Steam

Part of my job consists of weeding the print collection a relatively large community college library. As electronic books and databases become the norm for research practices, the print collections of most libraries is being drastically reduced. I understand this, and there are long-term cost savings, but at the end of the day it still means that a bunch of books are getting thrown out. Of course, a lot of the time these books are outdated and somewhat useless (see, computer science manuals) or too specific for a community college (veterinary medicine is not a huge topic here). But sometimes, it's just an old book that not many people check out. At the moment, I'm looking at a book called The Power of Steam: An Illustrated History of the World's Steam Age. It's a thirty-year old book that's long since been out of print and not specific to a subject taught here. And it hasn't been checked out since 1997. So I am forced to recommend it to be junked.

But here's why this bothers me so much.

This book is amazing. Never mind that I don't care about a lot of the specifics of the development of the steam engine, though it confirms that it was invented by James Watt (thanks, The Simpsons!). The book also explores the social and practical impacts of it (which is way more in my wheelhouse) and features so many awesome pictures I don't know where to start with it. There are oil paintings of a steamboat drag race, photographs of the Industrial Age's foot soldiers toiling in assembly lines and engineers caked with oil and grime. There's a wood engraving of an engine on Tokyo's Negishi Line from 1872*! There are lithographs of the first trial run of the London Underground (between Paddington and Farringdon in 1863), and a race in 1866 between a steam engine and a pack of dogs!

Sure, this the sort of thing a dork like me loves, and I hardly had time to explore the text itself. But if I can be so engaged by this book, couldn't someone who actually cares about engineering or history get even more out of it? This is my biggest problem with the eagerness of so many libraries to dump their print collection. I never would've searched in a computer for this book in a million years. The only reason I found it was because I stumbled across it while going through the shelves.


*Strangely enough, we were at a train museum a few weeks ago and saw an electric trolley that ran on that exact line at around 1910. I won't get into why we were there or why that excited me, but it should probably confirm what you think you know about me; namely that I am a 6 year-old at heart.

Strange Magic

   One of my new obsessions is Joe Hill's amazing comic Locke & Key, the trades of which I've been devouring lately. Eventually, I'll get around to writing up those books for Goodreads and repost here, which is something I've been meaning to do for awhile*.The book is fantastic, but I'm not necessarily going to talk about it today. However, there's a concept within the book that's been on my mind lately. In the story, there is magic. It is old and powerful magic, and so far, it is completely unknown by the adults of the series, even the ones that dabbled in it as youths.

   This isn't a groundbreaking idea. Going back to Peter Pan (and probably earlier), the idea has been raised that if magic were real, it would only be understood or appreciated by children whose minds have not been closed by... well, prolonged existence, I guess. I think this is a natural concurrence, really.

   I feel like my childhood was riddled with this, the magic of everyday life. The night I swear I saw a ghost in a rocking chair in the top window of an abandoned house. The power of a ghost story**, an out-of-body experience... these are things that I swear all happened to me before my teenage years. There was the time I went to Europe with my grandparents at age 8, and I returned with sore, hacked-up fingers. I thought for some reason that if I left fingernail clippings all over the streets and alleys of Italy then a piece of me would remain there and imbue me the wisdom and artistry of the ages. Now, it sounds like a pretty childish and disgusting habit, but you have to think that many, many superstitions have been started by less.

   There were two places in Maryland that I was terrified of. One was an old motorcycle clubhouse that hadn't been occupied in over a decade, the other was a cluster of trees around a streetlight. These were places I was certain were haunted, or at least held the power in my mind to be haunted. Nothing ever happened there, as far as I knew, although maybe some of my siblings tried to convince me otherwise. I don't know what it was, but I would fall into a catatonic state before willingly walking through these places. Weirdly, the giant abandoned hotel down the street was more or less fine with me. But a cluster of trees.... whoo, boy.

   Obviously, things didn't stay that way. The juju of the world is replaced by cold, dry logic. Gradually, the places I was terrified of became the type of places I would venture on dares from myself and others. It was somehow a part of the maturation process. Go to the places you once feared, and once you're not murdered there, a piece of magic withers away from your mind.

