Such Sickness...

Since Friday, I have been sick.
I have also been squatting in my own living room since the AC has gone in and Chris has gone away to the West.
I feel like the smartest, sickest homeless man ever.
I can hear virtually NOTHING out of my left ear due to weird sick pressure head issues and I can't seem to smell anything either.
I have a 2000 word recording session with TransPerfect Thursday morning at 10.
Fuck. Yes.
I also received an e-mail yesterday from my manager checking my availability for next week to go in for a rerecord for a session I did back in March.
Now, here's the deal, the folks from that session back in March, have yet to send my payment.
So.
Here's what I'm thinking...I won't set foot in that studio until A. we get that payment from fucking March and B. we get a written guarantee that we'll have the payment from this session within 2 weeks.
This company makes, literally, billions of dollars a year, they can fucking expedite this.
I don't think that's unreasonable at all and, if it is a little, I have never been a diva in my career and this is as good a place to start as any.

In other "news", since I've been delirious with sickness I have watched the 8th season of The Office (loving almost every second of it, and, although HE says he's never gotten it, I think Flans resembles Ed Helms XMAX), the 6th season of 30 Rock (I saw where my part would have been and, although it would have been awesome to put 30 Rock on my resume, I'm fine now that I did not get it; it was for the voice of Mayor MacBeth/Cheese from the credits of the episode where Liz finds her book from the year before and starts solving all her problems before they occur. I had to do a Patrick Stewart impression. And the addition of Kristen Schaal to the cast might have made one of the funniest things on television even funnier. She is perfect), Red Dragon (Ralph...Jesus...you're a nightmare. Also, I'd probably sleep with a serial killer if I later got to pet a tiger), Paul (the movie, not the me), that Rob Zombie animated film, the Haunted World of El Superbeasto (such a wonderful and pus-filled universe he has created, Sherri Moon Zombie-- which might be the coolest name ever-- does a great job as Suzi X...and Paul Giamatti is one of the most versatile voice actors I've ever heard) and the Doctor Who 8th Doctor TV movie (which was shitty trash ass and pure piss awful. Fear and burn this.).

I also played through Resident Evil 5 on Hard...which is less than Hard when you have a lot of super powerful weapons with infinite ammo, and I finally finished Max Payne 3, which was good looking and functional with a solid noir story, but nothing more.
I'm trading it in for something as soon as I have the time.
Not sure what though, as the new Silent Hill (SH: Downpour) got nothing but shit bags for reviews.

Aside from not really being able to hear out of my left side, I'm actually feeling better, so, tomorrow, Jen Rock and I are going to play through as much of Silent Hill 2 as we can without tumbling into the crimson maw of terror and darkness...so, like, forty minutes.  I might put the mattress away...if I have the energy and wherewithal.

The lack of my One and Only plus the effects of my sickness have made me part bachelor (in five days, I have used one bowl, one spoon, one plate and nothing more) and part wounded baby elephant (I've been eating a lot of peanuts and trumpeting).
In short: ay-ee-thang-SALL-fuk-dup.

Finally, after my day of Resident Evil 5, I had an awesome and intense zombie apocalypse dream that was actually a sequel to an earlier zombie apocalypse dream. It involved a secluded lodge house in the woods near a small town with an underground...something...that was causing all the zombie stuff. Aside from regular zombies, there were also huge Lovecraftian mutations running around as well. Utterly horrifying and extremely exhilarating. One part I remember very clearly was sneaking around inside the lodge house and slowly closing the blinds and locking the doors and windows so no zombies saw the people inside. It was during the day and very intense. Then, while making sure everything was shuttered, I saw a massive creature swimming in the river behind the house, something very much like Cthulhu, but more squid-like. If could just plug my brain into my PS3, I'd be the best survival horror game designer in the world.

And my fingers have just stopped working.

Soon, I Shall Number Among The Undead/I'm Totally Fine And You Should Come Over

Okay. So that tickling frog in my throat from yesterday has gestated into a rampaging shoggoth. I have decided that I am dying. So, since I am obviously going to turn into a zombie upon my death, I'm taking steps to make sure I become the best possible zombie that I can be. I'm sharpening my teeth, totally encasing my head in a protective covering (except for the sharpened teeth, of course) and reinforcing my joints and body with chain mail. No one's taking ME down without some collateral damage... I'm also attaching a time bomb to my body, just in case. Now, that said, I'm totally feeling much better and everyone I know should come over for tea and soft, frosted cakes. Since it's so hot out, you'll probably want to wear something light and easy to chew through rather than some sort of body armor. Or something. Don't be weird about it. All righty, I'm off to frost some cakes. I hope everyone likes cinnamon!!!

