P P U N C H

How to make an unsatisfying, if not stupefying, documentary about modern-day vampire flicks (as if making a documentary about modern-day vampire flicks isn’t already a losing proposition):

1) Put a camera anywhere near picture-perfect internet weirdo Harry Knowles
1a) Surround Knowles with clips from folks that make him sound like the defacto expert on all things vampiric and shitty
2) Include the abysmal John Carpenter’s Vampires in the roll call (and neglect to use any clips of James Woods’ pastor-baiting pecker-talk)
3) Cheech Marin? Really? What, were the rights to Salma Hayek red-carpet footage too expensive?
4) Let Uwe Boll hold court about how his dramatic decisions in making the film version of Bloodrayne were an improvement on the source material (though, nominally, the script was written by the same woman that’s worked on some better flicks; I have no doubt Boll did his best to make sure this particular pooch was screwed)
4a) Make Kristanna Loken talk about her participation in Bloodrayne
4b) Not forcing Ben Kingsley to go through the same indignity
5) Letting Joel Schumacher hold court on how Bram Stoker’s interpretation of the vampire myth is a metaphor for oral sex
5a) VAMPIRES ARE SEXY OMG REALLY CAN WE HAVES PROOF
5b) No Hammer Studio boobs = YOU FAIL
5c) Making The Lost Boys a progenitor of the modern vamp flick because either Stephen Sommers (Mr. Van Helsing) or Len Wiseman (Mr. Underworld) gives it props
6) Corey Haim, and no Corey Feldman?
7) NO FRIGHT NIGHT! (or are Tom Holland & Chris Sarandon holding out for the killer-doll retrospective?)
8) Not nearly enough John Landis (along with Tomb of Dracula writer Marv Wolfman, the only bright spots of this thing)
9) Not nearly enough of Coppola’s batshit-loony Dracula stab (and, no, Knowles praising the film as Coppola unleashed! counts; give the dude a free Ho-Ho, he’ll probably write 2000 words on the finer qualities of Mansquito) (hell, give me one, and I’ll do it)
10) Not nearly enough on non-American vampire flicks (the quota-filling talk about the same-time filming of the American and Spanish versions of Dracula, and the requisite Hammer Studio mention, do not count)
11) If we’re going to praise shitty movies with special FX involving vampires (hello Queen of the Damned), why not give a nod to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Ultraviolet?

However, if the juxtaposition between multiple folks weighing in on the evils of immortality & John Carpenter (claiming, yeah, living forever would be pretty sweet) was intentional, then kudos.

So after buying (and starting) the book a number of months ago, I finally got back around to continuing Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics. The fact that the only books of late that I’ve read have been comics, I’m hoping my love-em-and-leave-em “real” book reading policy of late - victims include a Ray Bradbury short story collection, A Scanner Darkly, and V - might go by the wayside if I read a book about comics. It helps that the book is as engaging and intelligent as Douglas’ other work (some of which, for the sake of disclosure, is now published for the same web-based music publication that sometimes gives me the time of day).

So I’m reading along, and I get to page 74 - Douglas is discussing the accepted mores and traditions of superhero comics, and how questioning their validity will inspire certain fans of such things to beat you about the head:

[Pulse co-editor Heidi McDonald and I] were complaining to each other that there didn’t seem to be a lot of smart, harsh comics criticism on the Web, and that a lot of the way readers talked about mainstream comics was to judge them on how well they played to the visual and storytelling conventions their readers expected, instead of on their own worth as art or entertainment as such.

The idea Heidi & Douglas cooked up - write spoof reviews for The Pulse in the voice of a young woman that was a newcomer to comics, under the pseudonym Jess Lemon. (The link in Lemon’s name goes to a page listing all the reviews Douglas wrote as Lemon.) As someone that read The Pulse around the time Lemon made the scene & vaguely recalls the furor “her” reviews caused, finding out Douglas was the primary perpetrator was a neat little kick in the pants.

Some interesting trends in the comments section on Lemon’s first review (of Outsiders #1, a book rife with the sort of shit wrong with mainstream comics, & also a book I didn’t mind all that much when I first read it, which makes me part of the problem, which I’ll get to):

- a handful of comic pros give Lemon the thumbs-up for calling a spade a spade (not a shocker)

- a handful of bystanders also give her props, and even give her suggestions on stuff to review, with hopes that she’ll give it a proper spanking (again, not a shocker - even if a review is fair and balanced in its dismissal, folks in agreement are going to joyously hop on the bandwagon and hope more of their views are corroborated, preferably in a venomous and cathartic manner - I think Douglas touches on this in the book, but I can’t recall the passage)

- one of the professionals getting zinged takes it personally, mostly on the basis that she (admittedly) doesn’t know all that much about comics (yeah, it sucks when you get dinged, regardless of the validity of said dings)

- as Douglas notes in the book, once it’s established that Lemon’s female, some of her naysayers lay into Lemon’s lack of comic knowledge with relish: “This is a review written by a girl who thinks comics are just plain stupid and like so many other girlriends and wife’s of comic book fans she’s immediately turned off/resentful to the big boobs in comics. (just go to a bar and listen to the catty remarks a big chested lady gets from other woman, its hilarious.)”

