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 202

News: Definite Hiatus in Updates.
You may notice that in the past eight months, I only posted four times. One post every two months. Now, it looks like I'm going to have to do some definite changes in when I update. As I mentioned earlier, I'm currently enrolled in Columbia College Chicago. Now, my workload is even heavier than usual. Right now, I have several stories that I need to write, a big creative essay on Crime and Punishment, a presentation on Bret Easton Ellis, a full-length one act play, and an essay on art in the Weimar Republic. As a result, I have decided to put this blog on an indefinite hiatus until the semester is over, and I will most likely put it back on when school comes back in September, even if my workload will be lighter than it is now. I simply cannot update the blog with any regularity with all this happening. I apologise to all the people following my blog, all five of you. But now that I've got that out of the way, I'd like to write the reviews for two films I've wanted to see.

The Adventures of Tintin: I've been a big fan of the Tintin series for years, and I've been excited to see it come out for a long time. Let me put it this way, while I was in my first semester in Fall 2008, this film was being shot. It only came out in December 2011, and I waited all that time to see it. How was it? It was pretty good. Even the motion capture looked pretty good. Spielberg fulfilled the promise to make it look like the characters were "real people, but real Herge people." And speaking of the characters, the acting is incredible. Jamie Bell's Tintin in particular is better than I could have imagined, he even manages to say the phrase "Great snakes!" with conviction I didn't know was possible. Surprisingly, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg voice Thomson and Thompson, but, despite the pair starring in one of my favourite comedies, Hot Fuzz, their performance didn't play that up too much. The plot is based on two albums, Crab with the Golden Claws, and The Secret of the Unicorn, and the script really does its hardest to streamline the two into one consolidated story, and even though it ends on a sequel hook, which I normally hate, it is justified because the sequel is definitely being made now. There were a few things I didn't really like about it: 1) Why does the model of the Unicorn catch Tintin's eye? In the original, he thinks it would be a good gift for Haddock, but since they don't meet until halfway through the movie, why? 2) The plan to steal the third model of the Unicorn is just insane: the model is displayed under bulletproof glass in direct sunlight (Just look at The Last Supper to see the impact of sunlight on valuable art), and so they hire Bianca Castafiore to perform with the ship behind her so it can shatter when she reaches a high note (while it's possible [if hard] to do this for regular glass, it really can't be done for Bulletproof glass.) This would be a miinor quibble, but considering that Herge did his damnedest to research his stories, it just seems out of place. 3) Why doesn't Bianca Castafiore sing her trademark "Jewel Aria"? Or are they saving that for the sequel?

We Need to Talk About Kevin: This book really is the story not of Kevin Khatchadourian, the school shooter, but of his mother Eva, and if you had any doubts about that reading the book, watch the movie. It's her show; Tilda Swinton stars and gives an amazing performance, and, in the scenes that are supposed to be set in the "present-day," she works so masterfully with silence that if The Artist spawns a new wave of silent films, she should definitely make a career with that. The major problem I have with the movie is its amazingly slow pacing; the first scene has what can only be called a "Ragu orgy," and, due to its relatively non-linear structure, it takes about ten minutes before anything identifiable from the novel is on screen. When I say the structure is non-linear, I mean it goes between two plots; one set in the "present-day," where Eva has to cope with her life after the loss of her family (original to the film), and the other dealing with how her son turned into a killer. While a lot of incidents were cut out, it's still fairly easy to piece the events together, although reading the book may help. The cast is pretty good, except for John C. Reilly. He's way too much of a nonentity in this film to be believable as Kevin's "favourite" parent.

Tract Review: Global Warming: Jack decides to take on Global Warming. He spends half the tract ridiculing scientists who predicted catastrophes, and then decides that they're actually right, at least in that the world is ending, but at least Jack doesn't make the mistake of setting any dates. Highlights: someone who looks like Al Gore with a pencil-thin moustache insults his TV audience; in the latest display of Jack actually being knowledgable about secular culture, the cast of Young Frankenstein causes global warming; Jack's remarks about Nostradamus show that he apparently didn't watch television in 1999 (going by the Pinky and the Brain clones in The Awful Truth, he might have been upset by the show's cancellation the previous year); polar bears and vultures coexisting peacefully; a teamster broke into the wrong protest; in the biggest "WTF" moment Jack has brought to us since "Moving on Up," he claims that climatologists pray to the Mayan gods and Gaia (represented by a Venus of Willendorf, pixellated for your protection); some people of different religions share their incoherent opinions of Christ (like he "had a devil" or "was queer"); and God is responsible for global warming because he's a sociopath with no more regard for his followers than Alexander DeLarge.

