What Devo is to consumer culture, Laibach is to identity politics. They've been making fun of nationalists and supremacists since the mid-'80's. They are based in Serbia. That they aren't dead says a lot about civilization.

This is their stageshow. In some parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey, making fun of nazis would get you a stomping. Imagine doing it for 20 years in Bosnia.

Here is their most famous hit, where they demand "friend dance with me" to the stormtrooper beat.

A guy created poster art for a theoretical Batman movie. This Harley's a little shabby, but menacing. Does it have Bunny's Seal of Approval?


Batman 3 Poster - Harley Quinn by ~joshwmc on deviantART



I don't know much about fashion, but I like Karl Langerfeld as a person. He never struck me as a guy who took himself very seriously.




And I'll be stopping by here tomorrow.
MonsterMania in Cherry Hill NJ.

"Tropic Thunder" is great and Robert Downey Jr. is God. Tom Cruise was also amazing, and had me second-guessing decisions I made for characters in "The Mad Earl."
The movie also gave me a new lease on an old story parodying "empowerment" in pop culture. The movie just stirs up some nice brainwork, and is the best satire since "Wag The Dog."

I saw "Batman". Christian Bale is always a good time. Heath Ledger had a fresh and interesting take on the Joker. Do *not* be a woman in Gotham City. Two and a half hours = two bladder breaks = too long. Third part of script was written to explain character philosophy = lame. Did I hear right that Gotham has "30 million people?"  If so, all of them must have a GPS in their colons, because everybody got across town and found each other almost instantly whenever needed. Worth $10 to see on the big screen. Ledger is on par with other Oscar winning villains. Worth $10 ticket, if only because you would spend $20 in the sex club, you sick person you.

Picking through "Little Big Man" and Charles Stross' "Saturn's Children." Both describe their worlds and are fun, but still early in. More on them later.

"Dr. Terrible's blog of Wahtever": tried to watch first parts of all three segments. My friends and I could have come up with as good, and i would have at least laughed once.
"But Joss wrote another musical!!!1! WoW!!!111! 
Kids, *you* can write a better musical.
Shifting POVs, flat characters, predictable jokes and plot.
"But it's just light fluff!11!!"
Picking at my dryer lint is light fluff, but my clothes get dry, which meant that  *something interesting happened.*

It's worth paying to go see. That is all.

Your world too short of resources? Your society a little too efficient?

For those who want some ideas for a dystopia, or a world that's a little too efficient, an art collective in Germany spent two years imagining a 100% green city. Part Quaker village / part Thunderdome.

http://www.ateliervanlieshout.com/

Look under "work"

New Lampreyhead story finished and sent to Noble Fusion East for critique.

Watching "Dexter." The season is based on the novel "Darkly Dreaming Dexter." The series is better than the book. Which means it's pretty good and worth seeing, if you don't mind a really icky anti-hero.

Saw “Cloverfield” last night and it was a grand effort to revitalize the big-monster-daikaiju genre. It should be encouraged just for that reason alone. But the characters were as flat as the tanks that monster stepped on. “Cloverfield” is “Godzilla Vs. ‘Friends.’” We would have had the monster or the hapless hipsters be the hero, but there were *too many freaking jokes* in the movie for me to care about either of them.
(other issues: average boho Rob and friends walk total 70 blocks, have two members killed gruesomely along the way, to climb and descend total of *120 floors*  [audience guffawing now] to rescue Rob’s love, then another 19 blocks to escape. All in six hours. No. And the parasites were from the After Effects file marked “Klendathu” sized small.)

Humor and horror are supposed to be sooo interrelated.  They are. But they are different ends of a spectrum of empathy. Horror by its nature squeezes out all other emotion and thought. Humor creates affection for its subject or deflates tension. The two are interrelated only if you ignore the important stuff like the story’s moral or emotional impact.

So giving the camcorder to the callow, chattering comic-relief guy Hud killed the tension. It was like watching the final chase of “Frankenstein” from the POV of Oona O’Connor, the batty cockney lady.

Again, I applaud Abrams for the wonderful idea of doing the movie, and especially doing it from the perspective of the people getting squashed, and *then* sticking in the additional threat of the parasites. But I didn’t care about the movie enough, for the same reason I do not care about “Lost” or “Alias.” His overthinking cleverness kills emotional impact.

