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Youtube and the Army of Fonzies

This week has absolutely beaten me.

There was a huge convention in town this week catering exclusively to teenagers. As I've previously mentioned, my workplace is directly connected to our convention center downtown. So, when they weren't doing whatever it was they were there to do at the exhibition, they lived in the mall. A mall swarming with restless teens in a party mood for what felt like days on end. It really makes me wonder: could I have been that obnoxious when I was that age?

Yeah, probably.

At times, it was hellish- one kid broke their leg after climbing on crap he shouldn't have, fistfights nearly breaking out, used condoms being found in places that are more skeevy than the average grossness of finding post-sex evidence out in public. (No evidence that any out of town teens were the ones who left those little gems, but they definitely contributed to the aura of chaos in which that sort of thing can happen without anyone noticing). The food court was a no man's land for the most part. To be fair, and in defense of the kids who were there, most of them were incredibly polite on an individual basis (It's weird being called Ma'am by kids who are only roughly 7 years younger than me.) and the city definitely appreciates the business they bring with them - but when they start screaming call and response games from one end of the mall to the other... let's just say, my nerves were completely shot when I was hearing kids yelling "Aaaaaayyy!" at the top of their lungs every 5-10 minutes.

This was the soundtrack to my week. Let that sink in.

I won't get into the other things stressing me out over this week, because I don't want this turning into Bitching Soapbox Hour, but suffice it to say I felt like I had a lot on my plate, which means that I feel totally devoid of creativity, clarity of mind, or mirth.

Thus, I present to you, a quick rundown of the corners of the internet I've been heading to in order to alleviate my tension and maybe get down with some giggles. Today, I'm looking specifically at you, Youtube:

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Watercooler Films is an awesome channel that I've been following for a while now. It all started with his series "Worst Movie Scenes of All Time" in which he finds some real gems and posts them in their pure form for your entertainment. It's like getting the best parts out of a so-bad-it's-good movie without actually having to sit through the tedious crap. I thank him for his sacrifice in doing that for me. He hasn't been posting new clips for Worst Movie Scenes all that frequently, but it's definitely worth checking out the archive. Right now, I'm enjoying his yearly 31 Horror Movies in 31 Days series in which he dedicates the month of October to short-but-sweet reviews of horror movies. While most of the films he picks out are atrocious, adding to the humor of the resulting review, I really appreciate that he doesn't simply tear each movie apart just for the sake of a funnier video. If there are positive qualities to a film, he'll tell you about it. And if it was like having his teeth pulled out, he'll definitely let you know.

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These two ladies get listed together because I find them at their funniest when they combine forces. They are such a fascinating mix of hot + nerd + genuinely weird that makes me jealous. If my Youtube page could be half as interesting as some of the random things they post, I'd be much more satisfied with myself. I'm kind of in love with this video starring both of them: it captures some of the hottest faces ever put to film (said with and without sarcasm). I've watched it an embarrassing number of times since it was posted earlier this month, probably because it reminds me of things I would have made with my friends in high school if we'd had the camera skills and the patience.

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I'm the kind of geek who seeks out intellectual stimulation, even if I don't necessarily agree with the points being made in one's persuasive argument. RSA Animate combines my love of somewhat high-brow philosophical and intellectual discussions on topics that effect our society and my love of doodling. Some may find the subject matter dry or hard to swallow, but I find this kind of thing fascinating and it makes me feel more alive - it inspires me to think more about the big picture when I'm getting too bogged down into the tiny passing details of my life that won't hold much weight in my future but seem so stressful in the moment.

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Epic Rap Battles of History is just plain silly and I love it. (Video NSFW due to language, btw.) They make some of the most random pairings for their rap battles. Some of them are logical in a way- Einstein and Hawking, Napoleon vs Napoleon Dynamite, Dumbledore vs Gandalf. But what would put Mr. T vs Mr. Rogers? What universe would put Genghis Kahn against the Easter Bunny? It is random, the raps are usually very well crafted, and the impersonations, while not always spot on, always amuse me.

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Thus ends my brief look into some of the things I use to amuse myself. I'm sure the list will be expanded over time, as this only scratches the surface of my internet haunts (seriously, there's a reason I hardly watch TV anymore).

Much love, deep breaths, and goodnight.

Horror Movie Horrors: The Perfect Host (2010)

Some movies you turn on really anticipating a positive experience. I went into The Perfect Host completely blind - having seen no trailers or hype for it and read no reviews. I turned on this Netflix listing simply because I like David Hyde Pierce.

