike the other 14 books I read, it's not really as much an illustrated novel or even a short story. It's really a picture book more than anything else. Its plot is simple: a crocodile wants to eat a child, and whenever it tries, whatever animals he's told of his plan try to stop him. An elephant then decides to throw him into the sun. It's repetitive and its darkness isn't really couched in humour, like his other books. Huh.

#10) The most fitting end to a career: Esio Trot.
This isn't one of his best works. It's not even as dark as some of the other books, and its story is simple, but in the end, it has a certain charm that isn't found in one of his other books. A man falls in love with a woman whose tortoise won't grow. So he slowly replaces him with other tortoises until she's satisfied and they marry. And then, the original tortoise starts to grow when given to a new owner. Somehow, it has its charms, and it all works. I might have put it in the most underrated spot, but where would I have put the Twits if I did? I wound up liking it so much that I seriously considered bringing it into my last tutoring session and reading from it.

Tract Review: Why Should I? Because Rondo Hatton won't leave you alone until he tells you about God's plan for your life, and spend more time on what he plans to do for your life if you don't accept God now.

Issue 200

There will be four parts to this piece. The first part will be a response to something I've recently discovered, the second part of this will be the latest installment of my list of favourite books, and, as a breather, I will include a review of Jack Chick's latest tract, and the next 25 in my list of life lessons

Part 1: William Lane Craig.
You may not know this guy's name, but apparently, he's considered a leading evangelical theologian. Granted, he's not responsible for any bestsellers on the order of Rick Warren's Purpose-driven life, people have recommended his writings to me in the hopes that I would believe in God again. From what I've heard, he's as well-respected as C.S. Lewis. I recently discovered that he wrote an Op-Ed piece on the morality of the accounts of genocide that are described in Exodus. He actually defended the genocide of neighboring tribes because, in his words, "the death of these children was actually their salvation." This is not a paraphrase. This was not taken out of some crucial context where Lane Craig almost immediately shoots down this strawman. If you copy those words into Google, and click "I'm feeling lucky," you will get the article in question, and there's a very good chance that you will be as shocked by this as I was. Even the Lutherans who made my formative years a living Hell at least had enough sense to know that there's something very wrong with that argument. And it gets better. In his view, it was okay to kill the Caananites because they were guilty of disobeying God's laws, and were basically bad people. When you kill innocent people (like babies or other children), they go to Heaven. From this, I must ask: when isn't it morally right to kill people? I must reiterate that William Lane Craig is not just some wild-eyed Fred Phelps wannabe who goes around the country spreading a gospel of hate, shouting down everyone he sees as being hell-bound reprobate just because they're not him or his extended family. This man is a well-read, well-published, sophisticated modern theologian that people accuse atheists of ignoring because it's more fun to pick on the whackos. Given the fact that he's fond of claiming that the existence of "objective moral values" proves the existence of God, I must ask where are the objective moral values in his own values system? He says that, if there is no God, everything is permitted, but with God, at least murder is permitted. I'd like to close this with a link to a song by John Lennon. It's not Imagine, but it's from the same album and it expresses my views of this man's moral system.

Part 2: The  best books of (the many I read in the first half of) 2011.
I tried, a few weeks ago to try to see if I could get a shortlist of books I could use to create my annual list of "The best books (of the many I read in) 20XX." Including the audiobooks I've been listening to, I must have been reading no less than 100 books over the course of the year. But the shortlist had no less than 40 books as I was starting it. As of right now, there's 47 books on it, including the book I'm reading right now, World War Z. So, I decided to divide the list into two parts divided at a rather convenient point: July 1, 2011. Granted, the first part of the shortlist was still rather ungainly (28 books), but I've still been able to whittle that down to a managable number. So, without further ado, here are the top 11 books I've read in the first half of 2011.
11. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
While the book's pacing is quite glacial, especially in comparison to the many film versions that have been obstensively based on this book, what really struck me about the book was the fact that it had a very different tone from the movies. The fact was that the book really has a great sense of tragedy that seems to be missing from the film version. Viktor Frankenstein tampers in God's domain by reanimating dead tissue and escapes responsibility by fleeing from his creation, and his monster, named Adam being the well-read (seriously; he reads Plutarch, Milton, and Goethe) monstrosity that he is, cannot be expected to be able to fit in society. Given how well-known the character of Adam is, the sheer amount that got lost in the sands of time is simply staggering. Since I've frequently mentioned the films, I should probably recommend the original 1931 James Whale film for its fame, the 1957 Hammer film for its thrills, the 1974 Mel Brooks film for its humor, the 1994 Ken Branaugh film for its fidelity (and its unintentional humor), and the Andy Warhol version for its utter insanity.
10. Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
I have not bothered to read Seth Grahame-Smith's other works in the Pride and Prejudice with Zombies series. As a man who has a lot of stuff he'd like to read, and as a man who thinks that Mark Twain's assessment of Jane Austen was too nice (her wit is nonexistent; all praise of her character-building ability are rendered pointless when one reads Dostoevsky, whose novels routinely contain almost the entire spectrum of thought and behaviour; and everything else about her works is insufferable to the point where playing Russian Roulette seems like a be a valid, sanity-preserving alternative whenever my mother drags me to an adaptation of her works), reading those books just hasn't been that high a priority. With this book, however, I knew I had to read it, especially after Linkara gave a shout-out to the book in one of his reviews. I've been interested in Lincoln most of my life, especially after all the times I went to Springfield with my family and toured Lincoln's world. What's really impressive is how, not only is the plot interesting, the supernatural events are linked to the events of the real world in such a way that it's almost likely that there was a big coverup to hide the fact that vampires walked the Earth, but the fact is that Seth Grahame-Smith gets so much of the history correct. Granted, he may get the dynamics of slavery a little over-simplified, but in this regard, he's almost as good at historical fiction as George MacDonald Fraser was.
9. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
When I was a member of Newspeak Dictionary, I had somehow managed to get through several years on a board devoted to politics and dystopian literature without having read Brave New World, and only having read 1984 once. For whatever reason, in February, I decided to give it a look. It was really much better than I thought it would be, and Aldous Huxley is brilliant in the way he not only builds this world where humans are born through cloning, humans are conditioned to be sex-crazed from preschool age on, and art is limited to interactive pornography, he is also brilliant in the way he is able to link those with contemporary culture. Of course, on occasion, the book shows its age: Huxley refers to the interactive skin flicks as "feelies", no doubt as an analogue to "talkies," a term that was still in parlance when the book was written, in 1931, and even the music that Huxley talks about seems to be an extension of the big band music that was popular when the book was being written. He does, however, manage to pull off the "false protagonist" device pretty effectively, even if it's not as clear as it could be when Bernard stops becoming the main character and John does.
8. Barney Ross by Douglas Century.
When the Borders stores were closing, I decided to pick this book up. I was impressed with it. I wouldn't think that I would be interested in this story of a real-life boxer, but there was really a lot to be interested in: this nice Jewish boy from Chicago starts a career as a boxer, retires after a particularly bad loss, joins the War effort, fights in Guadalcanal, gets addicted to morphine, recovers with the help of Hashem, and even tries to advocate a relatively sane drug policy. For what it's worth, his grave is in the Rosemont Park Cemetery. I'll be sure to find a good pebble for his grave before I visit.
7. Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.
Unlike every other item on this list, I had to read this play for an Intro to Drama class in Oakton. I'm now in the process of writing a big essay about it in another class at Columbia. Despite the fact that I read it for class, I really loved it to the extent that I had to include it on my list. Why? Because this play is composed in such a way that it's almost perfect. Why? Just read it.
6. The Visit by Freidrich Durrenmatt
All right, I must admit that, after calling one play "almost perfect," it does seem odd putting another play immediately above it, but just hear me out. Another book I bought when the Borders stores were closing, this play is really just one that really appeals to my sensibilities even more than Tennessee Williams' does; the play is a meditation on the nature of capitalism: a small town is in the throes of poverty when a favourite daughter comes back and offers the town $1 billion on the condition that they kill a man who wronged her in her childhood. How long does it take before the town finally kills them? How much is it possible for us to laugh at the way the townspeople try to deal with the offer? Durrenmatt is one of my favourite authors for two reason: one is that he's that rarest of creatures, a postwar German novelist who doesn't talk about the Nazis, and the second is that he's basically German's Kurt Vonnegut.
5. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
It's very hard for me to explain just why I love this book. The fact is that it covers a lot of subjects, and does all of it in this very wry sensibility. All I can ask is why do I not read more Vonnegut?
4. Popular Crime by Bill James.
I first read about this book in an issue of Wired that was lying about my workplace. What really struck me was the fact that not only was this guy attempting a truly far-reaching history of man's fascination with crime, but the fact that he had decided to create a scale of evidences that could establish guilt. I have had no interest in his previous work, since I don't care about sports (at least I don't care about the ones that involve balls), but this book I just had to get. I wasn't disappointed. His book covers 200 years, and, although he does often gloss over serial killers, he's only got 400 pages to cover. One thing that really did disappoint me was that he didn't include a full version of his checklist of the evidence that he kept talking about and applying to criminals. Perhaps the reason this was done was because he was a little uneasy about the consequences that applying the list to the modern justice system would be. After all, he created a scale where 100 points was guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and that was sort of like the old, medieval system, where one or two well-chosen pieces of evidence was incontrovertible proof of guilt. However, according to Bill James, even the most glaring smoking gun, DNA Evidence was only worth 80 points on a possible 100.
3. J.D. Salinger by Kenneth Slawenski.
I heard about this book soon after it came out. My parents checked it out of the college library for me, and I only got around to reading it by the time we took the train ride to New York. It's rather fitting that I spend much of the time going to New York reading about one of my favourite New York authors. With regards to the biography itself, it really does put a lot of Salinger's writings into their proper context. He even manages to summarise stories that were either unpublished, or stories that Salinger never bothered to put into book form. And, furthermore, it even puts what I did know of Salinger's life into an even better context. His habit of seclusion really made a lot of sense when you realised how much his life was ruined by paparazzi trying to intrude on it, much to the point where he actually gave out a red herring on the jacket cover of Franny and Zooey. Slawenski even made clear just why Salinger stopped publishing; after his Glass family stories were met with a collective cry of "They changed it, so now it sucks," he just got tired of it all and stopped publishing.
2. Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
I read this in audiobook form (mainly as a result of some speculation that one section of Thirty H's was a shoutout to the book) during the big blizzard that happened in February. Even without Jules Feiffer's illustrations, I loved this book. On the one hand, it's a book that's rather heavy-handed with its "learning can be fun" message, but, unlike a lot of pieces that are this heavy-handed, Norton Juster really does make this book really fun to read; its characters are zany personifications of different concepts, and words and numbers are things you can eat. And now there's going to be a 50th Anniversary edition published in hardcover and that's definitely something I'd like for Christmas or my birthday.
1. Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

