Anonymous' "The Farce of The Worthy Master Pierre Patelin"

So yes, as we already know, the word Tragedy comes from the greek Tragoidia, meaning "Goat-Song", and Comedy comes from the greek Komodia, meaning "Komodo-Dragon-Song".
...
I find it hard to believe I would be the first person in the history of the English language to say that! Someone must have gotten there first. ANYWAY, "The Farce of the Worthy Master Pierre Patelin" is a popular French comedy of the 1300's, a distant, hard-to-fathom era in which lawyers and businessmen were always screwing each other out of money by means of sophistry and sheer heartlessness. The worthy titular Master Patelin is a lawyer who gives a local merchant an I.O.U in exchange for a suit he will repay "ASAP"- then absconds with the fancy outfit and pretends to have been sick for the last 13, 14, 15 weeks, as his willing wife testifies- so it must have been a GHOST the merchant gave the suit to! It all concludes on a delirious court scene in which a key witness pretends to be a sheep. This must have been the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather of the one in the Marx Brother's "Duck Soup"...


...which in turn gave birth to this one in Woody Allen's "Bananas"...



...which in turn lecherously tried to feel up the one in "Legally Blonde."
No Pauly Shore, "Jury Duty" comments here.

Jarvis Cocker's "Further Complications"

Jarvis Cocker, the once-upon-a-time voice of Pulp and now solo explorer, is fine with going back in time. Not just musically- although "You're in My Eyes (Discosong)" is a sunny slice carved off the bloody side of 1979, and "Leftovers" is knowingly reminiscent of Pulp's "Common People"- but also sexually. He must be pushing mumbledy-some years by now, but that 23 year old "Angela" girl still has the young flesh he'll like to sink his teeth in. Still seedy, funny, and a little snarly in that glam way, (treasure his breakdown at the end of "Homewrecker"), Jarvis makes it safe for aging Brit-pop lovers to get back to the dancing even as the worries of impending divorces and recessional firings circle outside the club. It's frothy, fun stuff, but then he never said he was deep.

David Fincher's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is so aware that it's very very good that it loses all respect for the capacity of your bladder. That said, it has the world-building attention to detail one demands from David Fincher, and the dedicated acting we expect from Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt, so by all means pee right into your Dockers, discard, buy new ones. That's why the good Lord invented Wal-Mart.
It's curious how little interest I had in this movie during its initial, acclaimed theatrical run. Having read the F. Scott Fitzgerald story it's based on, (not to mention "Back to the Seed", the MUCH BETTER, similarly themed story by the great Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier) all I felt was: "All right, so he ages backward and ends up as a kid. The make-up and FX people go home loaded with shiny statues of naked men." The story seemed explicit, unspoilable: indeed, Eric Roth's script, (which is naggingly reminiscent of his own work in "Forrest Gump"), may be masterful, but you don't go home quoting its assertions about life, time, and miracles; you go home thinking that he could have told the story much better with some 40 minutes excised from it.
What I forgot, (thankfully Fincher reminded me), is that there's a lot more to a great movie than WHAT happens in it, or even HOW it happens. A movie isn't a seven page story- a movie is GREAT HATS, and awesome furniture, and city views worth pausing and making screensavers out of, and storms at sea, and rain that swells musically and falls at convenient moments so that nature is at sync with the emotions plastered on the flawless face of a star in close-up. And "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" has all that, not to mention an impressive supporting cast that includes Tilda Swinton, Taraji P. Henson and the long-missing Julia Ormond. So yes, you should go watch it right now, if you haven't yet. But pee right before.

Or, you know, use the pause button.

Anonymous' "The Mystery of Adam"- and the Scapegoats

It ain't quite "Year Zero", but there was a rather loose re-telling of the Book of Genesis touring mid-European towns in the middle of the 12th century called "The Mystery of Adam". Medieval Mystery or Miracle Plays more or less unwittingly recreated the ancient Greco-Roman experience of cathartic religious theater. (Curiously enough, they were MORE removed from the Greeks and the Romans intellectually than we are.) Strict re-iterations of lithurgical drama gave way to endless variations on the COOL STORIES. The separation of Church and State is a silly modern hang-up; the separation between CHURCH and THEATER is the true metaphysical problem. To this day, Southern Church-goers will talk about feeling the Spirit coming over the congregation, probably unaware that the same Spirit also comes over the exhilarated participants of the currently running "Hair" revival.

What I find most intriguing about this classic Miracle Play is the deviation from the Adam-and-Eve fig-leag motif. I think it's thoughtful and innovative, and obviously an invention driven by stage necessity: here Adam and Eve are NOT naked in Eden, but rather richly clad, and after the eating of the fruit the awareness of their sin leads them to rip their clothes apart and cover themselves with dirty leaves in expiation. Interesting medieval twist.


I suppose I should state my intellectual understanding of the myth, which flows well enough with the religious consensus (as much as there can be consensus on these things): Adam's eating of the forbidden fruit leads him to the awareness that he is naked, an animal, it elevates his thinking, it leads him to questions of choices between good and bad, awareness of SIN, etc- hence the election of leaves to cover the nakedness before God. God WANTS the nakedness, the free spontaneous actions and sexuality of animals. Most animals aren't great sinners, but they also aren't great thinkers. The shame, the perception of sin, the wanting to HIDE things is God's tip-off that man is AWARE, closer to GOD-LIKE, which is a big No No for that jealous, rather insecure Old Testament God. THERE is the original sin of mankind: Pride. Wanting to be like God. How is this sin redeemed and forgiven? Through a sacrifical lamb, a Scapegoat. What's a Scapegoat? The embodiment of a sin that is then killed so that the sin goes away. What's the Embodiment of man's SIN of wanting to be like God? Well, there you go, a man who says He IS God. The death of THAT man is the only thing that can expiate for mankind's Original Sin.

I realize I've stated the Christian arch a little more bluntly than most Christians would like it, but that's what the story means, and that's what a sacrifice is. If Jesus wasn't a symbol of man's greatest transgression, and if His death didn't free mankind from Original Sin, then he was just another cult-of-personality-wacko among the many thousands that have stepped to the microphone and gathered followers.

Back to theater. It happens THERE so that it doesn't have to happen HERE. The play, the opera, the movie, the TV show, the videogame, they're the Scapegoats. All our fears and horrors and sadness and idiocies and transgressions go away if we put them up there and start talking about the stupid things we've done, and how we can avoid them, or do them better.
Surely you know the word "tragedy" comes from the greek Tragoidia, "GOAT-SONG", right?

Grizzly Bear's "Veckatimest"

It's beastly out there on Indie land. There used to be a Panda Bear but now there's a Grizzly Bear, and there are Mountain Goats, and also Deer, with Hooves AND Hunters and now TICKS! As for Mice? There are Modest ones, Dangerous ones, some are even on Mars. And what about Foxes?!? A whole Fleet. I'm telling you, it's a veritable Animal Collective. It's terrifying for old foggies like me.

Pascal Laugier's "Martyrs"

Don't! Don't watch Pascal Laugier's "Martyrs"! It's a really really GOOD horror movie! TOO GOOD! As far as fear goes, the best I've seen in ages! Look away! You don't want to see this! You really don't! Unless you know you can take it! Don't come puking and crying to me if you think you're so tough and you've seen it all and you're desensitized by videogames and the horrors of FOX news! This is some really well done, really fucked up disturbing shit!!! Your kids can NOT watch this ever!!! This isn't some pussy PG-13 movie about a cute little vampire! This is not one for the drive-in! There are no black cats jumping out of closets so the girls can make out and the boys can feel boobies! If a cat jumps out out at your face in this movie, it's because it will claw your eyeballs out, digest them, shit them out, smear the end result over over your face, then ram itself up your nose cavity while you scream for the pain to end, and then kitty will scratch your brains like it's a meaty ball of yarn until your only thought is how to best bash your skull against the wall to make this horrible existence go away as quickly as possible.

Ok.

Don't say I didn't warn you.


Unlike the Italian, (this film is dedicated to Dario Argento), the French don't really have that much of a horror tradition, other than giving the world the Hunchback of Notre-Dame and the Phantom of the Opera and the ocassional "Haute Tension", (which is worth your horror time if you accept that it's directly ripped from Dean Koontz' "Intensity", which is sad, and has an impossibly bad end "twist".) But that's all changing, and here they've come up with the best Catholic torture-porn movie since "The Passion of the Christ". And by best I mean it's a repugnant, cry-for-your-mommy, vile, there-is-nothing-good-in-the-world kind of movie. But that's what I call SUCCESS in horror.
I can not stress this enough, this movie is only for MATURE ADULTS WITH SOLID MINDS who LIKE AND UNDERSTAND THE HORROR GENRE. If you fulfill both conditions, this is bliss, painful, excruciating bliss. If you do not, you should not watch this, and you will not want to, trust me.
A clear distillation of a life watching world cinema, "Martyrs" is the end result of an equation that goes pretty much like this: Carl Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc"+ Alejandro Amenabar's "Tesis"+ Michael Haneke's "Funny Games"+ Hideo Nakata's "Ringu"+ David Slade's "Hard Candy"+ Eli Roth's "Hostel"- (the last one a movie the director particularly claims to detest and whose glitzy, enjoy-the-carnage aesthetic he's, in a way, refuting.)
In 1971 a girl is rescued from a torture center. Fifteen years later, the traumatized child has grown up and she's trailed by a friend as she attempts to take revenge on her torturers, and what follows is horrifying and totally unpredictable. The two young ladies are played by beauties that are stunning even through the battle scars- Morjana Alaoui and Mylene Jampanoi- but beauty rots as good as anything. The plot is thin- just like a body stretched apart to the limits of suffering- and almost laughably improbable- THANK GOD- but it's also significantly more clever than the usual gorehound's meal, which means that while you're scooping up the vomit from your shirt front you'll think: "Oh, it's very intelligent, how effectively that was filmed." By the time the religious imagery of martyrdom pops up, you might be tempted to think that this movie has advanced to a higher level of philosophical discussion, but don't be fooled: this is just a horror film, a very smart one, one that the director is as conflicted about as you are. He made something truly horrible, and he's proud of that achievement, but also as scared of it as you or me.
Definitely watch the Making Of, btw. You will NEED to feel like this movie involved, like, cameras and catering and make-up and special effects and press junkets and editing. No actual humans were harmed.

