Oct 31, 2007

Michael Myers vs. Jason

Who ya got?

Wound up watching a bunch of films from the Friday the 13th series and it got me thinking about the Jason/Michael Myers rivalry that really only exists in the heads of Horror film geeks. Like me. And Slyde. I've never been a big fan of the series. More of a Halloween kinda guy, I guess. But whichever way you lean in this debate, you have to admit that they are two of the most prominent fictional, un-killable serial killers out there. So let's take a look at these two fine gentlemen of cinema and see who the definitive winner is, shall we?

Name
Apparently the makers of Halloween went the route of the 60's Marvel Comics/Stan Lee alliteration guide to naming superheroes. You know, Reed Richards, Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, etc... Michael Myers is NOT a scary name. Especially since the early 90's when a dough-faced comedian named Mike Myers started making it big on Saturday Night Live. No one should be afraid of a dude named Michael. Period. And it's annoying that you have to use both his first and last names. Never just Michael or Myers, but Michael Myers. Now Jason Voorhees...that's a scary name! Sounds Dutch, and the Dutch are scary. Winner: Jason.

Weapon of Choice
Michael Myers uses a butcher's knife as his preferred weapon of choice, but he gets creative from time to time and will use his hands or anything else lying around. Jason, while being fond of a machete, has been known to use everything up to and including the kitchen sink to kill his victims. Gotta go with Myers for being more loyal to his art. Winner: Michael Myers.

Ethos
While Jason started out only killing randy camp counselors at Crystal Lake, he has shown that he can be pretty indiscriminate when it comes to choosing his victims. And it doesn't just have to be at Crystal Lake or on a Friday the 13th. He's killed in Manhattan and in outer space! Michael Myers only kills those in his way as he tries to wipe out his family and only on Halloween. Er, or the day before. He's got a plan, people. You gotta admire that kind of dedication. Winner: Michael Myers.

Trademark
Jason wears a hockey mask. Or he has worn a hockey mask since the third film in the series. Remember, he wasn't the killer in the original movie. His mother was. And in the second film he was just kind of a lumpy guy in overalls wearing a sack on his head. The hockey mask is much scarier. Because hockey is evil, ya see. Michael Myers wears a William Shatner mask. There's nothing really scary about Shatner, except maybe his spoken-word recordings. Winner: Jason.

The "Other" Killers
The third Halloween film had nothing to do with Michael Myers. They "killed" him off in the second film and the producers planned to leave it that way. They wanted to keep the trademark going by making new films every year or so with the Halloween name, but with different story lines. That didn't work as most fans and critics panned the third film. He was back and raring to go in the fourth film and onward. Friday the 13th tried doing something similar with the fifth film by introducing a copy-cat killer. This wasn't kosher to Jason's many fans and he was back with the sixth installment. Bleh! Winner: Neither.

Survival Skillz
Jason has had to resort to a number of stunts to resurrect himself. He's been jolted back to life with a lightning bolt, he's been psychically resurrected by a misguided girl and his soul has possessed the body of a coroner. Michael Myers doesn't need these parlor tricks. He just doesn't die. Evah! Has something to do with a Druidic curse, I think. The series has been very wishy-washy about it. Either way. Winner: Michael Myers.

Sense of Humor

Michael Myers doesn't have one much of one. Oh sure, he sometimes has that naive sense of wonderment that comes with all serial killers. And he did dress up as Bob wearing a ghost's outfit just to fuck with Lynda in the first film. That was neat. But Jason? That dude is funny! He will do just about anything for a laugh. That crazy kid. This one time, in Manhattan, he scared a bunch of street toughs just by showing them the rotted face under his hockey mask. Remember that? Ah, hehehe...good times! And Jason Goes to Hell was hysterical, yo! Winner: Jason.

Conclusion
In reviewing my highly scientific study, it is apparent that the winner is, er, um. Wait...they kinda tied, didn't they? Let's just give it to Michael Myers. Because today is Halloween. Maybe Slyde will revisit the topic next Friday the 13th. Maybe.