This is just the single best novel I've read all year. You're probably aware of the novel's plot, you probably know how much wit is packed into it. Just go out and get it. I've already got two copies; one in paperback with an introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides, and one in hardcover that I got in a Barnes and Noble Leatherbound Classics edition.

Part 3: The Awful Truth (Tract Review)
And, once again, Jack Chick puts out his conspiracy theory of everything, and it's funny as all hell. From unintentional shout-outs to Pinky and the Brain, a scoffing Dudley Moore, he quickly goes into blaming Catholicism for all the world's woes (seriously; he believes that Islam, Communism, and Naziism were created by the Catholic Church to enslave the world). Perhaps most insanely, the Catholic Church apparently ordered the death of JFK because he chose the Constitution over Canon Law. I should probably do my own dissection of this tract, but I've currently got too much work at Columbia to try it.

Part 4:

1. Myxomatosis is not funny, except when it is.
2. Bruno Mars' “The Lazy Song” does not contain Insane Clown Posse levels of sex and violence.
3. Queering doesn't make the world work.
4. Catholic Priesting doesn't make the world work.
5. “Queer” is not a verb.
6. If not for prison rape, some people would never get laid.
7. Rape is never funny, except when males are the target.
8. If you are only attracted to men when they're unwilling, that still makes you bisexual.
9. U2 is the most overrated band on Earth.
10. The Zombie Apocalypse is the most viable political system known to man.
11. The Zombie Apocalypse will only work if the dead first rise in Colma, CA.
12. Calling yourself a lesbian trapped in a man's body does not entitle you to any of the benefits afforded to either gays or transsexuals.
13. This still applies no matter how many times you will admit to seeing D.E.B.S., But I'm a Cheerleader, or Heavenly Creatures, or how many times you've read Annie on My Mind.
14. Deutsche Kultur ist durch Amerikaner sehr interessant und unterschätzt.
15. Sam Shepherd once killed a man with his butt cheek power.
16. Some people really are that stupid.
17. Speaking with all the gentility that can be expected of an OxBridge professor can still be construed as rabid radicalism if the other guy disagrees with you.
18. “Fagpoles” is not recognised as a word by any reputable source.
19. Nobody who is easily offended or in any way surprised by the presence of the word “nigger” has any right to be reading novels about The South.
20. Cali is not short for Caligula.
21. Getting strung out on Heroin, listening to Joy Division, and throwing machetes at nothing in particular is no way to spend a Tuesday.
22. Even if you regularly get intimate with strippers of the same sex, flirt with same-sex coworkers and offer to marry a particularly butch one when Illinois legalises gay marriage, you can still consider yourself completely heterosexual if you occasionally go out with a boy you never look in the eye and align yourself with Team Jacob.
23. Sex and Death are both two things which happen only once in a lifetime.
24. Nothing improves the quality of one's music like dying.
25. Don't trust the judgment of anyone who seriously believes that the addition of an infant to one's life will solve any of their problems, with the possible exception of fertility.

Issue 198

News: My Mensis Horribilis. Things have not been easy for me since my family and I got back from Door County. A few days after we left for our yearly 2-week vacation in Door County, we heard reports about flooding around where I lived. The woman who was house-sitting for us at the time claimed that our house was not affected. However, it turned out that she only said that because she couldn't actually access the house itself. We arrived to find an odd smell coming from the basement, and we managed to find that the carpet was moist, there was mold on the walls and that some boxes of magazines that I had put on the floor had gotten damaged. Fortunately, I managed to get them all into the attic and I managed to save them all, with nary a sign of mold on any of them. That said, it seems like at least one magazine is M.I.A.: A 2005 issue of Guitar Player with Paul McCartney on the cover, which leads to another unfortunate thing that happened: It turned out that on August 1, we had two important things happening the same day that we had to go downtown for, but with all that was going on, we could do neither: One was to go to my orientation for Columbia College and the other was to go to the Paul McCartney concert that was happening at Wrigley Field. We had to reschedule the orientation (they had a last-ditch orientation date on the 29th, and I managed to get a class schedule put together in the meantime), and I had to miss out on seeing Paul McCartney live for the fourth time in my life. Given that, in all likelihood, I would have been dragged to the Chicago Diner (a place of which I have made my views abundantly clear a few blog entries ago), I think it might not be as bad as I thought it would be. Later, we had to move everything that was in the basement into the POD that we had rented specifically for the occasion. It was difficult directing a crew of six on the right way to clear the basement, and it was shocking to see them removing the carpet and large parts of the walls, and it was even more difficult getting everything in the pod by myself. Of course, even getting the basement in a condition where we could clear the pod was difficult, considering my mother's changing ideas on how to paint the floor, and the paint company's apparently giving two different shades of blue the same name. At one point, I managed to get a DVD copy of the play of mine that had been performed while I was in Wisconsin, and while I must say that the cops did pretty well, the homeless man somehow managed to think that the character was supposed to be a leprechaun. I have since revised this play in the hopes that this mistake is never repeated. Then, after all that was done, two things managed to break down. The first was my clothes dryer, which was fixed easily enough by a repairman, and then the second was my laptop: I accidentally dropped it and, while at first, it seemed to be fine (even if my internet browser did stall occasionally), it kept asking for a diskcheck, and so, I decided to do it. The diskcheck wound up going on for almost two days and, by the end of it, Windows managed to stop working completely on the computer, and we had to remove the hard drive. At work, some guys that Dad worked with claimed that nothing could be removed from it, but, as of now, he has managed to move my emails, my bookmarks, my MP3s, and my documents (although I haven't uploaded the former two on my backup laptop), and even though he has yet to get several folders, (the downloads [which contains the complete Ricky Gervais show podcasts], the pictures, and the videos) off the hard drive yet, this means that, unlike what I feared, the new feature I had put on the blog will not be stopped after just one installment. I honestly hope that, in the next few days, Dad can get everything else off of the hard drive that needs to be taken off it. Film Review: The Guard. This is the film debut of John Martin McDonagh, the brother of Martin McDonagh, a playwright/film director whom I think may be one of the greatest living playwrights (certainly one of the best under 50), and the film is still in very much the same style as his brother's work: Irishmen curse up a storm and commit violence. Hilarity and Tragedy ensue. In this case, Brendan Gleeson (Harry Potter's Mad-Eye Moody) plays a sleazy cop with a tendency to steal from dead people (his opening scene has him raiding the pockets of the victim of a car crash for a tab of LSD), play arcade games instead of working, and taking days off to have sex with hookers. He is paired with a straight-laced FBI agent (played by Don Cheadle) to capture the drug smugglers who (we eventually find out) killed his partner. Meanwhile, despite having a subplot about the lead character's mother dying, the movie is actually quite hilarious. One scene in particular had me in stitches; on Gleeson's day off, Cheadle sets off to Connamera on his own to question the locals. Nobody told him that in Connamera, nobody speaks English, and he doesn't speak any Gaelic. In a moment of desperation, he actually questions a horse whether he saw anything or not. Meditations of Dirkus Aurelius Part II: 26.Just because there are no laws on the books against necrophilia doesn't mean that you are immune from getting stuck with some charge. 27.I cannot convince anyone that any incident that I do not wish to hear about is a dream. 28.Any film that has two girls snogging automatically has one redeeming feature. 29.Filling an artificial vagina with hair chafes like hell. 30.Australians do not need you to remind you that every living thing on the island can kill you, the sheep included. 31.There are better things to make fun of the Mormons for than long underwear. 32.Renee Zellweger is, in fact, female. 33.“Try the cock, you know where it's been,” is not one of the ten commandments. 34.It takes hard work to create a Black Ops squad to do things that make no sense whatsoever. 35.Sam Shephard is the Chuck Norris of American Playwrights. 36.The more improbable the deed, the less likely you are to be punished. 37.The thin breadknife in the basement is not a machete. 38.If crossdressing, please try to make as little sense as possible. 39.“Fuck Robots, dahl-ink” is not a good slogan for anything. 40.More of this is true than you want to know. 41.If we take the time to get to know them, we would all find a lot of reasons to hate everyone else. 42.Nobody knows who Alexander Nevsky is, so try to not reference him too much. 43.Fish are not a lethal weapon when used on dry land. 44.Unless otherwise noted, all bishops will be presumed to believe in God. 45.Having a big pecker is not necessarily a good thing. 46.Anything that makes my mother uneasy is automatically a good thing. 47.Mentioning Richard Gere's Breathless in front of a film buff may be hazardous for your health. 48.Just because I can legally perform marriages doesn't necessarily mean I have to approve of them. 49.Lesson #2 still applies even if it's put in a phial with the directions to the nearest sperm bank attached to it. 50.Americans do not tend to get British spelling.

