Brief Essays With Pictures

Remaking somebody else’s work is a difficult thing to do. Sometimes, it is a stunning success, as in Jeff Buckley’s remake of Leonard Cohen’s “Halleleujah.” A proven piece of work was improved when reimagined by another creative force. The same goes for Cat Power’s interpretation of Oasis’s Wonderwall, and her remake of the Rolling Stones “Can’t Get No Satisfaction” is similarly satisfying. But occasionally, an attempt to remake somebody else’s work goes horribly, horribly awry.

I am currently, as I write this, enduring the nightmare that is Rob Zombie’s inexplicable remake of Halloween, one of the truly great horror movies. I am 37 minutes into this, and at literally every turn, Zombie has made the wrong decision. So far, I’ve witnessed - oh Jesus, Mom just shot herself because she was horrified about birthing Michael Myers, which isn’t what happened in the first movie. Oh, the first movie. How I wish I was watching the first movie.

1. In the first movie, we had no inclination of what drove Michael Myers to commit his evil deeds - making him all the more frightening. Zombie went a different route. He showed us everything that ever happened in Mike Myers life, so we know enough to think that Myers might actually…be justified in his endless killing? His family is awful. He kills them all. His guards in the mental hospital? Awful rapists, so he kills them both. The bully at the very beginning? He kills him. It’s a festival of dead people who are created to look as if they deserved it.

I’ve heard a rumor that the snarling Predator only attacked those, at least in the first two movies, who weren’t innocent. The reason it leaves the woman living in the train is because she’s pregnant. Zombie seems to try to set up the same thing with Myers, except he kills everybody. Unfortunately, we’re torn as viewers because we don’t know whether to loathe this fearsome killing machine - he killed Danny Trejo, a guard at the mental facility who loved him - but he also killed the rapists. What are we to do in this sort of moral quandary?

Answer: not care.

2. In the first movie, Myers kills his family as a young, young child, making the crime all the more inexplicable. Because when we first see him, we don’t know anything about him, we aren’t given reasons to disbelieve his later actions. In this movie, he’s allegedly ten, meaning that when we see him full-grown, we know to disbelieve the fact that he’s six-foot-nine, 280 pounds of muscle. He was tiny as a ten-year-old. There was no chance he grows into an enormous monster while living on hospital food.

3. Really Rob Zombie? A goddamned hour until we meet the more adult Laurie Strode? The first Halloween movie drops us into the action within ten minutes, if that. We don’t know anything more than a kid killer has apparently returned to his hometown. This movie? It takes us almost an hour to learn Myers’s backstory. What a total waste of time.

4. Everybody in my house is angry right now. Nobody is happy with this movie. We still have an hour to go.

5. Rob Zombie loves young women. To the point that it goes beyond disturbing. His female characters are naked, suggestive, aggressive, and generally act inexplicably. So the teenage girls see somebody they think is a pervert. Is the first instinct really to ask if he wants, “Some of the young stuff?”

6. Why are their placards in this movie? Am I really expected to say to my friends, “The movie really reminded me of Fassbinder’s work during it’s Trick Or Treat chapter?” Because, really, I’m never going to say that.

7. On the great list of horror movie kills, Bob getting lifted up into the air and stuck into the wall with a kitchen knife, as phsyics defying as it might be, is one of the all time greats. If it doesn’t happen in this movie, I’m turning it off….and….it doesn’t happen in the kitchen, but at this point I’ll take whatever I can get.

8. According to Bobbi, Rob Zombie loves the shot of a woman, laying on her side, from her feet, so that you can see her ass and, if you manipulate the dvd through use of its pause function, maybe see the slightest hint of a vagina. Grow up Rob Zombie. We have the internet. If we’re that desperate, we’ll find it.

9. Really? Michael kills the adoptive parents? Are you serious? Lame.

10. “And besides, the gravestone weighs half a ton…” Oh my god. Light my friggin hair on fire. What, Myers is hauling around a thousand pound gravestone? Stop giving me reasons to hate this nightmare.

11. Only 40 more minutes…I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

12. My God! It’s amazing how women have to get naked in horror movies to have sex, but men do not. How is it even possible to have sex through a pair of boxer-briefs? It isn’t that I want to see anybody’s junk, but if you want to make a gritty horror movie, then make it, and include the realistic nudity. Zombie couldn’t seem to decide what, exactly, he was making. Other than an unabated shitstorm.

13. “Loud Noises! People Screaming! I Don’t Know What We’re Yelling About!” Brick Tamland’s conversation with his coworkers in Anchorman is a pretty good way to describe this movie as we approach its ending. Its merciful ending.

14. Laurie Strode, running from Michael Myers, afraid, nervous, leads him right back to the younger children. What a cheap way to create tension. Rob Zombie = douchebag.