The King is Dead

What Elvis was to my elders, Michael Jackson was to my generation. Just like Elvis, Michael was a creature of music that bridged musical genres and cared little about race and all about imagination, we saw the transformation from someone who was adorable to a being of pure observed madness- just like Elvis, what we saw wasn't always pretty. We were aware that we were participants in the formation of something that could not relate to other human beings under any kind of normal circumstances, and who therefore was trapped in a world of spectacle. But what a show he gave out! Look past the tabloid allegations, past the idiosycracies, past the family spats and past the surgical nightmares, past the millionaire playground built in tribute to a carefree childhood he never had truly experienced and could only perpetuate through a grotesque arrested adulthood... The fact that we WERE willing to look past all that testifies to the amount of love and goodwill he'd generated. I'd grown with Michael in the '80s- the first music video I ever saw in Cuba was a smuggled Betamax copy of "Thriller", which TERRIFIED ME and yet INTRIGUED ME, (it came with John Landis's explanation about the special effects)- and I UNDERSTOOD then, all these monsters and things aren't REAL, there's no need to be afraid, they're CREATED, they're SPECIAL EFFECTS. And they're fun... And you can DETACH yourself from the scary and understand mortality in a more accepting way... And there was Michael to let me know, with that final wink, that of all life is an illusion.

With the dissolution of my first SERIOUS relationship, after our two year anniversary, I was driving my car in tears knowing that this was it and it was irrevocable. I knew it would be wise to park, I was no longer in control, and I gathered my breath and then the radio played "She's Out of My Life", in one of those moments of synchronicity that inevitably suggests to mystics like me that there's more beauty and magic in this grand show that we could ever deserve:

She's out of my life
She's out of my life
And I don't know whether to laugh or cry
I don't know whether to live or die
And it cuts like a knife
She's out of my life

It's out of my hands
It's out of my hands
To think for TWO YEARS she was here
And I took her for granted I was so cavalier
Now the way that it stands
She's out of my hands

So I've learned that love's not possession
And I've learned that love won't wait
Now I've learned that love needs expression
But I learned too late

She's out of my life
She's out of my life
Damned indecision and cursed pride
Kept my love for her locked deep inside
And it cuts like a knife
She's out of my life"

Of course I cried, and you might think it cheesy and unimportant, but that song broke through everything- HOW DID HE KNOW WE'D BEEN TOGETHER FOR TWO YEARS?!? HOW DID HE KNOW THAT I NEEDED THAT SONG JUST THEN, THAT I NEEDED THE MUSIC TO CRY WITH ME AND FOR ME?"-

And by letting me know I wasn't alone, that someone else could feel the same, it somehow made the moment survivable, and I could let it all out. And when the song was done, my fingers still knew how to work their way to the ignition, I made the car start.
And I drove on.
Thank you, Michael, for letting me drive on.

MICHAEL JACKSON? AND FARRAH FAWCETT?

Next it will be disco that dies. This is sad.
And I had been making so many uncharacteristic Michael Jackson references in Hallucina, too!
The good music's still around. And to be honest, very few of us were expecting the NEXT great Michael Jackson album.

He's out of our lives :-/

George Harrison's "Let It Roll"

The quiet Beatle didn't have McCartney's seemingly endless gift for melody or Lennon's caustic inmediacy. If there's one thing you get from George is how he could transform an undiscerning sense of wonder into communal bliss. He's uncertain about everything- there's something in the way life works that is great but he doesn't know exactly what, he really wants to see his sweet Lord but he has no clear idea of what THAT might look like, or when it might happen, he just knows that the Sun is coming up and it's going to be all right. This is a nice collection from a soul that wanted to express unnameable emotions. It's good that he was quiet. He let the guitar talk.
Or gently weep, whichever.

CHAPTER 63: PLAN OF CAMPAIGN

Monsieur de Sartines, the Minister of Police played by Roman Polanski, is happy this morning. He's kept the crowds under control during the celebrations that introduced the country to Marie Antoinette, he's kept the aspersions on Madame Dubarry's name to a minimum, and he's gotten the thumbs up from the King on all this.
When Monsieur de Sartines is happy, he puts on wigs. Dozens and dozens of wigs, blue wigs, grey wigs, heavily powdered wigs, wigs with dyes of rousset, they litter the floor of his room like the pelts of small, extinct creatures. Once bewigged, he dances to Cher songs in front of the mirror.

Then Viscount Jean Dubarry is announced to the policeman's apartments, and Monsieur de Sartines wigs out, sweeps all the furry proofs of his vanity under a sofa in the corner, adjusts his most official-looking wig, and welcomes the person he suspects is bearing the King's- and therefore Madame Dubarry's- rewards for a job well done.
Jean bursts in and directs himself to an armchair- this is a man who prefers comfort- and says:
"Great job on these parties!"
SARTINES: "Is that an OFFICIAL compliment?"
JEAN: "It's my sister's compliment, and I just came from her house at Luciennes."
SARTINES: "Doesn't the sun rise there at her whim?"
JEAN: "Yeah, it also goes down there, if that's what she has in mind."
SARTINES: "Ah."
JEAN: "Yes."
SARTINES: "Just to be clear, we ARE making dirty double entendres, right?"
JEAN: "What else? Anyway, I also come to ask a question of some importance. Suppose I've lost something in Paris, can I hope to find it again?"
SARTINES: "Sure, but only if it's worth nothing. Or a lot."
JEAN: "Oh, it's pretty worthless, that's for sure. I'm talking about a kid, he must be about 18 or so, name of Gilbert."
SARTINES: "And what does he do?"
JEAN: "As little as possible, I'm guessing. This is an intellectual, cloud-in-the-heads sort of kid my sister Chon and I met on the road, we took care of him for a while, and he abused our hospitality."
SARTINES: "He stole something of yours."
JEAN: "Other than our time and effort, not really, but he just disappeared on us weirdly."
SARTINES: "And you'd like him to reappear. Any idea where he might be at?"
JEAN: "A pretty good one, actually. I'm certain he lives at the Rue Plastriere. I might even have some decent clues on which HOUSE he lives in."
SARTINES: "Good Viscount Dubarry, one word from you and, I assume, your sister, and my grunts will swoop in and give him an up close and personal view of juvie hall. That's what you came for, no? Name the house."
JEAN: "Well, see, that's the tricky thing, my sister Chon is actually FOND of this Gilbert fella. It's quite befuddling. But she would like to recover him by NICE, sweet means, if at all possible."
SARTINES: "I get the delicacy of the issue. You're proposing I handle the matter in a more personal way. Fine, I comply, but first, I want you to be devastatingly honest."
JEAN: "I'll devastate."
SARTINES: "Ok. Which do you think? The blue wig? Or the red wig?"
JEAN: "Oh, boy."

Wearing a red-and-blue combo wig, (which we honor today in the form of those flashing red-and-blue lights on top of modern patrol cars), Monsieur de Sartines takes Viscount Jean for a ride on an undercover police carriage of unidentifiable make, and with a heraldy shield with the motto: "Non Sumos Custodes". They race up and down hilly streets, possibly destroying a conveniently situated fruit stand for effect, until they reach the Rue Plastriere, and at a word from Sartines the patrol carriage slows down and tries to be all unconspicuous. The coachman is acting as natural and relaxed as if the horse tranqulizer is just kicking in, while the horse is nibbling at the random mouse turds on the side of the street, and the carriage itself rolls in that carefree way that suggests there are NO UNDERCOVER COPS INSIDE AT ALL. NOPE. Look away, little gamins of paris.


Suddenly Jean points out the window at a very familiar building. "That one, with the garret, that's where Gilbert hides."
SARTINES: "OOOFFF! YIKES." Bites lips. "No good, no good."
JEAN: "What do you mean?"
SARTINES: "Ah, my dear Viscount Dubarry, don't play the lottery today. No luck for you. That house I can't touch. That's where Rousseau lives."
JEAN: "Jacques Rousseau? The author? Explain how that matters."
SARTINES: "See, the thing is, policemen and philosophers, we just don't quite like to congregate these days."
JEAN: "I'm not asking you to mess with Rousseau, I'm asking you for Gilbert."
SARTINES: "Yeah, but you said Gilbert was an intellectual, cloud-in-the-heads type? And he's staying in Rousseau's building? As the saying goes: Nerds of a feather flock together. They're probably staying in the same floor."
JEAN: "Well, suppose he WAS staying with Rousseau?"
SARTINES: "Then your sister Chon can't have his pet. Time to go out shopping for a well-endowed Doberman. I meant the dog, but I suppose the actual man from Dober will do, wherever that is."
JEAN: "This is quite ridiculous! Afraid of some book-worm! Aren't you the King's policeman? Can't you seize whomever you want?"
SARTINES: "I can arrest YOU whenever you want. I'll rather do THAT than arrest Gilbert at Monsieur Rousseau's."
JEAN: "I'm honored."
SARTINES: "You have no idea how weak these literary types can be! You so much as prod them gently with a baton and they're shrieking about police brutality and the abuses of the monarchy and writing scathing pamphlets, and soon half the city is in flames and there goes the monarchy. No, believe me, we may give a certain impression but I have half my police watching Rousseau as it is, making sure he doesn't accidentally break a leg, write a play blaming THAT on us, and start a revolution about it."
JEAN: "Come on, the building has four stories, Gilbert could be staying anywhere there."
He peers cautiously out of the window to see that people are gathering curiously around the not-at-all suspicious carriage that has been idling in the same spot forever. Dogs are peeing on the horse's mossy shoes. Inside, Monsieur de Sartines digs into the fluffiness of his multi-colored wig and pulls out a big folder on Rousseau. He runs quickly through the pertinent spy reports:

"8:00:21 A.M. Rousseau wakes up.
8:00:22 A.M. Still in the process of waking up. No subversive activities yet.
8:00:23 A.M. The yawn could be perceived as being agit-prop."

