First, a general complaint: Why, in a movie about vampires and werewolves, do we see no vampires ever actually feeding on human beings? What is it that makes them vampires, exactly? Unlike Twilight, these vampires at least have the decency to be allergic to sunlight, but are otherwise just as badly conceived as their Meyersesque counterparts. They don't ever seem to get hungry; when we do see Victor taking a drink, it's out of a glass. Granted, there are human prisoners, but they are obviously not being fed on, since we see them being lined up and forcibly transformed into "Lycans" - a term which, by the way, sticks in my fucking craw for the pretentious white-wolf/otherkin nonsense it is. As I recall, Michael shows that he can't eat cooked food in the second movie, indicating that he can only eat a fresh kill (which we don't really get to see him do). In the newest installation, you have two rather gigantic populations of creatures who are known to feast on blood or fresh prey, respectively, yet there doesn't appear to be human or animal stock on hand capable of supporting either.
I know that in many stories we don't bother showing the characters eating or shitting without good reason, but when your whole premise is based on a war between predators and parasites, it strikes me as odd to completely ignore the species most inclined to be their host/prey. In the third movie, the only time Victor interacts directly with a non-slave human, he throws him into a wall. He's trying to instill fear in the other humans: why not show him drinking one? Wouldn't it be more effective than just being able to snap their necks? The werewolves are even sillier - they are supposed to be brutal, violent and vaguely rapacious, but they always appear to be holding back on the humans.
My bigger problem with the third movie is the continuity and plot. "Underworld III" had a really difficult task in the first place: retell a story we'd already learned about in the first two movies, and tweak it enough to keep it interesting as a standalone story. Not easy, I admit. The trick is in the delivery, which struck me as alternately absurd and underdeveloped. The characters are supposed to be immortal plotters and schemers.
The only one who comes close is the librarian character, Tannis. We've met him before, in the second movie. Best characterization in both movies, in my opinion. He's the only one with a sense of perspective, but even he's simpleminded, considering that he's supposed to be many centuries old and an immortal schemer. Of course, almost every vampire story I've ever read or seen comes into this problem. The character may be thousands of years old, but is inevitably limited to the writer's imaginative capacity. That said, the writers of these movies have a limited capacity indeed.
Down to the most basic - the final battle, the confrontation between Victor and Lucien. I felt cheated. We knew from the beginning who would survive, who wouldn't, and how. Again, it's the delivery that counts. These two have been psyching up for a battle from the beginning - their story is Shakespearean tragedy, their rivalry epic. Each blames the other for the death of woman (who, btw, was also less impressive than she ought to have been, though still more interesting than either of the men). The plot was there. The payoff wasn't.
The rivals' fight was short and limp-wristed, and was brought to a conclusion by simultaneously invoking a cliche and a continuity error. Lucien realizes that the ceiling is really poorly kept, so he pulls holes in the ceiling, exposing Victor to daylight... except that the battle was taking place in the middle of the night. Naturally, there's an underground river into which Victor can fall, healing himself despite taking the sort of wounds which have been consistently killing his vampiric brethren throughout the film, and thus escape into his steampunkmagicaltwirlylock coffin. Any number of loose ends, but that's fine. We know how most of the surviving characters die, though, and since there really weren't any introduced that we hadn't already met future versions of, the viewer is left to wonder - so what?
A good prequel ought to leave us with some new revelatory information, something which puts a new twist on the story and tests the assumptions established in its counterparts, without violating logic or continuity. "Underworld III" accomplishes none of this. The story is told exactly as it was in the earlier films, with almost nothing fleshed out except to point out the involvement of a couple of characters that we already know are going to die - except now their deaths seem that much more disappointing, since none of them actually accomplishes anything they set out to do. None of the characters learns anything, nothing is introduced that could make the later movies more interesting, and the setting is just as lackluster in its "heyday" as it appears to be later on. Are vampires really just that bad at simple housekeeping?
It's a point of bitter irony for me that, since I love vampire stories so much, I'm increasingly dissatisfied with them. Genre storytelling is the easiest and hardest to accomplish - the author is given a number of elements to work with and a cultural history kept alive by rabid fans who are as unforgiving as we are obsessed. The trick is in the telling, in the spin and the perspective. It is still possible to tell a good vampire story (see "Let the Right One In" for a very recent example), but this requires some faith in the material and the ability to make it more interesting to the audience. Naturally, I'm now feeling compelled to tell my own vampire story, just to prove to myself that I can. Heaven deliver us from shoddy work.