Jill, The Master of Unlocking

Thanks, in part, to Jen Rock, I've recently shambled back into the convoluted, absurd and ridiculously Japanese world of Resident Evil.
It all started a few weeks ago when her and I hung out and decided to play RE5 using local co-op (two people playing, at the same time, on the same screen). We finished the game in two sessions, the second of which lasted about twelve hours and ended just as the sun was coming up. It was the most fun I've had gaming in a while.
Since this massive play session, I had a hankering to play through RE5 again in order to unlock a staple in all Resident Evil games...the infinite ammo rocket launcher.
It's a rocket launcher...with infinite ammo...and it is glorious. To be honest, no, it doesn't really add to the tension or horror or feeling of vulnerability inherent in the game, it's more like a fun little thing you get as a reward for playing the living shit out of the game numerous times. And it's delightful; big, Cthuvian nightmare comes shambling and snarling and mewling up to you and then, click, boom, done.
Delicious.

Still on my Resident Evil Zombie Train*, I watched the first Resident Evil movie last night. Aside from some less than amazing CG and computer effects and a handful of trite lines of dialogue delivered badly, this movie still holds up remarkably well. It's a bit more stylized than your typical zombie flick, more sci-fi, but it does a great job of co-existing with the RE video game universe...at least until you start watching the second (of five) sequels and begin to yearn for a time machine. They do a great job with the antiseptic atmosphere of Umbrella's underground labs and Marilyn Manson's score work is astonishing; it fits perfectly and does exactly what it sets out to do. And there is never anything wrong with Milla Jovovich ever. Except in Ultraviolet.

Going back to RE5: it's the best looking game in the series, allowing you to clearly see the horrible creatures and then struggle to try and describe them. In one case, Jen and I were fighting a huge, man-shaped bunch of black squiggles, in another, a part prawn, part whale, part vagina monster. If a Silent Hill game could look this good, I don't think I'd ever be able to sleep again. That was always something I liked more about the SH series, you never really know what you're fighting. With RE it's always an experiment gone wrong and sometimes you even find documents describing how and what went wrong, but with SH, you might get a torn and blood-smeared page from some black tome bound in human flesh rambling on about some awful ritual...and, when you get down to it, horrible supernatural evil is always more frightening than corporate espionage.

So, despite being smart and attractive, I still plan to watch the second Resident Evil movie (Resident Evil: Apocalypse) this evening. I may actually stop myself before watching the third (Resident Evil: Extinction) and I will definitely stop myself before watching the fourth (Resident Evil: Afterlife).
But...will I see the fifth and (please, sweet baby Jesus) final Resident Evil movie, Resident Evil: Retribution, in theaters this September? No. I won't. In fact, I'm so not going to see it, that I'm not even going to make a joke about it. I will never see another Resident Evil movie in the theaters. I saw the first one and that was it. This is, again, not a joke.

I will however, be purchasing the new Resident Evil game (curiously titled Resident Evil 6) the day it comes out.
Because, ladies and gentlemen, zombies are back.
In the past two RE titles, RE4 and 5, the things you've been killing have NOT been zombies, but rather people infected with something called Las Plagas (literally, "the plague"**), an organism that, essentially, removes their humanity, but, in RE6, the good, old fashioned, reanimated-dead-you-have-to-shoot-them-in-the-head zombies are back.

And I look forward to obliterating them all with an infinite ammo rocket launcher with Jen Rock by my side.









*Which sort of sums up the plot of Resident Evil 0 for the Gamecube
**Slow, unimpressed applause

This Things I Believe *

8.26.10

3:44 pm

My milk starts to go bad in three days.

Last night I watched the movie Little Children.

It was very Happiness.

Like comedy so black it wasn't really comedy.

It wasn't as funny as Happiness and there were less so-awkward-you-die moments, but it shared several elements, including the actress that played Joy in Happiness. She was doing her usual fragile, damaged, birdlike thing. In fact, based on what she said in Little Children, this might have actually been the character from Happiness.

And, knowing that, the terrible thing that happens to her is made hilarious (in a Happiness sort of way...it's still pretty horrible no matter how you slice it).