15. Yep. Michael Myers was hauling around a headstone that allegedly weighs a thousand pounds. Sigh.

16. In the original Halloween, Myers is obsessed with killing his family. In this movie, Michael Myers inexplicably seems to love his younger sister. Excuse me while I throw up all over this computer.

17. Everybody in my living room is terribly angry right now.

18. Loomis, with a .357 and no shooting experience, hits Michael three consecutive times and hardly recoils. It’s the little things Rob Zombie, you jerkoff.

19. “Is that the boogeyman?” “As a matter of fact, I do believe it was.” Michael reaches into the car, grabs Laurie Strode, and starts dragging her around…”Michael, it was my fault, I failed you.” Loomis is being a total loser right now…and now Michael has him, and squeezing his face to the point of crushing his skull…

“Rob Zombie, you are a master of the art,” says Evan, angrily.

Loomis is dead?!?! God, now we can’t have Halloweens 4, 5, and 6, which are hilariously bad. You haven’t lived until you learn that Michael Myers is the embodiment of Samhain, and that evil druids control his movement, and that blah, blah, blah, nobody cares. Back to this shmshmortion.

Michael clobber! Michael break! Michael crush! Michael heap strong, like bull! Michael make smashy! Oh, here’s Michael staring at Laurie while Loomis lays dead at his feet…no wait, he’s alive and grabbing Michael…and now he’s dead again. Michael crush!

Also, was it really necessary to suck for two hours? Couldn’t this movie have achieved similar levels of suckitude in less time?

“This is just tedious,” says Evan, as Michael continues to smash.
Bobbi is moaning. This movie has defeated her.

Laurie’s a bloody mess. And she has Loomis’s gun. And Michael tackles her off the balcony, instead of being shot off in the first one. Laurie’s completely broken now. And she’s got the gun at Michael’s head…and it is out of ammunition. Seriously Rob Zombie? You’re not even trying. Michael grabs her, the gun suddenly has a bullet, and she shoots her older brother in the face. Cue the classic Halloween music, and for me, bed.

Avoid this shitstorm at all costs.

As we’ve already established this week, I love when college kids are so self-righteous as to think that they’ve got something important to say. “It’s not that we object to criticism of the President,” uttered the College Republican, “It’s just that the word fuck is so foriegn to our precious ears. What’s that? Do a beer bong? Fuck yeah!” However, the protest at Colorado State was somewhat harmless, as nobody on campus cares anymore (two days later) assuming they ever cared at all.

But the students at Harvard who are whining about Jada Pinckett Smith’s alleged heteronormativity? Well they’re just fucking babies. It is shameful that college students made to feel “uncomfortable” according to the article are under the impression that their discomfort matters in the slightest. It doesn’t.

Then, to bury their discomfort in a fake word like heteronormativity? Grow up. Heteronormativity exists because the vast majority of the world is heterosexual. That doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with other forms of sexuality (outside of a few extreme examples). It just means that the vast majority of the world sees the world through a heterosexual filter. Reflecting that, even in such a way that alleged discomfort is visited upon some hyper aware trust fund babies, shouldn’t be the thought crime that some are insisting it become.

In case you think I’m making the above facts up, here’s the article itself:

“Our position is that the comments weren’t homophobic, but the content was specific to male-female relationships.”

So Pinkett Smith didn’t stray into the sorts of homophobia that ought to give us pause; rather, she spoke from her own experience as a person who has sex with the opposite sex. For this it’s being suggested that speakers ought to be warned about being tolerant of other viewpoints? What, exactly, are these few offended whiners hoping will happen the next time? That somebody who doesn’t share their experience will speak to it anyway? I can guarantee that the first straight who goes rambling in an attempt to include every conceivable relationship will get into hotter water with these same morons.

At some point, there are people throughout this country who need to figure out that their own discomfort with something is not reason enough to stamp their feet and go whining to whomever will listen. According to the article, the vast majority of the not-heteronormative organization at Harvard really liked Pinkett Smith’s comments. That ought to be evidence that maybe, just maybe, those pitching a fit might, dare I say, be wrong. There are times when we have to be responsible enough to deal with our own discomfort, and that doesn’t mean asking everybody else to change.

Based upon my enjoyment of Charles Bronson’s Death Wish 3, Netflix recommended another film I might enjoy: The Bible Collection: Moses. Somewhere, a wire is crossed.

Writing about politics is stupid. Either you’ll agree with me, or you won’t. Either we’ll see eye to eye, or we won’t. That said, Ann Coulter called John Edward a “faggot.” This occurred during a speech before the biggest annual gathering of conservatives in America.