Link: Another site that dissects Chick Tracts.

And now, the next 25 in my list of life lessons.

1. Korn will never top “Daddy.”
2. If I ever do get Jeremy Irons to sing a song entitled “You're f***ing a mutant,” there will be thousands of comments asking “Is this 2008?”
3. As Gabriel Byrne has shown, plate armour is not a good contraceptive.
4. If the question is “A or B,” the answer is “Yes.”
5. Nobody makes wicker toilets.
6. God does not hate lamp.
7. Given that in its original context, it is a prelude to both mass murder and the breakup of the people getting married, there are few pieces of music less suited for being played at weddings than Wagner's Bridal Chorus.
8. Except for “And I Will Always Love You.”
9. Just because you don't believe in God doesn't mean you can't become a minister and be legally entitled to add the title Rev. to your name.
10. There is actually a dance song where one of the moves is “sleep!”
11. My name is not Mr. B. Elzebub.
12. Nobody really listens to each other, and they probably never did.
13. There is no such thing as a homeless-sexual.
14. A Day at the Races did not predict the Rwandan genocide.
15. So many great works of art could have been averted if the characters had any goddamn sense.
16. No more digging up Billy Mays' grave without bringing a Necronomicon ex Mortis.
17. Until cannibalism is made legal, veal is the next best thing.
18. Many films could be improved with the addition of a character with a talking body part.
19. If you can't make the connection between Air Force One and the Air Force, you have no business writing political thrillers.
20. Sam Shepherd learned to fly a plane for The Right Stuff, and also learned to survive while riding on the plane's roof during a supersonic flight.
21. Satan does not answer to the name “The one whose little path would make me sad.”
22. No bucket list is complete without a major societal taboo.
23. The Insane Clown Posse was more fun when they were just rapping about over-the-top sex and violence and not just being idiots.
24. For the man who is seeking the affections of the 12-year old cancer girl: I would strongly suggest you get the help you need. I'm not that messed up. At least, I hope not.
25. It is better to be a fool than to be a Lear.

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 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 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 187

News: The Beat Books of (the many I read in) 2010.
Well, I've seen a few more films in theaters than I did last year. All things noted, however, I read a lot of books in the last year. How many, you may ask? Well, my original shortlist for this one happened to be 25 books. It took a while for me to be able to narrow it down to ten. And here's just the ten I felt were the best I had read, and no, none of them had been published in 2010.

10. Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser.
For the benefit of all of you who don't know, Harry Paget Flashman was the bully in the Victorian schoolboy's novel Tom Brown's Schooldays. This novel covers his life in the years after being expelled from Rugby school for drunkenness, wherein he joins the army and manages to gain some clout by shooting the top off a bottle (by complete accident), and gaining a heroic reputation (culminating in meeting Queen Victoria) in India despite being a total coward. The thing that really interested me was that it was apparently so historically accurate that, upon publication, several reviewers (particularly Americans) assumed that they were genuine. It's the first in a series of twelve novels, and I have yet to read the other eleven, but I can only expect more of the same.

9. If Chins Could Kill by Bruce Campbell.
On the prodding of a classmate in my recent film class, I decided to read this book. I hesitated, because of the fact that I never went in for the "private lives of the stars" sort of books. However, unlike most of the stars who've had books written about them, Bruce, at least at first, had a pretty hands-on role in the making of many of the films. He includes a setup for some of the camera tricks devised for the Evil Dead movies and even a recipe for blood used in the original. The classmate who recommended this to me also suggested I try and make that fake blood and see if it's edible, but I haven't. That said, considering that all the ingredients are edible, I think it is, but doubt that it would be appetising.

8. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.
This movie is probably one of the most frequently adapted novels in history, but, surprisingly, very few of those adaptations even bothered to take the original plot structure from the original. The more I looked into the adaptations, I found only two filmed versions that kept the original idea: 1971's I Monster, which changed the protagonist's names, and the Wishbone adaptation that squished the story into 15 minutes and made the main character a dog. And by main character, I mean Gabriel Utterson, who is, for some reason, left out of almost every adaptation. Why? After all, it's a perfectly good idea to let the audience figure out what had happened slowly, and at least make an effort of making it seem like the fact that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person was a twist. The fact that so many adaptations decided to establish early on that Jekyll and Hyde are one and the same is just as idiotic an idea as making a version of The Sixth Sense where everybody knows up front that the Bruce Willis character is supposed to be a ghost. Of course, like with Flashman, I had read this on audiobook, and there were some flaws with both of them: With Flashman, the footnotes were not read (the ones which reinforced the massive amount of research Fraser put into them), and for this one, the narrator mispronounced Jekyll's name. As much as I like Spencer Tracy, I blame him (and his 1940 film of the book) for the popular mispronunciation of Jekyll as Jeck-ull. According to Stevenson, it was Jee-kull. Rant over, on to book 7.

7. The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran and the Dhammapada.
What else is there to say about The Prophet? Behind Lao-Tsu, Shakespeare, and King David, this book is one of the most-read collections of poetry in recorded history. And, the fact is, his musings on the condition of living still hold up pretty well. He has succeeded in becoming timeless. I also include the Dhammapada in the same category because its subject is the same as the Prophet, but it was written by an actual religious figure. In short, it's probably one of the most solid-seeming religious texts, in my opinion.

6. Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris.
Well, this is a book about the making of a great man, namely, Theodore Roosevelt. This is the first part of a three-volume biography of Roosevelt, and this volume covers his life from birth to getting the news that President McKinley got assassinated, and it's surprising the amount of positions he managed to get before the age of 42, from published author, to secretary of the Navy, to war hero, to NYPD Commissioner, to personification of masculinity. I read Theodore Rex, the second volume, and I didn't find it as interesting as the first volume, and I have yet to read the last volume, Colonel Roosevelt, (due to wanting to get paperback edition to match my copies of the first two).

5. Angels in America by Tony Kushner.
The plot of this play is very hard to summarise: When I told my dad about it, I only managed to cover the subplot about Prior Walter. Indeed, much of the plot could be accurately be described as "gay guys talking about politics." Surprisingly, despite all of this, it manages to work as the most epic work written for the stage since Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung. Why? You'll just have to read it, or, possibly, watch the HBO miniseries based on the play, to find out.

4. The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman.
I discovered this book based to TVTropes due to its being categorised as a "weird american thing." In essence, this book is an almanac of completely made-up facts (in fact, many of the facts given are half-true). Considering the complete insanity of many of the facts (things like otters being called lobsters and being driven to extinction by new lobsters, or an escalating war of strange precipitation between Milwaukee and Richmond, VA) makes one wonder about the kind of world in which it is true. This is, once again, the first in a projected trilogy, and only the first two published yet. I have just started to read the second book, and it's actually a worthy successor to the original.

3. Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Due to the intricacies of my reading queue, I waited a while to start to read this book, but when I actually managed to get into reading this book, I was surprised by the conversational style of this book. The tone of the book seemed almost exactly like I was having a conversation with the man himself, and it really felt like what you'd expect when you talked with an orator. And I even managed to gain more insight into the beliefs of the nation of Islam, and even the bizarre nature of the genetics that the story of Yakub and the creation of the other races (other than Black). The afterword by the ghostwriter Alex Haley even gave more insight into the man's life and the book's creation.

2. The Ice Man by Philip Carlo.
For a while, I was on a big kick of reading books about hitmen, in the hopes that I could create a hitman story of my own. It didn't work out. Along with the two books written by Joey Black (an actual hitman), this work formed the non-fiction part of my research (I really wished I could find more non-fiction books focusing on the lives of hitmen, but there you go.) This book is about a man named Richard Kuklinski who claimed to have killed over 300 people and worked for all of New York's five families (since he wasn't Italian, he couldn't "get made" into any one family). The fact is, that, despite many questions that have been raised about the veracity of many of Kuklinski's claims, it's actually a very compelling story, and even on this level, it's still a must-read. Surprisingly, despite the fact that this is the story of a career killer who talked about killing people with no discernible emotion, this actually contains one of the most touching scenes I've ever read: while meeting his second wife's family, they take him to a Thanksgiving dinner, and Richard, for the first time, manages to discover for the first time, the phenomenon of being loved unconditionally by a family (his own was abusive, and his father even killed his own son Florian.) Naturally, this shift in tone does not last long.