For what it’s worth, I didn’t think much of Lemon’s reviews when I first read them - though they made some good points, a lot of times the targets were the same old What’s Wrong With Comics talking points that have always been deserving of criticism (or, maybe more appropriately, ridicule). Those sorts of potshots would fly a lot better if these reviews were posted in a venue more geared towards the sort of reader Lemon purported to be. Doing it in a venue where the readers are, as Douglas terms them, “superreaders” - folks aware of the ins and out of the comic language - makes this enterprise seem a bit ignoble, which some folks did not appreciate. (I only link to Alan David Doane’s wrongheaded dismissal of Douglas’ book because I’ll go off on a tangent I don’t want to end up on if I quote some of the more inflammatory sections.)

Looking at them now (& knowing what I know about their origin), there also seems to be, at times, an inconsistency in Lemon’s voice, a knowing & forced naivety that, in hindsight, seems to scream FAKE. Interestingly enough, in the comment section of a few of Lemon’s posts, there’s a poster that points out the same sort of niggling touches, and tries to piece together a case that Lemon’s a construct. The name of the poster, conveniently, is Douglas1 - whether it’s Douglas being Douglas1, or Heidi, or Pulse co-editor Jennifer Contino, or just some dude making with the magnifying class and pipe, it’s just another interesting twist on this whole caper.

As for claiming I’m part of the problem: simply put, I’m a victim of comic industry Stockholm Syndrome, inured to the tropes and commonplace idiocy Lemon rails against. Instead of having the incongruities and inconsistencies of the story and the art and whatever else jab me in the eyes as they do Lemon, I’m rolling with the punches, for the same reasons fans of serial fiction put up with all sorts of shit. Fondness for the characters, fondness for the creators, wanting so badly to revel in this particular brand of escapism that quality becomes a secondary concern, putting the need to find out what happens next above wondering whether it’s worth the trouble and time to find out.

I’m going to reneg on a previous claim and paraphrase one of ADD’s comments from the link above - his problem with the Lemon exercise is that it was an opportunity to set ignorant comic fans (supposedly those like the strawmen I describe in the previous paragraph) straight and educate them, and was instead exploited for a few cheap laughs at the expense of the great unwashed. It’s that word “educate” that gets me all bothered, at least in the way he employs it. Maybe the line between “inform” and “educate” is a fine one, and possibly just a semantical one, but it’s one I crossed a while back (when I was stuck up enough to think that what I thought about things was going to set shit straight and fix any number of supposed aesthetic slights), and in my eyes it’s the difference between engaging the reader (something Douglas does very well) (NB: I am not getting paid every time I praise his work) and attacking them.

The discussion that’s going on (or already happened) in music blogs about criticism and blogs and such could tie into this (maybe), but there’s no more tying to be had tonight.

The main reason I never, ever, ever post to this thing is because I’ve been in a meta sort of mood for most of the past few years (like, 20 or so), and I hate when I either 1) indulge the mood, and market myself as the downtrodden sidekick getting aw-shucked by the world (because blogging is marketing, either “here I am,” or “here are these things I want you to read about,” or both), or 2) try to fight the head-up-ass inclinations and spend X number of paragraphs boringly blabbing about this or that. I could get a LiveJournal to work this shit out (or, hey, try one of those old-fashioned bound things with paper in them), but it’s pretty clear that my interest in talking about me me me me (and only me - I’m a “here are things…” kind of guy) has shriveled to undetectable amounts. This, despite the yearning I have to spew about dumb personal shit, even if it’s in some back-assward twice-removed “friend of a friend” fashion.

So here’s to me trying to get over this hump & entertain myself (& by proxy, internet folk) without incurring the wrath of motherfucking comment spammers.

It’s 2:30 AM, the Red Sox whupped on their pale cousins on the South Side (twice!), and the Yankees & Tigers are playing regulation baseball, thanks to a puzzling 4-hour rain delay. Consider this post as close to Twittering as I’m likely to get.

UPDATE: It’s 3:04 AM, and Yankee shill Michael Kay is fellating Mariano Rivera as he pours strikes across the plate against 20-year-old rookie Cameron Maybin, who might be struck out by the time I finish this typing this sentence. (Please note that CM struck out about 35 seconds later.)

And now, to continue my King Of The Obvious tour through the crap rattling around in my head, and with apologies to Seth Mnookin (and, hell, even Fire Joe Morgan): Murray Chass is a gormless braindead feeb whose ability to actually add two single-digit numbers went the way of his hair. (I link to BTF, because the NYT will be asking for PAY PDQ, and I don’t want to link to that sort of thing unless the PAY is heading to ME.) Let me count the ways (while forgetting to check if I need to do laundry):

1) “Projections in baseball are overused and meaningless. […] But here is one projection that could actually have some potential as a barometer. Even better, it could create some fun: At the rate at which the Yankees are slashing into Boston’s lead in the American League East, they will pass the Red Sox in the standings by July 4.”

Welcome to the wide wonderful world of Strength of Schedule. After the conclusion of the “thrilling, pulse-pounding, season-turning” (that’s a paraphrase, not a quote) 6-5 Yankee victory against the Red Sox in Fenway two Sundays ago, the Yankees traveled to Chicago (27-34, as of today, 6/12), then returned home to tussle with the Pittsburgh Pirates (27-37). Meanwhile, the Sox traveled far west for four games with the Oakland A’s (34-28), then hopped to Arizona to enjoy the hospitality of the Diamondbacks (37-27). Guess who had the tougher go of it?