   I remember the first time I worked up the nerve to check out the old clubhouse, and the worst of my fears were confirmed when I saw someone had spray painted a pentagram on one of the walls. There has been foul business here. There were sacrifices of children and unholy ceremonies in my minds eye. It wasn't until later that I realized that it was a certainty that these were put there by kids not much older than myself, and with the intent of frightening kids like me. In fact, I'd put even money on the culprit being one of my brothers, trying to secure a place where they could smoke cigarettes without me finding them.

   There's a reason that teenagers love to spraypaint that shit. Pentagrams, 3 sixes. Swastikas. These symbols all have a power unlike anything else we know. It isn't until you're older that you realize that they are just lines and mean sweet fuck all. 99% of the time you see these things, it's a dumb kid trying to evoke a gutteral response from anyone that sees them. Unfortunately, it still works for a lot of people. Remember in the 80s, there was that massive fear of devil worshipers. the story of the West Memphis Three is pretty indicative of the paranoia associated with this stuff, which now we all look at as kind of silly more than anything. I feel sorry for devil worshipers at this point, since all they can really evoke from me is a rolling of the eyes.

   Nowadays, I miss that feeling. I think that I, more than just about anyone, fought the dissipation of magic from my brain. My reading habits (consisting largely of sci-fi, fantasy, comic books, mythologies, and occult manuals) probably helped with that quite a bit. But time goes on, magic grows stale and abandons our imaginations to more material pursuits. The Wonder of the world is replaced with a much different (and scarier) kind of fear.

The more I've been thinking about this the more I've been upset. I want nothing more than the ability to continue being amazed and enchanted by the world around us. I want one day to hear my child speak and not dismiss their magic as childish nonsense. So I started raking my brain for the magic in my life, and how I perceive it. and I realized, that I never really abandoned the concept, nor did it abandon me.

There remains magic in music for me. Not in the same way I saw it as a child, where members of KISS might abduct me in my sleep, or how Jim Morrison was some kind of stupid shaman. It is more subtle than that. When I was driving the other day, one of my favorite songs, "The E Street Shuffle" came on. Not the funky album version, but the shuffling, slow version that Springsteen and the band did live. Bruce tells a story, this one about Clarence Clemons and how they met. It's a long story, and a funny one. But it ends with Bruce cowering in the doorway of a closed shop, hiding from Clarence, who he thinks is out to get him. The giant man extends his hand and, this is where Springsteen's voice is practically a whisper:

Sparks fly on E Street when the boy prophets walk it handsome and hot 

 

   and I almost had to pull the car over. I can hear, feel the magic in those words. I've probably heard that song two thousand times in my life, and no matter how many times I might've glossed over that line, it still has that power over me. It was there the whole time.  Ditto for the beginning of the Velvet Underground's "Heroin", which I was certain I never wanted to hear again until this morning when it floored me by complete surprise. 

 

There is magic in The Exorcist, when that ghoulish face appears. I know it is a special effect in a film, but that has never stopped me from shuddering when I see it. There is magic in every single episode of Pushing Daisies that drips with a charm that distills in me a nostalgia for things I've never known. 

There is magic in The Stand, when we are introduced to Randall Flagg***, and in the narrator's home (a crumbling, waterlogged hotel) in Amnesiascope.

 

As I've mentioned before, there is magic in so many comic books I don't know where to start.

 

Though fiction, these things all come from someplace very real. Stephen King has admitted that his inspiration for Walter Flagg, one of the greatest villains ever created, came Symbionese Liberation Army leader (and Patty Hearst kidnapper) Donald DeFreeze. DeFreeze was a prison escapee who convinced people to do horrible things for him in the name of justice. Horrible, but absolutely magic. Same could be said for Charles Manson or Wayne Coyne (probably not a fair comparison, but I needed good and evil, you see).

In my rambling, incoherent way, I guess I'm just trying to remind you that there is magic out there. It's not Harry Potter or satanists, but it's in the minds of you and your loved ones, and creators, and in the atmosphere at large. the next time you get a feeling, instead of listening to the adult voice in your head or to rationality, try to just go with it. Make a note of it. Tell somebody else about it. Use it to wonder at the world around us. I know it feels naive, and perhaps stupid, even. But it makes things a hell of a lot more enjoyable. Don't preoccupy yourself with life, preoccupy yourself with living.

*So I've been pretty negligent with my Goodreads account, largely because I am always reading either too much or too little. One of my hobbies lately though has been to write up graphic novels and comics, since I feel they could use a bit more legitimization. I've done a couple, and I plan to do more. Unfortunately, most of these "reviews" are just diatribes about legitimization of comic books. Anyway, maybe I'll post a few after this post.