1. Requiem For a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr.
Yes, Hubert Selby is one of my favourite authors, and I read his four major novels, and, apart from Last Exit to Brooklyn, this is probably his best known novel. It's also one of the most disturbing novels ever written (but surprisingly, not even the most disturbing one written by Selby, that honour going to The Room), and, especially in this book, the bizarre nature of his typography (ridiculously huge indentations for paragraphs and replacing apostrophes with slash marks) enhances the disturbing mood created by his books by disorienting his reader, so that, if the acts being described don't disturb the reader, the confusion will ensure that his novel has a profound effect on the reader. The movie only concentrates the 300-page novel into a 100-minute film, and very effectively, I may add.

Film Idea of the Day: The keyboardist for a band ends up falling in love with an angel. This love forces him and his bandmates into a battle between them and the forces of the Almighty. The plot is, in essence Scott Pilgrim meets His Dark Materials, and should ideally include satire that covers everything from religion to the Twilight saga to eagle feather law.

Film Review of the Day: Black Swan. Like the film version of Requiem for a Dream, this was directed by Darren Aronofsky. Although I haven't been keeping abreast of his career since Requiem, it did seem like a big stylistic leap between the editing-driven, visceral Requiem and the surreal horror of Black Swan. That said, he did apparently release two films between Requiem and Black Swan, but I haven't seen them. Despite not being what I would have expected from the man who made Requiem for a Dream, and the subject matter (Ballet) not being something I'm particularly interested in, it was quite good. It really helps that there was a scene in which the two main dancers have sex with each other. Hot girl on girl action does tend to improve a movie, at least in my estimation.

Quote of the Day: "When a prosecutor loses a case, do you think he's happy that an innocent man walks free? No, they're angry that they've lost a chance at the governor's mansion."
_____________Hubert Selby Jr., The Room (actually a paraphrase of something in that book. If I were able to find the correct words, I would have posted them.) Food for thought for anybody who watches Nancy Grace regularly.

Link of the Day: My Film Teacher's Blog.

Tract Reviews: Uninvited. Jack Chick returns to the subject of AIDS, and makes claims that should be obviously false to anybody who has studied AIDS since the name was adopted in 1983. There are facts that should be obvious to anybody with two brain cells to rub together that Jack ignores. Here are some of them, for the benefit of anybody who doesn't want to read this tract.

*AIDS is no longer quite the Death Sentence it once was. If identified early enough, it can be kept in control with anti-retroviral drugs. I could just be talking about being HIV positive, though.
*If a six-year-old girl gets raped and left for dead, shouldn't she have had more extreme problems to worry about than possibly becoming a lesbian? Even disregarding physical problems, shouldn't she be scared that it could have happened again, thus ruining her trust for other people for at least several decades?
*Come to think of it, while it would be an oversimplification to state that homosexuality is wholly genetic, there's very significant evidence of genetic influence in sexual orientation. And it certainly does not come about just because they got molested as kids.
*AIDS does not just happen to gay people. In fact, there's also a significant amount of people who got it from heterosexual contact.

I really wish I didn't have to say these facts, but apparently, I do.

Shout out: Another guy has started to follow the blog, his name is life.experienced.

Issue 182

News: This news item made me laugh more than any in recent times.
Folks, it's been a long time since I last updated this blog, and there's been a lot of news, and I think the best news in that time is Barack Obama officially declaring Operation Iraqi Freedom finished, leading to the eventual end of the war, actually doing something that contradicts my image of him as being a big letdown of a president. However, one other story I've found interesting has broken through recently; 39 grand-nephews of Adolf Hitler have been located, and their DNA has been analyzed. It has long been noted that Hitler fell far short of the "Aryan" ideal of blonde, blue-eyed supermen, but one result has been surprising: he had a rare gene called Haplogroup E1b1b1, that is most common among North Africans, and, (this is the kicker) Jews. So, in essence, Adolf Hitler, the man who probably made the most headway in the attempts to destroy the Jews, was, in fact, probably Jewish, and not only Jewish, but also possibly Black. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAHAH!!!!! Surprisingly, the rumors that he was partly Jewish were long circulating that allegedly, Hitler's paternal grandfather was Jewish, but those rumors are believed to be just that among historians, and, of course, Hitler wouldn't have been accepted as a Jew, since the descent is maternal. However, if the information in the article is true, there must have been some Jewish blood somewhere along the line.