Runs through some more pages: "Voila!"

Rousseau is seeing collecting strange herbs in a forest, talking to a young man. The young man seems to be an intellectual, head-in-the-clouds type. Subsequently the two retire to Rousseau's headquarters of dissent in the Rue Plastriere."

SARTINES: "That's your Gilbert. I can't take the kid."
JEAN: "Maybe it's some OTHER intellectual, head-in-the-oh-who-am-I-kidding! Chon is NOT going to be happy about this."
SARTINES sighs and stares out the window at the forbidden house: "Well, now, is this so very important to your sister? She is quite a looker, runs in the family. Might she not use her womanly wiles and simply have Rousseau GIVE the boy away willingly? You know, they say sometimes old cocks still rise at dawn."
JEAN: "Just so I'm clear, was THAT a dirty double entendre?"
SARTINES: "Huh? No, I was just looking at that decrepit rooster that's pecking at our undercover carriage's wheels. It's out so early! I wish we weren't. Look, what I was getting at! We can get Chon, or even easier, Madame Dubarry herself, to SEDUCE Rousseau into putting Gilbert in your family's care once more. All we need is to arrange for a meeting between the philosopher and the King's bestest of friends. But since the twain seldom meets, we need to find a third party, a mutual acquaintance, to make the connection. Someone as scholarly and poetic as Rousseau."
JEAN: "A nerd."
SARTINES: "If you prefer. Haven't I seen Rousseau's friend, Monsieur Jussieu, at Luciennes often?"
JEAN: "The botanist? That nutter? Sure. Every now and then he visit and spends the time deflowering Madame's-"
SARTINES: "Too late for THAT!"
JEAN: "...GARDEN. He's a botanist!"
SARTINES: "Oh. Sorry. I thought we were still doing dirty double entendres. In any case, there, it's all set. If we have Jussieu on our side, Rousseau will deliver that boy to us without noise or violence. One simple question: Do you have an empty lot somewhere outside the city?"
JEAN: "A dozen of them. I've been too busy enjoying the idle life to develop much of anything upon them."
SARTINES: "Well, now we will develop something upon one of them."
JEAN: "What's that?"
SARTINES: "A TRAP. A trap for PHILOSOPHERS."
JEAN: "Sounds awesome, but for now, we should probably get away from this hood. There's spider webs growing under the carriage, and the neighborhood kids just graffitied "FILFTHY COPS" on the back window."

TWIT

Oh Father, I am but a product of my culture- I worship shiny widgets, submit to the molten glow of dead robots in Cyber-Mammon's foundry. Forgive me, for I now Tweet as they do.

So yeah, you can follow Hallucina's updates, and teases, and the such on Tweet. Add me. Until I get bored, or they come out with something new and spiffy called FLUPP or whatev that will "CHANGE THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT" wasting our fucking time on Earth.

David Wain's "Role Models"

Reluctant parenthood is also the subject of David Wain's "Role Models", a reminder that formulas exist because- in the hands of savvy chemists- they're satisfying. Paul Rudd and Sean William Scott play more or less the characters that you expect them to play: Rudd plays Danny, handsome but very relaxed about it; Scott is a doofus with a nickname- (this time it's "Wheeler" instead of "Stifler" or "Peppers" or "Crash", and next time it will be "Spliffman" or something like that.) Danny and Whheler tour schools as the cynical purveyors of one of those energy drinks that are supposed to keep kids off drugs because they make them too freaking jittery and retarded to successfully contact drug dealers. This charade of an existence leads to crippling remorse for Danny, a DUI, a break-up from his girlfriend, "Beth" (a sadly under-used Elizabeth Banks), and court-mandated community service. Wheeler, of course, comes along for the ride, and the dick jokes.
So Danny and Wheeler enter a program called "Sturdy Wings" run by the HILARIOUS JANE LYNCH where they get to get take care of a LARP-y nerd (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, "Superbad's" McLovin') and a jive-talkin' modern day Ebony White, (Bobb'e Thompson) respectively. Mintz-Plasse is very good, Thompson is a little annoying and not so much of an actor, but Wain, (who directed the far more unhinged "Wet Hot American Summer") knows how to cut away at the right times, so it's not a problem here. As I said, savvy chemists.
It's a pretty funny little movie- and Jane Lynch? Funniest woman in America.
Look, you know how these things go, at first Danny and Wheeler shirk responsibility, but then they learn to love their kids', and value each other's friendship, and blah blah blah maturity, and there are AWEXTREME KISS references, and Elizabeth Banks returns at the end of the movie after being negligible for too long (remember she was called BETH? Can you predict how that might be brought up considering there's KISS fans at large?). Will Beth finally accepts Danny as he grows out of manchildishness, even though she's only around to reassure us that the "bromance" (and goodness knows I hate that word!) between Danny and Wheeler is strictly limited to chest bumps after a good Madden '09 touchdown?
As I said, it's formula, but golden.
But where's "Wet Hot American Summer 2", David Wain? "Meatballs" had THREE sequels!

Dash Shaw's "Bottomless Belly Button"

The title and art-work in Dash Shaw's powerful "Bottomless Belly Button" might suggest punky navel-gazing, and the deceiving bulk of the graphic novel might give that "bottomless" an unintended ominous connotation
but do what I did, look beyond, and find the emotional peer to Craig Thompson's "Blankets" and Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home".
It is not an appealing book- a common misconception among the newly introduced to the form is that a graphic novel might deal with the usual literary suspects but that it might offer some visual "prettiness"- no, Shaw's drawings are not pretty, but they are ALIVE ib mysterious ways. One of his unusual techniques is to forego a cartoonist's "stink lines" and instead write directly above, say, a trash can, "STINKY".
AS for the "Bottomless Belly Button" we find, (those of us who are willing or capabale of decoding secret messages encoded in books) that it refers to the fact that young lovers Maggie and David had innie and outie belly buttons- they fit perfectly...

Except that we learn, bottomless belly buttons always ache for, but never make, true connections....

Maggie and David were once giddy with romance and exchanged romantic cryptograms. We see their beautiful family grow through a photo album- an effect akin to the one in Pixar's "Up"-
except that after 40 years of marriage, Maggie and David Loony, who are presumably in their mid-to-late 60s, decide to get a divorce. They summon the Loony family for a last weekend on their beach house, and we get to explore the effects of the break-up on their offspring Dennis, Claire and froggy Peter. No, literally, Peter feels and therefore LOOKS, like a frog. Kafka would have liked it, and I think he would have defended the casual transmutation).
Peter mainly gets stoned and fumbles toward love as the summer winds down, Claire sighs and accepts it- (she herself is divorced and has a teenage girl, Jill). It's Dennis who's angry, mystified- "WTF! Is not like they're going to find somebody new!"- and yes, terrified... Where is the love between his parents? ("Did it go POOF? Is it under the carpet?" he wonders.)

If not for the PICTURES, this tale would be described as Banvillean, or a reminiscence by the likes of Ian McEwan.

Happy Father's Day! From Ed Asner

"Up" is- among many many other things- a movie about a reluctant parent moving beyond the solipsism of a sour old age spent with ghosts to accepting the responsibility of loving the living.

I'm still surprised by this movie- not least of all because I had no big expectations for it, beyond assuming that Pixar would probably not make something TERRIBLE, (at least not yet, and not at this point in their creative streak). And the ads were the least enticing of any computer animated movie EVER, suggestic an ill-considered claustrophobic story about the cliched friendship between a cranky old man and a dumb fat kid. Why would a company known for imagining fully-realized (and highly populated) alternate worlds DOWNSIZE their vision? The recession is not THAT bad.
And then, of course, the low expectations the ad campaign raises make those 10 first minutes of "Up" even more powerful, as you realize while you're picking up your broken heart from the sticky theater floor.
I am not prepared to say "Up" EXCEEDS "Wall-E" artistically, (in the way that "Wall-E" certainly exceeds, say, "Cars"), but it is, er, up there. Besides I hate to rank beautiful things- let them play by each other's side.