So we’ve got horror and we’ve got humor. Who does it well? Ramsey Campbell does some really neat stuff in his new novel “The Grin Of The Dark.” Like “Cloverfield”, this book also works with some of my favorite subjects: silent movie comedians and weird horror.

The story is about Simon, an out-of-work journalist whose significant other’s parents think he is a loser. Enter her old boyfriend and parental meddling, and there’s a realistic source of tension set up just within the first chapter. Simon is hired to work on a story about Tubby Thackeray, a music hall performer who made a few silent films before fading into obscurity. Tubby’s performances were so hysterical and unsettling, they caused riots (shades of “The King In Yellow” cool-o!). Naturally, the more Simon investigates, the creepier his reality becomes.

Campbell does a real neat job of bringing silent movie back to its roots in vaudeville, then to mime, then to Greek theatre, then to the idea of an ur-language that predates speech and is the foundation of consciousness, *then* to altering reality itself. His short stories are great exercises in terror in broad daylight. Abandoned lots, knowing looks from strangers, petty tyranny, he’s always been in the shade between terror and absurdity.

In “The Grin Of The Dark”, he explores the whole spectrum of color from absurdity to horror to surrealism to weird. Sadly, Campbell overextends himself. Simon fights desperately as his health and life fall apart. What mechanism is his undoing? The engine of the protag’s doom is (no spoiler here, really) the internet. Yeah, I know.

If Campbell had written “Cloverfield”: Rob would have held the camcorder. He would only battle fifteen blocks to a ruined brownstone to find his love, but what fifteen blocks those would have been. If Abrams had produced “The Grin Of The Dark”, the mechanism of the ultimate threat would have been left a hinted mystery and the screenplay would have been better for it. I’m thinking that a tangible horror needs a more absurd or surreal touch to further heighten the menace. Meanwhile, cosmic or weird horror may go better with bickering Seinfeld characters so as to show how small we can be. “The Mist” seems to bear this out. Hmm. I’ve got some noodling on paper to do.



Thoughts:

A reviewer on “Rotten Tomatoes” said the movie was an in-your-face to the “self-absorbed Facebook generation.” Uh-uh. My friend Steve said it best in that the hero of the movie is the videotape camera. It reinforced my desire to keep a camcorder with me at all times.

Between “I Am Legend” and “Cloverfield”, will Adobe come out with an effects plug-in called “BrooklynBridgeShredder”?

The ending to “The Mist” *sucked.* Make the escapees wait a day before the deed, then after the deed Thomas Jane should have waited an hour or two, then have the same twist happen.

This is Karl Christian Krumpolz.

He worked at the comic book store many years ago. A funny, dark wiseass who had a lot of potential.

Now his star is rising, and he has a new comic out from avant-funsters Slave Labor Graphics. He was well reviewed on "The Onion" print and website, and interviewed very nicely too.

It's nice to see a good, talented guy be rewarded for hard work.

Check him out at http://www.myspace.com/karl_christian and http://slg-news.livejournal.com/tag/byron

The artist is Frank Cho, who does "Liberty Meadows."






"There's nothing like the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight." - Homer Simpson

Let the backlash begin.






I have to get moving on this short story called "Panthera" that addresses this issue.

My Off-The Cuff Review of “The Mist” and "Garth Meranghi's 'Darkplace.'"

    “The Mist” was written in the ‘80’s, when Steven King had just built his Terrormatic Trope-Cycler. As such, it has a lot of King’s tropes but still has the style to still make a compelling read. Giant spiders? Mommy abandonment? Impractical experimentation by the government? Clackety-clack-spit!
    The film is a 90% reproduction of the novella. The ending has been changed from the vague dammit-I-don’t-wanna-write-another-novel finish that also is part of the more recent Steven King short fiction ouvre. However, the movie ending is actually better, but more on that.
    The first half-hour is okay. Dad and Mom and Kid trade wooden quips, because hell, we know what we’re here for, let’s get to the store for Chrissake.
    The director is good. The acting is consistent and believable. There are no weak performances. It’s refreshing to see a horror director who can work with actors to create mood. There is just enough shake to the camera, just enough dead space to the shots to suck you into the action. The problem is after the first half-hour, when a novella has to be padded into a full-length movie.
    The director had worked with King before and apparently has an operating license to the Trope-Cycler. Here comes the crazy Christian! And the tragic love story! And the smack to the head social commentary!
    King’s stories always steered clear of most Hollywood clichés. Sadly, this is a Hollywood movie, which means that King’s clichés are now compounded by Hollywood clichés.
    You know how the blacks are always the first to get killed? This movie brings an efficiency and tidiness never before seen. Kids get killed? No way. Middle-class old people? More resourceful than trained military personnel. Poor folk? Stupid and gullible. Any actor you have never seen before? Put red shirts on ‘em and beam ‘em to the surface.
    The critters are believable. There’s a little tell-tale CGI look to the tentacles, but the models were first-rate.
    The new ending is grim by Hollywood standards, but the writer pushed it and added a cheap shot conclusion that took away its emotion. The audience literally groaned at it.
    Good munching. Good action. Good adaptation. If you know what you're getting yourself into, enjoy then groan.