Note - Only my brain cells were hurt during this study.

Oct 30, 2007

The Beast Must Die!


Now normally all of our awful movie reviews (the films are awful, not the reviews. Well, we like to think so at least) go up on Moviegrenade, but I'm making an exception for this one. Mostly because it brought back a lot of fond memories and because I'm really not going to review it. So there! The Beast Must Die came out during the drug-addled, care-free 70's. 1974 to be more precise. It was filmed out of the famed Shepperton Studios in England and it was their notion of a werewolf film combined with an Agatha Christie novel combined with the blaxploitation genre. What a wonderful idea! It starred Calvin Lockhart (wasn't that the boy's name in Calvin and Hobbes?), Peter Cushing and Michael Gambon. All viciously chewed up the scenery in ways that made me think that it had to be a condition in their contracts.

The plot is right out of "The Most Dangerous Game" and "Ten Little Indians". A wealthy hunter invites an odd group of guests to his secluded estate. He then announces that "...one of you here, in this room, is a werewolf!" Horrors! Lots of bad special effects, bad acting and bad music follows, but the best part of the film is in the third act during the "Werewolf Break". What, prey/pray tell, is a Werewolf Break you ask? The producers actually stop the film and asks the audience to take some time to decide on who the werewolf is out of the group. It's fantastic! They even show a little clock on screen so you can see the passage of time. What has two thumbs and loves visual aids to assist in his boredom? This guy!

I'm only joking because I truly love this film. It's like opening a vault into the past. The clothes, the music, the hair! I recorded it over the weekend and caught bits and pieces of it at that time, but I'm going to watch it with Gia tonight. I'm hoping the groovy 70's soundtrack will put her in a naughty mood! Rowr!

Note: You gotta love the "Amicus: the studio that dripped blood" tag on the poster. Ya gotta!

Oct 24, 2007

Root for the Rockies


And not just because the Jesus does. Root for them so we don't have to see any more YouTube videos of Jonathan Papelbon riverdancing to the Dropkick Murphys.



I used to love this song, mostly because of its use in The Departed. It's called "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" based on lyrics from a Woody Guthrie poem.

Now I kinda hate it.

Nobody fucks with the Jesus!





Note - Seriously. Do yourself a favor and watch that Big Lebowski clip. It's good for the soul. 8-year olds, Dude.

Oct 19, 2007

Evil. Pure Evil!

For as long as I can remember, my sister has been trying to kill me. Maybe it wasn't exactly a conscious choice on her part, but she did her best. It probably started in the crib...oh wait, that's right. She's a year younger than me. So it should have been me trying to kill her in the crib. I never was taught the proper protocol regarding the killing of one's sibling. Sigh.

Back when I was four or so we were chasing each other around the outside of the house when she tripped me by the front steps of the house. I say "tripped", but it could easily have been sheer clumsiness on my part. For the sake of the "sister who wants to kill her brother" story let's just stick with "tripped". Anyhow, I fell onto the concrete steps of the front porch. Right on my teeth. Yeah...that had to hurt. I lost the front four teeth on my upper jaw that day and basically looked like this until my adult teeth grew in a few years afterwards. Thanks!

And that was just one incident. In High School she started break dancing! OK, that one did me no physical harm, but a large part of my soul died that day. There are others, but I was inspired to write this after reading Anna's tale of getting burned the other day. My tale, involving my sister of course, went a little like this:

It happened when I was around four. Again. I'm not sure if I was sporting the jack-o-lantern look yet, but it was around the same time period. We were roasting marshmallows while camping at a place called Timothy Lake in Maine (I think) when my sister decided that the best way to extinguish her burning marshmallow was to wave it around. You know, shaking it like a Polaroid picture.

This, of course, only fanned the flame and agitated the 'mallow until it flew off her stick and onto my bare arm where it attacked me like molten lava.

I ran around, waving my arm (further fanning the flames, I'm sure) until the nearest adult got there and, um, put me out I guess. I don't really remember the pain, but I do remember the bandaging and application of ointments for the next couple of months.