Issue 196

News: Top 15 funniest films (with honorable mention).
Last week, I met someone I knew from school at the library. We were in the video section, specifically comedy section, and he asked if I had any recommendations for comedic films. I ended up choosing "Serial Mom." As of that moment, I decided that I would create a list of my favourite comedies in case I ever met with him again. I have chosen one film from each of my favourite comedians because, otherwise I would never have been able to narrow it down, but in some cases, other recommendations by the same people are given.

Honorable Mention. Sophie's Choice.
Yes, I do genuinely love this film, especially because it is genuinely disturbing in ways that so many Holocaust films fail to be (even Polanski couldn't help but try to spin an inspiring tale of survival out of one of the most horrific events in human history. You may well ask, Why am I putting a film where a woman is forced to choose which of her kids should live in a list of my funniest films? The answer is actually relatively simple: The sections about the Holocaust only occur in about the last third of the film, and it is for its first two thirds that I put it on this list. There are two characters whose performances are funny enough to put it on this list: Kevin Kline, whose performance as Nathan is almost exactly the same as the performance he would use a few years later in A Fish Called Wanda (which I will cover later in the list), and Stingo's erstwhile love interest Leslie, who is a woman who puts up a pose as a foul-mouthed sex maniac to hide how frigid she really is, wouldn't be out of place in a Woody Allen film (He is not covered later in the list, as I couldn't choose between five of his films: Manhattan, Annie Hall, Sleeper, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Love and Death.)

15. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters
I must admit that I am a big fan of Adult Swim, and when it turned out that one of their flagship series has been given a film, I knew I had to see it. As it turned out, unlike a lot of TV shows that got adapted to film, very little of what got into the film would seem too out of place in the series itself, and, impressively for a show with 11-minute episodes, it doesn't feel like there's any real attempt at padding. That said, it's pretty much impossible to recommend it to people because, on the one hand, if you're not already a fan of the series, you won't become a convert, but on the other hand, if you are already a fan, you'll probably have either seen it or want to do so.

14. Kung Pow: Enter the Fist
In 2002, Steve Oedekerk found an old kung fu flick where a guy managed to weather several kicks to the groin. He liked it so much that he decided to insert himself into the movie (it actually kind of works, believe it or not), and create a whole new script which consists of the characters making odd noises and saying the most insane lines imaginable. Just one example: "I have been called bad before. Many have said I do things that are not correct to do. I don't believe in talk such as this. I am nice man, with happy feelings. All of the time. First, a joke. What do you get when you cross an owl with a bungee cord? My ass." Warning: This film is incredibly polarizing. People either love it for its complete insanity or hate it for those exact reasons.
Other recommendations: All Thumbs. It is a collection of several short films that Oedekerk made around the same time as he was making this film, where several famous films were parodied with a cast made entirely of thumbs.

13. The Butcher Boy
This movie is shelved in the "Drama" section of my local library, and it would seem, for the first half hour, anyway, to be like a lot of Neil Jordan's other films, about life in Ireland during the Troubles, but after Francie, our hero, breaks into his friend's house, the film goes completely off the rails as he starts hallucinating and pretending he is a pig, getting caught by his friend's mother crapping on the floor. By the end of the film, he is on a first-name basis with the Virgin Mother, has survived a nuclear holocaust, and killed said friend's mother Charlie Manson-style.
Other Recommendations: While I did mention that the director made other works, none of them even come close to this level of hilarity or insanity, although many of his other works, including The Crying Game, are quite good.

12. Catch Me If You Can.
I'm normally not that big a fan of Steven Spielberg's movies, but I actually like quite a few of them, but quite honestly, this film, one of his more underrated films, is probably the only one of his films which I really love. Unlike the previous three films on this list, it's not really that insane. What I really find interesting, and even quite amusing, is how easily a sixteen-year old manages to gain a job as a pediatrician, lawyer, and airline pilot simultaneously and even manages to hold on to all three for several years. Of course, having Christopher Walken as the dad really helps make the film funny. Also, this includes one of my favourite court scenes in a film.

11. A Shot in the Dark.
Peter Sellers is widely considered to be one of the funniest people to ever maintain a presence on the silver screen, and, as it turns out, The Pink Panther series is one of the best showcases he was ever given for his comedic talents. Of all the films in the series, the second, A Shot in the Dark, is, hands down, the best, because, among many other reasons, Sellers is, in fact, the star of this one (the first one has him only as a relatively small character). In theory, there were nine films in the series, but four of them were made without Sellers, and three after his death in a desperate attempt by Blake Edwards to prove that he was really the one responsible for the film's popularity, and not Sellers. For what it's worth, there was a reboot a few years ago, but it's not really that good.
Other Recommendations: The other four Pink Panther films that Sellers made (including The Pink Panther, Return, Revenge, and Strikes Again), Dr. Strangelove, and Being There.

10. Bratz
When I saw the trailer for this film before Harry Potter 5, I knew that this had to be utterly ridiculous, but eventually, I managed to see it, and only then did I manage to notice how utterly insane this film is. Like Buster Keaton's featurette Sherlock Jr. (A film which is not on the list as a consequence of shortening the list down), almost every second is either devoted to something utterly hilarious or is leading up to something. Of course, in the case of Bratz, the laughs are almost entirely unintentional. What kind of things am I talking about here? Here's a few: a Hispanic family which inexplicably has a live-in mariachi band, a girl changing her outfit out in the open, students who dress like dinosaurs, the popular girl brandishing a sword in her own office (which she apparently has), and, as you might expect from a movie based on fashion dolls, insanely unnecessary makeovers. No, I'm not making any of this up.

9. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Is there anybody who doubts that there is really much of a point to explaining why I would be into this sort of film? In essence, the film is roughly two hours of Johnny Depp and Benecio del Toro acting completely out of their gourds. How could that fail? It may be possible, but it certainly doesn't happen.
Other Recommendations: An adaptation of Hunter Thompson's novel The Rum Diary, also starring Johnny Depp has actually been made, and is currently scheduled for an October release. It may be saner, but it may be quite good.

8. Plan 9 From Outer Space
This film is widely considered to be one of the worst films of all time, and also the epitome of "So Bad it's Good." I tend to lean towards the latter, because the movie is way too entertaining to be considered the worst film ever. Here's the plot: two aliens in a spaceship made of paper plates decide to avert the creation of a bomb that can blow up particles of light, which would lead to the destruction of the universe. They do so by going to a cemetery and resurrecting two dead people, one of whom is played by Bela Lugosi except when he's not. All those two dead people do is wander around that cemetery and kill a police officer, and make him one of them. Eventually, two other cops go up to the spaceship and the aliens explain everything. Shortly afterward, they leave.
Other recommendations: Glen or Glenda and Bride of the Monster were made by the same guy, and a biopic titled Ed Wood was made by Tim Burton about the making of those films. Of course, a similarly ridiculous film is 1938's Reefer Madness, which is probably a better companion piece.