**query: Have I told my Tockwogh Hermit ghost story story here? If not I will fix that.

Mildred B. Soule, 1916-2010

   Last week was among the worst that I can remember for a number of reasons, and its opening salvo was the death of my grandmother. Before I get into this, I don't want to make this sound sad. It's not. She was 94 years old and, though sharper than most I know at a third of her age, she was ready for it. I am grateful that her family and friends were given the time they had with her, and I am happy that she may now rest. This isn't a dirge or anything, just a way to process what I'm thinking.

   My grandmother, to anyone that met her in the last 20 years, could easily consider her a prototype for Lucille Bluth; a stubborn, sharp-witted, heavy drinking, old-school socialite who was remarkably quick for her age. She would regularly wound family members with unintentional quips and could let fly with some frighteningly dated comments*. I don't say these things to denigrate her memory, but to define her better as a person. She was widowed relatively young in her life (and again much later) and long before I knew her, she was traveling the world. For most of my life, that's how I thought of her. She worked as a travel agent and lived by herself in an old lady house on Long Island and did old lady things. It was a beautiful house, and I remember being allowed to touch about 4 things in it.

   We would visit a few times a year, and I remember she had cable, which seemed so extravagant in 1982. I remember her calling all of my siblings insane because we would go there for a week and I was the only one who went outside. Everyone else watched copious amounts of MTV, the boys falling in love with Martha Quinn and the girls watching it because, well, it was MTV. If I wasn't so freaked out by the dwarves in the "Safety Dance" video, I probably would've been right there with them.It was in a nice suburb, and I remember loving the prospect of having new yards and parks to explore. Every time we visited it was like moving without the hassle of having to make new friends.I like to think I climbed new hills and let my imagination soar or whatever, but in reality I'm sure I just sat on a bench and read somewhere.

   It's funny, because I started writing this with something else completely in my mind, but, but this one memory just unpacked itself in my brain, and I'd be foolish not to document it now while it's here. This is from later, when my siblings were old enough to want to (or be able to) get out of these visits to New York, and so I would be the one kid left to go with my parents. In retrospect, I have no idea what the rest of the kids were doing, but they were old enough for it to be no good. But I digress.

   I read a lot as a kid. I'd pretty much read anything, from album liner notes to sporting goods catalogs to whatever I was allowed to check out of the library. This included pretty much anything, but specifically by just grabbing whatever was on the new shelves. It's not the best approach, but nobody was going to complain, because I was a kid reading on his own, right? As a result, I read a lot of standard kid books, including most of the Judy Blume catalog. Yes, you probably see where this is going. In the autumn of 1987, I brought a book called Just as Long as We're Together** with me to Manhasset on one of these visits. I'm not sure if I read the whole thing there or what, but I remember walking back to my grandmother's house from the park and asking her what a period was. My parents weren't there, off visiting some of my mom's high school friends or something, and my grandmother went white as a sheet. So yeah, my grandmother then was tasked with the chore of explaining menstruation to her 9 year-old grandson. I wish I remembered it more clearly, but it stands as a rambling mess of awkward followed by shoving my towards my mom when she got home. I can't say I blame her for that, it's probably what I would've done, too.

But what really has had me rethinking my grandmother's life as of late was finding out when I was in my early 20s that she was a lawyer. This was a complete shock to me, and something I had never even considered. She had been a part-time travel agent for all the time I'd known her, and it was pretty shocking to me. Even more shocking to me when put into the context of the time. For the sake of argument, let's consider the world of Mad Men. Normally, I'd try to avoid including a reference to a TV show while eulogizing my dead grandmother***, but this is apt. Watching that show, it's amazing to see what kind of shit women had to put up with in 1960 suburban New York. It's incredible when juxtaposed with the climate today. Then I remember that in 1960 my grandmother was in her mid 40s and had passed the bar in 1943 and my head reels at what she must have been put through. The amount of determination and sheer willpower that must have taken is more than I can imagine. I'd be impress if I inherited a sliver of that. She was an amazing lady.

In any case, I'm thinking of her now as I look at my cat sleeping on a rug that she made for me when I was a baby. It has a picture of a Peter Cottontail on it and it's one of the only things I still own from age 2. It's remained a valued possession for all this time, and even moreso now. In fact, I might have to yank that cat right off of it. I'll try to attach a picture of it to this site later.