Pierce: The Face of Horror.

And seriously, a horror film with David Hyde Pierce? The man I would cast to play Food Network's Alton Brown? I've always had an inkling that his acting ability far outweighed the parts I had seen him play, but I was understandably skeptical about seeing him in a horror movie role.

To be fair, The Perfect Host is much more of a thriller than a horror movie - and it is one of the best thrillers I've seen in recent years. It's subtle when it needs to be and does a wonderful job of slowly peeling back the layers of the story, providing a great number of twists and turns without giving you much in the way of exposition.

It's hard to summarize the plot without giving anything away. A fugitive, having just completed an armed robbery, is on the run when his identity is splashed all over the local media. Injured and needing a place to hide, he cons his way into a man's home (played by Pierce) as he prepares for a dinner party. Not all is as it seems, though, and he quickly finds himself regretting his choice of hide outs.

There is so much more going on in this plot. Wanting to avoid spoilers, I can't really elaborate further, but this film does a lot of "turning the tables" on it's characters. Unlike a lot of Hollywood twists, these aren't unbelievable events that come out of nowhere and really don't mesh with the plot. Instead, newcomer writer-director Nick Tomnay does a brilliant job in the planning and execution of this plot. You can tell that he carefully deconstructed his overall story and sprinkled those plot points like bread crumbs for the audience to pick up on. There is very little flat-out exposition. Instead, the audience is given all of the pieces they need to understand what is going on without anyone having to spell it out for them.

I definitely recommend this film. It's strange and mysterious as you learn more about Pierce's character, whom he plays perfectly. They leave a lot of questions unanswered in the end, but in a good way.

News Travels Fast v2.0

Holy Cameos, Batman!

There's another character thrown into the massive mix that is Arkham City: Deadshot. I'm seriously impressed with the line up they're creating. I really hope that the development team can pull it off well (I have faith in them) and that it doesn't turn into a mish mash of Batman drifting aimlessly from villain to villain just for the sake of them being a part of the roster. This game could be incredibly epic, though. Really looking forward to it.



Gaming + Porn = Duh.

 
Wait, so it's somehow news that young males like both video games and boobies? Apparently it's news worthy, as The Escapist recently had an article on their front page about Pwned by Girls (NSFW), a website started by two female gamers who wanted to join together their love of nudity and video games.

I'm a fan of playing games and not wearing clothes. Except for me that's usually more of a private affair and it has more to do with just not feeling like getting dressed for the day than any sexy times with a camera. Silly me. Maybe I'd be rich if I'd decided to market this idea earlier.


Gen Con and Mayfair Make Good Bedfellows.


So, you know from my previous little convention lovefest that I'm a fan of Gen Con. Well, I got an email a little while ago saying that Mayfair Games is upgrading their level of co-sponsorship for Gen Con to a more permanent arrangement. This last convention was a sign of things to come - Mayfair Games was able to provide over nine thousand game demos for Gen Con'ers to enjoy. While vendors are great and you definitely shouldn't miss the Artist's Alley (maybe I'll be there one day... maybe), game demos are kind of the meat and potatoes of Gen Con. It really is all about the games.


Well, all about the games and all the nerdiness that goes with it.

 
Txt better than bombs! #140BickeringDiplomacy

Apparently, the Taliban and Nato take out their aggressions online the same way fourteen year olds with internet connections do - via Twitter. The remarks made aren't really all that remarkable, as they simply express stances that each side take in opposition to one another and the judgements each side makes of the other. The only reason this is striking is simply because of how surreal it is. I think of passive agressive co-workers or siblings duking it out in the 140s, not Nato and the Taliban.

Chaos in Mexico

The latest news out of Mexico is quite horrifying, and I choose not to go into detail here as 1) It's a little too 'heavy' a subject for me to handle right now and 2) sources are a little fuzzy when it comes to confirming details.

However, this comment on Slashdot really caught my eye:

"While drug cartels in Mexico are disemboweling people they accuse of blogging about drug violence, Anonymous busies itself taking down Mexican government websites. With all the problems facing people in Mexico right now, including drug cartels extorting teachers for 50% of their pay and killing schoolchildren (thus shutting down the school system), Mexico's biggest oil field in terminal decline and drug cartels kidnapping busloads of people and forcing them into gladiator-style contests to the death, Anonymous' actions appear particularly petty."