    The sound of groaning brings us to my latest purchase, which spoofs both ‘80’s episodic horror and genre writers a little too full of themselves. In 2004, British comic actor Matthew Holness invented a horror writer named Garth Merenghi. Known for his hip style and smoldering glare, Garth's novels included such classic chillers as The Ooze (can water die?), Afterbirth (a mutated placenta attacks Bristol) and Black Fang (where rats learn to drive). The multitalented Garth persuaded BBC4 to allow him to produce “Garth Merenghi’s ‘Darkplace’”, which Garth wrote, directed and played lead. The problem? The show is bad. Aggressively bad.
   The dialogue is stilted, chatty and far too clever. The action is way over the top. The plot is predictable and the characters flat.
    Anyone can write badly. What this show pulls off is a pitch-perfect reproduction of amateur horror writing. Editors and slush readers will sit in awe.
    Those who appreciate production values will find the same care in destroying all those details. Music cues are garbled. Laughs and screams go on for too long. The special effects aren’t special and have no effect.
    Like the TV spoofs in the movie “Idiocracy”, “Darkplace” will follow you around as you watch real TV shows on SciFi or USA, nudging you and saying “Yeah, see? I did that.”
Between scenes are interview bits where Garth and his producer show epic levels of self-delusion. If you like “A Mighty Wind” and “Tales of the Darkside”, you will enjoy “Darkplace.”  Look for the performers on YouTube in current Brit-coms like “The Mighty Boosh”, “The IT Crowd”, and “Little Britain.”

    Here's a clip:

 

A grand ego boost over this weekend!

I went to PhilCon and had my sense of place in the Universe reaffirmed by others who are suffering the same artistic ordeals. If these bright, dedicated folks are having the same problems, then I must be doing something right.

I reconnected with friends I hadn't seen in many years.

Your commissar looked smashing and was enthusiastically chatted up by attractive writin' women. Seriously, I have to get out of the house more.

Space Squid wants to do minor rewrites of the Lampreyhead story with an eye towards publishing.

Asimov's rejected, with the note: "This story is well done, but I'm afraid it doesn't work for me. Please let me see more of your material when you have it, though." sez Sheila Williams, Editor.

Other developments may be bringing me back to making movies. I cannot speak more on this at this time.

Perhaps I ought to whine to the Universe more often.

Yeah, I know: "No."


Now, a quick reminder why octopi are the coolest animals on Earth:

Finished three stories and am waiting for the critiques. I have another three in the funnel. Revisiting the trunk and rewriting is very satisfying.
But not as satisfying as my new Oppo all-regions PAL reading DVD player!

(Announcer voice: That's right, Tim! The Oppo DV-981HD delivers a breath-taking picture with vivid color, fine details, and life-like picture quality. The DV-981HD is also compatible with discs and TVs in both NTSC and PAL formats. Not only is the picture gorgeous, but the sound is equally impressive. Its dual-laser optical pickup head ensures skip-free playback with excellent error correction. Boasting a stylish and sleek black casing, the DV-981HD is a perfect match for any high definition home theater systems. New from Oppo! Back to you, Tim!)

Thanks, Don! So naturally, the first thing the Commissar did was go to Amazon UK and order a DVD not available in the US. Steve Coogan from "Alan Partridge" made a parody series for BBC spoofing '60's Hammer horror films. The result: "Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible." Featuring stories with names like "Curse of the Blood of the Lizard of Doom", "Voodoo Feet of Death" and my fave "Lesbian Vampire Lovers of Lust".

Here's a clip!




So life is good.

These guys are jaded.









Find a *lot* more at http://gawker.com/news/kreepie-kats/