Film Idea of the Day: Pore Jud is Laiv (sic). Some time void opens up in the world of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma, and several characters are transported to the era when the film based on their lives is touring on the roadshow circuit. Several other contemporary films (the only ones I can think of right now being Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and The Searchers) suffer a similar phenomenon and eventually split into factions led by Jud and Curly (both from Oklahoma!,) and both are portrayed as anti-heroes, taking their characterizations in the film (as a lovesick drunk who may possibly be a serial killer, and the man who tries to get him to kill himself over a picnic basket.) I hope to give them something larger to fight about than a woman's affection if all the assorted companies that hold the copyrights will allow this Massively Multiplayer Crossover Event to exist.

Review of the Day: Downfall. Yes, this is the movie from which all the "Angry Hitler" clips came, and I'm probably one of the few people who was inspired to watch the movie due to the clips, and I still have to admit that, while it is one in a long line of German "scar films" that deal with the legacy of totalitarianism in their country, or countries, it is different in that, for the first time, Hitler himself is portrayed in a German movie as a human being and not a bogeyman lurking in the shadows. Don't get me wrong, even in this movie the Fuhrer is beyond pity (especially since he not only brags about the genocide he's committed, but also suggests a scorched-earth policy with regards to his own people), but in doing so, it ultimately reminds the audience that, as human as Hitler was, he was ultimately a truly degraded specimen, especially in those last days.

Link of the Day: Come on, you knew this one had to come.

Quote: "Your challenge is to write crossover fanfiction combining Chronicles of Narnia and World War II. The story should use a secret government plot as a plot device!"
_______________The Terrible Crossover Fanfiction Idea Generator, apparently unaware that Pan's Labytinth Already exists.

Tract Review: Stinky. An extremely dull Halloween tract, this one is mainly notable for being yet another incident of obvious self-promotion on Jack's part, with two kids being saved by a Chick Tract, and Satan going ballistic due to one smuggled into Hell.

Issue 178

News: Cinema on Criterion: Crack is Cheaper.
In the past twelve months, I've managed to get my hands on a few Criterion DVDs that had just gone out of print. Most recently, five films from one of my favorite directors, Luis Bunuel, had just gotten out of circulation, and I managed to get two of them: The Milky Way and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. So far, this just leaves Belle de Jour as the only one of his later French works to remain in circulation. Just before that, I managed to get Ran, The Third Man, Grand Illusion, Tales of Hoffman, and Pierrot Le Fou while I could. Surpsisingly, a lot of this has been happening extremely recently: I managed to come across a list of OOP Criterion titles from October 2009, and there were only 24 titles on the list. With the latest two extinction events, as I call them, the total has become 59. Yes, suddenly, Criterion seems to be hemorrhaging titles, and who pays for it? The fans who were hoping for the right time to get the titles they wanted and give the copy they kept renting from the local video rental to somebody else for a change. And the fact that most, if not all, of these titles will be extremely expensive ($30 a pop) doesn't help. The thing that I think is a big middle finger to the cinephiles who would want to acquire them is that, while for most of the titles I mentioned, it appears that there are no plans to put them back on the market anytime soon, some of the titles are available, but only on Studiocanal Blu-Ray. I can certainly imagine that many of the titles would look good on Blu-ray, especially the scenery porn that is Ran, but the fact is that just because somebody is willing to pay upwards $30 for a single-disc DVD that may or may not have had any special features doesn't mean that they're going to be receptive to having to buy a whole new system just to be able to buy a new title. I personally am considering holding back on Blu-ray until I can buy a portable player at Costco so I can watch them on vacation. And it's not just art-house distributors who are doing this, by the way. Just to list one example, according to Amazon, Kevin Smith's Dogma is only available on Blu-ray now. Why? DVD is still going strong; making certain titles only available on Blu-Ray is not going to change that. It's just going to piss off the people who still prefer DVD.