Forty Six and Two
lyrics by Tool
My shadows
Shedding skin and
Ive been picking
Scabs again.
Im down
Digging through
My old muscles
Looking for a clue.
Ive been crawling on my belly
Clearing out what couldve been.
Ive been wallowing in my own confused
And insecure delusions
For a piece to cross me over
Or a word to guide me in.
I wanna feel the changes coming down.
I wanna know what Ive been hiding in
My shadow.
Change is coming through my shadow.
My shadows shedding skin
Ive been picking
My scabs again.
Ive been crawling on my belly
Clearing out what couldve been.
Ive been wallowing in my own chaotic
And insecure delusions.
I wanna feel the change consume me,
Feel the outside turning in.
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and
Cleansing Ive endured within
My shadow
Change is coming.
Now is my time.
Listen to my muscle memory.
Contemplate what Ive been clinging to.
Forty-six and two ahead of me.
I choose to live and to
Grow, take and give and to
Move, learn and love and to
Cry, kill and die and to
Be paranoid and to
Lie, hate and fear and to
Do what it takes to move through.
I choose to live and to
Lie, kill and give and to
Die, learn and love and to
Do what it takes to step through.
See my shadow changing,
Stretching up and over me.
Soften this old armor.
Hoping I can clear the way
By stepping through my shadow,
Coming out the other side.
Step into the shadow.
Forty six and two are just ahead of me.
The last couple of weeks have been an incredible, heaping cluster-fuck punctuated by moments of benevolent revelation and quiet absolution. Grandma Billie is still in hospital, and will likely be there for at least a couple of weeks. My uncle Buddy has had hospital issues as well, though the nature of his visit is less definitive. His son, Eric, also in the hospital after sneaking out of the house at 2am, only to get beating up and pistol-whipped in what is probably a gang-related incident. En route to Buffalo last Thursday, JD and Topher hit a deer at about 2:30am, just thirty miles south of their destination.
Both of them were miraculously unhurt, but JD's truck was more-or-less totaled, depending on who you ask and in what context. Sharon ended up driving us back down to DC, with my stuff once more loaded into her van.
My great grandmother seems locked in a ever-deepening spiral of poor health, and the last thing I heard her say (though she didn't know I was in the room) was that she wanted to be done with it. She was saying this to my step-mother, whose immediate was to try convincing her this wasn't true. I'm not so sure. Grandma mentioned wanting to "get in" when she was morphine-delusional, and though she told us she was talking about Las Vegas at the time, I was left with the profound impression that wasn't what she was talking about at all. For her, Las Vegas has always been a sort of philosophical dream-place; a fond personal heaven of nostalgia to which she returns when she needs to be reminded of better times and lives.
That last time I got to see her, I got to introduce her to Topher. She was lucid, then, and told me she liked him and approved of him, and gave us her blessing; she said she'd love me always, and then told me not to come back. It was after Topher and I left the room and Sharon went back in to say hello that I pulled an Orpheus and went back anyway, thus hearing her confirm what I already suspected. She isn't suicidal, exactly, but she's about as prepared for death as she'll ever be. I suppose that's about as much as anyone could ask for at that stage.
She is still alive, and not even verifiably dying, but I find myself reviewing my memories of her: a bundle of momentary impressions and longstanding themes, repeated phrases and conversations that lasted far into an infinite number of summer nights when I would visit for a month or so. I remember the walks we used to take when I was very little, staring starry-eyed at the city lights and their far counterparts in the sky; amazing, how lush the clouds looked, pregnant with reflected, violet luminescence. Details come back to me, chased in gold and caramel like the sofa she always kept clean by draping it with a sheet, mirrors lining every wall to reflect the mellow light of her apartment, vines climbing lazily up macrame planters amidst a modest collection of impressionist paintings.