7. Modern Times
I must admit that this film holds a particular hold on my heart (reading about him made me want to get into film), but the main reason I only gave it #7 is that, according to many people, Chaplin's own sentimental style doesn't hold up very well. Although, that said, he actually does sentimentality much better than most filmmakers, even Steven Speilberg, and even then, he manages to put a lot of priceless bits into the film, from his going into a machine to tighten the nuts on the inside, while it's still operating, stopping a jailbreak while on cocaine that he accidentally ate, and even the rollerblading scene where he manages to evade falling off a ledge blindfolded several times.
Other Recommendations: While any of his films between 1921-1952 (with the possible exception of The Circus and the definite exception of A Woman of Paris), are, in my opinion, essential viewing, only Modern Times and The Great Dictator (wherein he takes on Hitler) are currently in print.

6. Borat
Of the many comedians I've talked about here, Sasha Baron Cohen is one of the very few (with the possible exception of Williams Street, who made #15, and Edgar Wright, who will be talked about below) who appears to currently be in the prime of his career. The fact is that Baron Cohen made his name on television giving interviews with three different alter egos: Ali G, a wigger who is incredibly dense, Borat, a Kazakh journalist whose humour derives from the vast differences between his culture and that of the West, and Bruno, an Austrian fashionista who interviews mainly show business figures and people who would not be very comfortable with his homosexuality. Each character is known to use their personae to paint a less than flattering portrait of the people they interview, and each character had a film devoted to them. Ali G's was, hands down, the worst, due to its complete genre shift, and Bruno's film was still quite funny and far more psychologically revealing for American Culture (as the commentary for that film will underscore), but in terms of sheer funny, Borat's film was definitely the best, and part of the reason for this is, despite all the bigotry that Borat displays towards blacks, women, and Jews (which Baron Cohen is), it's evident that the character is actually pretty good-natured. And despite the fact that all three characters have been retired, it seems like he's still going strong.
Other Recommendations: As mentioned before, I also liked the Bruno movie, and as it turns out, he's also making a film based on a novel by, of all people, Saddam Hussein.

5. Hot Fuzz
This film was the third collaboration of Edgar Wright (director and writer) and Simon Pegg (Star and writer), a team which has probably been the most popular and best thing to come out of British comedy since Monty Python (and any of its spin-off projects, which I will talk about below). This film's particular target is police movies, and what really struck me about this film was that, not only did they reference many cop movies, and deconstruct many of the elements that are in them, but that they managed to do a lot of research about what the police actually do, but that they managed to incorporate an insane amount of things that they learned about it(Yes, Nicholas Angel is probably one of the only movie cops who would actually do well on the force). And considering that around the same time, Seltzer and Friedberg were working on several films which focused on "parodying" movies without doing any more research than watching their trailers, so, considering that Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg managed to do all the work that they did and still make the whole film a laugh riot shows that filmmakers like Seltzer and Friedberger have no excuse.
Other Recommendations: Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright have also collaborated on the zombie film Shaun of the Dead, and the TV series Spaced, and will both work with Steven Spielberg on the upcoming Tintin film adaptation. Wright went solo on the Scott Pilgrim movie, which I also recommend.

4. Harvey.
This is probably one of the most well-crafted comedic plays of all time (many of Shakespeare's works included). The film is about a man who appears to be best friends with a 6 1/2-foot tall invisible rabbit named Harvey. It's really hard to put my finger on just one thing that makes this film so funny, but I think that a large part of the humor comes from how nonchalant Jimmy Stewart's character is about everything, and another part of it comes down to how something as simple as getting a stoic man who appears to be hallucinating a large rabbit to get committed goes so disastrously wrong.
Other Recommendations: This film is not available in the library, but Jimmy Stewart and the director Henry Kostler reunited twelve years later to create a very different film called Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation. The film is definitely a product of the early sixties, when Hollywood was beginning to let its hair down, but not to get so risque as to actually break the Production Code. That said, Jimmy Stewart's roles in Harvey and Mr. Hobbs couldn't be any more different, but he makes them both work well.

3. A Fish Called Wanda
Of all the many projects that featured members of the Monty Python troupe without actually being part of the canon, this is without a doubt, the best of them all. It starts off as a heist film, beginning with the theft of several diamonds, and, after trying to collect the loot, Jamie Lee Curtis decides to seduce John Cleese so she can discover the real location of the loot, her boyfriend Kevin Kline (in one of his better performances) gets jealous, and while all this happens, Michael Palin tries to kill the only witness to the crime, but only manages to get her dogs. How funny is it? Well, it caused a guy to literally die of laughter several years ago.

2. Monty Python and the Meaning of Life
Monty Python is probably my favourite comedy troupe, and, for what it's worth, it's probably everyone else's favourite troupe as well. It was really difficult to choose which of their three films were the funniest, but I decided to choose their last film, Monty Python and the Meaning of Life, due in no small part to their retaining the format of their classic television series. In fact, one of my favourite moments comes from this film. In one animated sequence, a leaf falls, but just before that happens, it appeared to be going into a suicidal depression. The same cycle happens for the leaf's "Wife and kids", but after the kids fall, there is a pause, and every other leaf on the tree falls off simultaneously.

1. Duck Soup
Of all the films that the Marx Brothers made, this was probably the funniest. If it was certainly good enough to bring Woody Allen out of a suicidal funk in Hannah And Her Sisters, it's certainly good enough for you. As Roy Blount, who recently wrote a book-length analysis of the film, wrote, there is, at most, one dead spot in the entire film: and it appears when Groucho references a recently popular song entitled "That's Why Darkies Were Born." Yes, this song really existed, and it's just as patronising as you would expect it to be. What really makes the moment is that just after he drops that title, Groucho lets out a single "Huh!" that is pretty much the sort of reaction somebody who actually gets the reference would react to the scene. That said, every other second of the film is hilarious.
Other Recommendations: Any of the Marx Brothers' other films from 1930-1935 are highly recommended, and that includes most of their other Universal films which are only available on the same boxed set as Duck Soup.

At any rate, it's pretty difficult to analyse humour, and I honestly hope I did a pretty good job.

Issue 195

News: Derek the Restaurant Critic.
Normally, I do not review restaurants. Normally, I'm just content to eat whatever the menu has that fits within my tastes. However, I recently (twice, as a matter of fact) got dragged to a restaurant so horrible that my experiences simply demand that I have to do so. That restaurant is the Chicago Diner. The restaurant's major sell is that it is a vegan restaurant which apparently manages to use vegan cuisine to mimic diner cuisine to the extent that it is indistinguishable from the real thing. However, is it? The fact is, that it's not. To test and see if this is possible, I ate a "bacon" cheezeburger. (sic) To analyse both of the major meat components, the "burger" was made out of seitan, which is essentially a fancy word for dough. The fact is that it tastes like it, with a lot of spices that are, in theory, supposed to help it taste more like beef, but, apart from failing, that will not sit well with your intestines. As for the bacon part of it, it tastes like nothing. Simply put, it has no taste, and I mean this in the sense that Jean-Baptiste Grenouille had no scent. I had to force myself to eat the entire thing, due to my being malnourished to the point where my own faeces would have been equally appetizing if the smell could be neutralized, but there was no point whatsoever wherein any part of the burger tasted like bacon, cheese, or beef. However, we can probably lay this down to the fact that making dough actually taste like meat is impossible, but this does not excuse their other crimes against cuisine. Both times I was dragged there, I ordered a side of Mashed Potatoes, and somehow, even this was really off, particularly due to it looking neither like a potato nor mashed to any particularly meaningful degree. The taste itself was bland, different from the flavour I'm used to with potatoes in its sheer lack. After the Bacon Cheezeburger fiasco, I decided to order a salad. Surely if there's anything that a vegan could make palatable, it's salad. And yet, I was wrong, especially with what passed off as ranch dressing, tasting like a sub-par variation on the dill dipping sauce that is served with vegetable platters that are supposed to be sold for parties. Of course, the serving staff are kind, as you can expect from people who seem to be incapable of that most basic of human thought processes: rationalising the death of other beings for one's own desires. All that said, would I recommend it? Well, on the condition that you have no sense of taste whatsoever, or all the common sense of Madeline Bassett, then I would. If you don't fit those two criteria, I would guess that it would be the best argument for eating meat, especially human (or at least veal, which is supposed to taste exactly like human flesh). By contrast, if you're looking for a vegetarian restaurant that doesn't decieve, try Sweet Tomatoes. It makes no pretense of claiming that anything in it is supposed to taste like meat, and, for what it's worth, its food actually tastes good.

