Cannibal, oh Cannibal

Cannibalism just doesn't make any sense.  Not as a dietary plan.

Eating people or parts of people as a religious or ceremonial ritual I get.  The consumption of another's power or strength makes sense to me.  If I happen to kill some crazy good artist, they'll find his fingers in my stool.  If I come across a famous alcoholic's body, I'm stopping at the store to get some fava beans and a nice chiante.

What I don't understand is cannibalism as a dietary supplement.  Raising humans for harvest is just impractical, right?  Am I wrong here?  We take FOREVER to be born, and there isn't enough good thick steak on us until we're at least 8 or 9.  Even then the meat can't be thick.  MAYBE a nice veal but the premium on that, 9 months of extra resources for the mother for just some tiny cutlets?

No, I don't think we're in any danger of being harvested for food.  You can all sleep well tonight.

You're welcome.


MotD: Cannibal Holocaust

Not recommended for fans of cannibals nor fans of holocausts.  The premise is "found" footage was taken back to the states from the Amazon, which shows the Yanomamo tribe as the titular cannibals.  As the movie progresses, you see more of the footage and learn more about the people who took the film and your opinion changes.  This had to inspire the likes of Blair Witch and Cloverfield, amongst others.  The effects do look shockingly realistic, but overall it's a bit of a bore.  Also, I know I flunked Anthro 103 (don't ask, I didn't go to class, got surprised by the midterm, it was a mess) but nowhere in that class did they mention the Yanomamo as being cannibals.  I'm just saying.

Mallrats

Here's something I thought of today, after watching my movie and thought I'd share.  If anyone out there has done this or something similar, let me know, cause it was awesome.

Mid 1990's, who didn't rollerblade?  All the rage, America was inline skating.  What was easy at college, what with the broad lanes of a Quad and stone steps and columns, was a little harder back in the suburbs.  Parks weren't really catering to rollerblades or skateboards, they were still verbotten.  So finding a nice surface was a premium.  One day, I had an idea...

At the local mall, they had a movie theater built indoors, like many malls across america.  Now the mall closes at 9, but the movie theater still shows until midnight or later.  When you exited the theater, you left through main theater doors.  Who has smoother, cleaner floors than the local mall?  No one, I daresay!

So, we scooted over one night, after the last movie started but before it ended, and bladed into the mall.  This was when we discovered, at least back then, that security only worked inside the mall during work hours.  At night, they just drove around the parking lot.

We proceeded to skate up and down the mall, from end to end, with absolutely NO ONE telling us to stop.  We passed cleaning crews that couldn't give a shit about us.  We raced, figure 8's, everything and anything we thought of.  No damage, nothing malicious, but we skated the shit out of that mall.

And then we left out the same doors we came in.  And then we did it again.  Memory's foggy, but I know we did it at least twice, possibly 3 times that summer.  Funnily, the only time we ran into issues with security was when we were skating in the parking lot itself.  One night, a security car chased us off, specifically for being in the parking lot, having nothing to do with the 1/2 hour we just spent inside the mall.

MotD: Observe and Report

Darkly funny movie about a Mall Cop with delusions of Grandeur.  If you're reading this and enjoyed Paul Blart: Mall Cop, close the browser and kill yourself.  That movie sucked such ass that it unfortunately tainted this much superior film's box office life.  There's problems with this film, some things about it feel a bit disjointed, but the performances are solid, there's some genuinely funny shit.  It feels like someone, studio or producers or some outside party, got their hands on it and twisted some things.  Nothing specific, if I had to guess which parts of the story were mucked with, I'm sure I'd be wrong, but it just veers from time to time from a consistent vision.  Having said that, it might be on purpose, since *** SPOILER ** the main character has bipolar issues.  Essentially putting the viewer through the same roller coaster that Seth Rogen is on. **END SPOILER**  Having said that, I liked this movie quite a bit and recommend it to anyone who can laugh at pain and enjoy watching damaged people bringing the crazy in a big bad way.

Ticket to Ride

Appropos of nothing, I was doing the math today on some logistics of life here in Chicago.  Let's say I was going to go into Lincoln Park for the day to shop.  I planned on spending at least 3 hours there.  Now, everything I have been told from the city says they want me to take public transportation, be it the El or a bus.  I agree with the concept in principle, I would rather not congest the streets with a single passenger car.  Believe it or not, I do feel that way. 