The movie is at least a breakthrough in its 3-D use married to a story that is NOT about the 3-D. I don't remember much of anything overtly jumping at my face, but I do remember gasping at the beauty of those South American canyons extending into the distance. The accelerating rate of 3-D achievements thrill me, (Next? Someone make a LIVE-ACTION 3-D movie worth seeing. We haven't quite gotten there yet.) Old school grouches are STILL talking about "viability". IT'S HERE, IT'S VIABLE, IT'S GREAT. Caveat: I'm talking the "Real 3-D" system, not the red-and-blue relic from the '50s. I have THE worst vision of any person not routinely accompanied by a cane and a very smart dog, but I was not once bothered by my glasses during "Up" and felt no need to look away from the screen to nurse a digusted headache- (which, incidentally, I did during the entirely 2-D "The Proposal", but more on that soon.)
People who hate things to change and disorient them use the word "distraction" in their assessments, clearly taking a cue from Grouch #1 Roger Ebert's comments. 3-D is NOT a distraction, any more than 3-D in your everyday life is a distraction. It is an ENHANCEMENT! (In our alternative weekly, a critic ridiculously warns his readers away from the "distracting" 3-D version, as though things being COOLER was somehow a hazard.) What 3-D can NOT do is turn a shitty movie into a good one, anymore than 3-D can turn your shitty day at the office into an exhilarating experience. But the only reason anyone would want to be LESS thrilled at an spectacle, instead of MORE, is out of that Norma Desmond reactionary strain- "talkies ruined films with their silly DISTRACTING 'dialogue'!".

"Up"'s cranky old man learns that you CAN grow and learn new things, even at 78. Take a cue, Roger Eberts of the 2-D world. Embrace new people and new possibilities. Also embrace your Dad, or your Kid. Don't be shy: hug first if you have to.

Pete Docter and Bob Peterson's "Up"

If Pixar came and raped my mom, I would have to side with them and say that the bitch was begging for it.
They can do no wrong by me.

Until I saw "Up" I'd actually forgotten that my tearducts were fully functional, and that I could shed tears of both the sad and the happy variety. For an hour and a half I rediscovered the possibilities of love, and the world seemed open to exploration and magic, and promises were worth keeping even if one has to leap over continents of logic holding only to colorful balloons blown up with magic. For an hour and a half it seemed like there was dignity in old age, (thank you, Ed Asner), and Michael Giacchino's beautiful score lulled me into the illusion that the Boy Scouts could very well save the last shred of America's decency.
God damn it, for an hour and a half I could have distinctively called myself happy and alive and full of glee.

Then it was over, and I took off the 3-D glasses to wipe the tears off my face, and I turned my head around to share the theatrical joy, and a sullen-looking teenage boy was like: "What the fuck you looking at, you never seen a crack pipe? Turn your head around, you old faggot."

Ah, back to Earth.

CHAPTER 62: THE APARTMENT IN THE RUE PLASTRIERE

Chon and Jean, that dastardly duo, (Evangeline Lilly and Gerard Depardieu, respectively) are staking out the Taverneys' place from a neighboring house. Mademoiselle Sylvie, who we briefly saw last chapter, is Chon's waiting-maid and a third wheel, but Jean is sneaking glances at the third wheel because apparently it's well rounded.
CHON: "Would you like me to send Sylvie out while we discuss the intricate secretive matter of me pretending to be a widow in order to rent this apartment so I can keep an eye on Andree, who we suspect has attracted the King's attention away from Madame Dubarry? It IS getting crowded in here."
JEAN: "Oh, no, no, three's company! Sylvie fits just fine if she sits in my lap here!" Sylvie giggles and obliges, Jean continues: "Everything is working to perfection. BEYOND perfection! Why, they say that a boy scout is always ready, but I'm not a boy scout, and I'm usually ready anyway, but I could not have foreseen something that just hapenned to me."
CHON: "If you're trying to bore us into submission..."
JEAN: "Let me explain, dear sister! I was just now down there among the filthy commoners looking for bargain furniture to decorate your observatory, since we don't want the place to seem too luxurious and attract undue suspicion."
CHON: "Oh, great, here comes a three-legged table and a flea-ridden fouton!"
JEAN: "I smacked the fleas out. ANYWAY, there I was shopping for suitable junk when I happen to pass by a fountain, that sparkled as if it had caught the sun's shiny droppings..."
CHON: "Oh my God, you're thrilling the shit out of me! A fountain! OOH! Finish the damned story!"
JEAN: "Well, I was near this fountain- a little stone cherub peed from its center- when suddenly a jet of water splashed my pants!"

CHON: "Is this some round-about way of explaining why your crotch is wet? I thought it was just because Sylvie was sitting on your lap."
JEAN: "No! It's because a certain young man had obstructed the flow of the fountain with a piece of bread, causing the water to spurt at me."
CHON: "Oh, perfect, some kid hosed you for a prank, this plays into our plans so precisely, what a wonderful thing it is. Dear brother, I say this with much love, you are absolutely a murderer of my time."
JEAN: "Come on, the story is long but has a beautiful point. I turned eager to give the whippersnapper a bit of a whipping, and who do you think the young man playing with the water jet turned out to be?"
CHON: "Hmmm, let's see, if your story HAS any pay-off at all: Gilbert."
JEAN: "Gilbert, yes, whom we trampled on the road, whom you saved and tried to mold into a decent sort of fellow in the King's court, and who's repaid us by plunging out of a window at the first chance."
CHON: "So? Did you catch him?"
JEAN: "He scampered off, dodging carriages and throwing himself in between wheels just to get away. I was too dignified to run after him."
CHON: "Too fat, you mean."
JEAN: "It's all muscle, baby, isn't it, Sylvie?" Sylvie giggles some more, just happy to record the gossip in the mininal cavity of her head.
CHON: "So you lost Gilbert again."
JEAN: "Well, I owed him a beating he didn't want to collect. I kind of sympathize. But it's Paris. You can easily find anyone you want, if you're on good terms with the lieutenant of police, Monsieur de Sartines." (Roman Polanski plays him!)
CHON: "Which we are, at least three days a week. We need to get ahold of Gilbert, you know. He was a witness to the fight that you had with Philip de Taverney (waaaaaay back a million chapters ago), and knows you were in the wrong, and he could use that against us..."
JEAN: "Wait, what, how was I in the wrong?"
CHON: "I mean from the narrow-minded view of current legality, dear brother."
JEAN: "Ah, that's different."
Suddenly SYLVIE interrupts : "So you want to find Gilbert? And he was at the fountain down the street just a while ago? He was probably gathering water from it. Which usually would mean he was thirsty from working nearby, and since he had a piece of bread to divert the water jet and splash Viscount Jean, he was out at lunch time. Except that since he's a young philosopher he's not good for actual rough work. So more likely than not, he lives right in this very neighborhood, and someone has set him up as some sort of office assistant. Wasn't there an OLDER philosopher living right over on that other building? Sounds like he might have taken him in. But tee-hee, what do I know, I'm just a girl!"

Chon and Jean stare at Sylvie, who pretends to be busy tryng to figure out what her hair tastes like.

CHON: "ANYWAY, Jean, would you grab your opera-glasses and spy on Andree de Taverney for me?"
Jean is way ahead of Chon, is practically falling out of the window with his opera glasses: "Oh, yes- I can see her...she's reading a book! I can see her moving those big pages... OH, that's it, baby, turn the page for daddy. Chapter IV, yeah, you know you want to read that Chapter IV."
CHON: "Oh, brother! You like her too? What does she have that you can't find closer at home?"
JEAN: "For starters, our children might not come with inbred genetic deformities."
CHON: "You say inbred, I say blue-blood. Oh, Jean, let's keep it all in the family."
SYLVIE: *coughs, sing-song* "Waiting-maid... still around... waiting."
CHON: "RIGHT!" She snatched the opera-glasses from Jean. "I'll do the peeping from now on. You moron, you were staring at her boobs all the time, weren't you? She's not reading! She's just sitting there lost in thought!"
JEAN: "Like girls will do? When they're thinking about the manly love of a King?"
CHON: "I fear so. Oh, wow, this opera-glass is REALLY good. I can see everything in the room! And the city! Oooo, look at that pretty cloud! HEY, is that the Hunchback of Notre-Dame?"
Suddenly, she drops the opera-glass, and pushes Jean and Sylvie away from the window.
JEAN: "What? What? She saw you?"
CHON: "No! I saw HIM! GILBERT! He's right on that OTHER building, and he was ALSO spying on Andree!!!"
SYLVIE: "Told ya."
JEAN: "YES! We got him, then! AND now we don't have to worry about watching Andree- Gilbert is already fulfilling our watching needs. Now, all we need to do is turn the screw on our young philosopher, who will become our young spy. We just have to make Monsieur Sartines crash down on the kid, smack him a bit, turn him into our informant- or else it's Bastille Day EVERYDAY for Gilbert boy!"
CHON: "YES, and we have to do it, like, right NEXT CHAPTER. You know how Gilbert tends to throw himself out of windows every chance he gets!"

Will Eisner's "The Spirit Archives" Volume 4

I may dream of one day owning a complete set of Will Eisner's "The Spirit Archives", but my early explorations of Eisner's Central City are rewarding already. I really don't know why "The Spirit" isn't more of a part of America's communal consciousness, (despite what reverent Comic Book Lovers think, Ellen Dolan and Satin are not exactly Betty and Veronica).
Eisner's work in "The Spirit" is magical for a reason- this is some of the most fluid, creative entertainment the past century produced, and those Spirit Splash pages belong in the Museum of Universal Ingenuity, (a Dear Imaginary place I would love to visit.) Eisner famously talked about wanting to be an artist and a writer, not being great at either, and merging those two ineptitudes into one huge "eptitude". He knew how to marry words and drawings like few people- the lettering in his comics has such PERSONALITY!
Frank Miller introduces Volume 4 with a story about how Will Eisner metaphorically licked him when Miller talked about wanting comics to be appreciated as movies on paper. No, Eisner was one of the early graspers of comics as its own intellectual medium that conveys things differently from movies. This is why the kind of comic artists who confuse comic panels with storyboards contribute to the lessening of the material. Don't look for a comic to look like a movie- think of where the comic can go that the movie can't!
Of course, "The Spirit" stories are signalers of the future, and not the future themselves, but they are whimsically noir and very very good: the Spirit, (one Denny Colt) doesn't really have any interesting superpowers other than his Cary Grant-ness, but you wont' care. It's all about the way he ambles through a delightful world of comically noir low-lifes, vampy spies- and about the way Eisner pushes the medium to inventive pictorial heights. There's something here for everyone to love.