My reasons for writing this dumb and unflattering attempt of a eulogy are twofold. For one thing, we aren't going to be having a memorial for her until late September, and I wanted to get some of my thoughts down now while they were fresh. Second, when I was looking around for an obituary online, it was disturbing to realize that aside from one written up by a local funeral home and a lovely tribute written up by one of my mother's neighbors, there wasn't one. I don't expect my 94-year old grandmother to have much of a web presence, but it's kind of sick when you think about the complete absence of one. If this is what's supposed to pass for posterity, if we're supposed to forgo written documents and burial plots in an effort to reduce our planetary footprints, shouldn't we at least make an effort to remember our loved ones? It pains me when my grandparents tell me about how all their friends are dead, but it's also a plain fact of life, I guess. What isn't fair is that they rarely have anywhere to talk about them, remember them. It would probably take like 1% of the internet to set up a database that could host every obituary that was ever written.

I'd like to see more than that, but at least it's a start.


footnotes after the jump

Watching The Long Goodbye and just made 2 stunning realizations: A) Henry Gibson just died and B) he was from Germantown. Huh.

I think anyone who's ever been here knows my love of English Russia. I don't get there every day, since I find it incredibly time-consuming, given the simplicity of the site. It's not just the complete insanity of the commenters there (this is the only site I actually read the comments on), or the awesome cultural weirdness, but also the way you get to see all of these little things about the Soviet era that would've been swept under the rug of history were it not for the downfall of the regime. The submarine bases at Sevastopol, the Road of Bones, etc...
What's even more amazing is that these things are still there. The USSR ran out of money, and never bothered to cover these things up. Here, the greatest of efforts are made to urge the population to forget about our previous mistakes, and instead to focus on our triumphs, regardless of where they came from*.
So I was pretty shocked to discover on Mental Floss this morning that remnants of Manzanar are still there. Manzanar was one of the "relocation centers" to which we herded the Japanese-Americans on the West coast following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Interestingly enough, Japanese-Americans living in Hawaii at the time were relatively unmolested.
Anyway, I knew that it was made a National historic Site in the nineties, but I had no idea that any of it was still there. It just seems like the sort of thing we would bulldoze, put up a modest marker, and then move on. And while I'm sure they were pressured into doing so, I'm still happy to see that something was done. I have a friend whose parents were interned, and the stories she told me were awful. I like to see that we still wear this black eye.

Anyway, head over to Mental Floss to see the site as it looks today.

It's a road trip I should really consider making, and I guess that "I don't like driving through the desert" isn't really a viable excuse...

*It'll be curious in October, when we're celebrating the moon landing, if much mention is made that the space program which revitalized our national pride was the ultimate result of Nazi scientists and their slave labor. One of the reasons that we've prospered so much as a nation is that we've lifted technologies and methods from every culture around the world. Doesn't it strike you as odd that we feel obligated as a nation to be so proprietary about these ideas?

I think I need a new nickname...


That could probably use some explaining. It came up in a search earlier. I'm in like hour 20 of working on my last final of the quarter, and I'm listening to a lot of Springsteen. This wasn't intended, just one of those things where I thought about it for a second, and then 20 years later I'd downloaded a bunch of old shows to help me get through the night.

At some point, my dad's favorite song came up. This is no surprise, Bruce played it almost every show. Still, it got me a little saw and since I'm working online, I was wondering if there are any pictures of him on the internet.

This is weird, and something I've never done. I don't keep many pictures, and I've gone to considerable lengths to keep pictures of me form being taken, let alone posted on the internet, but that's a different story. Anyway, my dad was different. He belonged to organizations and did charity work and for years was a township commissioner. So I was surprised when only one picture came up. I was even more surprised when I realized it was for one of my mom's high school reunions. and I just sank in my chair when I saw the picture.

It was late into the cancer. You hear people talk about it sometimes like they'll never forget watching their loved ones shrink away. That it's etched into your mind the way they just vanish so slowly. That's entirely true. It's long and shitty and you hate yourself for making the faces you make when you see them.