However, in the scenario here, the train would cost me $4.50 (at least, if I don't have connections).  Driving my own car and parking at a meter, even at the bullshit inflated prices of the new meter contract, would only be $3.  Additionally, depending on the time of day, driving is way faster.  Yes the train gets you in the vicinity faster, but then add in walking time, etc.  At best it's a wash for time spent, at most, the car is a better alternative.

So, why do I want to take the train?  I'm talking about a day trip here, not a night out thing with cocktails involved or to an area where you know parking is non-existent.  And Brian, exclude bikes here, let's pretend it's dead of winter.

If the city was really serious about cutting down on congestion and increasing the usage of public transportation, they would LOWER the CTA fees, not raise them as they're planning on doing in the next year.  The math simply makes sense.  People that HAVE to use the CTA will do so regardless of cost, so all they're doing is driving away the casual user, in exchange for pimping more money from the necessity user. 

It's similar to what Marvel did with Amazing Spider-Man when they increased production to weekly.  Many casual fans dropped off, myself included, and they simply squeezed more money out of their die hards.  Circulation overall dropped somewhat, but they made the money back on the wallets of fewer people.  That hardly seems like a responsible business tactic that a city should be foisting upon their citizens.

MotD: Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)

I wholeheartedly disagree with the public's distaste for John Travolta.  Scientology is crazy, yes, agreed.  He's made some shitty movies, who hasn't?  Check my sidebar for some of my own shitty vehicles.  He is still engaging to watch and he certainly was in this.  Mix in Denzel, who is always just amazing, and Tony Scott and you have a seriously good kidnapping thriller.  Remake, of course, of the same named Walter Matthau film, it veers somewhat in motivation.  It's tight, starts right where it needs to and takes you right to the end of the escapade.  See this and then I recommend watching the original as well.  Just as gripping, dramatically more of a character study, and both are quite good.

Fresh out of Radioactive Clay

Conflict, change and transformation.

That's what makes life worth living, or so the writers of the world would have you think.  Think about the most interesting conversations you've had in your life.  Put these questions to them.

What was the conflict there?  What did each person involved want out of it?

What was the change or transformation that happened?  If something ws resolved, or two people came to an understanding, who compromised and why?  What were the motives?

Do that, and you feel a little like a puppet master right?  Always analyzing, always trying to read into the motivations of the other person.  That can get you in a world of trouble if you really do apply this to everyday life, because nothing is that tidy.  Most often you don't know what you're after, really, and then to try to anticipate what the other person is saying will get you swiftly kicked in the proverbial balls.

What I'm finding about crafting these things for yourself is the problem solving aspect is the most fun of it all.  Put two (or more) people in a room, find out what they want, what hurdles stand in their way, and how will they resolve it.  Play this game when you're watching a movie and it will ruin it for you.  Enjoy.

MotD: Hostel Part II - Two days in a row movies about man hunting man.  NOT planned, funny tho.

I like Eli Roth.  Not so much a fan of his "torture porn" but the craft and sensibility that he brings to the films themselves.  Cabin Fever was fun and low budget entertaining.  Hostel was creepy and gory around a good hook.  Along those lines, I like what he did with Hostel II.  Horror sequels are usually very much the formula that worked in the first one.  Different types of kills, but same themes, wash, rinse the brains out of your hair, repeat.  Roth does a nice thing with this sequel in that he pulls back the curtain on the bad guys a bit, to let us see how the whole kidnap and kill kids operation works.  What it accomplishes is making it less of a torture porn horror, tho there is certainly plenty of gore, and more of a story of the people who would partake in this.  It's a nice change of pace, and a necessary one to keep the interest up.  Certainly not for everyone, but I enjoyed it.

I'm getting too old for this shit.

Not dressing up for Halloween, but being out until 6, or I guess 5.  I suppose last night was exaggerated by the Fall Behind aspect of the clocks, but still.  That was a fun night, but long.

I woke up midway through the first quarter of the Bears game and got it together enough to hit the power button on the remote control.  Pleased with the outcome but Cutler should make sure his health insurance is solid, because he's gonna get killed.  Our offensive line is just that.  They can't block an intestine.  Defense looked really good, but they were playing against an awful, just plain awful offense. 