Quotes:
"Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self righteousness."
- Robert Hutchinson
"Veronica forces herself to go through a great deal of labor and preparation just to make her food taste more like meat, with weird-ass spices from around the world sprinkled atop "exotic" (and mandatory) sauces, curries, fungus, Boca burgers, textured vegetable paste, Tofurkey, and other processed blends of soy and gluten."
___________Rotten Library on Eating Disorders.
"It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable."
___________William Seabrook on Menschenfleisch.
"In a post-apocalyptic world, one man is transported from the microwave dimension to feast upon the remains of those who once lived. Rated R."
_______________Meatwad

Issue 193

News/Review: Ken Park: The review.
Recently, I discovered a new reviewer on the That Guy With The Glasses site I frequent. His name is OANcitizen, and his show is called "Brows Held High." His particular niche is reviewing bad Art-House and Independent films, showing that, yes, even in the case of Art House films, Sturgeon's Law, that 90% of everything is crap, still stands. One film in particular he reviewed is something that particularly struck me: Ken Park, the undistributed opus of filmmaker Larry Clark. For the record, Larry Clark is a filmmaker infamous for starting out as a photographer for most of his life (including a book which apparently inspired Taxi Driver) until going into film in 1995 with Kids. I have seen his films all the way up to this one, and the first three were particularly disquieting looks at the inner lives of teenagers. Ken Park, however, not so much, as somewhere between Bully and Ken Park, Clark seems to have discarded any regard for narrative. The film is split into five stories, each focusing on a member of a group of friends. Before one asks, the five stories are tied only in two ways: a photograph of the five, and a gratuitous three-way involving three of them.
1- Ken Park. The lead character of the film, only appears in two scenes: one at the beginning where he goes to a skateboarding park to shoot himself, and one near the end where Clark reveals that he did it because he impregnated his girlfriend, who isn't part of the five.
2- Shawn. This segment is essentially like a porno, except with better production values and hardly any set-up. Simply put, he propositions his girlfriend's mother, and she obliges him. There's hardly any conflict in this segment.
3- Claude. A skateboarder is abused by his muscle-headed father, who is also attracted to him. The dad is played by TV's Patrick the Starfish. You will never look at SpongeBob the same way again. For that matter, after reading up on the newer episodes of the show on TVTropes, and how everybody involved became unlikable, I'll never look at that show the same way again.
4- Peaches. An Asian girl tries to hide her sexual proclivities from her Fundamentalist father. She fails and he marries her. It'd probably be better to swallow if she wasn't of a race commonly portrayed as promiscuous in media.
5- Tate. He is a man who hates his grandparents for no real reason (they never do anything worse than pass off "Sibi" as a word in Scrabble during the whole film.) After doing a lot of unpleasant things, like abusing his dog or... what I will call "rehearsing for a play of the death of David Carradine or Michael Hutchence." Unlike some of the other graphic nude scenes in his previous films, Clark doesn't even try to integrate it into the story proper (even what little there is), and thus the story grinds to a halt. Then, he kills his grandparents while nude and gets arrested.
Simply put, I'm sure that if somebody else could remake the film, especially if they replaced a lot of the sex (Nobody thinks that American film boards should let their hair down more than I, but in this case, there's no real point) with proper character development and plot, who knows? Maybe it could even get a distributor in America, and if I ever meet Larry Clark, I am seriously considering telling him this, perhaps going so far as to talk about directing it myself.

Tract Reviews: That's Baphomet: A Masonic couple has their son attempt suicide. After being lectured on the dangers of Masonry, their son survives.
Still No Revival: Essentially a 50th Anniversary Retrospective tract, somehow managing to incorporate his fear of Muslims, Catholics, and non-King James Bibles. Interestingly enough, he even manages to, for the first time since he incorporated one of Laugh-In's many catch-phrases into one of his early tracts (with the possible exception of the tracts that talk about Harry Potter or Dungeons and Dragons, which don't count because he made abundantly clear that he doesn't understand a thing about either one), he actually shows some awareness of popular culture: He shows a family watching Family Guy.

Issue 192

News: This is probably old news, but...
Once again, I'm sorry I haven't been updating. I've been working on a short story, college applications, getting my service hours squared for my Criminology class, reacquainting myself with Arthur Miller, Samuel Beckett, and King Lear, and spending Easter at my grandparents' house (for the last time, since they're apparently selling it), so, between all of that, there hasn't been much time to write for the blog. That said, I have had a few ideas for blog entries, and here's one of them.
On March 20th, Not The Terry Jones, Fundamentalist nutjob who has been condemned from all sides for threatening to burn the Koran in September (for the record, I have mixed feelings about the act itself, ultimately resolving in a Voltairean "I disagree with what you say, but I agree with your right to say it," aided by the fact that, if a Koran is to be disposed of, technically, burning it is the recommended method), finally managed to do so. But he decided to first put the book on trial for six hours. What I'm wondering is: if he feels justified to do so for the Koran, what's to prevent someone from doing the same for The Bible? I can almost imagine it; Getting a man to prosecute the Bible (ideally a Gideon Bible, since they're pretty much free in any hotel room), and a priest to defend it in a court of law (I'd especially like to see it if we could get at least one of the lawyers to say something like "now, I'm just a simple country lawyer," like Jimmy Stewart), against charges of Crimes Against Humanity (what I have in mind would ultimately be something like Judgment at Nuremberg), and seeing how far it goes, especially if we can see it streaming online or after the fact on sites like Youtube. If the Bible is found guilty, it would be burnt while some fitting tunes (all of which should involve fire-related imagery), definitely beginning with Arthur Brown's Fire.

Film Review of the Week: Mildred Pierce (2011 version). For a while, the 1945 film version of James M. Cain's Mildred Pierce has been one of my favourite films noir. However, until recently, I hadn't read the original novel, and now that Todd Haynes adapted it into an HBO miniseries, I think that it's a worthy successor, so let me go over some of the most important elements:
*Mildred: Honestly, after looking into Joan Crawford's real-life motherhood, it's ultimately hard to take her seriously as a woman who would take a bullet for her daughters like she does in this film. However, in the film, it comes close to almost disintegrating any lingering doubts, but there's still the occasional thought in the back of my mind that wants to make a snarky reference to wire hangers. Kate Winslet, to the best of my knowledge, appears to have no such parenting problems, and it is much easier for me to take her seriously as a doormat of a mother. And, what's more, in the novel and the miniseries, her character arc becomes more dramatic: She goes from doting on Veda to saying (albeit at Bert's promting) "to hell with her."
*Veda: To be honest, it's very hard for me to say whether Evan Rachel Wood or Ann Blyth is a better actress in this role. They both seem to nail down the "Bratty-bordering-on-sociopathic Teenaged Daughter" role, and both look like they could very well be the daughter of the women playing their mothers, even if, in the case of Wood and Winslet, their ages are too close together for it to be realistic. However, to break the tie, I will note the climactic scene in the new version: When Mildred discovers that Veda is dating Monte, she strangles her, but she manages to get away. After this, Evan Rachel Wood curb-stomps willing suspension of disbelief by running around the house and then sputtering, repeating this for several minutes. Unless I can find some sort of evidence of this sort of thing being feasible after being strangled, I will use this as an example of how Ann Blyth's acting is better.
*Ray/Kay: I definitely have a favourite here: Jo Anne Marlowe's Kay is a much more interesting character than the Ray that Quinn McColgan played in the miniseries. The main reason for this is that I cannot help but find it satisfying that, in the 1945 film, the younger daughter, of all people, is something of a voice of reason for the family, and we see that a change occurs in the family dynamics when she dies, sometimes calling Veda out on her greed and ego. However, in the miniseries, she's just a little kid who just tries too hard to be cute, and when she dies, it feels more like the author is himself trying to get the audience to think that Ray was "too good for this sinful earth."
*Pacing/The Second Half: After reading the book, you really come to see how much the plot came to feel rushed in the film version; in fact, major plot points are completely glossed over in the film, like the fact that Veda is taking music lessons: these are mentioned enough times that they can be counted on one hand. In the miniseries and original novel, much of the novel's second half, and the last two episodes of the miniseries revolve around Veda's getting a career as a singer (a coloratura soprano, to be precise). Of course, the plot in the film still makes sense as a whole, and thus, it works, even though the miniseries allows the plot to breathe more.
*Mise-en-Scene: Michael Curtiz made it into a film noir. Todd Haynes filmed it to look like a lot like Douglas Sirk's "Women's pictures." They both worked extremely well for what they are. The choice between the two styles boils down to one's own personal preference, and mine leans strongly towards noir.