There's a replica relief of Pan with two nymphs, which has been hanging on her wall as long as I've been alive. She got it in Vegas (a little piece of Heaven?), and I've been in love with it for years. For months, she's been telling me to take it with me when I get to Buffalo. While there, I did manage (despite a number of obstacles) to get all of my belongings - but even with her permission, I felt like a thief taking that statue when she wasn't there. It was all so unceremonious and last-minute. I'm sure the feeling will pass over time, unless it doesn't.
Father's Day (Satherhood?) was nice enough, though I keep seeing more and more evidence that the family is in a state of decline and fragmentation. Forgiveness is in short supply, by and large; some branches of the tree seem to be in the process of falling off, some more or less lamentably than others. Grandma thinks everyone's being obtuse and suicidally stubborn (and who would know better?). Last time I spoke with her on the phone, before the second surgery and the morphine, she told me she wished they'd all sit down together and straighten things out. I doubt that will happen, but it's a worthwhile dream.
Buffalo is less and less home to me, more and more a trip into memories bitter and sweet in equal measure. Family is there, and so are a few friends. I don't hate the place like I used to, but there's also little to no attachment. Most of the places I had any interest in before are now closed. Stimulants and the Continental come to mind. Every school I went to before high school has closed, Hutch Tech has been renovated from the inside, and so looks unfamiliar even from the street. Allentown, while nice, was never really one of my haunts. In fact, it occurred to me that I don't really have any "old haunts" left there, except maybe Spot Coffee and Prima Pizza, and that little stretch of Main Street we more or less laughingly refer to as the "Theater District" - it's nice, but two square blocks does not a district make.
I am faced with the sudden realization of my own adulthood. Part of me is relieved; some of me is afraid. Less than I would have expected. The onslaught of inevitability, imagined futures and memories given their rightful place and perspective, all brought on by my grandmother's illness, has wrought deep and necessary changes in me. Grandma is still alive, but I already feel unburdened in the aftermath of my merely-imagined mourning. What I'm feeling isn't stress, it's growth; the shedding of skins, fears and illusions. If she lives to be a hale hundred years old, I'll still have changed today.
At the same time, I've been blogging semi-regularly (as you may have noticed) over at the Watha T. Daniel library page, which has made me passing familiar with Blogger. Then there was the facebook group, which is turning into a blog, which started me on GoodReads. Between my new exposure to Blogger, Twitter, GoodReads and Facebook, Google Earth, Google Images, etc., I suppose it was inevitable that I would end up with a Gmail account (facsimilesmiles@gmail.com), and subsequently a Google Reader account. Today I discovered Gizmodo, Digg and a handful of interesting blogs. Tomorrow I will probably drown in a sea of information.
To make my life easier, I'm abandoning Yahoo (been planning that one for a long time anyway) in favor of Google; and I'm eliminating all extraneous feeds from my lj f-list, since all of those feeds are available in an easier format on GoogleReader. My livejournal is pretty much going to become strictly an outlet for personal ranting and musings (should I ever again have time to vent them) and a venue to keep track of friends who still use this site.
More another time,
~N~
Today is the first in our Paul Robeson film series, every Sunday in June. Today, we'll be playing his earliest extant movie, "Body and Soul", a silent film in which the actor played a double role as a corrupt minister and an unassuming inventor, each vying for the affection of the same woman. Very controversial for its scandalous depiction of the black church (everything Robeson did was controversial for some reason or other).
If you're in the area, come to the Watha T. library in Shaw at 3pm. It's at 945 Rhode Island Ave. NW, next to the skate park and across the street from Seaton Elementary.
Also? I'm creating a new Blogger and GoodReads account for Spooky Books/Strange Children. Will update as it happens (and maybe eventually find time to wax philosophical about life, the universe and everything).
---
On another note: Why do they keep making Sun Shang Xiang more and more dainty? Wasn't she supposed to be some sort of bad-ass warrior woman? (Yeah, we just got DW6 - it rocks but for certain details. The horses are much better; far more maneuverable, and it's nice that you can kill them if they start to crowd you. I'm not thrilled with the new weapons system, though, and the character advancement is reminiscent of FFX. Haven't gotten around to unlocking much, but overall I'm pleased.
/geekery
I feel vaguely guilty about linking here to all the stuff I'm doing not-here, but since there's never any time to post journal entries because of the other stuff I'm doing, I suppose it makes sense that's what I'd post here.
