What is best in life? Bowie, eternal

What is best in life? The Star Wars spoiler standard

One of the things I find most fascinating about Star Wars' renewed grip on modern pop culture is the way the entire world is holding its shit together on the issue of spoilers.

As everybody who has seen The Force Awakens knows - and by now, that's getting to be a significant proportion of the planet - there is a big, Star Wars universe-changing moment that comes about three-quarters of the way through, setting things up nicely for a climax of explosions and angst.

The fact that there is a big plot twist isn't surprising, but what has surprised me is how long it has remained a secret, more or less. It's regularly mentioned in full articles, essays and interviews, but always comes with a spoiler warning, and is never referred to outright in the headline, in case somebody stumbles across it. Even social media has been reasonably good at keeping it together.

I honestly thought all that would have broken down by now, and that everybody would be discussing it out in the open, especially when that plot development sets such a mood and tone for the final movie. But the culture around this movie has become weirdly self-policing. Nobody really wants to be the dick that ruins it for everybody, even though everybody knows about it.

I really can't wait to see how long it lasts, because it won't last forever. I thought it would be out there a week or two after the movie premiered, and that it would all just be common knowledge, but it's still bubbling away there, and might last for a while yet.

If anything, it's just nice to know we don't all turn into total dicks on the internet.

What is best in life? The sad death of Leland Palmer

What is best in life? X-plaining the X-Men!

There are a huge number of entertaining and informative podcasts produced every week, on subjects of history, philosophy and cutting edge science. Naturally, I only listen to podcasts about movies and comic books, because they are the most important things in life.

I still only have the time and inclination to listen to about half a dozen podcasts a week, which means I usually stick with the old favourites, like Graeme and Jeff's Wait What, the House To Astonish crew, the various Factual Opinions things and the odd True Crime thing so we can gossip about it in the office. I'll try out other podcasts, but rarely stick with them. That takes something special to become a regular thing.

Turns out, a fanatical devotion to Chris Claremont's X-Men comics was special enough, because I'm hooked on Jay and Miles X-Plain The X-Men (because it's about time somebody did).

Every week, the Portland pair dive into some deep X-history and pull apart the comics that were, for better or worse, a vital part of my adolescence, and it's glorious. Their show is just a bit too slick, and I often disagree with some of the individual assessments of various stories, but there is just so much enthusiasm and passion and affection for these strange old comics.

I've only just caught up on the past 90 episodes, and they're right into the comics that meant oh-so-much to 12-year-old me, like the Claremont/Davis Excalibur comics and the X-Australia epic. I could be listening to somebody talk about the geo-political landscape of 17th-century France, or a treatise on the growth of human consciousness, but I'd rather sit around and listen to Jay and Miles, and mourn Doug Ramsey together.

What is best in life? The lovely wife!

The lovely wife has been mentioned on this blog once or twice, and she remains eternally patient with my geek nature. She has her limits, but I wouldn't go that far either.

Yesterday, for my birthday, she bought me a star. An actual star - HIP 46569, in the constellation of Hydra. She got it from the Stardome and it’s mine.

Right Ascension 09h 30m 33s. Declination -23 degrees 25’ 03”. Distance 1672.6 light years.

When you and her and I and everybody we know are dust in the wind, that star will still shine down from the heavens for millions and millions of years to come.

I might be a total fuckin' nerd, but I'm a total romantic fuckin' nerd, and she gets me like no other.

Plus, she built this goddamned monstrosity!

What is best in life? Blogging!

This is the seventh anniversary of the Tearoom of Despair, and my 41st birthday. Normal service will continue for the foreseeable future.

Thank you for your participation. I love you all.

What is best in life? Brian Bolland's Judge Dredd covers

What is best in life? Every Frame A Painting

I adore video essays about film technique, craft and structure like nothing else, but there are so many rubbish ones. Videos that think they are making some kind of groundbreaking observation when they point out that Twelve Monkeys has a circular structure, or that Kubrick liked to use a bit of the old Steadicam.

But there are some lovely ones out there - Sean Witzke did a terrific piece of the Mission Impossible movies recently, and Tony Zhou's videos are the best.


Drive (2011) - The Quadrant System from Tony Zhou on Vimeo.

Zhou's videos are funny, thoughtful, informative and freaking obsessed with craft, nailing what makes directors like David Fincher so great - and it's all about the staging.


David Fincher - And the Other Way is Wrong from Tony Zhou on Vimeo.

He's done tonnes of them, on the sheer brilliance of Jackie Chan, the grace of Robin Williams and the use of chairs in modern cinema, and his poetic ode to F For Fake somehow turns into a tribute to the art of all storytelling. In four minutes.


F for Fake (1973) - How to Structure a Video Essay from Tony Zhou on Vimeo.