Issue 190

News/Review: Phantom Tollbooth: Book v. Movie.
A few weeks ago a big blizzard struck, as any midwesterners reading it would know. (What much is there to say about the blizzard itself? There was a massive amount of snow and I had to shovel it.) Just before the blizzard struck, I managed to get a book both in dead tree and audio editions, after discovering that Thirty H's apparently included an allusion to it an episode with a .58 child in Chapter 6. and most of the time I spent shoveling it, I had spent listening to the audiobook version. That book was Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth. Quite honestly, I think it's one of the best kids' books I've ever read, and my only regret is that I hadn't read it as a kid myself, and after listening to the interview with Norton Juster on the audiobook, I regret not having read it as a teenager, either, since, according to him, many people have written to him talking to him about how they read the book as children, teenagers, and as adults, and that it seemed like a different book each time. As it turns out, there will apparently be a new hardcover edition for its fiftieth anniversary in November (something I'd like come December), and I find it very likely that when I write my "Best Books of the Many I read in 2011" list next year, I am almost certain that it will be in the top five at least. And so, in honor of this, I must inform you that there is actually a film adaptation from the early seventies directed by Chuck Jones, which recently received its first DVD release through Warner Archives. But unlike some other films which took a ridiculously long time to come to DVD (like Wise Blood or The African Queen), there is a very good reason that it took this long: Simply put, it's bad. It's not a faithful adaptation at all. Needless to say, I've written two previous posts about film adaptations of books that changed some things significantly from their source material, but unlike Watchmen, where Zack Snyder did what he could to keep the film at a manageable length, and the 1959 version of the Brothers Karamazov, which attempted to reduce an 800-page novel into a 2 1/2 hour film by stripping away almost every subplot not directly related to the murder of Fyodor at the expense of many major characters. This film, directed by no less an animation god than Chuck Jones of Looney Tunes fame, has no excuse. The film's character designs are pretty good, even if they do deviate significantly from Jules Feiffer's illustrations (at this point, my main qualm about this aspect of the film is the fact that Tock the Watchdog's watch seems to be tucked into some sort of pouch on its body, and apparently downplaying the fact that he is supposed to be a "Watch Dog" with a real watch on his body. The fact that his voice actor is pretty bland doesn't help matters.) The film's major problem is with its pacing. It seems to be good in the opening scenes (where Milo manages to say the opening paragraphs of the book to a friend over the phone, thus finding a pretty good vehicle for putting the exposition in without the use of a narrator. However, after the scene in the Doldrums, the film begins to dramatically change from the book. Namely, in the book, after leaving the Doldrums, Milo and Tock head straight on to Dictionopolis, and then, after learning of the story of how the princesses Rhyme and Reason were cast out, decide to quest for them (with The Humbug, another character from Dictionopolis who lost much of his distinctive character in the film, drafted into joining by King Azaz the Unabridged), with several episodes following on the way. On the other hand, the film features Milo and Tock managing to encounter many of the people they found in the book long before they managed to get to Dictionopolis (on the one hand, there's nothing that wasn't in the book, but on the other hand, there was no 0.58 child anywhere in the mix). Needless to say, by the time the film finally gets around to giving the film its backstory about two-thirds of the way into the film (That's right. Important backstory that is supposed to set up the main plot of the book doesn't even get introduced into the film itself for about sixty minutes into the film's ninety-minute running time) there isn't much left for Milo, Tock, and the Humbug to do. It's like making a remake of Rain Man where most of the antics Charlie and Raymond get into happen in Cincinatti before they finally go to L.A. Yes; It would have been as poor a film as the real version is a poor depiction of autism. One more problem I have with the film is the treatment of the ending; in the book, as Milo drives away after reuniting the Mathemagician and King Azaz the Unabridged, they both remind him to remember the importance of words and numbers. This restarts the argument the two had been having about which one is more important that led to the imprisonment of Rhyme and Reason. With the disappearance of the Tollbooth from Milo's room, and the note that came with it, it implied heavily that the book's plot would happen again with some other bored child in Milo's place. In my opinion, this was a pretty effective twist ending. However, the film does not give any such implication. It's just a more simple "happily ever after" ending. Granted, the tollbooth still vanishes, and it even goes to the kid Milo was talking to on the phone. Unfortunately, by leaving out that little scene, Chuck Jones has managed to strip the scene of some crucial context making it poorer than the book's version. Simply put, if Chuck Jones had decided to keep the Book's structure, and maybe bite the bullet and add a few more scenes to make it longer than 90 minutes, it would have been a better film. However, he didn't, and I had enough material to rant about for quite a while.

Tract Review: There's two new tracts on Jack Chick's website, but they're both new versions of old tracts. One is a new version of "This Was Your Life," entitled "You Have a Date." The main differences are that the protagonist is now female, and instead of telling dirty jokes, has apparently had a lesbian experience as a teen. In addition, Jack seems to have realised that claiming whispering is a sin (as he did in previous versions of this tract) is idiotic. The other new tract was a new version of "The Attack" changed with a plug for a new book which no doubt regurgitates many of these arguments.

Issue 176

News: Why I'm unsure that my Alan Mencken project will ever get off the ground.
For a while, I've been conceptualizing an idea for an album of covers of songs composed by Oscar-Winning Composer Alan Mencken, many of which will be changed from being relatively faithful re-imaginings of the songs to completely off-the-wall versions.
Some of the ideas I've been thinking about for this one:
*Somewhere That's Green: Very similar to the original, only piano and vocals, but the vocals are done like Tom Waits, with very little lyrical change. "I look like Donna Reed" indeed!
*Part of Your World: Ideally, the first verse would be done as a mambo, but the rest of the song would be done as a punk number in line with Sid Vicious' "My Way."
*Under The Sea: Style Parody of the Steve Miller Band, particularly "Fly Like an Eagle."
*Kiss the Girl: Done as Astral Weeks-era Van Morrison.
*Beauty and the Beast: Power Ballad in the style of Sister Christian, with similar slide guitar work to Badfinger's Day After Day.
*Medley: One Jump Ahead/Friend Like Me/Prince Ali. Done as a single medley in the style of Django Reinhardt's Quintet of the Hot Club of France, with solos on guitar and violin (which may or may not be synthesised), and possibly some extremely low-key vocals.
*A Whole New World: Done in Two Versions, Three if you count the intentional false start in one version: Version A begins simply, with the first line sung, punctuated with a single, extremely deep and dense piano chord which lasts for upwards of a minute. The song resumes as a style parody of The Moody Blues' "Ride My Seesaw," complete with synthetic three-part harmonies, for both male and female singers. Version B is done as a solo number only accompanied by violin, and possibly a whip (which once again, may or may not be synthesised.)
*Colors of the Wind: Part 1 is a style parody of Rod Stewart's Rhythm of my Heart, before I manage to hijack the song half-way through, turning it into a doo-wop number, and adding an entire instrumental break, which includes me arguing with the female singer about my interruption, before finally working on collaborating in the end.
*Savages: A style parody of two early-twentieth-century mental patients, one singing after getting into the doctor's supply of Amyl Nitrites, and the other playing pianos while in the first stages of neurosyphillis, or whatever the hell brought Nietzsche to his complete mental collapse.
*Heaven's Light/Hellfire-Done as a duet, Heaven's Light done as a Jimmy Webb song, but Hellfire done as a number from Sweeney Todd, naturally, pared down to the essentials for both cases, climaxing in Sweeney Todd's work whistle.
*True Love's Kiss: Well, Hurra Torpedo is probably the best way to go for this song.
*That's How You Know: Instead of the calypso beat of the original song, it would be done as a style parody of Led Zeppelin's "Fool in the Rain."

As you can imagine, this would definitely need to be more than just one man and his guitar. However, I'm not sure whether such a thing could get off the ground. Here's the sort of thing I'm looking for in the band members:
*Female Singer: Her voice should be pretty far-removed from the sort of Broadway feel that seems to pervade through many of Mencken's songs, and ideally, it should be somewhat like Kim Deal from the Pixies, or any other female singer to alt-rock bands who are mainly remembered because Kurt Cobain idolized them. She may or may not play any of the other four instruments below.
*Keyboardist: My plan is that the Keyboardist should be the skeleton key to making the band truly work, and to help realize the goals. Ideally, he (any he's used from here on in are gender-neutral) would have as varied musical tastes as me, and as you might have guessed, my tastes are extremely eclectic [In my music queue right now are Pierre Boulez, Tenacious D, The Byrds, Hot Rats, Van Halen (not Van Hagar), and Miles Davis' Bitches Brew.]
*Bassist: Should be able to play both bass guitar and upright bass (for songs with styles that wouldn't work on bass guitar, like the Django Reinhardt medley)
*Lead Guitarist/Drummer: No special requirements here, although, if possible, for the Django Reinhardt medley, should be competent enough on guitar to keep up the rhythm (along with me, as Django Reinhardt did have two rhythm guitarists.)
And to have these sort of musicians play mainly radically changed versions of Disney Songs? You see why I'm not sure about the future of the project.