Well, unless you're black, in which case you might be a mite offended by the Spirit's little sidekick, Ebony White. ("Yessuh mist' Spirit, Lawdy, Ah sure am a gonna clean your shirt!")

But, be lenient. It was a different time. Ebony White is awesome and a good guy, and no more cartoonish or ludicrous than, say, Ludacris, his grammar is just as inventive as Snoop-Doog's, and if you're going to be offended by an insulting cartoon of a black man, deal with Flavor Flav first. The series is FULL of cartoony evil WHITE guys, but so is life, what you gonna do?

Addendum to Green Day: What's NOT opera, doc..?

How facile is it to label Green Day's "21st Century Breakdown" as a punk-opera simply because it has two "characters", Christian and Gloria! It's yet another NON-opera from Green Day! Is our culture so vertiginously ignorant that we don't remember what the simple idea behind an opera is? An opera, even at its loosest, has to be a play told through music. It needs characters and a story. "Christian" and "Gloria" are nebulous make-of-them-what-you-wills. I mean, it's cool that she's a girl that "carries a little book of conspiracies", but that's not as specific a characterization as, say, a DEAF DUMB AND BLIND BOY! And do we ever hear their voices? Nah, Billie Joe just refers to them, as though they were cool kids he saw making out by some generic graffittied wall somewhere in Oakland. We're invited to glean more from the art-work surrounding the release than from the lyrics.

I think those Green Day "kids" should sit around and study, not Verdi, not Queen, and not Keith Moon's drumming, but simply The Who's story-telling. Man, there are more characters and story in 4 and a half minutes of "Sally Simpson" than in 70 minutes of "21st Century Breakdown". Again, not a reaction to Green Day's perfectly fun, catchy song-cycle, but to the pretentious mis-nomer.

Tomas Alfredson's "Let The Right One In"

Childhood molestation is WRONG- unequivocally WRONG- but then puppy love is SO ADORABLE! Does anyone ever fall in love as powerfully as when they're 12 and cynicism hasn't eaten your heart and you can easily stare at your pretty red headed girl (or boy) from across the cafeteria for hours, hoping for nothing more than a chaste kiss or a brush of your bookbag against his-or-hers?
Ah, sex and its endless complexities. Damn you, Paul Anka!

ABOVE: Pedophilia is apparently ok, if it's performed by other pedos.

Let me get one thing out of the way. Go watch Tomas Alfredson's "Let The Right One In" like RIGHT NOW. It's yet another reminder of how the horror genre- and the vampire subgenre- are perfectly capable of exploring more than blood-letting, and can use traditional elements to create something completely new. Unfortunately "Let The Right One In" is rated R, and it's also Swedish so one has to READ subtitles, (which apparently is like, HARD for some people), so I'm guessing the Stephenie Meyer crowd will miss it. (I should quit my Meyer-bashing, but it alarms me that, by a recent poll, 4 out of every 5 books sold in America were by Stephenie. People, read like, Dickens or something!)

A friend put it correctly: in Sweden, the suburbs, the clothes, the haircuts and even the COLORS look like it's still the late-'70s, early-'80s and they can't let go of their Abba and their Rubik Cubes. Even the snow flurries in a late-'70s, early-'80s palette. This is the world of 12-year-old Oskar (Kare Hedebrant), who is bullied at school, and his newly moved-in neighbor, Eli (Lina Leandersson), who seems similarly aged, but has clearly been 12... for a very long time. And she can't be exposed to light. And she can crawl up buildings but has to be "invited" before she can enter your room. And drained bodies start appearing in the neighborhood. Am I spoiling things? Anne Rice explored the idea of a female vampire growing up sexually while being trapped in the body of a child in "Interview with the Vampire", and although this movie does not go into places that are TOO icky, (at least erotically), there is a definite budding sexuality in Eli's and Oskar's relationship that makes this a tender, unexpected love story.

ABOVE: I made some pedophile subscribe to my blog with that picture, didn't I? But really it's soooo sweet when the little naked girl vampire gets in bed with her boyfriend! I guess you just have to watch this movie. And you should!

This is the genius of "Let the Right One In": half of your brain is watching a disturbing, gory but classy vampire thriller; the other half is watching the sweetest tale of puppy love since Macaulay Culkin was trying to bang that girl from "My Girl" whose name evades me now. Some people thought they were watching a very disturbing scarefest! But you know what? I'm that sick mo'fo' who walked out of this one with a big grin and a lot of sympathy for the devil.

Green Day's "21st Century Breakdown"

You know that L.A. bit about how "sequels should be the same... but MORE?" Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool must have stormed out impatiently before the second half of the sentence. "21st Century Breakdown" IS "American Idiot"- you can practically super-impose the two albums' track lists to see what song here matches its stylistic predecessor, (much like super-imposing a map of Middle Earth on one of our tragic reality reputedly places the hobbit's Shire on top of Britain and Mordor in Nazi Germany.)
Same paranoiac anthems featuring some guy named Christian, (who stands in for AI's St. Jimmy AND the Jesus of Suburbia), coupled with loving odes to a girl whose kick-ass awesomeness seems to be her only defining feature, (she's now called Gloria, which I suppose it's a step-up from "Whats'ername".)
Same austere, heartfelt warnings about how THE GOVERNMENT IS LYING TO YOU, stuff that was plenty obvious back when the Who were wishing they would die before their current state. And, oh yes, same nods to the Who and Queen. (Will someone PLEASE make a "rock opera" that DOESN'T reference Brian May's guitar solos?)
Same muddled, inexact writing. If not for the melodic, "poetic license" context, you would doubt this person's competence to form sentences. The syntactic and metaphorical choices throughout are atrocious. Take lines like: "When your thoughts have taken their toll/ When your mind breaks the spirit of your soul"... Or "Inside your restless soul, your heart is dying." So THAT's were dying hearts are located, inside restless souls? I KNOW what he means, sort of, but does he? Or take the faux-folk prayer in "Song of the Century":
"Sing us a song... for me."
No, dude, when someone sings "US" a song, it can't be for "me", it has to be for "US." It's a compliment that he's able to EXPRESS so much through such nonsense.

So, yes, same of the same, but the same WAS one of the stand-out rock albums of a decade that wasn't overflowing with those, and "21st Century Breakdown" maintains a similar level of youthful romanticism. I find it overstuffed at 18 songs, (compare to AI's 13), and frontloaded with the catchier moments, (AI was the rare Green Day album that did not let down from first to last). But all the same, the title track, the propulsive "Last of the American Girls", "Know Your Enemy", the sweet-then-rocking "Viva La Gloria!", "21 Guns", and the Bowiesque "Last Night on Earth" could all very well end up on Green Day's inevitable SECOND Greatest Hits album- a popular and critical achievement I certainly could not have foreseen when I was clutching my beloved copy of "Dookie" in high school, and lauging. It was called DOOKIE, for St. Jimmy's sake!

John Patrick Shanley's "Doubt"

I once was an altar boy. No, I didn't get molested, although I did get slapped once by our decrepit elderly priest for trying to steal communion wafers, (I had a theory that if I ate enough Jesus-crackers I might develop superpowers, or at least good carpentry skills.) To be honest I felt a bit left out of the molestation loop- I thought I was quite adorable! Was my singing not girly enough? But I knew other kids who got "special treatment" and I kind of wish we'd had a ballsy, reasonably suspicious nun to keep the padres in check. A nun kind of like Sister Aloysius, in John Patrick Shanley's adaptation of his Tony-winning play "Doubt."

Watching "Mamma Mia" and "Doubt" back to back as I accidentally just did, (yeah, I rewatched "Mamma Mia", wanna make something of it?) would have made anyone realize how worshippable an actor Meryl Streep is, if they somehow had never seen her be great again and again for 30 years. "Doubt" is anchored by four great performances. Streep's, obviously; Philip Seymour Hoffman's as the lovable-but-maybe-inappropriate Father Flynn; Amy Adams' as the naive-but-not-exactly dumb Sister James; and Viola Davis', as the mother of the first black child admitted to the Catholic school.
That anchor is needed; without it "Doubt" would float away in its ponderosity, like most pretentious pieces that want to explore a BIG NOUN.

(Yeah, "War and Peace" is good, but let's stay from generics unless you're Tolstoy, or Woody Allen making fun of Tolstoy in "Love and Death". Stay away from the all encompassing names. Don't title your masterpiece "Doubt". No "Love", no "Faith", no "Revenge", no "Fear", no "Sadness." If you're very famous, you can get away with something like Philip Roth's "Indignation". Or if the BIG NOUN is relatively unexplored, like "Constipation."
But mostly be specific: "The Love-Like Emotions of Ice Road Trucker Wally Smiegel" is a good title for a book.)

As usual, I've detoured. That's good because it weeds out those who just wanted to know if they should watch "Doubt" or not. They should, because although it's a little melodramatic at points, (the kind of movie where lightning and tears punctuate revelations) it's well written and acted and markedly more adult and intelligent than most movies out there. (OH NO. I said "adult" and "intelligent", now no one will watch it! I take it back! Amy Adams takes off her wimple in this one!)
I actually want to go into why "Doubt" does not get an enthusiastic GO WATCH NOW from me, despite that intelligence and the great cast. It involves SPOILERS!!! BEWARE!!!