All this by way of prefacing my next shameless plug; I've created a new group on Facebook, for those of you as have accounts there, called Spooky Books for Strange Children. It's basically a niche interest group for those with an interest in compiling a list of childrens' books for parents and library-people who want to share their love of gothic horror, science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction. Non-parent, non-librarian types are more than welcome to join, just for the hell of it.
If the link doesn't work, let me know and I'll see if I can't fix it.
Love to everyone,
~N~
Yes, he sang "Old Man River", but no, we're not going to show that one. As a sop, here it is:
Enjoy!
Just watch this. Do it.
In any case, here's a peek at my current and near-future reading list, at least half of which are very recent arrivals at our branch of the library. Naturally, it's somewhat incomplete and out-of-order, and naturally I'll be reading some of them faster than others. These days I am never reading just one book at a time. I find myself leaving some at work, some at home, some in my bag for the commute to and from school, and some I read only in the restroom (make of that what you may):
1. The Vampire Chronicles*, by Anne Rice - yes, all of them, currently working on Queen of the Damned. I'm reading with an eye on the characters' codependence and disjunctive personality disorders.
2. Jesus, Interrupted*, by Bart D. Ehrman - points out the contradictions and authorship questions in the New Testament; none of it's new to me, but still has it's fascination...
3. Supreme Courtship*, by Christopher Buckley - I love Buckley's satire; it's easy reading, keeps me laughing, and (like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher) reassures me that I'm not the only one who feels this sense of surrealistic terror when confronted by politics.
4. Blindness, by Jose Saramago - Yes, the one the movie was based on. I gave the first page a quick once-over while shelving it, and got hooked. Strange writing style (it shines through even in translation from the original Portuguese); nicely allegorical, right up my alley.
5. Paul Robeson, by Martin Duberman - We'll be showing a weekly film series of important Robeson films in June, and I'm doing a little research to prepare for it.
6. Baudolino, by Umberto Eco - caught my fancy at random
7. J-Horror, by David Kalat - Saw it on the desk at work.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
fritterfae got to it first, so I'll have to wait.8. Columbine, by David Cullen - ten years, and I'm still puzzling out my feelings about this; hopefully, the book will help.
9. Hella Nation, by Evan Wright - survey of the "Lost Tribes of America". Seriously, yes.
10. My Booky Wook, by Russell Brand - just because, really.
11. The End of Overeating, by David Kessler - curious what he has to say
12. 1491: new Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann - Pre-Columbian empires given a good looking-over? Why, certainly. :)
* - I'm already mostly done with these.
Only 20 days left in the semester, and I'm already planning the various things I want to accomplish during my "vacation". River City, of course. Someday I'll stop "working on" that story and finally get it written. Hopefully this will be that summer. A new zombie story in the works. The story will begin on Good Friday, in which Transubstantiation takes on a new and terrible dimension. I'm calling them "Eucharist Zombies". They cry while they eat. I'm using the working title "Passover Massacre", though to be honest the story will be a little more dignified (I hope) than this paragraph suggests.
Also during the summer I need to get my DC ID (which won't be a driver's license, thanks to the rank fuckery of the Virginia DMV); then Topher and I will get our domestic partnership taken care of, so he can go on my insurance and I can help prove residency at school (hopefully), get in-state tuition rates and not be stuck paying $5k out of pocket every semester for the rest of my education (and that's after loans).
In the meantime, I feel the need to refocus myself spiritually, physically and psychologically (perhaps all the same thing, but still). My eating habits during the semester have been atrocious, and I haven't been going to the gym like I ought. Haven't taken time to meditate (as, yes, I am wont to do) or indulge my ecstatic pagan side (which it has been way too long since I did). I need to reorient myself generally. There are a lot of things I have simply ignored for the sake of expediency, and now is the best time to get sorted.
Oh yeah, and I'll be writing a lot of my traditional pretentious twaddle in the coming months as well - possibly more than usual so I can fill my twaddle quota for the year, since I don't have the chance to do so much during the semester.
Love to everyone.
~N~
I had a severe panic/rage moment, figuring out this schedule, on account of the seeming impossibility of the situation. I feel like I've been asked to run a race with one foot cut off; if I didn't have to work full time, I'd be fine, but I can't do that. I'm already pushing the rules as it is. I worry that, when I get to the last few semesters, when everything is 300 level courses, I'm going to just bomb the fuck out for lack of time to actually do my studies.
If I dropped to part-time, it would take me another four years to earn my bachelor's degree. I don't want to be in my 30's and just getting to that stage in my life. I'm already pushing it as it is. If I could work part-time, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but then wouldn't be able to afford going to school.
I think more than anything, it's the trapped feeling I'm railing against. Why can't anything ever be simple?
---
More lyrics for the road; another song that touches me (Moist always does). I really, really miss this band.
"Leave it Alone" - Moist
id walk the water to get back to you
and where i was complete
we found you scattered by the highway side too
soon to be released
gathered the pieces up and clean the places
where you were undone
and washed the wreckage out unfinished all the
thoughts that wed begun
i came to burn the sky and tear away
the beauty that it sows
if i could rape the day and find the things i thought
id always known
leave it alone again tonight
i laid your arms out long untwisted there
and shaped what i could find
unmade the most of it then left the rest
the parts unrecognized
my reconstruction was the only way
for one last look at you
i lost the sense of it the absolution
that we never knew
leave it alone again tonight
leave it alone again tonight
and it takes me back from this place here
it takes me back from this place here
i came to burn the sky and tear away
the beauty that it sows
if i could rape the day and find the things
i thought id always known
leave it alone again tonight
and it takes me back from this place here
from this place here it takes me over
and it might be lost in this place here
from this place here it takes me on
tonight leave it alone
fritterfae showed me this very important news item which I feel accurately illustrates our current political climate:This is a uniquely honest moment in American journalism. I only hope we can see Anderson Cooper have an equally frank discussion about this tender subject. Perhaps they can demonstrate?
Also?
Bwahahahahaha!!!!
"Warning", by Incubus
Bat your eyes girl, be otherworldly,
count your blessings, seduce a stranger
What's so wrong with being happy?
Kudos to those who see through sickness (yeah)
Over and over and over and over and ooh
(chorus)
She woke in the morning
She knew that her life had passed her by
And she called out a warning,
"Don't ever let life pass you by!"
I suggest we learn to love
ourselves before its made illegal
When will we learn? (When will we learn?)
When will we change? (When will we change?)
Just in time to see it all come down
Those left standing will make millions
writing books on the way it should have been
When she woke in the morning,
she knew that her life had passed her by
And she called out a warning (WARNING!),
"Don't ever let life pass you by!"
Floating in this cosmic jacuzzi,
we are like frogs oblivious
to the water starting to boil,
no one flinches, we all float face down
She woke in the morning
She knew that her life had passed her by
And she called out a warning,
"Don't ever let life pass you by!"
---
Funny, every time I hear a song by this band I feel like I'm floating on this airstream of emotion, hot and cold, sad and joyful, but I've never thought to buy one of their albums.
I'll have to rectify that.
Also, this station is just playing all my happy songs today. Right after "Warning"? "The Chemicals Between Us", by Bush. I love Pandora.
I'm currently re-reading IT, by Stephen King, and will be posting a retrospective review at some point next week. Also, I promise to write something of worth here at some point in the near future.
Love to everyone.
...
"Are you just saying that?"
"No, I mean it. Will you marry me?"
"Um... You're going to make me cry in this restaurant, aren't you?"
"Will you?"
"Yes."
"Say that again."
"Yes..."
"One more time..."
"Yes!"
"That's it, all settled."
Much of this is paraphrased, but it's how I'll be telling it to future generations, at parties and the like. It's roughly accurate. Salient point, I fucking derailed the argument. Unfortunately it's not a repeatable feat, at least I hope it's not.
Yes, we're getting married, in every sense of the word that matters to us. We're looking at late August for the date; further details shall be forthcoming. I have no idea how to plan a wedding (gay, pagan or otherwise). No idea about our venue, format or guest-list so far. I've already got a gadzillion people I want to invite, though I know we're going to have limits. I am tentatively thinking "public park", but I know we're waaaay to late to rent a space, so probably someone's home or the deep fucking woods (maybe the Farm?).
Anyway, yeah. Off to do homework. No philosophical revelations, just practical ones.