Film Review: Bugsy Malone. I recently stumbled upon this movie, a gangster movie with only preteens in the cast, at Skokie Public Library, and I found that, while utterly bizarre (twelve-year old Jodie Foster in such a sexualized performance is unsettling even if you remember her as a child prostitute in Taxi Driver), many of the songs in the film are earworms; Even right now, I can hear the words "we're the very best at being bad" being sung in my head. It's certainly worth a look, but it's not available on DVD, only VHS. This problem really needs a once-over.

Quote of the Day: "The inquisitors were torturing Harry. First, Ignatius used the rock. Then Billy asked Harry if he wanted to read his BDSM blog. Harry was so surprised that his pants flew right off. He was wearing women's underpants. The inquisitors were wearing them, too. They realized that they were all men of the lord."

Link of the Day: A new reading of Thirty H's: The greatest Harry Potter Fanfic ever.

Tract Reviews: The Poor Revolutionist: I can only assume that this tract was re-released to capitalize on right-wing fears that Obama=Black Revolutionary Antichrist, and not Obama=milquetoast who can't even get Universal Health Care to pass yet. None of this stops the tract from feeling hopelessly dated.

Things to Come: Apparently, a Gypsy Catholic fortune teller decides to tell a Fundie what for, after she learns he can tell the future, but, surprise surprise, gets interested in getting saved, but in an unusual Gainax ending, the rapture occurs, and we're left hanging. Also features first person narration. Besides, everybody knows that only one man could see the future and his name was Oswald Spengler.

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 168

Issue: More on Autism.
Upon further research, I managed to Harry Lime myself. Two issues ago, I said that even in a newborn, it would have to take 2000 vaccines for the amount of thimerosal in vaccines to kill it. I found out a few days later that, of all the vaccines that are given to kids before the age of six, only seasonal flu vaccines even contain it, and not all flu vaccines contain it. In short, by this point, thimerosal is even less of an actual threat to their children. I mention this A) Due to my need to correct myself, and B) Because there is actually a possible new treatment for autism that might possibly work. From what I've heard, there is supposed to be a drug, currently called STX-107, that is supposed to limit a receptor that the pharmacologist Mark Bear believes could cause autistic behavior in Fragile X syndrome. It certainly seems interesting, although, admittedly, there is no concrete evidence yet that it could actually generalize results to patients all over the autistic spectrum, or, for that matter, that it can actually work in humans, but it is nevertheless interesting news. This raises an important question; I have hyperlexia, which is on the autistic spectrum. I have been able to fake my way through the Neurotypical world. Given that the disorder gives me a unique perspective on the world, would I take drugs that limit it? All I can say is that given my habit of blacking out and sometimes freezing when reminded of my abusive old school, not being able to relate to people is probably the least of my mental problems.

Film Review of the Day: Stalag 17. Who would have thought that a movie about being held hostage by one of the three most evil regimes would be so... light-hearted? I'm honestly quite surprised that somebody managed to make such a lighthearted movie about Nazi camps with the memory of Auschwitz so fresh in many minds, but I suppose the fact that it's just a POW camp and not Treblinka certainly helps with the mood dissonance.

Quote of the Day: "If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it's their f___ing fault that the diseases are coming back. They're making a product that's s___. It shouldn't be polio versus autism.”
_______________Jenny McCarthy. The mere fact that she actually prefers a disease that cripples and kills kids slowly to autism should say a lot.

Link of the Day: Jenny McCarthy's Body Count.

Tract Review: Going Down? Folks, I truly have no idea what is going on here. The first four pages chronicle a Western Story. I can only assume that it is supposed to be a Deadwood reference about four years too late. The story switches to Jim Backus watching said western, while his wife Susan Boyle complains about the swearing (nonexistent, I might add. Not even symbols.) They get into a car crash and call their pastor Patrick Swayze and berate him for telling him that Hell doesn't exist. After having nightmares about Jim, Susan, and John Waters (who makes no other appearance in the tract) welcoming him to Hell, he has nurse Judy Ken Sebben from Harvey Birdman introduce him to somebody who looks like either Jimmy Carter or my Grandpa, who makes him rededicate himself to Jesus Christ. Ladies and Gentlemen, even with his history of claiming that the Catholic Church is directly responsible for every evil on Earth since the Edict of Milan to making some tracts with baffling premises, this would probably be the crowning evidence that Jack has some serious mental problems. Read it here.