In a turn of events that will shock no one (except maybe Chass), the Yankees won six out of seven (three of four in Chicago; a clean sweep of the shoot-me-now Pirates). Meanwhile, the Red Sox lost three of four to the A’s superlative (and timely) pitching, then took two of three from Arizona (damn you Randy Johnson), for a final total of 3 wins and 4 losses. Meaning that the Yankees gained three games on the Sox during this stretch.

Never mind that Jim Tracy mismanaged the one game he could’ve won (by leaving Gorzelanny out for way too long to start the 7th - a leadoff double by Miguel Cairo ain’t the sort of thing you pitch through late in a start, coach - then turning to two shitbirds to navigate through the heart of the Yankee lineup while Damaso Marte, your 2nd best bullpen guy behind The Closer [no Sedgwick], languishes in the bullpen until two runs are given up). Never mind that the White Sox have the worst offense in all of baseball. Never mind that the A’s have the lowest team ERA in the American League (and are only .11 earned runs behind the Petco-padded Padres). And God forbid Chass should look past his own willful myopia and note that the Diamondbacks are a first place team.

No, this past week of action is clearly a sign that the Yankees are surging and the Red Sox are flailing, and the oft-mentioned specter of 1978 (shut the hell up, Miller & Morgan) is going to swoop by and touch the bat of some no-hit middle infielder (Miguel!) during a pivotal late-season match-up between MLB’s Hatfields and McCoys. Astute analysis, Mr. Chass - yes, if the Yankees get to switch off between two of the worst teams in baseball for the rest of the season, while the Red Sox contend with an AL Wild Card hopeful and a division-leader, then the Yankees will eventually overtake the Red Sox. It’s no wonder he writes for the Times, with that sort of brainpower at his disposal.

2) ” Speaking of 1978 [Ed. Note - NO WAI?], the Yankees didn’t eradicate their 14-game deficit overnight. They went quickly from 14 to 10 in only four days, then picked up two more games during the following four-day period. But from July 27 on it was a slow process; a month later, the Yankees had sliced only half a game from their deficit, meaning that they lagged seven and a half games behind Boston with five weeks left in the season. […] The point is that even if the Yankees don’t continue to slash gobs of games from Boston’s lead in the coming days or weeks, it doesn’t mean that the Red Sox are safe. Sixteen weeks remain in the season, which is plenty of time for dramatic events to occur.”

Actually, Mr. Chass (if I may condescend), the point is that little sentence fragment I bold-faced up there. 1978 was a one-in-a-million occurrence that required so many perfect storms and broken mirrors and black cats to even get to the one-game playoff that ultimately cost the Red Sox the division, never mind making up that sort of deficit in just over a month. Entering today, a .500 finish for the rest of the season means the Red Sox end up with 90 wins. The Yankees would have to, in essence, play as well as the Red Sox have to this point in the season for the rest of the season - a 61-40 record - to win the division.

And this is with the Yankees having already played tiddlywinks with the D-Rays for four games, and the punchless ChiSox SEVEN times. while only getting three rounds with (let’s emphasize this) the best pitching staff in the American League. And this is with Boston having already played Detroit four times and their full complement of A’s games (seven) & having yet to face the White Sox or Tampa Bay. Yeah, the Sox had the Royals thrice (with nonce for NY, ods bodkins), and the Yankees had to contend with those “surprising” Mariners - yeah, that team with the solid offense and god-awful pitching, those “surprising” Mariners, the “AL West version of the Yankees” Mariners - for all of seven games (to three for Boston). And, yeah, facing the Mets is a tougher row to hoe than facing the Braves.

But, still, what I’m getting at - that 60-win thing the Yankees would have to do (assuming the Red Sox only break even from this point forward) isn’t that likely. Which leads to Strike Three:

3) “Clemens, Chien-Ming Wang, Andy Pettitte and Mike Mussina should be good enough to match the Boston starters. That rotation has an unbeaten Josh Beckett (9-0), but it also has two pitchers, Tim Wakefield and Julián Tavárez, who have losing records on a team that has the best record in the major leagues.”

I’ll give the Yankees Wang and Pettitte (though I’m waiting for the wheels to come off of Wang’s K-less carriage, and Pettitte’s personal relationship with God might not keep him safe from the injury bugaboo that’s bitten him in the past). And, sure, Clemens, for 28 pro-rated million dollars, might be good (though that 100+ pitch effort against Pittsburgh isn’t an inspiring sort of thing). But Mussina’s nothing close to a sure thing until he can actually bring a non-mediocre effort to the mound on a consistent basis. And that fifth-slot - home to either a Tampa-fied Igawa, or the three-headed rookie monster (DeKarpard?) that’s been schlepping out to the mound for most of the season, or that Hughes kid with the potential and the boo-boos - is a crapshoot.

Meanwhile, those beloved scrappy Red Sox (cough cough) have four starting pitchers - four! - with ten starts or more and ERAs at or under 4.52. (It would be prettier if Dice-K could actually drop the .02 points off his ERA to make things nice and shiny, but I won’t quibble.) Tavárez has a robust 5.25 ERA as well, but he’s the damn fifth starter, and he’s shaved nearly a run and a half off of his average since May 11th. And he’s taken the mound as the starter over ten times as well.

As for those telling, damning records under .500 that show 40% of the Red Sox rotation is shark chum? Wakefield is a whole 2 games below the break-even point - at 5-7, he’s been hit with every decision for every game he’s started, and he’s earned 5 of those 7 losses (with two Quality Starts going for naught). Meanwhile, Tavárez is living some sort of charmed life, because the Red Sox have split the difference in his 12 starts to date. Again, he’s the damn fifth starter - if you can win half of the games your fifth starter is pitching, then you’re doing something right.

And never mind the bullpen differential, Mr. Journalist Sir. The Red Sox bullpen has definitely exceeded expectations, thanks to Hideki Okajima’s coming-out party and Brendan Donnelly’s return to (Emery-abetted?) form. (I’m going to take a wild guess and say that J.C. Romero’s 1.95 WHIP, .308 BAA, and 3.15 ERA makes him the winner of the Inherited Runners Scoring contest. Maybe Rolaids should hand out a Firestarter award, too?) Meanwhile, the Yankees, hamstrung by both a rash of starting-pitching injuries and Joe Torre’s usage patterns - “you’re my guy until your arm falls off, unless the moons align and I have undercooked chicken the night you blow a lead; then you’re in the doghouse come Hell or herpes” - have a bunch of guys of varying quality getting worked like Iditarod sled teams. The Yankees have four bullpen guys in the top 20 in appearances - 3 effective (Scott Proctor, Brian Bruney, Mike Myers), 1 walking cussword (Jose “LOL @ Randy Johnson” Vizcaino). The only other team with many relievers in the top 20: the Baltimore Orioles, not the team you want to be kissing cousins with in the pitching department.

And it’s no doubt that the overworked and ineffective bullpen (see one Mariano Rivera’s April & May) are the cause for the Yankees’ one true failing - their awful one-run-game record. The Red Sox, leading the charmed bullpen-abetted life they are - 11-6 (now 12-6, thanks to tonight’s 2-1 squeaker against the Rockies). The Yankees, getting bit in the ass - 4-10. If my math’s right, that’s 5.5 games in the standings right there. And that’s why the Yankees, despite outscoring their opponents by 52 runs to date this season, are just getting back to the .500 mark this evening, and have a hell of a mountain to climb.

Now I’m as much a fan of a good story as Mr. Chass claims to be in this joke of a column. But, as a Red Sox fan (not of the Pukka-shell Jeter-AIDS variety, though fuck one fistpump sans lube, if you please), I pray that the Yankees get nowhere near the division lead. After the WTF turn of events in 2005 - wherein sporadically-talented slapheads like Aaron Small and Shawn Chacon saved the Yankee season by pitching out of their minds - I’ve had my fill of Yankee mystique and pinstripe pride and all of the regular-season shenanigans that have had the Yankees exposed in the postseason like the glossy paper tigers they’ve been for the past three years. Questionable pitching (and pitcher usage), coupled with inopportune hitting slumps (hi Alex), a godawful bench (Miguel!), and the sort of defense that fuels the fancies of drunk co-ed softball teams, has lead to New York going championshipless the past six years. That’s really a shame for the Tri-State area, but I’m all for it, as are the majority of baseball fans sick of Yankee overexposure. (Said fans are probably sick of Red Sox overexposure as well, to whom I say: deez nutz, they are yours to suck, ha ha and a ha.)

Unfortunately for me and other haters, Brian Cashman knows his ass from a hole in the ground, and seems to have the sort of control over Georgie Boy that the caretakers in the late 80s / early 90s were incapable of exercising. But I will continue to hope for a return to those halcyon days of my baseball youth, when the azure green fields of Yankee Stadium were patrolled by Kevin Maas and Oscar Azocar, when Andy Hawkins and Tim Leary toed the rubber for the New York faithful (and could lose no-hitters), when John Sterling wasn’t an insufferable catch-phrase loving drunk sack of ass. And this year, with its confluence of bad luck and bad habits, and the presence of such sainted names as Melky and Clippard and DeSalvo, carries with it the airs of those sunny days of my misbegotten youth. I find myself basking in the sort of nostalgic vapors I wasn’t expecting to sniff until I hit the big 4-0, and for that, even if it’s only for these past nine weeks of the season, I am eternally grateful.

And to Murray Chass - thanks for getting me worked up enough to actually write something about baseball that’s in my own voice, for a change. You suck, but you’re OK.

(And if you actually read all the way to here, and you don’t want to punch me in the taint, how’s about saying howdy?)

Honestly, I would love to know what “they” were waiting for, if “they” are actually up in arms over the way The Sopranos ended last night. Would it have been better seeing Tony eat a bullet and actually pay for all the shit he’s perpetrated? Or maybe some flash-forward where Tony’s in Uncle June’s chair, senile and alone? Or maybe laid up in the hospital again, like Silvio (or like he was last year), with his grief-stricken wife pumicing his feet?

I had the distinct pleasure of tuning into ESPN Radio’s Mike & Mike just as they were broaching the topic of The Sopranos series finale. Mike Greenberg (the soft-spoken, genteel asshat, relatively speaking) was running through a list of other notable season finales, with Mike Golic (the boisterous, know-nothing asshat, relatively speaking) interjecting his thoughts. When they finally came around to the topic at hand, Golic announced that The Sopranos finale would rank with the Seinfeld finale as one of the worst ever. Turns out Greenberg was the voice of reason (a surprise to me) - he related the finale to a story he heard in elementary school, The Lady And The Tiger.

In short, it’s the story about a lower-class man who deigns to fall in love with the king’s daughter, and is sentenced to choose his fate in an arena. In this arena, he has the choice of two doors - behind one “there came out of it a hungry tiger, the fiercest and most cruel that could be procured, which immediately sprang upon him and tore him to pieces as a punishment for his guilt”; behind the other “there came forth from it a lady, the most suitable to his years and station that his majesty could select among his fair subjects, and to this lady he was immediately married, as a reward of his innocence.” The princess knew which door lead to the lady, and she signaled to the man which door he should open. And this is how the author ends the story:

The question of her decision is one not to be lightly considered, and it is not for me to presume to set myself up as the one person able to answer it. And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of the opened door - the lady, or the tiger?

The way The Sopranos chose to end is like this - Tony’s sitting down to dinner with Carmela (his wife) and AJ (his son); his daughter, Meadow, is outside trying to parallel park. Meanwhile, the camera cuts between various patrons in the restaurant - a young couple, an older man with some boy scouts, a guy in a trucker hat getting a coffee - and this man in a Members Only jacket that precedes AJ into the restaurant. He sits at the counter, glancing over his should, though what he’s looking at isn’t shown. Later on in the scene, this man gets up to go to the bathroom, which is to Tony’s right. The show officially ends with the following: Meadow running from her finally-parked car towards the restaurant; a shot of Tony & his family sitting at their table, eating onion rings & reading the menu; a shot of Tony looking up as the bell attached to the front door rings; 15 seconds of darkness (give or take).

Does the Members Only guy pop Tony? Do the two guys window-shopping at the deli case, who enter just a few seconds earlier, do a number on him? Does someone else in the restaurant do him? You can presuppose, sure - you can link the sudden darkness (as many have) to the conversation Tony had with his brother-in-law Bobbie about death, and extrapolate that Tony did actually die. Maybe some of the diners do have tenuous connections to shit that Tony & Co have pulled off in the past. (I’ll admit that my knowledge regarding this show goes back only to the start of the previous season, with a quick 1st season dalliance courtesy of NetFlix.)

All I know is that final shot, just before the darkness, right before Steve Perry hits the word “stop” - as if the going-to-the-bathroom Godfather nod wasn’t enough, David Chase one-ups Scorsese by soundtracking this fantastically-paced tension-wrought scene with Journey, of all things. It’s Tony looking towards the door, and the look on his face isn’t necessarily the look of someone checking to see if that’s his daughter walking through the door. It’s the look of someone expecting something he doesn’t want to see coming at him. It’s probably the look Tony Soprano’s given every opening door for as long as he’s been a made man. It’s the resignation of a man that realizes he could die at any moment.

Or maybe it’s the dopey look of a guy thought-deep in a bowl of onion rings, his head jerking up at the sound of the bell like Pavlov’s at the other end. Some might say it’s a copout, Chase choosing to end things this way, especially with so much unresolved, but it’s to his credit that he knows how and when to end a scene that allows folks (folks that want to give the show the time and thought it asks from viewers) the opportunity to conjure up all these scenarios and suppositions. This is what Greenberg’s point was, when talking about The Tiger And The Lady - instead of the author giving the readers The Answer, he’s letting the readers choose their own ending, or letting them simply dwell on all the possible permutations.

A lot of folks that want to know exactly what happened to who and where are, not surprisingly, shitting themselves silly throwing fits (see that link in the first paragraph) over how David Chase bilked viewers out of their deserved ending. But it’s not like, as far as I can tell in my limited exposure, that The Sopranos has ever been about giving viewers spoon-fed satisfaction. Sure, there’s the base pleasure of Tony & his pals mouthing off like ignorant Guineas, mulching words and slandering everything and everybody (including each other). And there’s plenty of violence to be had, if you wait for it. But it’s not like the show was paced to fit network-TV commercial breaks and act-based climaxes.

The most important death this season - Christopher’s smothering at the hands of Tony after flipping the SUV they were riding in & asking for a taxi because he’d flunk a drug test - happened in the first ten minutes of an episode. Vito’s death, from the previous season, was an out-of-nowhere assault at a motel room, where viewers saw nothing except Phil Leotardo’s smug sanctimonious face as his thugs fucked Vito up. The show gets as much mileage, if note more, off of peyote epiphanies and dopey one-liners from Tony’s braindead son
as it does from all the mob violence. Even Phil’s death during the finale - the actual death, the ho-hum bullet to the head, wasn’t the money shot. It was the shot of the kid throwing up after the SUV rolled over Phil’s head (crosscut expertly with that kinda skeevy-looking hobbling scruffy guy yelling, “Holy shit!” after the head was crushed).

Like I said, I’m kinda new to this whole Sopranos thing, but my feeling is that if you’ve been with this show from the beginning, and you’re expecting a pat bow-wrapped Hollywood ending from a creative team that’s given you nothing of the sort for over six years, then, by all means, consider David Chase’s farewell a fuck-you, because that middle finger is being flipped in your general direction. And if you really think that “The Sopranos was not a show that went on inside your head,” but was instead just a “a richly visual series whose most memorable moments were graphic and in your face and damn proud of it,” then godspeed and God bless, because you’re both partially right and about 50 types of wrong.

One of the things I liked about the original Hostel (aside from the gooey gore & the sick sense of humor) was that it turned out to be a snazzy little story of revenge and, in a sense, redemption. By the time Jay Hernandez’s Paxton parks his dead-tired ass on the train, he’s come full circle from the flaming fratty asshole he was at the start of the film. Sure, he was the sort of guy you could comfortably bro down with (if you are down with bro-ing), but he was also kind of a dick. The sort of dick that, in a run-of-the-mill slasher flick, would either be eviscerated in bed post-coitus, or team up with the leading lady to escape the clutches of the dude with the cutlery, with nothing to contend with as the credits roll aside from a few bumps and bruises.

Paxton, on the other hand, has two of his fingers sawed off, is forced to hide in a pile of corpses (which includes some body parts of a friend), and watches the girl he saves from the kill club (whose dangling eyestalk he gently severs) commit suicide by jumping in front of a moving train. (That the suicide scene the suicide comes off as grotesque slapstick, yet still carries some poignancy, is a credit to the stylistic tightrope walked by director Eli Roth throughout the film.) It’s this ordeal that makes Paxton’s hands-on revenge all the sweeter. If there’s ever been a movie where a girl getting hit and flipped by a speeding car deserves a standing ovation, it’s this one.

Paxton ends up saving himself (physically and spiritually) by doing to his captors what was done to him (in once case, literally), and the satisfaction gleaned from that isn’t the sort of thing you’d expect from a horror film. In most flicks like Hostel, the fun’s had by luxuriating in the violence experienced by the dispatched protagonists. Whether it’s at the hands of your usual slice-and-dice fetishist, or the result of belabored Goldbergian machinations (see five minutes of any Final Destination flick), the thrill from the kill is often the same - we enjoy watching the villains take out the protagonists in as gory a manner as possible.

To be sure, both Hostels offer those sorts of base thrills as well. (Dig that bathing-in-blood scene, man - I’m sure Roth was feeling a little Hammer Studios while shooting that.) However, not many horror films flip the script so successfully so as to make the inevitable death of the bad guys both entertaining and satisfying. The only reason Hostel Part II’s table-turning moment isn’t quite as emotionally powerful as the first movie’s moment is the simple fact that the first movie already turned that trick. As far as shock value goes, though, it’s hard to top a scene where a formerly-captive girl is holding a knife to a guy’s penis. Unless, of course, the girl then lops off the penis and throws it to the dogs - as with any sequel worth its popcorn, everything’s kicked up a notch.

Other than the gender switch - yet again for this genre, it’s the girls getting the shaft and/or scythe - this return to the hostel plays out in a fashion pretty similar to the first one. Tourists get captured, most tourists die, one tourist get revenge, little kids terrorize the countryside. (Here’s hoping there’s no Hostel Like Me in the works.) The one true wrinkle added here is the time spent with two would-be killers, though there’s not much there aside from some fantastic scenery-chewing (by the recognizable and unknown Richard Burgi) and a cliched denouement, wherein it’s revealed that Uber-Macho Alpha Male is a wimp when it comes to getting the job done while Timid Thoughtful Man - you know, the one having second thoughts about murder - turns out to have a serious thing for torturing women that may or may not resemble the wife he’s too chickenshit to confront.

I would say that the sequel has more in common with I Spit On Your Grave (a gory flick from the Snortin’ Seventies wherein a girl gets revenge against the thugs that gangraped her and left her for dead) than the original. I would, except I’ve never seen Grave, and from what I know about the movie (thank you, Wikipedia), the only similarity is that it’s a woman getting revenge. Roth presents Lauren German’s Beth as a mannish sort of woman, willing to coldly and clinically do what needs to be done, whether it be seducing her captor into thinking she’ll let him fuck her, or offering the kill club money to get herself free. Or, um, slicing a dude’s penis off and feeding it to dogs.

Paxton, on the other hand, goes through an ordeal somewhat similar to what Grave’s Jennifer Hills does - they’re both tortured and violated, left for dead in some fashion, and exact their revenge in a pointed and personal manner. Roth’s decision to have a man go through the sort of degredation this genre usually reserves for the ladyfolk added a wry wrinkle to Hostel that the sequel - as good as it is - just can’t recapture. In other words: you can go to Prague again and watch young adults go through horrendous shit, but it’s just not the same as it was your first time.

Been kinda sort semi-busy w/ things. Will be “back” (if I ever was here) momentarily.

Fifteen hours ago, I was arriving at Foxwoods Casino with a bunch of twenty-dollar bills in my wallet, and The Cure (”Just Like Heaven”) playing over the intercom. Fifteen minutes ago (around 5:30 AM on Monday, in case this post gets waylaid by my need to sleep), I arrived home from the casino, somehow with more money than I had when I arrived. I ain’t bragging, though - for one, poker is as much about luck as it is about skill. You can make all the right reads, and act on those reads accordingly, and still have some shit-for-brains stumble into the hand that breaks your bank.

For another - sweet shit, I spent 3/4ths of a day playing poker! It didn’t really sink in until Hour 12 or 13, when I went to the bathroom to freshen up. Splashing some cold water on my face helped wake me up, but it also made me realize that I hadn’t yet washed my face (or brushed my teeth - ungh) since this morning. Were I feeling glib, I’d just point to the old adage that it’s not a gambling problem if you win, but, in hindsight, god damn. And I was having a severe problem during the first half of my residency - the chunk of change I set aside (to lose) was all but gone by the time the Patriots / Chargers game was finished.

That said, there’s something comforting about spending time with fellow degenerates, shooting the shit about the Patriots and golf and women in tight jeans and other brotastic topics of conversation while waiting for the dealer to actually give you a playable hand. Or, better yet, dissecting what the hell the other morons at the table are doing - there’s nothing like seeing some guy catch his lucky card against all odds to bring a poker table together.

There’s also nothing like having some guy that’s been pounding free shots of Jack Daniels all night weird you out to make you feel totally uncomfortable. The main reason I ended up actually winning money tonight / this morning was because of the largess of one such player. This guy (the brother of another table resident, who just happened to be the chip leader) was loud and boisterous, and his play was the same way. No doubt doing all those shots of Jack had something to do with his behavior. Regardless, the guy bought back into the table more times than he probably should have, and whenever he’d work up a decent-sized stack, he’d go about pissing it away on some fruitless straight or flush chase.

Lucky for me, this guy was itching to race when I was dealt pocket kings. He raised initially with Ace-Jack offsuit (or so he said, at first). I, not wanting some stupid bastard to catch their Ace without paying for it, tripled his bet & three other players called. Not sure why, unless they were all hoping for that magic card to arrive. The flop was Jack Ten and some other card. My friend made a really weak bet at the pot, less than 10% of the pot’s actual value. Figuring my friend was full of shit, I reraised him all but $20 dollars of his chips. The other 3 chasers folded, and Mr. AJ went all-in.

It’s at this time that he said he was playing the top pair - however, he never showed his cards. Meanwhile, I’m feeling pretty good when I flip my cards over, and I feel a billion times better when another King is turned. He mucks his cards, the dealer pushes over all of the chips in the pot, and I start stacking my winnings. A few hands later, though, the dude I beat starts chatting with his brother (sitting to his right), claiming that he screwed up - he didn’t actually have Ace Jack, he says; he had Ace Queen. If that was the case, that would mean the King that supposedly gave me the nuts (with 3 of a kind) would’ve actually have given him the nuts (with an Ace-high straight). He kept on harping about his mistake, and for about 5 seconds (because I’m a sucker), I thought I should maybe give back some of his chips, even though there was no proof he actually won besides his word.

This is what happens when you play poker for about 13 hours - stupid notions like the one I had actually pop up & seem like reasonable plans of action. Thankfully, I just shut up & offered nothing, except maybe a chagrined & concerned half-frown. The dude & his brother lingered for a few more hands, with the dude bemoaning his stupidity while watching his brother (a freewheeling sort with a little more discipline), and then they left together. A few other folks at the table assumed that the dude was full of shit - they caught him crowing about his Ace-Jack after the all-ins.

What I was worried about, thought, was the sort of scenario that Doyle Brunson alludes to in the introduction to Super System 2. (Yes, I bought books about poker - if you’re going to try to make money by spending money, you should probably invest some cash in learning ways on how to best spend your money in this sort of endeavor.) Back in the day, when being a professional poker player meant playing pick-up games in storage rooms and basements, and finding out about games simply via word of mouth, Brunson was rolled and/or threatened more than a few times after winning big.

So, of course, I’m concocting scenarios where my pal’s waiting for me to take a piss after I cash out, so he has a chance to get his money back the old fashioned way. And, on my way out of the casino, with my winnings in my right-hand pants pocket, I might’ve been walking a little faster than I would have otherwise. (Music playing as I left, by the way: INXS’ “Need You Tonight.”) Once I hit the road, however, my concerns turned towards the deathless stretch of Route 2 between Norwich and Hartford that’s darker than dark and prone to twists and turns. The next best thing to worrying about some bro kicking your ass is having a van ride up to your bumper in the middle of a rainstorm when you aren’t even sure you’re driving in an actual paint-sanctioned lane.

