My Life in Binary: 09/28/09

Last week, amidst the ongoing threat of swine flu (even though the media’s gotten bored with a goddamn PANDEMIC, of all things) I suffered the quickest illness of my life, presumably to make-up for the incredibly awful ear infection I had in high school where I was so sick that I saw the clouds in the sky forming skulls and crossbones.

The weekend before that I had come up with a great premise for an anthology project I refuse to tell you about and managed to hash out the story (pun intended) over breakfast at The Mission as my roommates and our friend on-his-way-to-LA sat in silence at our booth, each working on separate things as we waited for breakfast to come. It would be another week before I’d be able to come up with a decent execution for it.

Which brings me to my illness. Exactly a week ago I suffered a harrowing, surprisingly linear fever dream of Lynchian proportions in which I went with my sister and dad to see a screening of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that was for some reason being attended by Halle Berry. In the middle of it, my dad decided to leave, confusing and upsetting me as we followed along. Hysteric and bawling at the dinner table, I couldn’t figure out why he would do that as my sister coped with the preposterous action quite well, my other sister verbally dissected me, and my mom was nowhere to be found (probably in the kitchen making dinner, as she is wont to do)--heightened versions of my entire family to drive me into hysterics. To further exaggerate reality, I was completely unable to maintain my histrionics, stopping my bawling to deliver a joke. It was like my mind was trying to deconstruct itself.

Waking up with a jolt, I coughed out the essential puzzle piece to my story. My hero would face an ad hoc dissection of his entire existence, and he would need a partner/lover to instigate the whole thing. Scrambling for a pen and paper, I hazily, hastily scrawled ideas into my notebook, and finished the story another week later. Took a bit too long, I’ll admit, but writing isn’t so convenient.

NOM NOM NOM MEDIA

Caught Arctic Monkeys at Soma in Northeast San Diego. One of the bigger small venues in town, the place turned out to be an all-ages affair packed with kids and adults annoyed to be around kids. Which means moshing. At an Arctic Monkeys show. Not the greatest show I’ve ever seen--when did the Arctic Monkeys grow from snotty little shits into well-dressed longhairs?!--but I did go a bit nuts during “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor,” which I always thought was the band’s bratty little masterpiece. First time going to a show alone, which wasn’t as traumatic as my neurotic fears would have be believe.

Entering the venue, security patted me down and took my (rather nice) pen, tossing it in a box with other crude writing implements. Leaving the venue, I saw they had left the box out on the floor and I got mine back. Victory of the night.

The Dirty Harry tour continues. The Enforcer really sucks, but I’d like to see someone dissect it vis-á-vis the fairly contemporaneous women’s lib movement, as Harry Callahan’s partner in this foray is a woman who carries around a huge, unwieldy purse and has to catch criminals in heels. You’d be amazed at what movies are automatically improved by their critical papers. For example, James Kim’s "The Legend of the White-and-Yellow Black Man: Global Containment and Triangulated Racial Desire in Romeo Must Die" totally justifies the existence of one of the relatively better entries Jet Li’s very bad streak of American films.

Sudden Impact proved a slightly better film and features the line "What you doin', you PIGHEAD SUCKA?!" as Harry kills the only black criminal from the 1970s he didn't get in the first few gos. However, it's a movie with Dirty Harry as a guest star. When you’re raped and you spend the entire movie exacting revenge on the people who wronged you, you become the hero of the movie--not the no-nonsense, rule-breaking cop who has nothing else to do in the movie. Good thing Abel Ferrara made a proper version of Sudden Impact two years earlier and called it Ms. 45.

The Dead Pool, the final Dirty Harry movie, is more cohesive than the previous two but suffers from a fatal case of who-gives-a-shit outside of the amusement of seeing early work from Liam Neeson and “James Carey.” There’s a scene where the killer gets his victims with bomb-rigged R/C cars that’s laughably silly and makes me think of the cleverness of the screenwriter.

You see, The Scheme is how a screenwriter high-fives himself in a script. He’s come up with a new, original way to do something in an otherwise boring, by-the-numbers script. It was a neat idea when it first came out, I’m sure, but to posterity it’s weird and silly and trendy. Imagine a 1998 sequel, Dirty Harry Blows Someone's Head Off Again, where he has to track a killer who uses the internet to kill his victims. And once again, we the screenwriter high-five himself for being so clever.

Last movie I saw in theatres was Gamer. It was not the brilliant Godardian masterpiece that Crank 2 was (no, seriously), but it’s worth a rental at least. For a lot of reasons.

Been rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and being shocked at how throwaway most of Season 1 is (Demons are rigging the school election! Frankenstein's crashing the prom!), and how the quality takes a dramatic spike (pun NOT intended) with Season 2. I guess The WB saw that Buffy was going to be a hit and decided to finally let Joss Whedon do the show his way.

READIN’

Finished Rick Spears and Rob G’s Teenagers from Mars and thought it was a ripping good tale of teenaged rebellion and comic book love.

Finally read Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo webcomic and regretted that I hadn’t done it earlier. It’s got a wonderfully breakneck pace and a lot of surreal intrigue to set it apart from the more mundane crime comics. I updated the “Webcomics I read” sidebar on the blog to include Sin Titulo and other webcomics I love. Go read and be merry.

Been reading Thomas Pynchon’s V. as an ebook on the iPod Touch and the experience itself isn’t bad. Read a chunk, tap on the right to get to the next page, reducing an entire novel into thousands of tiny, digestible chunks, which I’m sure someone will give me shit for, but my iPod fits in my pocket and I don’t go to bookstores as much as I’d like to. As for the book itself, the Whole Sick Crew chapters are a bit like Kerouac without the Benzedrine, and I’m learning to appreciate the epoch-spanning Stencil chapters considering they’re proving to be the brunt of the book.

FIND ME ON THE INTERNET

At Spectrum Culture, I teamed up with colleague Eva Gordon to write a mega-review of the Feelies rereleases, which are fantastic. With Crazy Rhythms, you witness the birth of the Pixies, and with The Good Earth the birth of REM.

White on Rice has an unfortunate title that implies that it’s going to be a movie about the Asian-American experience, which thankfully it isn’t considering it’s made by a white guy who discovered Japanese people while doing Mormon missionary work in Australia. It’s not incredibly funny, but it’s likable enough to make me sit through it once.

Over at Monkey Toss TV, we’re gearing up to start shooting video segments at various comic shops in San Diego. For some reason I’ve been deemed appropriate for this venture, so I’ll start posing links to them once that gets started, provided I’m not too embarrassed.

In the meantime, here are the last couple installments of This Week in Comics. In the 9/16 edition, I cover some interesting manga, make fun of Galactica 1980, and feature a couple too many superhero comics. In the 9/23 edition, I quote The Simpsons, tell you what you’ve been missing by not reading Wednesday Comics, and jump the gun on Umbrella Academy: Dallas.

One Model Nation is an upcoming comic by C. Albritton Taylor (Courtney Taylor-Taylor of The Dandy Warhols) and Jim Rugg (of Street Angel) that looks awesome. Given a preview of the book, I managed to write an article about the unlikely partnership of comics and music.

HORRORS OF THE NET

Marvel Smart Ass illuminates the beauty of old Marvel Comics in all their wonderful POP silliness by looking at Incredible Hulk #111.

This Hark, A Vagrant comic amuses me to no end, especially the final panel with Joe Kennedy’s stern face and the completely oblivious baby Ted Kennedy. Kate Beaton should be made known to everyone who is smart and cool.

And here I will share the greatest comic panel in history: