Hellboy sweetness

Hellboy: Darkness Calls

Sometimes to get a comic shop to order a lot of copies of a particular comic, a publisher will offer a “retailer incentive.” This is often some sort of poster or super-rare variant cover or even a collectible like an action figure, and the comic shop gets one if it orders enough copies of the comic. Then the store can put the incentive on display, though often enough they’ll just sell it to a rabid fan, usually at an exorbitant price.

The current Hellboy miniseries is called Darkness Calls, and the retailer incentive was a beautiful 18×24 poster signed by artist and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. Since I’m known as the local Hellboy freak at New England Comics in Harvard Square, the manager, Matt, set aside the poster and sold it to me for an insanely reasonable price. I’m actually jealous of me.

I can’t thank Matt enough, so instead I’ll plug his rap/funk/rock band, Type 4. You can also check out his Myspace page here.

(Oh, and so far, Darkness Calls is really good. It’s written by Mignola but drawn but Duncan Fegredo, since Mignola is busy with Hellboy 2.)

Live Free or Die Hard

Yippie-ki-ay, mother(BLAM!)

I don’t remember the first time I saw Die Hard. I do know I loved the movie as a kid, which was one of the great action films of my youth alongside The Terminator and T2, Predator, Aliens and Robocop (though I saw most of these as edited network television versions, rather than the R-rated originals). In junior high school I wrote a story in which my high school was taken over by terrorists and my friends and I were the heroes who fought them, crawling through air ducts and using makeshift weapons–an obvious rip-off of Bruce Willis’s first starring vehicle.

I read an article recently (can’t remember where, sorry) that listed the greatest action movies, and on the entry on Die Hard it mentioned how Willis’s John McClane, a blue-collar New York cop who gets caught up in a terrorist attack on an office building in Los Angeles, was a different kind of hero than the bad-ass, unstoppable Herculean killing machines that Arnold (Commando) Schwarzenegger and Sylvester (Rambo II) Stallone tended to play. As the movie begins, McClane is having trouble with his marriage, irritable from having sat through a long flight across the country, and as uncomfortable with the flaky California culture as only a lifelong New Yorker can be. Over the course of the first film, McClane is beaten, stabbed, shot, burned, blown up, and forced to walk barefoot over broken glass–and unlike Stallone or Schwarzenegger, all those wounds add up, to the point where his wife gasps in shock when she sees what’s become of him near the end of the film. (more…)

Catholic school considers admitting Hell boy

Catholic school opens gates to Hell boy

Live Free and Roll Out

There’s so much I could be blogging on—and yet, nothing at all. (That’s deep, yesno?)

There are a lot of movies out I want to see. There’s 1408, for instance. I recently read the short story it’s based on, and I have to say it was one of the least-scary things I’ve ever read, to say nothing of the least-scary thing I’ve read by Stephen King. “The Body” (the source of Stand By Me) was scarier. But the film looks more interesting, and I always enjoy John Cusack and I usually enjoy Samuel L.

Then there’s Live Free or Die Hard, which I’m planning on seeing tomorrow. I love the original Die Hard as well as the second sequel, Die Hard With a Vengeance. I’ve only seen Die Harder once or twice, and for some reason I don’t find it as appealing—maybe because Vengeance has something of a plausible explanation for why McClane gets involved in yet another terrorist incident. I was initially skeptical of Live Free or Die Hard—the title is pretty lame, and I’m wary of this whole better-late-than-never sequel trend (Rocky Balboa, John Rambo, Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods). But I’ve heard good things about LFoDH, and I can’t really think of a Bruce Willis movie I haven’t liked (though I’ve never seen Hudson Hawk), so I’m giving it a shot.

Then there’s Transformers. Fifteen years ago, I would have been the first person in line to see that movie. At the age of fourteen I wrote a gigantic Transformers pastiche (fanfic) that was over 200 pages when printed. From about age six to fourteen, I loved the Transformers. They were a huge part of much childhood. And yet, I’m just not really excited about the movie. One would think the movie would have re-awakened my Transformers obsession; after all, I spent years collecting the revamped Masters of the Universe line back in 2002-04. But for whatever reason, it hasn’t taken hold.

Oh, I’ll see the movie. Soon. But in terms of movies I’m really looking forward to, I’m all about The Dark Knight and Hellboy 2 (and the aforementioned City of the Gods). 30 Days of Night might be good, too. And I have high hopes for I Am Legend. Oh, and The Bourne Ultimatum.

The trick is actually getting out to the theater, gritting your teeth and laying down a ten spot for the privilege of watching pre-presentation commercials and getting gouged at the concession stand.

Training session in the garden of good and evil (w/ pics!)