Anyway, if anyone wants to rob me, the cash is sitting on top of my kitchen stove. I might stop at the ATM today to get it out of the house, though I’m guessing I’ll be crashing in the next few hours and sleeping until evening (in time for the third & fourth hours of 24, I hope), so feel free to stop by. I’ll even leave the back door unlocked for you - the stove’s right there. Just leave a note if you do plan to visit, preferably in a William Carlos Williams style. Something like:

I have taken
the cash
that was on
your stove

and which
you were probably
saving
for school loans
or a PS3

Forgive me
but the hookers
I bought
are really hot

Mark Millar. He could be this generation’s Stan Lee, given his penchant for hyperbole and hucksterism. That is, if Joe Quesada weren’t already dryhumping Stan The Man’s family plot. He’s a funny book writer, sometimes on the decent side. Actually, when it comes to The Ultimates, he’s without peer - that book features the 70mm action and suspense cut with a wry sense of self-awareness that’s made him Marvel’s go-to guy for cinematic splendor. Unfortunately, away from the trusty pencils of Bryan Hitch, Millar’s Speilburgian greatness on that title turns into the sort of laborious brain-deadening schlock you’d expect from an ironic Michael Bay.

I guess one reason Ultimates works so well is that those characters are his characters. They’re following a template, but it’s a very loose blueprint, and that gives Millar plenty of wiggle room to follow his muse. Give Millar characters whose identities are firmly established, however, and things go a little awry. Grant Morrison (his one time writing buddy) often reimagines the characters he writes - cf. his resuscitation of both Emma Frost & Cyclops - but he does it using the character’s existing foundation. Millar’s tendency (especially nowadays - cf. his Marvel Knights Spidey run; his Wolverine story, “Enemy of the State”) is to mold the characters to fit the plot, motivations and plausibility be damned. My “favorite” moment of his Spider-Man story - a 12-part guest-star-laden fiasco that served mostly as an analogue to DC’s “Hush” storyline in Batman - was a page where Spidey, visiting Rachel Gray of the X-Men, exchanges clumsy expository dialogue, just pushing the story along like it was a mail cart navigating cubicle clusters. If Marvel was looking to save a few bucks, they could’ve just given the Dodsons an issue off, and simply printed copies of Millar’s script.

It’s bad enough that Millar’s latest widescreen effort, Civil War (a Marvel Comics EVENT in 7 parts, mind you), falls flat on its face because of all the scheduling issues & delays that plague the mini-series / EVENT. If the series were any good, the delays would be somewhat acceptable. Not that quality seems to matter - each issue of the mini has sold upwards of 100,000 copies. But, right from the very event that kicks the Civil War gears into motion, Millar employs the MU’s characters as plot devices, nothing more. It’s not a big deal for the casual fan - they don’t care that, for instance, the last time the New Warriors were seen, they were innocently gallivanting cross-country doing their hero thing, their reality TV show a necessary burden to allow them to do their spandex duty. They weren’t glory-seeking showboaters by any stretch of the imagination. And the leaps of faith made to justify Mr. Fantastic & Iron Man’s support for the government’s superhero registration act, especially within the confines of the Civil War series, are ludicrous. That the justifications for these characters turning against their friends are to be found in the titles that crossover with the main mini is endemic of the failure of this enterprise to live up to its hype. (An aside: both Marvel & DC, of late, are guilty of perpetrating these major EVENT storylines, wherein the mini-series that centers the EVENT actually serves more as a catalog / pitch for the crossover stories than as an integral part of the story.)

Meanwhile, new readers unfamiliar with the universe’s general continuity could take issue with any number of plot twists or turns Millar whips out. The penultimate issue ends with a convenient switcheroo that gives the anti-registration side (the right side to be on, of course) the upper hand in the upcoming slugfest that’s sure to take up the lion’s share of the story’s final chapter. It’s a whoop-dee-doo shocker, on the level of the revelation in #5 that anti-registration teammate Tigra (a D-list character with ties to the Avengers) is actually a spy for the pro-reg side. These are supposed to be an important revelations, but the supposed impact these twists require is never earned. Even the one true surprise this title had to offer - Spider-Man going public with his secret identity - comes off as a hollow publicity stunt. They’re examples of what happens when self-awareness runs unchecked. The winks and nods turn into obnoxious gestures. The spectacle is undercut by this nagging, mocking sneer. It’s the work of a guy that’s writing for the paycheck, and happy to let you know about that on every single page.

Certainly this series isn’t a sales failure, if Marvel’s content to simply capitulate to the fanbase it’s already cultivated, or sell newcomers a false bill of goods. On all other levels, it’s a copout. This being a fictional universe with established trademarks, any major storyline is going to be a copout to a certain degree - long time fans know that Wolverine was going to get his adamantium skeleton back, that Magneto & the Green Goblin aren’t really dead, that Spidey wasn’t going to stick with the red-&-gold armor. It’s an unwritten agreement in the contract between comic reader and comic publisher - fans know that any earth-shattering changes aren’t permanent, and as long as the story’s worth a damn, fans are willing to go along for the ride. If Civil War actually cared about the readers - both new and old - the writers and editors would actually try and live up to this contract. Instead, Millar & Co. have their sights set on pulling out all the stops to turn this story into an enormous trainwreck.

You want more proof? Meet Penance. He used to be Speedball, the happy-go-lucky bundle of energy (literally) from the New Warriors. After the event that triggers the superhero registration movement, however, he’s put through an emotional ordeal that sees him exchange his bright & shiny blue-yellow duds for bondage-type gear with spikes on the INSIDE of the costume. It’s the ridiculous apotheosis of the “grim & gritty” strain of superheroics that stained - and, um, I guess still stains - this wing of the industry. And it’s a selling point.