The actor that played Rorschach in Watchmen plays a child molester (exposing yourself to kids, that's child molesting, right? There's not some other, more PC term?) and does a great job of it, not over the top at all. Just as in Happiness, the film doesn't seek to make the child molester look bad (something not all that hard to do) but to humanize him, not that he was falsely accused or anything, he did what he was accused of and does some stuff in this movie that is hella creepy.

An odd addition, maybe from the book, I'm not sure, was the voice of a narrator. It was sparsely used, but a bit distracting at times.

In the end, everything that needs to happen happens (sort of) and everyone learns a lesson, usually a painful one.

Jennifer Connelly looks a little like an alien in it and Kate Winslet is getting more and more naked.

Both are...off putting in their own special ways.

Before I watched Little Children, I tried to watch the latest entry in the Romero Dead Trilogy**, Survival of the Dead.

*sigh*

When Land of the Dead came out, Philip happened to be in New York so we went and saw it in the theaters. This was the first Romero "Dead" movie since Day of the Dead and we were jazzed.

Mr. Zombie was adding a fourth installment to his pivotal, genre-defining series.

And it blew dead goats.

A lot of the effects were digital, bad digital, a HUGE slap in the face to the practical magic of Tom Savini, the plot was vaguely interesting until you met the larger than life characters and found out that THE ZOMBIES WERE LEARNING AND REMEMBERING.

George...no they weren't.

They CAN'T.

That's the point, they are an unstoppable army of corpses, they aren't remembering shit!

They are here to consume you and your shitty retcon!

So that was a bummer.

The guy who started a movement, succumbing to the clichés plaguing that movement.

Years later (about ten after the Blair Witch Project shocked and terrified the nation), Mr. Romero thought it would be cool to meld two dead things (zombies and first person perspective filmmaking) into one smelly bag of decay.

And he did so with Diary of the Dead.

*double sigh*

I downloaded this one and got exactly what I paid for.

A bunch of idiot kids decided that "people need to see this!!!!!!!!!!" and grab a camcorder, as if fucking anyone in the whole zombie-riddled world wasn't seeing this...

A side note, the kind of sentiment behind this, that people "need to see" the Zombie Apocalypse, that someone might have missed it, is the same sentiment behind people showing footage of the fucking Twin Towers going down while chanting "never forget". Who, in the blue FUCK, is going to forget something like this?!

Anyway, while on their journeys, this intrepid bunch of kids gets pulled over by some folks wearing Army uniforms (mistake number one in the world of the Zombie Apocalypse). They board their RV and take all their shit, then disappear. The movie continues to slouch on until it finally falls dead, its brain destroyed.

Then.

2010.

(Hopefully) the final sigh...Survival of the Dead.

*triple sigh*

Downloaded this one as well (call it a funny feeling...).

This movie is allll about those asshole solders who took those kids for everything they had.

I got about thirty minutes in before realizing I'd rather be killed and eaten by zombies than watch the rest.

Imagine a bad movie with a random character.

Now imagine a worse movie all about that random character?

These are the kind of movies that should NOT be made.

George, you listening?

Funny thing is, I used to work for the producer of these last few films, Peter Grunwald, and I could, conceivably, call him (I still have his cell) and just ask him why he thought these were a good idea.

I could.

Would it be a horrible, perhaps career ending move?

Perhaps.

But would it be funny?

Not as much as I'd think.

And plus, this guy knows Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, so I'm not jeopardizing that.

I'm one degree away from Shaun of the Dead, yo!

Can't fuck that up...

Anyway.

Don't watch any Romero movies with "dead" in the title if they were made after 1991.

Night of the Living Dead, the remake directed by Tom Savini, is excellent and is the last good zombie movie Romero is associated with, unless he had something to do with the Dawn of the Dead remake as well, which was also excellent.

Phil and I started writing a zombie movie while sitting in Doc Brown's on the upper east side one afternoon, but it devolved quickly when George Michael then Prince came on the jukebox and it became a satire seconds later.

One day, my friend...one day...

* Super obscure Simpsons reference = !!!POINTS!!!

**This one makes six.

Diary of the Dead?

All right, fine.
I like zombies and zombie movies as much as the next person who likes zombies and zombie movies, but after Land of the Dead (which blew zombies) Romero is REALLY going to have to bring it ("it" being the stuff of which great zombie movies are made).
And DOTD looks like someone saw the Blair Witch Project, then the trailer for Cloverfield and then called Romero and said "first person is in, George!" and he fucking fell for it.
But, hey, whatever.
I'll see you in hell Diary of the Dead...you'd better be worth the bus fare.