I apologize for the almost epic pause between posts. I spent all of last week in Savannah, Georgia for a training session for my job. I ended up having to be there from Monday through Saturday evening, so it was one long trip down there in the land of Oglethorpe.

I stayed at the Hilton in downtown Savannah, so I had the chance to become pretty well acquainted with the city.

The main impression I was left with is that in mid-summer, Savannah is really hot. And muggy. Hot and muggy. Sweat was the order of the day. I was pretty ripe when I got back; in fact, DG demanded that I shower immediately when we got home, because I “didn’t smell like Jason.” I would argue that I smelled more like Jason than I ever had before, instead of soap and Pert Plus. In any event, it was a relief to wash off yet another layer of dried sweat.

Most of our time during the day was spent in training, but we were done by 5 PM and at that point we could stroll around Savannah to our heart’s content. Savannah has a lovely boardwalk along the Savannah River on what is aptly titled “River Street.” River Street is home to River Street Sweets, where I discovered I apparently love pralines. A lot. I brought some back for DG, but the sugar was a bit too much for her, so I think I ended up eating most of that box too.

I spent most of my time in Savannah with my co-worker Jackie (see below). Somehow we managed not to drive each other crazy, and we had a good time hanging out with all the other librarians. We were the only Yankees in a group of Southerners, yet there were hardly any references to the War of Northern Aggression or grumbling asides about “that old drunk Grant.” Maybe one or two.

On Friday evening my college roommate Jim drove up to see me from Atlanta and, along with Jackie, we went on a so-called “Ghost tour.” Savannah is allegedly home to many ghosts, possibly due to the constant yellow fever outbreaks that struck the city every summer for the first 200 years of its existence.

However, I have to admit that this ghost tour was less than impressive. Our guide clearly didn’t believe in ghosts at all, and it became evident over the course of the tour that he was doing this to pay off those student loans on his Masters in history. The guide also refused to make eye contact with anyone, instead keeping his eyes focused on a point somewhere above our heads, which was disconcerting after a while. The scariest part of the tour was when he started talking about how the yellow fever was transmitted and we all noticed we were being eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Jim and me

That’s Jim and me on the ghost tour. Yes, it was damn hot, even at night.

In order to take a direct flight back (rather than have to go through, say, Detroit), Jackie and I ended up staying an extra day. So on Saturday, we visited Fort Pulaski, a Civil War-era fort who had the dubious honor of being the first victim of rifled cannon, which forced the Confederates to surrender within a mere thirty hours. Some of the shells are still embedded in the fort’s brick walls.

Jackie and me

That’s Jackie and me in front of the fort. Again, it was really hot. Apparently the moat was full of alligators, though I didn’t find that out until later, after I’d been walking along the stone edge.

One of the earliest known photographs of men playing baseball was taken in Fort Pulaski. We were fortunate enough to catch a reenactment of an old-timey baseball game (I should mention the last two photos are courtesy of Jackie, while the first is from Jim—I forgot my camera).

Baseball in Fort Pulaski

Jason vs. Jason

I can’t do it.

Four movies in and I’ve come to the conclusion that this slasher-film-fest is not going to work. Even Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter, with its crazy Corey Feldman and its macheted Crispin Glover, could not win me over.

I’ve discovered I really don’t like slasher movies. I like monster movies—preferably monster movies with some semblance of a plot or theme.

I liked Freddy vs. Jason, but I think that may have beeen because both franchises had acquired enough “mythology” in their respective universes to allow for a vaguely interesting plot. Freddy and Jason were both full-fledged supernatural monsters by that point. Also, I grew up a huge fan of Godzilla movies, and the whole “versus” concept seemed like a campy nod to those days.

But these early films…I don’t get the appeal of slasher films. I guess it’s similar to that of movies like Hostel and Saw. I know that there are real-life psychotics out there who murder people in brutal fashion—I don’t get any enjoyment out of seeing it on-screen.

I admit the Friday the 13th films are particularly egregious. Unlike Halloween, which had good direction and a horror-in-suburbia theme, or A Nightmare on Elm Street, which had a more intriguing plot and antagonist, these Friday the 13th films just have a guy in a hockey mask killing people in gory fashion. I found myself wondering why, exactly, Jason kills all these people. After his very first victim, we aren’t given any reason for the rest of his endless murder spree. How about some psychological background at least? Of course, Jason’s very existence is an affront to what is set up in the first film, which at least has the infamous reverse-Psycho twist at the end.

Anyway, I’m sorry, folks. It was a good idea, but I began to crave oblivion before I could even finish the first franchise. I realize these are probably the worst films of the lot, but I just can’t bear the idea of watching hundreds more teenagers get hacked, slashed, strangled, tortured and whatnot.