Here's the costume, Jesse Custer: The Preacher!

Saw some good costumes last night, lots of fun stuff.  Nothing that stood out as a knock out costume however.  Nothing that I recall this morning and think like, WOW that was good.  Not sure why, just didn't see that one particular winner.  I was accused of being a costume snob, for my penchant for obscure costumes, and I think she was right.  I'm a total costume snob.  Eh, I'll own that!

MotD: The Most Dangerous Game

First off, this is NOT the Jarts documentary that I was hoping it would be.  It is, however, a FANTASTIC little movie!  It's streaming off Netflix right now, so please, all (both?) of you reading this, watch this movie.  I'm sure you're familiar with the premise, a great hunter is tired of the mundane animal hunts so he's now hunting the most dangerous animal of all.... MAN!  This has inspired countless remakes/reinvisionings/satires over the years and it's so worthy of it.  This is the same production outfit that gave us King Kong.  Also, it looks like DC used the visual of the hunter was the inspiration for the revamped Merlyn.  What do you think?

Count Zaroff

DC Comic's Merlyn

Cry Wolfenstein!

Happy Halloween!

Now that we done got that out the way.... What do you write about when you have nothing to write about.  It's not block, I don't believe in that, it's just muse, inspiration, ideas are missing for today.  So, instead of boring you with crap, I'll get right to some movie reviews.

MotD: Willard

George McFly as a crazy ass rat lover.  Never seen the original, I'd never even heard Jacko's song from it.  All I knew is there's a ton of rats and crazy karate kicker.  Standard schlub/loser gets picked on until he finds his means of revenge.  Crispin Glover is just perfect in this.  Creepy and obviously disturbed, his Willard is the guy you root for even after he goes off the deep end.  Plus, their use of "Ben" is perfect and it's really an odd song by a young Jacko.

MotD Bonus: Cry Wolf

This one is tough.  At times, I liked it a lot, at others it was too clever for it's own good.  Students in a prep high school start an urban legend of a serial killer that JUST MIGHT BE COMING TRUE!!!  Nothing mystical, it's treated as if someone seriously is doing this.  It's real interested in keeping a whodunit/whosdoingit vibe going, and in the process gets a bit lost in its own byzantine plots.  It does have Jon Bon Jovi in it, whether that's a plus or minus I leave to you, gentle reader.

Son of a Preacher Man.

Unexpected drinks on a Thursday night can only lead to good things, right?

Found a costume, it's one I've wanted to do for a few years.  Inspiration struck me last night as I was succumbing to the self inflicted roofies I take every evening to keep the night terrors in check.  Sadly, it's one that not many will "get".  It's sad because it should be more well known than it is.  It absolutely deserves a wider audience.  Huge among comic fans, but not translating to the masses.

Jesse Custer!

Here's a link to the Wiki.

Some links to get the Trade Paperbacks. 

I can't recommend this series enough.  The premise is...

Jesse Custer is a small town Texas preacher who sees his congregation destroyed by the same energy bolt from Heaven that grants him the "Word of God".  He now has the ability to command others to do "exactly" what he says.  He starts on a journey, joined by his great love Tulip and newfound friend Cassidy, an Irish Vampire, to find America's soul and see if God still gives a shit.  Along the way he encounters a collection of the most depraved and socially awkward characters that have ever been put to a comic page.

Garth Ennis is the writer, Steve Dillon the penciller (for most of the issues) and they are just brilliant.  It touches on some advanced topics and certainly isn't afraid to get graphic.  However, you will be hooked once you try the first collection.  Every issue has been compiled and they even did a hardcover of the Glenn Fabry painted covers.

MotD: Pumpkinhead

P-head as his friends like to call him, is one of those monsters that always showed up in documentaries about special effects.  Created by recently departed LEGEND Stan Winston, who also directed, Pumpkinhead tells the story of a demon summoned for revenge upon some city kids for the death of a country chillun.  Seriously, that's it.  Kid dies, city folk are dicks about it, Bishop calls forth P-head and regrets it pretty much right away, kids die, Bishop redeems himself a bit, movie over.  Not much there.  The effects are cool, an attempt to add an icon of horror to the genre, but ultimately a fail.