In the movie, Sister James (Adams) notices that Father Flynn (Hoffman) is particularly friendly to a young black altar boy, and after seeing the boy return from a long meeting with Flynn with alcohol in his breath, she expresses her concern to old frigid-rigid Sister Aloysius (Streep), who instantly jumps to the conclusion that Father Flynn has been playing guess-what's-under-the-robe with the kid. Sister Aloysius dogs the priest. The priest, a little hysterically, explains that the boy had been caught stealing sips from the communion wine and that's why he had a long talk with him, and that's why he had alcohol in his breath. Sister James is immensely relieved! That's actually a very good explanation! But Sister Aloysius will not give up. She goes to the boy's mother, (Viola Davis) and insinuates her child might have been molested, and- here comes the movie's pretty good twist- the mom is like: "SO what? So what if my black kid is gay? So what if someone shows him the affection he's not getting at home from the father who's pretty much repulsed by his kid's budding flamboyance? This is his chance to escape from the ghetto? He just has to hang on until June."

The end: Still, Sister Aloysius pushes in her accusations causing Father Flynn to- (well, pretty much get a promotion to another diocese). In the final scene, when Sister James finally meets with Sister Aloysius, Sister James is all like: "So he DID do it" and Sister Aloysius is all like: "I DON'T REALLY KNOW! I have DOUBTS!" Parumpum.

Ok, you get the point about how one shouldn't make destructive, gossipy, judgmental assumptions about other people's lives, because we're fallible ourselves - but you should have gotten that point back when you were 6 and you visited your friend Erin's house to draw doodles, and you saw she had a Crayola box just like yours and she was boldly coloring away, that little hussy, so you got into a paranoid fit and thought she'd stolen YOUR Crayola box, and then when you got home you realized that you'd left your very own Crayola box behind and it had been on the breakfast table all along, and you had a big fight over nothing. This should happen pretty early on anybody's list of life epiphanies.


Here's what really turned me off. Through the permissiveness of the Viola Davis' character, who tacitly approves of her child's hypothetical violation, the movie pretty much proposes an idea that if I was the kind of person who believes in things like a "gay agenda" I would be seriously alarmed by: that is, that HEY, maybe some of those molested boys in the Catholic Church were just budding homosexuals being initiated by loving, older gay men who could relate to their outcast state. No harm, no foul, right?
HMMM, NO NO NO. Sorry, movie, you lost me. Child Molestation, Gay or Straight, is Wrong. I'm not one for absolutes, not do I believe that there's some sort of mystery day in which a person stops being a child and becomes a grown-up, (shit, I'm not sure it's hapenned to me yet.) And neither do I subscribe to the view that pedophiles are insane monsters- just see them as immature people with some mixed up sex-wiring. But the fact remains, taking advantage of your power over an immature mind and, worse, an immature body, for your sexual pleasure is a no no. Viola Davis' acting was so good that it blinds you to how unbelievable her character's reaction is. I mean, I'm not saying it couldn't psychologically happen. But it's 1964, not 1944. I know there's some segregation still working itself out, I know the black woman is put down enough and just rooting for her boy to make it through the year at the nice WHITE PRIVATE SCHOOL. But there's no way that she's going to GO AGAINST this nun lady in order to ENDORSE the molestation of her child. It's much more likely that she would have marched right up to Father Flynn and smacked the bejesus out of him, and she would have had Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King to back her up.

Stupid Story Round-up

This has been a fructiferous time for news. Adam Lambert finally got elected as President of Iran. An 88-year crazy killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington; apparently part of an ineffectual plot to prove that there was no Holocaust and the Nazis actually were very peaceful and nice to the Jews. David Carradine should have done a more extensive background check on his prostitutes. And now I hear some glacier in Argentina has kept its size for over a century "despite global warming." (Being perpetually frigid: how like an Argentinian!) Global Warming Deniers, a group as psychologically intriguing as Holocaust Deniers, rejoiced at the headline. At least until someone who actually reads entire stories points out that the glacier gets its constant ice flux from THE MELTING SNOW IN THE ANDES. Doesn't snow melt with INCREASING TEMPERATURES? I don't care much, that's just my wacky theory. As Bobby Frost so poetically put it, whether by ice or by fire, we're all screwed.

ABOVE: A hunk of ice having a melt down. Just like my ex-wife! (rim shot) No, but seriously folks, I'm here all week, you've been lovely.

Lisa Rogak's "Haunted Heart: The Life And Times of Stephen King"

OH MY GOD!!! It's like Esquire Magazine snuck inside my dirty brain!!! A new Stephen King story- written on Bar Refaeli's naked body!!!


I was further thrilled by the non-issue smackdown between Stephen King and Stephenie Meyer- (King quite observantly pointed out Meyer is a terrible writer, and Meyer probably replied by saying she'd never read a Stephen King book, or really, any books that were scarier than "Little Women".) So I thought I would continue this merry King streak by reading Lisa Rogak's "Haunted Heart: The Life And Times of Stephen King".
Oh well, two out of three ain't bad.

"Haunted Heart" boasts of how unathorized a biography it is, but the problem is that Stephen King is not Charles Manson, no matter what those '70s bearderiffic pictures of him might have suggested. He's always been a fairly transparent person in his work and life, and there's nothing here that might surprise his fans. We know he has Daddy issues; that he was struggling to make ends meet with stories for "Cavalier" and the such until his wife dug "Carrie" out of the trash; we know of the phone call after "Carrie"'s paperback rights were sold, (Agent: "You need to sit down. We just sold the book. For $400,000 dollars." King: "YES!!! $40,000 bucks!!! AWE$OME!" Agent: "No, Steve. Not 40. $400,000!" King faints.) We know he spent the 70s and 80s coked out of his mind- which is pretty much the way everyone else spent the 70s and 80s. We know, yawn, that he went all gay in the 90s with a series of wussy under-edited novels about abused women who took revenge on their psychotic- and racist and Republican and homophobic- husbands, and we know that it kind of sounded like either "Tabby" was writing the books for him, or he'd slapped her once or something and was inflicting his exaggerated public penance on us. We know he was hit by a demonic truck that was still embitted by the bad treatment of his kind in "Maximum Overdrive", and we know he's really really bad at retiring. ("I'm done with writing, well, except some 20 or so novels I'm working on. But after that, I'll write 10 more, and that's it for good!")

What does Rogak have to add? Boring, repetitive prose. A weird balance between a reverent tone, (she LIKES the guy, that's why she writes this) and weak GOTCHA moments like: "In an interview in 1986, King said his grandma died in February '58, but I looked up the obituary and she died in MARCH '58! Is King repressing a memory darker than any on his stories?" What?! Bitch, I can barely remember what my grandma's NAME was, let alone the month she died in.

Anyway, skippable. Wait for the man to write his own memoirs. Hopefully before Devil Truck #2 comes bearing down on him.

GOSH, ok, we have to look again, don't we?

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Season 8, Part 4: "Time of Your Life"

Tombs have been desecrated before, but that whole bit about them re-making the (crappy) original "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" movie WITHOUT Joss Whedon's participation, pretending the show didn't exist AND in a clear bid for that post-"Twilight" money, is the worst kind of sacrilege. It's very cute how they treat it as if it was a simply remake or re-envisioning of a classic, like, say, that new "Star Trek" movie. But that's not what it's really at stake here.
OH, haha, I said stake. Totally unintended. ANYWAY, do let me clarify what the situation is, for the ungrasping or uninitiated. Imagine that BEFORE making "Star Trek", Gene Rodenberry had written a really bad story in middle school called "Star Trak" that had a guy named Spock in it, and then had thrown away the story in a garbage bin out of sheer embarrassment, and many years later he'd gotten some elements of "Star Trak" to make the "Star Trek" franchise, and THEN many many many years after THAT, some recession-mad screenwriter had been hunting for remains of whoppers in a dumpster and had found the original crumpled "Star Trak" story, and decided: "HEY, kids liked Battlestar Galactica! Let's throw this crap at them!!!"

That horrifying event is at hand.
Unless it's some sort of far future event, I want no one BUT Sarah Michelle Gellar to play Buffy. As it is, I am usually discomfited by how little the characters in Buffy's canonical comics season 8 can remind me of their real-life counterparts. Of course if this Buffy re-wind disaster goes through I'll watch in rubbernecking horror, but the fact is that it speaks to the high level lack of imagination in Hollywood. Was assembling the TV cast for a NEW movie such a logistical impossibility? I guarantee the nerds will squeal. Couldn't they get Whedon to join in- other than contacting him to remind him he doesn't have the rights to his creation? (Whedon's vaguely Alan-Mooresque official comment: "I hope it's good.") Or, hell, adapting Whedon's 2001 "Fray? Was a sci-fi version of our beloved vampire-slayer not "tried-and-true" enough?



*sigh* Until then, we have part 4 of season 8. Not as solid as part 3, the arc has Buffy meeting "Fray" in a future where people swing slang even more fractured than hers (although they use the word "spaz", which prompts Buffy to snort: "THAT little bit made it?" ). Willow does something much too familiar from TV's season 6. Dawn goes from being a giant to being a centaur, (both spells ensuring she has a "ginormous ass"), and Xander has to climb on her with all the accompanying double entendres. Dawn: "You rode me so hard you left me sweating!" Xander: "EEEEWWWW, Dawn that's disgu- except it's literally true."
And in keeping with trademark Buffyness, there's one revelation that's so out-of-left-field that it might have come from an adjacent ballpark.
Still, the problems of Season 8 at its worst remain. The covers are fantastic, but the art-work inside is rushed (not "Jubilee" bad, mind you, but certainly far from, say, John Cassaday's magnificent work on Whedon's "Astonishing X-Men" run). The storyline is ALSO rushed- not in the bad way, but in the PACKED way. The characters TALK right, (Whedon penned most of it), but they MOVE too quick, there's no room for them to breathe as they would in a one-hour format. Imagine if every Buffy episode was condensed to 15 minutes, and had ten times the action scenes. It's telling that it's in a cartoony flashback situated roughly between seasons 1 and 2, that the true spirit of classic Buffy is revisited.