But what you never really hear about is what happens afterward. Or at least I didn't ever hear about it. Almost immediately, my memory just skipped over itself and the image of my father as this frail, fading man was practically gone. Almost as if by elastic, my mental image of him snapped back to the way he appeared my whole life before then. I can picture him with beard, without, whatever. Just there, you know? Actually tangible and not a whisper of the man who raised me. Of course, this is a good thing. I'm going to remember him the best way I can, and that hardly includes when he could barely speak from the pain. I guess this is some sort of cosmic right that allows people to cope easier. I'm grateful for it.

So seeing this picture was a blow for me. I haven't seen many of them, because frankly it's too fucking hard. The mercy of not seeing him like that was suddenly robbed of me for a few more minutes.

and I started to think about how unfair it is that it someone who didn't know him were to start looking for a picture of him right now, that's what would show up. It really upset me. Of course, he wouldn't care, and I'm not sure I should. But still, I m going to.

I have to get back to work, though. I cannot stop and think about this now, but I promise that first thing tomorrow I'm going to put up a better picture of him and then tag the hell out of it so that maybe google image won't be such a dick about things.

Anyway, that's all I got. Back to work. My dad would be pissed if he knew I put this stuff down for a half hour.

Anyway, cheerier stuff to come, I promise.

Happy Memorial Day

I'm in the throes of wrapping up my first quarter of classes, but take some time off of your Memorial Day to flip through some of these photos taken during World War I of soldiers of the British Empire as they prepare for one of the longest and bloodiest battles in recorded history.

Which isn't to say that they're particularly sad or harrowing, but they are worth taking a look at, especially considering that they've been sitting in a French barn for the past 90 years and that next to nothing is known about them.

For me, I can only look at them and see these people, most of whom were probably younger than I am now when these were taken and many of whom were probably dead 6 months later, these people trying to retain something of themselves in what could only have been miserable conditions. They pose proudly, sometimes smiling, sometimes with local children, putting on a brave face to send back home to their parents or sweethearts or friends.

WWI both fascinates and terrifies me. It conjures the images placed there by people like Owen and Remarque, these horrific images of panic and weariness and death. this is a war in which modern warfare was born, and largely without the sister development of modern medicine that is supposed to accompany it. Never a good combination.

I've never been stupid enough to think I could hack it in a war. But if there is indeed a war that scares me above all others, this is it. War has never been sensible. But as hard to believe, I think it has only gotten more sensible.

Stop and remember that people are dead today. You don't have to agree with their cause or their government. you don't have to pick someone from your country. You don't have to pick the winners or the losers. But just think for a second that millions and millions of people have died for causes that are forgotten by most today. You don't have to remember them. But at least stop and think of them for a minute. It's the least they've earned.

I'm not getting into the whole torture thing, largely because I think that this is all stuff we've known or at least suspected to have known for a long time. Whether you're a proponent of torture or not, and I'm not going to pretend like there aren't people that don't advocate torture, nor am I going to say that they're wrong for doing so. It's a valid opinion, just not one that I happen to share. Anyway, I can handle that just fine, what I just can't tolerate is the renaming of it and pretending it's something that it isn't. I can understand why someone might think torture works (though I refuse to accept 24 as a reference point here), but they should at least have the stones to admit they're in favor of torture and not enhanced interrogation techniques.

Anyway, I'm not going to get into that (see what I just did there!!??). But I just read a story that provides some pretty compelling testimony that we can also add kidnapping children to the list of things I can be ashamed of our government doing and that pit in my stomach just grew a little bit. I mean, I guess we've been kidnapping children for awhile now (how old were some of those kids in Gitmo? 15? 16?), but these are kids. like, 7 and 9.

Anyway, I don't really have all that much to say about it, I just figured that it's worth pointing out.

ratfarts

Eddie Bo, R.I.P.

New Orleans lost another giant in Eddie Bo, who passed away on Wednesday. Songs like "Hook & Sling" and "Check Your Bucket" were always favorites, and nearly impossible to listen to and stay in a bad mood. May your legacy never die, Eddie.

Learn and hear more of him here.

View-Master R.I.P.