I was very young so I made a full recovery. Well, almost. If you look closely at my right arm you can still see some scar tissue, and I have noticeably fewer freckles on that arm. But I'm positive that this, along with the knocking out my teeth and break dancing, was just another incident in which she was planning my demise.

Sisters are evil.

I have four of them.

Oct 15, 2007

I wanted to be the first to find a Golden Ticket, Daddy.

Oooooh, I so want one of these.

I was perusing The Green Parrot blog the other day when I saw a story about a musician named Corey Harris. He's fronts a wonderful blues/reggae band and we were lucky enough to see him perform at the Parrot last December. Great show.

Well, he was recently named as one of the 24 recipients of this year's MacArthur Fellowships. What, pray tell, is a MacArthur Fellowship? It's an award of $500,000 granted to a US citizen or resident of any age and working in any field who "show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work." It's not awarded for an individual's previous body of work, but rather as an investment in the future development of creativity in their given fields.

Past winners have been from occupations all over the map. Writers, filmmakers, geneticists, historians, lawyers, artists, poets, astrophysicists, choreographers, educators, mathematicians, etc... There was even one dude who won this who was a light sculptor. What the fuck is a light sculptor? Wait...wait. There was another dude who won for his work as a sound sculptor! C'mon! They have to be making this shit up, right?

This "genius grant" deal, as it is often called, seems like a pretty good gig. I'm just shocked that a crazy Rasta dude in shorts who plays at the Green Parrot can get in on the act. Great for him!

But now I want one. First I need to do something creative. How about blog sculpture or something? Who's to say that someone on their anonymous panel doesn't find what I do here to be absolutely brilliant. There's no accounting for taste, really.

Oct 13, 2007

New movie review


It's up at MOVIEGRENADE!

Feel free to ignore it at your own pace.

Oct 10, 2007

Potty Mouth

I've been upgraded:

Dating



Guess it was my last post about the Yankees loss.

FUCK!

I know, I know...may last few posts have been lame, but my attention was on baseball (emphasis on "was") and a few other things. Plus Gia is away this week at a beach house in South Carolina and I can't meet up with her until this weekend. As I said earlier...FUCK!!!

Oct 8, 2007

Ugh

Yankees lose.

Fuck!

Fuckity Fuck Fuck Fucking Fuck!!!

So the post-season continues on later this week with those traditional NL powerhouses, the Rockies and the Diamondbacks, playing in the NLCS while the Indians get the Sawx.

I think I may give the NHL a try for the next few weeks.

Note - I hate Hockey almost as much as I hate the Red Sox. So that ain't gonna happen.

Oct 6, 2007

The "Couldn't Sleep" post

So there I was early this morning. Lying awake at around 4:30AM. My stomach was a little upset for some reason. Didn't go out drinking last night, so it couldn't have been that. I don't know. Then I detect that Gia isn't sleeping either. She's got a migraine so she can't sleep. Woke up right around the same time that I did.

She took some aspirin and a big glass of water and was back off to bed. Me? I decided to watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for the umpteenth time because I could tell that I wasn't going to sleep right away anyway. I love that movie.

Do you remember the scene early on in the film when Butch and Sundance ride back to the Hole-in-the-Wall hideout? One of the members of the gang (which was actually called the Wild Bunch. They changed it for the film because it might cause some confusion with the Sam Peckinpah film of the same name), Harvey "Kid Curry" Logan wanted to take over the reins of leadership from Butch and requested a knife fight.

In my head, I always pictured Richard Kiel, the towering actor who played Jaws in a few James Bond films, as Harvey Logan. But when I watched it again this morning, I could see that it obviously was not him. In fact, Logan was played by Ted Cassidy, the towering actor who played Lurch on the Addams Family. Neat! Sweet! Petite!

I also looked up the exploits of the real-life Wild Bunch and it seems as if the perception of Sundance's skill as a gunfighter is somewhat of a murky deal. You see it was Harvey Logan, aka Kid Curry, who was the wildest of the Wild Bunch and the most feared gunman among them. Many of the news stories of the day mentioned his foul deeds and referred to him as "the Kid", so it is likely that folks assumed the stories were taking about Sundance instead of him.