Feel free to follow links to find out more. I'm honestly shocked that we don't pay more attention to the current state of affairs in Mexico here in the United States, considering they're our neighbors. Then again, this is coming from a Californian who is currently displaced in the Midwest. 

Whoops.

Netflix is set to lose about 1 million subscribers. Yikes. They think this is mostly due to the change in their through-the-mail pricing as well as the loss of some of their content (especially with the deal with Starz falling through.) I don't see them going anywhere soon, but it would be wise for them to consider some more options in accessing a broader array of content. Still, I'm an addict for streaming movies, and sometimes the more obscure it is, the better.

Anniversary

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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I can remember watching this and feeling a mixture of grief and comfort. It's what I needed to be told at the time. All I wanted was for someone to make me laugh again.

And sitting under your desk with cottage cheese is pretty cool.

10 Years Later

It's time to talk about something that's not fun. It's not amusing and it's not for entertainment. However, given the situation, I really feel like I need to write this down.

Today is the 10th of September, 2011. I don't need to tell you what event has it's 10 year anniversary tomorrow. For the past week, maybe longer, I have heard talk of 9/11 crop up in virtually every outlet I have for news. I won't lie; for the most part, I've been ignoring it. Part of me feels guilty about it, but part of me is completely jaded about the whole thing.

Me only months before 9/11.

Consider this: I was fourteen years and a few months old when it happened. I was old enough to understand the gravity of what was happening and yet young enough to have my formative years bombarded by the post-9/11 culture of the United States. I traveled A LOT as a kid (flying back and fourth between parents) and watched what had been a fairly enjoyable and exciting activity for me turn into one full of anxiety, suspicion, and high security. I grew up in a country where there was an intensified fear, suspicion and even hatred of the "other" - even though the terms that defined the "other" varied somewhat from time to time. People talk about how the United States came together after 9/11 and that is certainly true in the people to volenteered time, money and resources into helping their fellow man. But that's not the America I really ever got exposed to. I never saw any of that behavior (even though I know in retrospect it was happening throughout the nation). I watched the news very often as a teen, so I grew up with the stories of the latest threats and crimes, not the kindness in people's hearts. I felt the intense potential for coming together, like people desperately wanting to cling to each other into one giant national hug. But within months, that just seemed to slip away. The desire to feel some sort of resolution, to have something positive come out of the event, went unfulfilled for me. Instead, I just watched the country go back to the same in-fighting and pointing fingers that it has always done. To my young mind, it seemed that nothing had changed in the way we treated one another, just the way in which we wrapped ourselves in the flag and declared that those who disagreed with us must want to hurt America- be they our countrymen or not. I also had a family friend who is a close relative of John Walker Lindh... which, as you can probably imagine, gave me a fairly unique perspective on the "American Taliban" who was absolutely demonized into a two dimensional cartoon villain by most of the news reports I saw. (Note: I am not making a judgement here about what he did or the degree to which he deserved punishment, etc. I only bring it up because I grew up with a very real reminder that the "enemy" is a real human being and it's easy to forget that the real world is a very complicated place if you just listen to what you're told in the media.)

I couldn't help but feel jaded about the whole situation, as this anniversary approaches. I didn't want to hear news stories of people re-informing us about something that we haven't allowed ourselves to ever forget. Combine that with the fact that I thoroughly disagree with the direction our country has taken in reacting to the attacks, and I end up seeing 9/11 as just the beginning in a huge senseless tragedy.

And then I watched this absolutely stunning video about 9/11.

I think the simplicity of it is what really struck me. After all the talk about 9/11 and what it means, what changes it has or hasn't made in this country, the religious prejudice that has come out of it and whether or not it is justified, etc. etc. etc.

But to simply see it all again left me with no other option than to write this. It took me back to that morning, to waking up and going downstairs and seeing the second tower fall. It took me back to that feeling of absolute helplessness and confusion as I tried to process what had just happened, wanting desperately to watch the news but instead being shuffled off to school with no understanding of who or why or how, just that so many people had just died in a grotesque and completely random way. It took me back to being a young teen who realized that life is completely taken for granted: that I could have my life snuffed out in an instant and that it could have nothing to do with what I do with my life or how I choose to treat people. Being alive, I realized, was completely out of my control. Outside of suicide, living or dying was not something I could choose or control and I could be the most altruistic human being on Earth and still be killed in a completely random and senseless way. All those people had died, hadn't they? None of them had done anything to deserve it. Any ideas that I had about a world that was structured or purposefully fated was destroyed. Any faith that I tried to convince myself I had in anything beyond the great capacity for human goodness and evil pretty much vanished in the process of trying to understand and cope with what had happened. I will never not feel sorry, so intensely sorry, about those who died that day and the damage that was done. 9/11 is not something that is frequently on my mind, but I can't deny that it has had a huge effect on who I have become.