Movie Review: Bruno. I finally managed to get my hands on a copy of the final movie in the Sascha Baron Cohen trilogy recently, and let me tell you, it may not be as funny as Borat was, but it certainly has its moments, including a Missed Moment of Awesome where Bruno meets the "God Hates Fags" gang and simply does nothing but walk past them onto a bus. It was while he was in leather, huddled and handcuffed onto another guy, but still. In fact, some of the best scenes, as the DVD release showed, ended up on the cutting room floor, including an interview with a Neo-Nazi leader. However, the material is almost all fresh, with very little reworking of past antics, as far as I remember, from the Ali G Show. Even where both the series and film have a gay converter, Bruno doesn't ask the same questions for both interviews. And yes, the Hitler references get old pretty fast, but there is a talking penis in the movie, but it is only on for a brief moment, shouting "Bruno!" and even then, only as computer-generated bumper for a prospective Bruno television series.

Idea of the Day: It's somewhat like Sex in the City, except aimed heavily towards men, and often seeming like In the Company of Men: The Series, including a short story writer obsessed with Charles Bukowski, a dirty cop who can, if the occasion strikes, be as much of a monster as Mr. Blonde from Reservoir Dogs, a businessman who moonlights as a blues guitarist and is the token nice guy of the group, and a cold, rational, neurosurgeon.

Issue 175

News: How not to do a Jesus biopic: Another long-term essay.
A few weeks ago, I saw the movie, The Passion of the Christ. My mother heard about it, and she said that she never wanted to see it (and she's the most religious member of my immediate family, although for her, it means self-identifying as Lutheran, and occasionally going to Church on Christmas or Easter, depending on her health), especially since she heard that it was little more than a glorified snuff film. Well, I ended up renting it from the library, and, it turns out, she was right. The fact is that it was almost entirely devoted to the torture and execution of Jesus, with surprisingly little focus on any other aspect of his life. And, even though they went through the trouble of translating the script into the languages that would have actually been spoken at the time, they even manage to get that wrong, especially since the Roman soldiers were speaking in ECCLESIASTICAL LATIN. Honestly, if you're going to translate your dialogue into a foreign, dead, language, make sure it's the right one. I like a bit of the old ultraviolence now and again, but really, when the entire point of the movie is devoted to one man's execution, it is not good. Even Funny Games took time out of showing the two men torturing the Yuppie family to break the fourth wall and play Naked City music. To keep the contrast to other religious movies, The Passion of Joan of Arc devoted itself to the last few hours of the life of a saint, but C.T. Dreyer focused the movie not only on the suffering itself, but also at least gave Joan some character development. However, Mel Gibson gives his Jesus very little room for such character development, and gives us no real reason to care about his suffering except that we're supposed to care about Jesus being crucified. Indeed, I think there can be, and actually have been, some great interpretations of Jesus' life on film, like Pasolini's Gospel According to Matthew (although a lot of my admiration can be due to its eclectic sountrack), Nicholas Ray's King of Kings, or, in terms of sheer comprehensiveness, Zefferelli's Jesus of Nazareth. I'd even recommend Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ, even if its casting choices are suspect, to say the least, and it isn't even based on the Gospels. While we're on adaptations of the Bible done by unusual people, I recently read R. Crumb's adaptation of the Book of Genesis, and, as it turns out, the man who created Mr. Natural and wrote the source material for the first X-rated cartoon film actually does a pretty good job of adapting the first book of the Bible. He even manages to make the "begats" interesting by actually giving the people being "begotten" a face, and it's actually surprisingly reverent for R. Crumb, and quite possibly the most oddly reverent adaptation of the Bible since Aphrodite's Child's rock opera of Revelation: "666."

Relevant Quote: "The New Testament tells two stories for two different sorts of readers. One is the old story of the achievement of our salvation by the sacrifice and atonement of a divine personage who was barbarously slain and rose again on the third day: the story as it was accepted by the apostles. And in this story the political, economic, and moral views of the Christ have no importance: the atonement is everything; and we are saved by our faith in it, and not by works or opinions (other than that particular opinion) bearing on practical affairs.

The other is the story of a prophet who, after expressing several very interesting opinions as to practical conduct, both personal and political, which are now of pressing importance, and instructing his disciples to carry them out in their daily life, lost his head; believed himself to be a crude legendary form of god; and under that delusion courted and suffered a cruel execution in the belief that he would rise from the dead and come in glory to reign over a regenerated world. In this form, the political, economic and moral opinions of Jesus, as guides to conduct, are interesting and important: the rest is mere psychopathy and superstition."
_______________________George Bernard Shaw, Preface to Androcles and the Lion.

Tract Reviews: The Little Sneak: a kid hides his parents' life savings and a preacher coerces him to giving up the money's location. For his trouble he is killed.
Is Allah Like You: A muslim father reads the Quran and finds out how much of an A-hole Allah is, and converts to Christianity. Jack is completely oblivious that many of these criticisms he makes of Islam can be made of Christianity, and can even be given scriptural citations.

Issue 172

News: My Five Least Favorite Books.
Here is the impetus for writing this book: recently, my worplace decided to pose us in the position of the Last Supper, and I decided to portray Judas (although it turned out to be more of a combination of Peter's position with Judas' elbow, oddly enough), and it came out that some members of the crew actually believed that the figure to Jesus' immediate right was Mary Magdalene, and I ended up blowing up at the person who talked about it. After that, I was browsing TVTropes and stumbled upon their page for the Turner Diaries. I knew then that the next blog entry I wrote had to be about the worst books of all time. So, here's my top five, and, astonishingly to some, Jane Austen's works are not on this list, because, while I do dislike them with a passion, their major flaw is that they are utterly dull to anybody with a Y chromosome, and not facepalmingly stupid.
5. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
Well, the title bucks art historical convention and calls Leonardo simply "Da Vinci", even though it's not his actual surname. It's all downhill from there, with regards to historical accuracy. Just to take one example: The vessel for holding the wine is actually in the picture, but it's not the gilded and bejewled common cup of legend; they're all individual glasses that could have been used by anybody in that time period. Admittedly you can only see it if you're looking at an ultra-high-quality picture, but once you did, Teabing's claim that the Grail is in the picture in the form of Mary Magdalene (actually John the apostle, incidentally, and has been identified as such for many years before most of the other disciples in the picture). For a book that claims to be 99% accurate, I am not impressed.
4. Twilight by Stephanie Meyers.
I am almost certain that somewhere in the Middle East, there are some people who will use this book as an argument against giving women education. In essence, you have a woman who is driven to stalking the one person who doesn't love bomb her as soon as she moves to her new town. And it turns out that he's a vampire, which to Stephanie Meyer, seems to entail simply drinking goat's blood, being androgynous, and sparkling in the sunlight [Well, I'm okay with toying with the symptoms of vampirism, like with Cassidy in Preacher, but narrowing it down to those three?], and worst of all, the vampire has graduated from High School literally dozens of times. WHY IN PLUPERFECT HELL WOULD HE NOT JUST PASS FOR YOUNG ADULT FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE? HONESTLY!
3. Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard.
Well, in either book or movie forms, this has to be one of the worst tales in any medium, and there are enough plot holes in either form to fill the Royal Albert Hall. While general consensus is that the book is much better, I admit that I stray from the consensus here for several reasons.
A) John Travolta's Terl is way too entertaining.
B) In the books, the climax is literally 1/3 of the way through. The film's climax, as muddled as it is, is at least in its proper place near the end, probaBLY because it was supposed to be the first half of one long movie.
C) Blatant Ethnic Stereotyping. That is all.
D) Johnny is even more questionable. Johnny is considered a hero after vanquishing the evil Psychlos by destroying their planet, except that, in the book, they're only evil due to another race's mind control. Nobody rethinks Johnny's motives.
TIE:
1A) Left Behind. I've done enough on this subject. I don't need to run over why this is on my list.
1B) The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce.
Surprisingly, Pierce is probably the most competent writer on the list. However, what he does to merit the lowest position is to write what is probably the most evil novel I've ever read, especially since it's apparently supposed to double as a how-to guide for a White revolution. What truly astonishes me is that Pierce goes into how crime and punishment under the Order would work after they take Southern California, and it's astonishingly brutal: apparently the only punishment for any crime, whether commited by or against whites (for instance, owning a restaurant that serves all races) is summary execution. This is presented as unambiguously good, even though it's clear that they're clearly worse than The System could ever be. Somebody should probably write a book about how a real-world government would face such an insurrection.