The depths of my dorkiness are yet to be unplumbed, I assure you.

Robert Kirkman's "The Walking Dead" Vols. 7-9

It's understood that the titular "Walking Dead" in Robert Kirkman's saga are not the "herd" of "roamers", but the dwindling human cast as they travel a post-American, post-technological landscape. (You know, the same landscape that is "cliched" and "infantile" if it's in a comic, but is "visionary" and "groundbreaking" if it's in an inexplicably revered Cormac McCarthy novel.)

Punctuated by infrequent moments of horror, the real charm of the series lies in its characters' preocupation with holding on to humanity when they know their friends and extended family will most likely not last the week. They survive with the tools of 12-steppers, (one zombie attack at a time), and Kirkman does not spare anyone. Rarely do you read a book in which you actually do feel like no character is safe, like Kirkman might simply kill off your hero not as the result of a character arc or because of plot necessities, but simply because, SHIT, IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD! (And there are some shocker deaths in these volumes. One in particular will have you going like: "No. NO WAY. That didn't just happen.")
Read this, or George A. Romero's corpse will nibble your toes while you sleep.

Eminem's "Relapse"

So what is it about Emimen? He's FUNNY! Sophomorically funny, agressively funny, introspective, navel-gazingly funny. There is really nothing likeable about Em outside of his pushy honesty and addled wordplay; but honesty and wordplay are two things that I greatly treasure, if you've been following. Dre keeps the production on track so that you hop along from joke to joke to rape of the obligatory celebrity to joke. "Relapse" functions better than "Encore", which frankly functioned just fine for me, because of the wealth of pharmacological information in it; Slim and Em have been through rehab, they have both been amused and horrified by it, and neither of them are too sure if it's been effective- or if they want it to be.
But the question that has haunted me since the beginning, and through Eminen's up and downs, is about race. Why is it that I have listened to every Eminem record but remain relatively ignorant of, say, Little Wayne's ouevre? If I don't generally care for hip-hop, (anthems about nice rims and murdered fiends and slapped bitches kept in their stitches so that they don't turn into snitches), why do I go along for Casper's ghoulish rhymes? Are his sensitivities instinctively more "white"? I would hate to think that.
The most flattering explanation I can find is that Eminem's raps have always directly come from a childish id, and they're not interestesd in racial gangsta communities; they're the sick, giddy hallucinations any kid of any race has as he (and it's usually a he) thinks of the gory tortures and vengeful annihilation of his enemies.

Kalidasa's "The Recognition of Shakuntala"

The seed of every serendipituous Bollywood musical lies in the convoluted sensuousness of the Mahabharata. "Shakuntala", easily the most famous Sanskrit play, is taken from an incident in that holy Hindu epic. The beautiful Shakuntala is raised in an equally beautiful garden hermitage, secluded from worldly cares, (although her pollen allergies are pretty worldly). One day King Dushyanta stumbles in after a long day's hunt, sees the girl, likes what he sees, marries her, and gives her a ring before he departs to do Kingly things. (Why he couldn't carry her with him as his Queen is the least of the logical questions you'll ask- this IS a story from what's basically the Bible of Hinduism, so logic surrenders to legend). King Dushyanta has unwitingly cock-blocked the evil sage Durvasa, who wants a shake of that Shakuntala tail, so Durvasa casts a spell by which the King forgets all about her and goes on a-Kinging. (You don't need a spell, we used to call that "rip-and-dip" in ye olde college days). The spell of forgetfulness CAN be broken, however, if Shakuntala presents a signet ring to the King. Naturally, at the first chance she gets, Shakuntala loses her ring- slips her hand into a placid lake and there it goes, down the gullet of a fish. So when she shows up all pregnant to Dushyanta, he's all like: "Ho, I don't know you from Jonah! Shakuntala is not my lover, she's just a girl who claims that I am the one, but the kid is not my son!"

Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
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He shuns her, but eventually a fisherman finds the ring and Dushyanta comes to his senses- which means he fights Titans (Prometheus could have been among them), gets a VIP tour of Indian Paradiso, and finally gets to have his Queen recognized.
And everyone lived happily ever after. And then there was "Slumdog Millionaire".

"Thriller 2"

No, the Gloved One isn't returning to old haunts. "Thriller 2" is an anthology edited by Clive Cussler that attempts to replicate the success of James Patterson's 2006 "Thriller". That "attempts" is misleading. This collection is much better, since genre-rific authors like Jeffery Deaver and Ridley Pearson don't use the ocassion to plug in their typical brand of thrills or current series heroes. The hit-to-miss ratio is better too. I was in particular shocked by how much I enjoyed R. L. Stine's "A Roomful of Witness", with its "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" cruelties:
(SPOILER TWIST)
We're led to assume that the narrator is working amongs the elderly, while he's actually taking care of very smart, deadly chimpanzees- when the revelation comes you get that thrilling "click" of all the previous clues fitting into place. That could not have worked in any other way BUT through words: in a movie you would have seen the chimps, or the director would have kept you from seeing the chimps so painstakingly that you would have suspected there was something going on. Most thrillers might as well be movies. R. L. Stine, (of all people in the world!), reminded me today me that words can sometimes take you places a camera can't.

Robert Kirkman's "Jubilee"

Sorry, Robert Kirkman. Hallucina giveth praise, and Hallucina taketh away.

"Jubilee" didn't even last "Antman"'s 12 issues. Jubes had her fifteen panels of fame in the X-Men universe in the early '90s cartoon, where she trailed Wolverine and was sort of "the character kids could relate to." But really, she couldn't do much more than spew out fireworks from her finger tips and look vaguely ethnic, so when Hollywood couldn't find a single popular Asian-American actress to play her, (Margaret Cho being not quite trim enough for the part), they just decided to mostly leave her out*. And so the fireworks died.
Her six-issue solo series didn't help. As envisioned by the increasingly more incompetent artists, it's hard to tell if Jubilee is Chinese, Samoan, Hispanic, African-American. As a matter of fact, she stops resembling any kind of a human figure as the artists visibly give up on even the basics of drawing: stick figures wrap up the tale. It's actually quite enlightening to see how Robert Kirkman's series decays. "Jubilee" starts with a bang: Like the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, or Veronica Mars, our gal moves to a school in L.A that's interestingly divided between the uber-wealthy and the supper-ghetto. Jubes gets assigned as a counselor, a great position to examine this microcosm of teenage angst; meanwhile her super cool aunt doubles as an assassin! So many possibilities! Can a TV pilot be far behind?
And then I guess the artistic team was told no one wanted to see if Jubilee was good at her World Civ class. Everyone just simultaneously surrenders all will. The drawings get increasingly crappier as the storyline progresses- if it can be considered progress when Jubilee suddenly quits the counseling job, drops out of school and starts dating a local gang-leader/ drug-dealer/ crackhead-looking motherfucker, in what has to be the most ill-advised career move of any X-Men EVER.
Things are so desperate at this point in the tale that Wolverine has to pop in, out of nowhere, to rescue Jubilee and drop her back into the happy fold of the X-Men's D-List. At least I think that was Wolverine, it's hard to tell from the drawings. It kind of looks like everyone just asked the janitor to fill in the last pages as they fled the office. Oh, and could he be nice enough to turn off the lights on the way out?

*FOR THE NERDS:
Yes, I know Jubilee actually does appear in the X-Men movies. In the first movie you can see her for almost an entire second in the background of a classroom. In the DVD for the second movie, she is on a deleted scene that can only be accessed if you weigh over 700 lbs. In the third movie, if you play the DVD backwards on a record player you can hear her voice at 1:05:32, saying: "PLEASE LET ME BE POPULAR AGAIN."

Robert Kirkman's "The Irredeemable Ant-Man"

Eric O'Grady is a complete shit.
The kind of guy who tricks his best friend's girlfriend into having sex with him right next to his best friend's FRESHLY DUG GRAVE.
The kind of guy who, after stealing the Ant-Man superhero suit, realizes that with great power comes the great ability of sneaking into Ms. Marvel's shower.
He really is the worst super-hero and that's exactly what makes Robert Kirkman's 12 issue series so gosh-darned admirable.
Kirkman grabbed the ant by the antenna- this was an anti-hero story about a guy who was nothing but dick moves, and he would follow through. It didn't win fans beyond the cult admirers, he didn't give the Marvel audience the "awwww, he really was a sweet heroic guy all along" moment they were waiting for at the end of their Pavlovian conveyor belt of cliches. (I have mixed my imagery, but that was all a trick to distract you while I used my superpowers to look down your cleavage and take-off with your wallet. Oooooh, is THAT what you keep on your wallet? Naughty-naughty.) "Ant-Man" is a comic book for the small-minded frat boy within every one of us, and Kirkman is one of the best comic writers around- I'm still following his zombie-saga, "The Walking Dead", the freshest thing in the field since George Romero's days.
(Or is that UN-freshest?)

SUPER COOL ADDENDUM!

I've just been chatting with John Sandford's son about the "Prey" books!
And I heard "Futurama" may be making a comeback!
And all is fine at the "Dollhouse"!
I'm happy, I'm happy.