There was an interesting article in last week's Economist about the decline of the View-Master, and a few mentions of its history and many uses. I know that it's really just the advance of technology and that these things cannot compete with a PS4 or whatever, but it still made me nostalgic for that time when I had one of those things. Despite it being somewhat antiquated by the early 80s when I used mine, it was still a pretty interesting toy to have. In addition to having all the discs for whatever movies and stories were popular with me when I was using it (The Black Hole and The Jungle Book were two I remember well), I also had whatever discs could float down through siblings, relatives, rummage sales, trips to national parks, etc...
So, as a kid I ended up with this weird , encompassing view (haha) of not only my own pop culture, but also that which preceded my by up to 40 years or whatever it was I found. It was kind of humbling, being presented with decades of expired fads in the face of your own, knowing that someday, Thundercats would be just some really godawful show to be exploited for nostalgic purposes by VH-1. And me, I guess. It reminds me when a friend's dad saw us all playing G.I. Joe out in the neighborhood somewhere and he decided to show us his old figures, which were at least 5 times the size of ours and looked much more like dolls than anything else we had at the time. Cloth fabric clothes instead of plastic!!??

Anyway, remember the View-Master fondly, folks. It's almost gone.

Half-abandoned

In continuing my theme of abandoned houses, there's a really cool photo essay at dornob of townhouses in Camden, half of which has been abandoned. You see a lot of these in the dwindling mid-Atlantic cities like Baltimore and Philly (and Chester), and it's always pretty remarkable Probably the result of regional architecture and urban flight as much as anything, but it's still an interesting sight.

(from Neatorama)

Apparently, my hometown newspaper is publishing op-eds by John Yoo.

That's about as embarrassing as it gets.

PNL files for bankruptcy

PNL is the publisher of both the Daily News and the Inquirer, so Philadelphians are suddenly faced with the prospect of losing their 2 largest newspapers.

(Al Día is fine, people)

Anyway, Will Bunch writes about being on the inside of it here.

If you live in the area, people, buy a paper.

Last night around dusk, right after I got home, I saw a red fox skipping across the lawn. His* rear half was practically hairless, and he looked pretty scrawny. I also noticed that he was limping, his left hind paw never even touching the ground.
There are fewer things on this planet that can evoke my pity more than an injured animal. I have stepped over one-legged homeless people, but you show me a cat in a cone and I will hug that thing to death like we were in a damned Warner Brothers cartoon. Also, for some reason I always thought a red fox was rare/lucky to see. This undoubtely comes from my family, who also let me to believe the same of black squirrels and the great blue heron, though since then I've discovered that none of these are rare or all that lucky. I mean come on, who thinks a squirrel is lucky? What is this, Taiwan? Anyway, I digress. Seeing this little guy, hurt and ragged and freezing, I sorta freaked out and immediately I decided that I was gonna give this him a helping hand.
Now, mother nature can be a cruel mistress, and I knew that involving myself in any way, shape or form would likely exacerbate his predicament. I looked at that wretched creature and decided that I had to do something -anything- to give the little guy an advantage over the frozen tomb in which he now seemed doomed to rest for eternity. But there lay the question: What could I do?
It should be pointed out that a three legged red fox still runs faster than a two-legged Cotton. At best, he'd slow down enough to keep me in sight, but would never let me close enough to pose a thread. Since I couldn't bandage him or knit him a little fox cozy, I realized I had to feed him. Of course, I have no idea what foxes eat (though I'm guessing it's some kind of varmint?) and no time to sit around googling fox diets.
So, a few seconds later, I'm literally chasing this poor bastard through the woods, a half-pound of sliced turkey in one hand, and slices of tomato in the other, shouting at it to slow down. He never did. So I left him a trail of meat and tomato leading him away from the spots where I always see evidence of hunters (ATV tracks, treestands, arrows, etc...) and towards the nice little statue of St. Francis of Assisi** in the yard. That way he'd just KNOW he was safe!
Well, the next day the trail was entirely gone, which means that at the very least, SOMETHING got fed. I like to think it was the little fox, knowing I was just trying to give him a boost. Of course, it wasn't until I got back to the house that I realized that he probably found the trail at the statue (where I'd first seen him yesterday) and followed it right to hunter alley. Yeah.
So yeah, I'm not going to dwell on how much worse I might've made things for the little guy. Instead, I'm going to make myself a turkey sandwich and try to forget about it.


*Listen, I have no idea the sex of this animal, but I just went with male. My apologies if I'm wrong.
**I don't know enough about saints, specifically their feast days, but wouldn't his have to be all vegetarian? It would certainly make sense....

(Please note that I resisted the tempation to post a picture of Redd Foxx with this post, though every time I image search for him, I'm reminded of 200 awesome photos)

Suspects arrested in Coatesville arsons case

Surprisingly, it was a teenager that likes to burn things. If this is the guy, throw away the key.