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.

Issue 158

News/Link of the Day: The Republican Moral Event Horizon.
Recently, I just got into a site called TV Tropes. If you can imagine a reoccurring theme that you've seen across television, film, and literature, odds are, it's there. One of the tropes that's on the site is called the "Moral Event Horizon." It is the point at which a character truly ceases to be sympathetic, like Aarfy's rape-murder in Catch-22, the entire third Star Wars prequel film, and on South Park, Cartman has had one every season since the fifth. Earlier in the month, however, it appears that the Republican Party has finally passed this point, after 8 years of the most unpopular administration, and the most ineptly run campaign in years. The point came when Al Franken (now a senator), proposed an amendment to a defense bill that keeps any defense contractors from taking rape cases to court. Yes, there was actually a need to make this bill, but, incredibly, although it was passed, thirty senators (all being Republicans) not only voted against it, but vociferously argued against it. Incidentally, in case you didn't get it before, 75% of the Senate's Republicans voted against it. Seventy-five percent of Republicans chose to uphold capitalism at the expense of Rape victims. And this, from the party which claims to hold a moral high ground. I'm going to let this sink in.

Band Name of the Week: Khairei, Deerslayers!

Film idea of the Week: In the process of writing: A short play in which an opera singer confronts his fear of singing "LArgo al Factotum" in the most cataclysmic way possible.

Film Review of the Week: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. I recently decided to check this movie out on hulu, and I must admit that I particularly appreciated it, especially in the wake of recently watching all of Linkara's Atop the Fourth Wall videos on Thatguywiththeglasses.com. I especially liked the music, which was a particular change in pace from the comics presented in Linkara's videos.

Quote of the Day: "It is not the government's business to decide who the government does business with."
____________Jon Stewart.

Tract Review: It's Not Your Fault. "Thank you, unborn baby whale. You were as helpful as you were delicious." Now that I got that Drawn Together reference out of the way, on to the tract. Chick tackles the Rwandan genocide, PTSD, and institutional child sexual abuse in one tract. And apparently, accepting Jesus can rid somebody of PTSD. Jack's drawing has gone beyond simply cartoony to horrendous, and God actually has a face in some panels.

Issue 145

News: I'm Ba-ack!
You may have noticed that I have been posting much less frequently in the past few months. Well, that is not due to my writing the screenplay for the Captain Planet movie, as that was my fourth annual April Fools' day post. The real reasons are a lot more complex than that, but also somewhat related to that. One big problem, and one which would not need much more explanation is that I am simply not getting enough material for a blog post. I have not been having a lot of new film ideas, nor have I been discovering enough interesting links for the links section. Fortunately, I have had a lot of interesting movies, and, if I have enough to say on them, I may be putting these in the News section unless I actually get something interesting. The bigger problem is that I have been wading Nipple-deep in schoolwork, whether it be preparing a presentation on Schopenhauer for my Honors Seminar, working on a paper on I Never Promised You a Rose Garden for Abnormal Psych, or working on a huge research paper on School Reform for English class, which has been particularly consuming for me in the past month, indeed, finding enough relevant sources has been very time-consuming, and I was only able to post the Captain Planet thing because I had the idea in my head since I discovered the Nostalgia Critic video on Captain Planet and realized I had a good idea on how to mess it up. Fortunately, I finished the first draft of the Research Paper today and have gotten it up to as well as I could. Now, the only things of note that I need to do for school for the rest of the semester is write two film reports on films I've already seen, and two essays that haven't been assigned yet. The worst part's over now. All I need to do is drudge up some material for the blog.

Band Name of the Day: Middle Child Syndrome.

Film Idea of the Day: Honestly, if Ted Turner is willing to let me deconstruct/mess with Captain Planet as I proposed in my April Fools' day Message, I would do that.