It is impossible for anyone to believe that this happened by accident, because to believe that is to ignore the recent history of the Republican party concerning homosexuality. That Coulter was cheered immediately after making her comment says even more.

Specifically, Coulter said, “I’d say something about John Edwards, but if you use the word ‘faggot’, you have to go to rehab.”

One of the reasons that she was cheered is that there are some Americans, some of whom apparently sitting in that room, that believe that the politically correct have prevented them from honestly expressing opinions. In Coulter’s defiance of this, they see a hero, a woman willing to triumph over those demanding tolerance.

I’m no fan of political correctness. Requiring anybody to believe anything is problematic. But this isn’t about political correctness. This is about being a decent human being, and decent human beings don’t go around calling one another faggots. Coulter wasn’t kidding around when she suggested that Edwards might be gay; Coulter was dead set on undercutting her opposition in a crass way that she knew would fire up her rabid base. It isn’t bad enough that Edwards is a liberal, she’d say, but he’s gay too. And not just gay, but a “faggot.”

Decent people don’t do this sort of thing. Decent people argue with one another, disagree, and fight, but they don’t resort to throwing epithets around. They don’t resort to this sort of penny-ante bullshit.

One of the reasons that debate in this country is so toxic is Ann Coulter. She has equals on the other side, of course. The fact that we can no longer disagree without calling or being called faggots is absurd, and the reason that I stopped writing posts like this. There are more interesting things out there, more places that need to be explored, more places that need to be seen. Coulter only reminds me of that.

I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t secretly like Anna Nicole Smith’s television show. It was fantastic, as crazy as it was embarrassing. Her death today comes as shocking news.

When somebody dies that we like, perhaps its worth something to remember something about them. For me, its remembering an episode of Anna Nicole’s reality show, wherein disadvantaged children came over to play; if I’m not mistaken, perhaps they were over at Anna’s house to paint, and then ended up going crazy. Anna Nicole seemed like a real person for those few minutes. It seemed to matter to her very much that those kids have a great time. I always thought that was touching.

More on her death here.

Sometimes, it’s lonely out here on the whatever we’re calling the Internet these days. The Tubes? The Internets? Cyberspace? The Information Superhighway? Anyway, it gets lonely, particularly when you’re suffering from my particular ailment.

How do I put this gently? Women love me. But it isn’t so me, as it is my boyish good looks. They’re obsessed with how gorgeous I am, and they look past my soul. My ideas? My beliefs? My passions? They mean nothing to these lusting women, who see only my handsome face are so immediately overcome with passion that the rest of me couldn’t concern them less.

Just look at this picture of me:

When you’ve cooled off under your collar, you’ll be able to understand why I feel a certain kinship with poor Leonardo DiCaprio, who had to suffer through his selection of literally any woman he could ever want when he wasn’t busy swimming in his swimming pools full of money. It isn’t easy being us Leo, seriously.

…celebrates by raping a kid, then running away to France to escape punishment. I’m kidding, I’m kidding. That’s what he did thirty years ago. Now the serious accusation of rape leveled against him is routinely ignored by his artistic supporters. Because art trumps rape.

 People are stupid.

Bill O’Reilly went on the air after receiving tips from insiders at the Kansas Office of the Attorney General. He did so to declare one particular doctor, who performs abortions, all sorts of nastiness. O’Reilly based his diatribe on tips from private medical files. Obviously, invading the privacy of an individual to make a point on a cable chat show is of the least concern for an individual like O’Reilly.

Unless the private life of a comrade is being invaded. O’Reilly lept to Rush Limbaugh’s defense when it was revealed that the talk radio host was addicted to Oxycontin. O’Reilly alleged that it was a Democratic conspiracy against Limbaugh. So if you’re keeping score at home, here’s what to put down. Bill O’Reilly is all for invading people’s personal lives if it means the slightest ratings bump, but is totally aghast at anybody else invading the personal lives of his friends.

Got that?

Wowzers, Scott Adams wrote something awesome. I mean, Dilbert’s funny from time to time, but the phrase “deep-pocket, autofellating, corporate shitbags” has never been so beautifully rendered.

However, I draw the line at endorsing his position on voting machines. Those things will almost certainly undermine our idea of democracy. And anything that will almost certainly undermine democracy is a bad idea.

Hey idiot, how about taking care of the three kids that you’ve got? How about spending a little bit of time with your first born children? I’m glad that you care so deeply about all of the children worldwide who desperately need homes, but when you’re giving quotes like, “It’s, you know, another boy, another girl, which country, which race would fit best with the kids…” it sort of seems like you’re comparison shopping for the most adorable infant. How about using some of that fantastic wealth of yours and adopting some kids who aren’t perfectly prepared for the paparrazi?