Did you know that a woman was beheaded in Buffalo last week? Neither did I. Terrible, terrible.

You sick bastards

I complain enough about remakes on this thing that I really should just make it a theme. But really, most movies don't need to be remade, and I can't possibly believe we've exhausted every good idea.

I thought I'd addressed the upcoming Friday the 13th remake here already, but my search came up empty. Which is fine, because they already remade well, let's go down the list:
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Omen, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Prom Night, Carrie, The Hills Have Eyes, The House on Haunted Hill, The Amityville Horror, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (like seven times), Dawn of the Dead, The Hitcher... I could do this for HOURS without even delving into all the foreign remakes or sci-fi, but italicizing them all bores me. I mean, why should this genre in particular seem so ripe for the plucking? Why hasn't anyone tried to remake Gone With the Wind, or Casablanca? The Maltese Falcon or The Wizard of Oz? Eh, I guess The Wiz sorta counts.

Because people will lose their goddamned minds, that's why. As long as they avoid movies that aren't widely considered classics they're in the clear. But these are my classics. And it pisses me off to see them treated so shoddily. Remake Dr. Zhivago into a Dane Cook vehicle for all I care, but I swear to you, if some fucker puts their creasy hands on Phantasm, there's going to be a bloodbath.

Of course, as I'm looking up this stuff, I see that they're remaking Poltergeist. Are you kidding me? Is there any reason to do this? What, was the trail of bodies not long enough after the last few? The original Poltergeist is one of the best movies ever made. In fact, the very remake of it makes me suspicious. Can you imagine Spielberg remaking any of the other movies he's ever made? Is it because he didn't credit himself as the director that he felt okay selling the rights to it? Fuck you, Spielberg. Go remake Hook or Empire of the Sun or some other bullshit movie and stop messing around with the ones that I love.

Apparently, they're remaking Hellraiser, too. Though to be honest, I don't really care. There's already like 40 of those, and I'm not sure anyone has noticed that.

My real reason for starting this post, though, is completely different. Because the movie that they're remaking now is even more ridiculous. The Last House on the Left is an extremely disturbing movie. It's gorey and rapey and honestly makes you sick to your stomach watching it. Along with I Spit on Your Grave and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this movie heralded an entirely new wave of low-budget horror that not only became Drive-In staples, but really fucked up a lot of the American psyche and certainly helped usher in that acid hangover that followed the late 60s and early 70s. Also, I would say they're directly responsible for Cannibal Holocaust, make of that what you will.
BUT.
There's no reason to remake it. Especially since there is NO FUCKING WAY POSSIBLE that it can be made in today's studios without half of America starting their own letter-writing campaigns. So we will get a watered-down and and ill-conceived version of a movie that really can't be made more terrifying. Let's face it, one could argue* that the original should never have been made. But it was. And it sets a boundary for about as sick as a (non-Japanese) horror movie can get. Why fudge that line?

So listen, Hollywood assholes. PLEASE knock it off. Make more comic book movies if you have to. Shit, make another 200 Fast y Furiouses if that makes you feel better. But try to give us something remotely new.

or you know what? Remake chick flicks. Steel Magnolias could use an update. or Beaches. If cou can't use a sliver of imagination in writing movies, at least pretend to have some variety in the genre of film you want to ruin. Dicks.

*Not me, but I can see the rationale behind it. I wonder if the remak would be NC-17. Is that still a thing?

Will Bunch on the C*** Park hooplah

As much as I like the idea of Taxpayer Field, it doesn't seem likely. Besides, weren't we just going to call it Shitty Park anyway?

I haven't made any mention of the Coatesville arsons here because there isn't anything I can say that hasn't already been said. It's disgusting and I can't imagine how hard this is for the people that live there. This sort of thing should always be abhorred, and that it's being done in such trying economic times (not to mention the middle of winter) is just salt in the wound. To the person lighting these fires: These people are going to tear you to fucking* pieces when they find you. Furthermore, nobody will want to stop them.

I truly hope this situation gets resolved as soon as possible for the sake of Coatesville and its residents. It's a terrible situation that nobody should be subjected to.


*my profanity reform has gone off the rails**, but I'm trying to use it only when I feel really strongly about something.

**the fucking rails.