Review of the Day: Since I recently finished reading the first four books of Hubert Selby Jr, one of my favorite writers, I decided to review his books.
Last Exit to Brooklyn. I read about the book in Junior year of high school, but couldn't make it past Tralala, but eventually I made it to the end last summer. It was actually pretty good. Admittedly, I'm not sure whether it should count as a novel or a collection of short stories, but, either way, it's one of Selby's best.
The Room. This is the book I finished reading recently. In fact, it is even more brutal than Last Exit was. In fact, Selby himself couldn't read it after writing it. If you thought a teenaged prostitute getting gang-raped by a dozen drunken sailors was brutal, you haven't seen anything yet.
The Demon. Well, this is his most subtle work of the four I read, less overtly terrifying and more subtle, explaining the motives behind Harry White's increasing evil in scenes less overt than his previous terms.
Requiem for a Dream. Well, Darren Aronofsky got the essence of the story, and a lot of the little things in the novel down to their essence in 100 minutes, but the novel is much less emotionally satisfying, and I think that, in this case, not giving the audience much closure is best, since it's probably best for the reader to imagine what is happening in the end.

Issue 163

News: The 11 Best Books of (The many I read in) 2009.
Well, Usually around this time of year, I usually post a list of capsule reviews of films I liked that were released in the previous year. Unfortunately, I didn't go to the theatre a lot last year. I liked most of what I went to, but there were a lot of movies I wanted to see that I didn't get to see, and so far, I've seen none of those, and then there were some I'd heard of that were so horrifying that I wouldn't even torture my mother with them (I'm talking to you, Lars von Trier's Antichrist.) However, I've read a lot of books, and since it's been a while since I've reviewed a book here, I've decided to make a list of some of the best books I'd read in the past year. I read dozens every year, and here are 11 of my favorites.
11. Mental Floss' History of the World: An irreverent Romp through History's Best Bits.
If it doesn't live up to its title, it sure comes damn close! Admittedly, it makes some mistakes, particularly with regards to its remarks about absinthe (the Thujone content in most absinthes isn't really enough to cause hallucinations or death), but it makes up for that by actually contributing more to my understanding of Hegel (due to one paragraph on p. 240)than my attempts to read Hegel.
10. Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins.
It is a worthy successor to The God Delusion, but still is less appealing to me. While it does present a pretty thorough survey of evidence for evolution, it falls short of its predecessor for a few reasons, including the fact that it devotes the entire first chapter to explaining terminology that he only uses once or twice outside of that chapter, and that he sometimes puts digressional footnotes about how he dislikes things like how the city of Peking is now called Beijing (his age is beginning to show.) This is the only book on the list to actually be published in 2009.
9. Novels in 3 Lines by Felix Feneon.
Few people could have seen the republishing of this coming: century-old news blurbs about events in France, but despite the unusual nature of the work, it is probably one of the most curious discoveries I'd made all this year; it is actually a surprisingly longitudinal discussion of life in 1906 France done in over a thousand two or thee-line blurbs. In terms of brevity, it makes Hemingway seem like Joyce.
8.Paris Spleen and Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire. These works constitute the collected poetry of Charles Baudelaire.
What else is there to say? He treaded where few poets treaded before and his works still maintained interest, particularly when he talked about lesbians in his poems (at one point, he apparently seriously considered naming Flowers of Evil The Lesbians.) However, it appears that, as a prose writer, Paris Spleen will inevitably have more influence on my style.
7. Lamb: The Gospel according to Christ's Childhood Pal Biff by Christopher Moore.
This book really makes a fairly plausible attempt towards figuring out what happened in the "Lost Years of Jesus." Well, since the gospels are silent on everything from Jesus' brief time in Egypt to his baptism (except for a short time where he was debating with priests in the temple at the age of 12), an angel resurrects Jesus' best friend Levi that is Called Biff to write a book to fill in the missing gaps, and what happened to Jesus between the ages of 13 and 30? Simple; Biff and Jesus moved to Asia, where they lived in a palace with a Taoist master, went to a Zen monastery, and poked Untouchables in India. Naturally, he spends little time on JEsus' ministry, but does, of course, focus on the Crucifixion, which is, of course, the climax of the entire story. As it turns out, he gave Jesus a sleeping potion that would mimic death, but this plan is thrown out when a centurion slashes him.
6. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.
I read about this book on a list of the ten most disturbing books of all time. It is set as a series of letters from a woman to her husband about the story of how their son Kevin became a killer (he became a school shooter with, of all things, a crossbow.) I won't give away the final twist, but I will say say it does hit hard and everything all falls into place with it. With regards to the PS material in the back, the way I interpret the book is that it is that Kevin somehow knew that he should never have been born and that every event in the book, particularly the final twist, is part of a big plan to make his mother regret ever having borne him. Oh, and Flaxid and Flassid are both considered equally valid by the Dictionary.
5. Essays and Aphorisms by ARthur Schopenhauer.
Well, as Huysmans said in A rebours (a book that would have made the list if I could find a copy), "Schopenhauer had seen the truth!" What else can be said? Well, there is the matter that it is several excerpts from his final book, Parerga und Paralipomena, and probably doesn't have the most judicious selection of excerpts, including several aphorisms, but apparently leaving out the famous story about the porcupines' dilemma. For better or for worse, though, it is probably the only selection of this work in translation that isn't exorbitantly expensive.
4. The Yosemite Murders by Dennis McDougal.
I've read several books about serial killers, but this is without a doubt my favorite. While Carey Stayner may be more obscure than, say, Ted Bundy, but his story is probably more interesting than most, particularly in that it reads like a story from a Greek Tragedy; Carey's brother Steven gets kidnapped, and he grows withdrawn as his family focuses on Steven, but as soon as he returns, he gets jealous of the increased attention Steven gets and the fact that Steven gets away with things he can't (like smoking, drinking, and swearing; in a Mormon home, no less), and this eventually warps him for life and he eventually kills 4 people to gain some attention of his own. I'm surprised that nobody's tried to adapt this story into a movie. I suppose I'll have to do it someday.
3. Ham on Rye, Factotum, and Post Office by Charles Bukowski.
Okay, so it's three novels in one position, but they're still part of one story (and for that matter, are only three novels of five that tell it) the story of Henry Chinaski, Charles Bukowski's author avatar. And, for better or for worse, Bukowski has been a major inspiration to me and my writing career; while every creative writing teacher asks their students to write about their experiences, Bukowski actually managed to take time out to write his experiences, only publishing his first book at 40, and becoming able to write professionally at the age of 50. I recieved a volume of his short stories, but I haven't read it yet, though I intend to soon; hopefully after its companion volume comes in the mail.
2. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Do I really have to explain why this book is on my list? This is probably the greatest novel of all time, and in fact, one character in Slaugherhouse-five actually claimed that everything there was to know in life was in it, and the exaggeration is only slight, as anybody who has read it knows. If you're going to get it, be sure to get the translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky (For that matter, this advice applies to any other novel by Dostoevsky, Gogol or now, Tolstoi.) The fact that the other translations are still in print is one of two reasons it's in the second place (the other one will be revealed in the Number one spot.)
1. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
Well, the fact is that this book is as complex as The Brothers Karamazov, except more accessible to people, and much shorter (the other reason it was only at number 2). For this reason, I suppose it lends itself to adaptations better than Brothers Karamazov. At any rate, I got into the graphic novel just before the movie was released, and I finished it in a few hours, and I actually watched the movie with the original book fresh in my mind. What else do I have to say?

Film Idea of the Day: A community holds a marriage lottery. eligible males and females are arbitrarily matched, and anybody who tries to defy the lottery is punished. A couple tries to defy it, and leaves the country for Mexico. A hitman tries to follow them, and they are protected by an eccentric who plays the organ. Ideally, the hitman and the organist would both be played by Klaus Kinski, but I suppose that's the difference between the Ideal and Real for you.

Film Review of the Day: Avatar 3D. I went to see this in 3D, and I admit that the visuals are much better than the story. The story is derivative, but at least James Cameron admitted as such early on, noting that he was heavily influenced by stories about America's genocide of the Natives. Some plot devices, such as the imaginatively-named Unobtainium, though, do detract from the story, such as it is. Doug Walker said of it, "Pretty Visuals+Lame Story=Pretty Lame." However, the way I see it, the story isn't that bad, even if the visuals do overshadow it.

Quote of the Day: "Baby," I said. "I'm a genius but nobody knows it but me."
________________________Charles Bukowski.

Link of the Day: This guy reads the Twilight Series so we don't have to.

Chick Reviews: Crazy Wolf- An Indian woman named Mary gets Saved, and has a shaman put a hit out on her. The shaman turns into a werewolf, but an angel changes him back and she Saves him. Surprisingly, the kids in the village informed Mary about the hit, but not so much to warn her as to gloat about it.