John Sandford's "Wicked Prey"

After nineteen novels you wouldn't blame Sandford if he phoned it in, but DAMN, "Wicked Prey" is a true return to form! I'll just let the book jacket speak for itself:


"Danger stalks Lucas Davenport at work and all too close to home- and there is no place like home- in the superlative new thriller by the #1 New York Times' bestselling author. For twenty years, John Sandford's novels have been beloved for their "ingenious plots, crisp dialogue and vivacious musical numbers" (Washington Post) and nowhere are those more in evidence than in the sudden twisters of "Wicked Prey". The Republicans are coming to St. Paul to sing along to the touring company of Broadway's "Wicked". Throwing a big party is supposed to be fun, but crashing the party are a few hard cases that the police would rather have stayed away. Chief among them is a crew of professional stickup men who've spotted several lucrative opportunities, ranging from political moneymen with briefcases full of autographed Idina Menzel playbills, to that flying house house with the gravity-defying system, which is also being targeted by the sinister "Friends of Dorothy" Conclave. All that's headache enough for Lucas Davenport - but what's about to hit him is even worse. A while back, one of Davenport's stray bullets left a psychopath named Nessarose in a wheelchair, and, ever since, the man has been nursing his grudge into a full head of psychotic steam. He blames Davenport for the bullet, but it's no fun just shooting him. That wouldn't be painful enough. Not when Davenport has a pretty fourteen-year-old adopted daughter that's auditioning for the role of Glinda. And then there's the green-dyed assasin who calls herself Elphaba, with the .50 caliber sniper rifle and the Wiccan-crazy background, roaming through a city filled with the most powerful closeted homosexuals on Earth. . . "Wicked Prey" is only the latest in Sandford's Broadway-Thriller-Series, which has previously included "Cats Prey", "Jesuschrist Superstabbed Prey", "More Miserable Prey", "The Phantom of the Prey", "Lion King Prey", and "Preying Prey: The Musical!"

Anees Bazmee's "Singh is Kinng"

Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif are Bollywood's sweethearts, they've been in four movies together, all lysergically colored romantic comedies that randomly burst into shoot-outs or elaborate dance numbers at the drop of a turban. "Singh is Kinng" was 2008's box-office winner, and I gathered all the love I could from the bottom of my dancing belly for this elephantastic piece of crap, but sincerely kitsch has a limit, and I lacked the controlled substances that would have made this a magnificent tabla-thumping piece of transporting non-sense. Still, my brain was so addled by the nouveau-riche third-world obsession with music video thuggish poses, that when Snoop Dogg randomly dropped in to say that "Singh is Kinng but the D-O-Double G is the Kinng too", it either made absolute sense, or I was no longer able to understand that it made no sense it all.

Li Xing-Dao's "The Chalk Circle"

Another entry into the "communal, mythical consciousness" category is Li Xing-Dao's "The Chalk Circle". It's hard to read this play and not see it as a better told version of King Solomon's famous "split-the-baby" judgment, except that it was written in the 14th Century by a playwright who was unlikely to be acquainted with either Judaism or Christianity. "The Chalk Circle" is the heart-breaking tale of a prostitute, Hai-Tang, who is redeemed by the love of Ma Chung-Shing, who accepts her as a second wife. First Sister-Wifey is naturally a jealous viper who quickly poisons Ma Chung-Shing and connives to pretend that Hai-Tang's little boy, Shoulang, is actually hers, (thus securing Ma Chun-Shing's legacy.) In comes wise judge Pao-Ch'ing who draws a chalk circle around the child and orders each woman to pull the child to her side. Whichever woman pulls the child out of the circle wins (here were "tug-o'-war" and "toe-the-line" invented.) Naturally, evil First-Wife jerks the hell out of the boy to get him to her side and Hai-Tang lets go because she can't bear to see her true-born get hurt, and Pao-Ch'ing figures out who's got the authentic mom material.(See how this story is smarter and makes more sense than the baby-as-splittable-variable in the Bible?)

Bertolt Brecht modernized this as the more famous "Caucasian Chalk Circle".

"Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder"

ABOVE: Get Yer Ta-Ta's Out!

Was "Into the Wild Green Yonder" the end for "Futurama"? Will there be a Season 6 in the Year 2348, once it's accepted as mankind's sole lasting achievement, a veritable oracle of prescience? Time- and Matt Groening's disembodied head- will tell. Typical of "Season 5", the last installment came together only awkwardly, but I'll rather have lesser "Futurama" than no "Futurama" at all.


ABOVE: Get Yer Magnifying Glasses Out!

Sophocles' "Antigone"

Antigone is like, the most kick-ass woman ever. Don't misunderstand, she's pretty chill, a nice girl, it's just that she wants to bury her brother's carcass so that vultures don't peck the eyes out, but her asshole father-in-law Creon is like: "NO. I'll make a LAW! The dead guy is a traitor to the city, so let his body rot! Let the dogs burrow in the entrails! I command it!" And Antigone is all like: "I just want to bury him in a nice little tomb." And Creon is like: "If you do that, then I'm going to bury YOU in a nice little tomb." And then Creon's son, Haemon, who has been going at Antigone, is like: "Hey, man, you so harsh. Why don't you mellow out?" And all the Greek Chorus is like: "Yeah, it's the law, but it was a dumb law, let's change it." But Creon is all like: "NO! WE must follow the rules even though obviously I'm being a dickhead and my stubborness is bringing on all this DRAMA when we could just bury the stinking corpse properly and everyone would be happy!"

"Antigone" is the way everyone everywhere should learn that sometimes hot chicks wrapped in bed-sheets must stand up against the ridiculous patriarchy that's just causing unnecessary pain.
Or, if you want to glean something deeper- sometimes sticking to your principles is unwise- you have to know when to let go of simplistic standards of behavior. Better?

Aeschylus' "Prometheus Bound"

"Behold, here I am, pained and crucified
By will of a god, though I myself am a god;
My love for mortal men the only offense that bows me to this yoke."

Sounds like bonus commentary from the Crucifixion, but actually those lines were written in Greece four centuries before the Birth of the Big C.


Dear Imaginary Reader:
I'm reading some canonical plays from a great anthology of world drama. A few are for the first time, many are for the second or third time, some are after many years, some are new and I've never heard of them, and some I've always evaded but I'll force myself through for you. And I will very briefly note them.

Follow me. Depending on who you are, you can:

a) learn some fancy cultured shit you can drop in a chat room: "Nigga please, back off my Sophocles!"

or
b) you can get some vicarious bits of culture by learning the plots of plays you KNOW you should know but you don't. PLAYS, yes, the things people watched to learn their sex and drugs and rock and roll and violence before those new fangled Moving Pictures were invented.

or
c) you can refresh on some high school/college standards like Ibsen's "A Doll's House", which is very much linked to a certain RESURRECTED FROM THE DEAD show
called DOLLHOUSE.


or
d) you can snort and be bored by my shallow re-reading of that old dross "Medea". (Doesn't every child recite the thing by the age of three?!? Everyone knows what it's about, duh!) If you are this kind of person, I should tell you: your butler is buggering your gardener. Go, investigate, bye bye.

Anyway, Aeschylus' "Prometheus Bound" is static- or "unified"- enough to please Aristotle, (its hero IS chained to craggy boulders and left to suffer an eternity of exposure in a vast, wintry desert). Its bulk is in the form of prophecy dense and as alluring as anything in the Bible. Religious anthropologists fixate so much on the connections between Dyonisus and Jesus that sometimes the obvious imagery of punishment and regeneration in the Promethean myth seems to be pushed to the background- the wound on Jesus' side correlates so impossibly much to the one on Prometheus' side, and then there's the Titan's inability to die (the continual healing of his wounds is part of the punishment.) To top it all, "Prometheus Bound" also has an Annunciation, as the virgin Io is wooed by Jupiter. We mustn't forget, although for some reason we often do, that the word Jupiter comes from the Sanskrit DyusPiter... That is, Deus Pater, "God the Father." Similarly Zeus is not so far away from the latin Deus. The Greek gods didn't really go away- modern Christianity is nothing but the successful merging of the Hellenic and the Hebrew. In that context, Prometheus's prophecies are chilling, and Bible code obsessives would do well to expand their field of inquiry to classic Greek drama. Gives them material that's just as juicy.
Think of what it suggests of the Greek intelligence and wisdom (and religious sophistication) that Aeschylus has Prometheus say that he can wait things out until the current youthful up-and-coming God runs his course and a new SOMETHING arises to take over. Prometheus (who is eternal and as detached in his perception of time as Alan Moore's Dr. Manhattan) foresees that the reigning God of the Heavens-
our wise bearded Jupiter/ Deus Pater/ZEUS/Jove/Yahweh-
will one day be taken off the throne,
and new hungry gods will come and replace him. All of these eternal struggles are simply beyond mortal comprehension, by the way, and shouldn't concern you much. Think about how emotionally significant it is to you whether a particular household ant marching on your lawn has an ugly rice-grain addiction. Got that emotion captured? That's exactly how much the Greek Gods feel for your human troubles.

"Mankind has but one myth; we're just looking through a prism."- Joseph Campbell.

...

Ok, it's my own damned quote, I just made that shit up. It SOUNDED like something Joseph Campbell would say, though, doesn't it? Things are oh so much more meaningful if somebody with a tie and a biographer says it.
(I have ties, although I don't like them and I rarely get a chance to use them. That's good. if I'm wearing a tie, it probably means someone just died.)

Ah, Hallucina. The only place where Joseph Campbell, Joss Whedon, Aristotle, Alan Moore, and Aeschylus are likely to ever collide. Keep coming back for more, you hear? Tell your friends and neighbors.
We'll get ourselves some culture here somehow, I promise.