Photo from my trip to Ground Zero some years ago.

Deep breaths everyone. Thank you for letting me have that moment. I promise things will be more lighthearted shortly.

Horror Movie Horrors: The Inheritance

I stumbled across this movie when it was added to Netflix a little while ago. Seeing a few names I recognized (and the fact that I would enjoy just listening to Keith David read the phone book to me), I added it to the queue for a rainy day. Well, it's not quite rainy, but I do have a rare day off with nothing in particular to do, so I decided to check it out.

When the final credits rolled, I decided to check out some of the reviews for the movie (something I can't do when on my Xbox, which is how I access Netflix 90% of the time) and was kind of surprised. With every horror movie, you expect to see a lot of low ratings. Part of this is because horror movies tend to be crappy, but it can also be attributed to the fact that people can be incredibly picky about what they're looking for in a horror film. Some are looking for extreme gore and they don't care much about the plot, others look for compelling writing and performances, while still others are just looking to have the pants scared off of them. With a fairly broad scope of points to hit, it only makes sense that horror movies tend to get lower ratings.

Also, horror films tend to be shit.

But I was seeing review after review saying that this was the worst movie ever.

A short list of some horror movies that are worse than or equal to The Inheritance, limited by what I have personally viewed: 

Redneck Zombies
American Psycho 2: The All American Girl
Manos and the Hands of Fate
Gamebox 1.0 (which I've been meaning to write a review for)
Ticked Off Trannies with Knives (still trying to figure out how that got a high rating)
RoboGeisha (it's more of an action flick, but it has enough gore to be labelled horror)
Cabin Fever
Deadgirl
Transylmania
Satan's Little Helper
The Sitter
After.Life
Tooth and Nail
Any number of films featured on MST3K 

And that's not counting the number of films I've seen detailed reviews for that look 10 times worse. You want to call The Inheritance the worst movie of all time? Go watch some of the films reviewed by The Cinema Snob and then we can talk.

Now, I won't make any claims that I was watching this film with a serious critical eye. Today's movie choice was a film turned on as background noise while I spent some quality time beading.

Diet Coke helps the creative process.

But I will at least say that for a genre that is filled to the brim with stereotypical and formulaic slashers, this film was trying to do something a little different.

The story starts with a family reunion - five "cousins" from five close-knit families are called up to the old plantation where their ancestors were once enslaved for a get-together with their Elders. There was some confusion of people writing reviews thinking it was weird that two of these cousins were in a relationship, but they establish that these five are not actually related. Back in the days of slavery, there was a mysterious African shaman who was lynched but survived. He ensnared five slave families with promises of freedom, power, wealth and prosperity if they made sacrifices to him. Agreeing to do so, these families have stayed incredibly close to one another throughout the generations, considering themselves different branches of one spiritual family.

As far as these young people are concerned, it's just a weird family story. The real purpose of them meeting up with their Elders is so they can ask for some financial help.

In my opinion, the premise had promise. It kind of ties together the tropes commonly found in both witchcraft ritual horror and slasher films and it's interesting to see the concept of "evil ancient African magic" from the perspective of a film with an all-African-American cast (except for two out-of-place white people... guess who dies first?)

The performances were solid, but the script was really weak. The characters are put into an inescapable situation far too early in the film and don't make many intelligent attempts to save themselves, despite an obvious desire to. Toward the end, it seems that they wrote themselves into a corner: characters who know they have no chance of getting out of there simply jump into danger as if the writer didn't know how else to get rid of them. Because of this, the film doesn't really have an ending, which is it's biggest flaw.

Do I recommend this movie? Not really. It isn't great. Hell, it isn't even really good, but it fell into the following criteria:

1) I made it through to the end credits.
2) I didn't regret watching it.
3) I've seen a hell of a lot worse.

So, no. Sorry Netflixers. It's not the worst movie ever. It had the potential to be something much better, with a really strong cast, some good visual effects, and an interesting story idea. The script and storytelling was too weak to save it from being a 2.5 out of 5 in my book.