Film Review of the Day: The Brady Bunch Movie. I loved the television show precisely for its extremely campy nature, and I wouldn't be surprised if the show was as anachronistic in the Early Seventies as it is now. When I saw the movie version, I was amazed to see how it was, in essence, written in more or less the same way I would write it; a deconstruction of the show written with the Brady Bunch still stuck in the Sixties, and the rest of the world stuck in the present day, and one moment I found particularly priceless was one not even I could have imagined: Marcia ends up getting snogged by a girl. I am not making this up, just look in the topmost, leftmost panel.

Quote of the Day: "Excuse me, officers, but I hate to ask a law enforcement official to bend the rules, especially for Penal Code 117, Section 33b, but our house is at stake."
____________Bobby Brady, the Brady Bunch Movie.

Link of the Day: Yup, this is how low I'm digging for links.

Tract Review: It's All About You. Simply put, it is Jack's illustration of why you must become like little children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven: Because you have to be so stupid to get behind his arguments that there's no way you ever mentally reached adulthood. Either that or it's about a college girl talking on campus with her grandfather. I don't get it either; I'm currently in college, but I've never seen girls talking talking their grandfathers. And if their relationship was really so close, why didn't he seem to see fit to talk to her about Jesus before she went to College?

Issue 139

News/Review: Expelled: There's a reason it is.
In the last entry, I mentioned that I had wanted to see Expelled, mainly to write a column here to see how much bull it was, but my usual channels failed me. Finally, I looked on YouTube, and it was there, and so, I finally saw it. I was right, and even though I finally watched it, it was very much what I had expected it to be: a movie about Ben Stein griping about how Intelligent Design is "persecuted." What I didn't expect was that he would actually fail to try and give any real argument about why it should be considered at all more valid. The closest thing he comes to creating an argument was when he claims that the odds of the first life forming are somewhere in the area of 1 in 10^72, (of course, the "scientist" quoted does only say the word trillion six times). However, even if the odds of this happening were so small, this does not necessarily mean that this is impossible. I will show you exactly how this argument is flawed. Imagine a raffle at a high school with 1000 students in the raffle, and one student wins. Another student protests that the odds of the winner winning are 1000:1, and that the winner must have cheated, failing to account for the fact that the odds of anybody else winning are about the same. The only other argument that Stein attempts to make, that evolutionary ideas were a major influence on Hitler, is very flawed, because even if science hadn't long since repudiated eugenical ideas such as Hitler's, even if there was any evidence that Hitler was more influenced by evolution than his interpretation of religion, as much as it perverted the message of (or at least the message we attribute to) Jesus, even if not for the fact that a lot of ideologies actually used and abused Darwinian ideas, even if there weren't genocides long before Darwin's theories came onto the scene (many of which were doubtlessly inspired by religion), even if not for the fact that even if he was influenced, the idea that he would have to do anything would show a gross misinterpretation of Darwin on his part, and even if there weren't more "even ifs" I could write, this argument doesn't hold water because the argument holds no real value on its scientific truth. In the end, it should be noted that THERE IS A GOOD REASON PEOPLE DON'T TEACH INTELLIGENT DESIGN IN SCHOOLS, and it's for the same exact reason we don't teach psychologists to study the irregularities in people's skulls, or that very small solutions that often for all intents and purposes add up to little more than overpriced water is good pharmacology, it's because it's been thoroughly debunked. There's my review.

Band Name of the Day: The Casino of Life. From the Expelled movie, where they decide to put the odds at the first life forming.

Film Idea: Not an idea per se, but a list of some of the parallels that brought me to see how similar the movies Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Roman Holiday really were.
*Surprisingly, they are both 118 minutes long. This is, of course, a coincidence.
*In both films, the male lead is a journalist who is covering a story with an associate (in RH, a photographer, and in FLILV, his attourney.)
*These reporters end up traveling the city with their companions.
*Both of these reporters end up failing to publish the stories they were sent to write.
*Both of them end up spending much of the time pursuing their desires, in Peck's case, Audrey Hepburn, and in Thompson's case, "Every drug known to Civilized Man since 1544 AD."

Quote of the Day: "What Gods Don't You Believe in?"
_______________Ben Stein, Expelled. I hope that he was kidding when he asked this to Richard Dawkins, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't.

Link of the Day: Two entries ago, I forgot to link to this comic.

Tract Review: Papa. After watching the Pope's funeral, a man talks with his neighbor, who informs him about how Catholicism is somehow a continuation of the ancient Roman religion.