I think I’m gonna go watch The Monster Squad again.

Dramatic chipmunk (or prairie dog?)

For some reason, I find this five second video really funny.

Thinking a(decapitated)head

I’ve mentioned that this year’s Halloween Month is going to feature reviews of all the Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween movies. Well, so I don’t have to play catch-up in October, I’ve decided to start really early, so tonight I intend to watch Friday the 13th. I’ve seen it before and it’s definitely not a favorite of mine, but I want to do this scientifically.

The question is this: at what point will I go foaming, eye-gougingly insane? Will it occur during the pointlessness of Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, which features not Jason Voorhees but a lame copycat killer? Or will life become meaningless during Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which has nothing to do with Michael Myers?

I can promise you this: these won’t just be the same sort of straight review w/ photos deal I did last year. I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve that should make this year’s Halloween Month a bit more interesting.

DG and I celebrated our three-year anniversary yesterday. It was three years ago that she took her comprehensive exams for her Ph.D and decided she was now free to flirt with that cute boy who’d sublet the spare room in the apartment she shared with her friends. That boy of course fell for her immediately, or rather already had, though his attempts to show it—such as showing off the way he’d strung up a Superman action figure on fishing line so it looked like it was flying—failed miserably. And then that boy left and I came along and swept DG off her feet. (I kid of course. I was that kid with the Superman figure.)

Somehow I’ve managed to keep her around. I guess I must be doing something right, even if that something is just lookin’ so good. Or maybe it’s the action figure collection. Girls love that…right?

On a side note, my good friend Kate leaves for a week-long trip to the UK this weekend. She’ll be visiting a lot of the same places I did when I was there in summer 2000, including Salisbury and Hay-on-Wye in Wales. Please join me in wishing her a great trip!

Dusk of the Dead

As you have all no doubt figured out by now, the two posts I put up yesterday were gags, part of Blog Like It’s the End of the World, an event organized by blogger Steve Wilson. The idea was to write your blog as if a zombie uprising had actually occurred, Dawn of the Dead-style.

Hundreds, maybe even thousands of bloggers participated, with all sorts of different approaches to the task. I tried to work pretty straightforward, imagining the situation as realistically as possible—if I were actually able to post a blog about something like that, what would I write? How would I really behave during a zombie uprising? Judging from the number of friends who told me they freaked out upon reading the first few paragraphs of my post, it seems I was successful. For all of you who got a little scare, like those folks who heard Orson Welles’s famous War of the Worlds radio broadcast…you’re welcome.

Some of the other Sphere of Influencers participated in BLITEOTW. Most notable is the Jersey Exile, who ended up blogging nearly 6,000 words by the end. His entries read almost like a work of fiction, a Lovecraftian journal chronicling the hideous events.

Stone also pretended he was being swarmed in Watertown. And Robin took a slightly different tack, pointing out the similarities between zombies and burned-out college students.

I’d like to thank all the people who commented—you guys were great. Oh, and DG is fine, by the way. She actually stayed home sick yesterday while I went to work.

Wilson says he plans to hold the event again next year on June 13 (perhaps with a different threat—aliens maybe), so those of you who didn’t participate this time around can sharpen up your shotguns and load your chainsaws.

BRAAAAAINNNSSS!!!

later

I just saw someone get eaten.

It was a woman, young, maybe a college student. She was running up Dighton, and she was outpacing a few of them down the street, easy. The things are slow. I went to open the window, call out to her and tell her she could hole up in here, when I saw one of them lurch out from behind a parked car. I couldn’t see the damned thing from my angle.

She struggled for a second but it had already bitten into her arm. She tore at it, trying to get away, but another one of the things had already come around the corner. It…they kept biting her…and then the others caught up–she screamed for minutes, MINUTES, she wouldn’t stop screaming, and then finally she did, and then there was just that wet smacking sound…I shut the window…

No word from DG. Or my family. Email seems to be down, but the damned Internet is still working somehow. How does that make any sense? There seems to be more of them roving around out there. I might have been able to make my car before, but not now. Not after what I just saw.

The TV’s not broadcasting anymore, and I turned the radio off. No one seemed to be getting news reports anymore anyway. And they had nothing useful to say–no one seems to know anything. There was a report, don’t know how reliable it is, that the outbreak started in Louisville (the American outbreak, that is) and the government nuked the city off the map. Could it be true? I guess I could believe anything now.

I thought about going into the hallway and knocking on a few doors, see if anyone else is holed up, but I’m too freaked out…who knows, people might be sitting in front of their doors with shotguns and itchy trigger fingers. Too dangerous right now. I think I’m going to take stock of the food. The power’s going to go out eventually, I need to eat some of the cold foods now while I still can.

I wonder where DG is.

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