You can find them all here, and Zhou is producing them semi-regularly, with a look at ensemble staging just the other day. Which is good, because this kind of articulate and ultra-modern love letter to cinema can only be a good thing.

What is best in life? Jack Yeovil's Krokodil Tears!

 
On Monsters' Row, they were going wild. Voorhees had wrenched his door off, and was being held down by a dozen officers. Rex Tendenter hung naked from his bars like a monkey, chattering like a mad creature. Staig, Mizzi, McClean and Brosnan were howling like beasts. Etchison was laughing uncontrollably, plucking his eyelashes out one by one. Myers just stared at the walls of his cell, unperturbed by it all.

Voorhees got a cattleprod away from one of the officers, and shoved it through a uniformed chest. Hector Childress clapped as the blood sprayed, and called for more. Tendenter leaped to the floor. His bars had been bloodied. He licked the fast-drying red greedily, smearing his face. Colonel Reynard Pershing Fraylman lay on his military-perfect bunk, his tongue lolling, his face blackening. He had been struck dead early in the riot, brought down by a burst blood vessel. Norman Bates shouted in a womanish, high-pitched voice.

Voorhees had killed five of the guards, by now. Tear gas cannisters exploded and Staig swallowed his tongue, choking quickly to death. Three hefty officers in transpex riot gear jogged through the door, and levelled their guns. Rubber bullets bounced off Voorhees' broad chest, and spanged against the bars.

"Don't freak around," shouted a sergeant who was trying to hold his arm onto his shoulder, "kill the motherfreaker..."

Norman Bates cringed at the bad language.

The riot bulls levelled semi-automatics, and filled Voorhees's chest. The hulking moron kept stumbling onwards.

"Come on guys," shouted the sergeant, "plug the fat..." He was cut off by the next burst. Ricochet bullets slammed into him, and he relaxed, his arm slipping into his lap. Three other officers died in that volley, and Voorhees kept walking.

The riot bulls put ScumStoppers through Jason Voorhees's eyes, and the back of his bald head exploded.

"What a mess," said Norman. "This will never wash out, you know, never. This dress is ruined!"

They were still screaming. Tendenter dipped his fingers in Voorhees's spilled blood and brains, and raised the chunks to his eager lips.

"Freak," said Officer Kerr, "it's time we settled these bastards' hash once and for all."

He shot Tendenter between the eyes, and the Bachelor Boy slumped, still smiling, in his cell.

Childress realized what was happening, and ran to the back of his cell, hiding behind his bunk. Officers shoved their rifles through the bars and shot the chainsaw murderer through his bedding.

"Who's got the keys?" asked Kerr.

"No one."

"We do it through the bars then," said Kerr. "Sandall, you take Myers with the burpgun. He's the worst of them."

Sandall shoved his weapon through the bars, and looked into the empty eyes of the Haddonfield Horror.

Even without a mask, his face was a blank. He flipped the safety catch, but the murderer moved too fast for him, and he found himself hugged to the iron. His head wouldn't fit through the gap, but Myers pulled it into the cell anyway, leaving ears, hair and chunks of flesh on the metal.

"Myers has got a gun. Take him."

The sirens stopped, and more officers arrived. Myers tossed the gun into the corridor, and sat down again.

"What's going on here?" asked Deputy Warden Crighton.

"The monst... the inmates attempted escape, sir."

"There'll be a full enquiry, Kerr."

"Yes, sir."

Crighton looked down Monsters' Row, at the corpses jumbled against the walls.

"Freak, what a mess! This is worse than the Tasmanian Devil's leftovers."

Rex Tendenter was buried in the asylum grounds while an overwhelmingly female crowd of over 300 piled lavish floral tributes against the walls of the institution. The widow of Officer Lyndon Sandall, who had been one of five mourners at his modest funeral a week earlier, threw a petrol bomb into the crowd. Sixteen died, forty-one sustained serious burns, and Clara Sandall moved into Sunnydales' Low Security Wing.

The home had kept Dr Proctor's "confinement area" empty for him, just in case he was ever recaptured. Nobody really wanted him back.

Meanwhile, Jason Voorhees's body disappeared from the morgue.

- Krokodil Tears by Jack Yeovil.

Yeovil is the hard-drinkin' alter ego of the superbly hirsute Kim Newman, and Krokodil Tears was part of an insanely entertaining series of books Newman apparently wrote in a matter of weeks, sometime in the very early nineties. Hitting all the right pop culture and post apocalyptic buttons, they remain my favourite trash novels ever, even if the saga never got the ending it deserved. Krokodil Tears isn't even the best, with the adventures of Colonel Elvis Aaron Presley (retired) in Comeback Tour taking the cake, but this scene, with a bunch of fictional psychopaths losing it as, elsewhere, vast eldritch gods battle on multiple planes of existence is the funniest bit in the entire series.

That bit where Myers throws out the gun and just sits back down still makes me laugh.