Logan was responsible for the death of at least nine lawmen over his "career", as well as numerous other shootings/deaths during attacks by posses looking for him. Like Shaft, he was a bad mother-fucker! Sundance, on the other hand, is only known to have participated in two shootings (including the famous shootout in Bolivia where he may or may not have been killed), with no confirmed killings in either.

History is a funny bitch, ain't she?

And this is what I do when I can't sleep. I watch movies and I look shit up on the Web.

Probably doesn't help the whole "no sleeping" situation, now does it?

Oct 5, 2007

Blog break

Just while the Yankees are playing. OK, maybe I'll check in now and again.

If you're lucky!

PS - Fucking CC Sabathia!
PPS - Fucking Fausto Carmona!

Oct 2, 2007

Jesus is a Yankee fan.

"I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn't work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there's no guilt in baseball, and it's never boring... which makes it like sex. There's never been a ballplayer slept with me who didn't have the best year of his career. Making love is like hitting a baseball: you just gotta relax and concentrate. Besides, I'd never sleep with a player hitting under .250... not unless he had a lot of RBIs and was a great glove man up the middle. You see, there's a certain amount of life wisdom I give these boys. I can expand their minds. Sometimes when I've got a ballplayer alone, I'll just read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman to him, and the guys are so sweet, they always stay and listen. 'Course, a guy'll listen to anything if he thinks it's foreplay. I make them feel confident, and they make me feel safe, and pretty. 'Course, what I give them lasts a lifetime; what they give me lasts 142 games. Sometimes it seems like a bad trade. But bad trades are part of baseball - now who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas, for God's sake? It's a long season and you gotta trust. I've tried 'em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball." - Annie Savoy - Bull Durham

Religion and Baseball. Two of my favorite subjects. Well, the second one is at least. Like Annie, baseball IS my religion and playoff time is the closest I've ever been to the Allmighty. Why do I bring it up? Because of a conversation that I had with Gia today.

You see, I've been openly pushing for the Colorado Rockies to make the playoffs this year. I truly try to root for no other team than the Yankees, but occasionally I find no harm in pushing for the little guys in the National League...just as long as they aren't playing the Bombers. Gia, likewise, has been pushing for the Cubbies...and I respect that. The Cubs are the lovable losers that the Red Sox never were. The Red Sox were/are just losers. My favorite t-shirt in 2005 was "What Curse? They just sucked for 86 years!" Good times.

Back to our story: Why do I root for the Rockies? I really can't tell you. They play out west, so I never see them. They play in the National League, so I could absolutely care less about them. They play in a ridiculous ballpark that inflates all of their hitter's stats and kills the careers of any free agent pitcher stupid enough to sign them. Actually that's it. Those are the reasons that I kinda root for them. Because no one else will.

Then Gia told me about how the owners and management have created some kind of weird religious cult around their organization. I had never heard of it, so I looked it up. You can read about it here, or here, or here...if you like. Oh, and by cult I really meant Christianity. My bad.

Now most of what has been written about the organization and it's policy concerning religion (or the fact that it may not have a policy concerning religion. Blah blah blah!) is all over a year old now, or at least that's what I found in my 30-second Google search. The story doesn't seem to dominate the airwaves. But when conservative, religious leaders of a corporation start throwing around watch words like "character" when defending their choice of employees, and you see that most of those employees are white Christians...I really start to wonder.

I dunno how this is going to affect my decision on who to root for in the Colorado/Philly series starting tomorrow. I'm really not sure it should. Because the only religion that belongs in baseball is voodoo. As in curses, because that stuff with Pedro Cerrano's bat in Major League was hysterical, yo! And I'm not even sure if that is a religion!

Note: Please don't be offended by my labelling of Christianity as a cult. I do what I do to make myself laugh most of the time. Seriously...you should see me with a ball of string.