Not the happiest chap in the flapjack shack, folks.

end day.


-Noah Genda

Watching Poltergeist, knowing that Heather O'Rourke, the "They're heeeeere!" girl is dead, is creepy times two. She died when she was twelve of an undetected infected intestinal blockage.

She's got a memorial site that is alive and kickin 14 years after her death.

First thing on the page, in big bold letters.

GREAT news EVERYONE! Click HERE for info on buying nearly EVERY
appearance of Heather O'Rourke on DVD or VHS!

and then

In Loving Memory
Heather Michele O'Rourke
December 27th, 1975 -- February 1st, 1988
You Will Never Be Forgotten.

Of course not, cos this fucker is selling everything your sweet blonde head has ever been in. Just gander at the creepiness.

Who, in this great nation, is going to buy a copy of a 1983 Strawberry Shortcake commercial...

on DVD!?

Dear sir, I would like to order the three episodes of Webster where the dead girl from Poltergeist guest starred; and go ahead and throw in the episode of CHIPS where she plays a kidnapped girl.

Also, is it possible to get a rush on that?

My relationship with movies is not so dissimilar from my relationship with a pet. A cat or dog. Just their presence, can flip the tone of a day. When a dog cocks his head and wags his tail or a cat curls up on my lap and purrs, it's the same as when Tremors is on TV.

My heart flutters a bit, and I give them what they want. My attention.

When fishermen would pull up the oyster nets they'd be full of starfish.

So they'd just pull em out, cut em in half, chuck em over their shoulder.

They had no idea they were doubling the starfish population.

Had an interview at Barnes and Noble today. With Terri. The perks there are amazing. 30% off anything in the store, including bargain books. 50% off cafe. 20% off dvds and music. AND-- you can take home ANY hardcover book in the store for 2 weeks-- FOR FREE!

I want the job now just so I can read Doulgas Preston's The Codex for free.

Don't talk to me bout no fuckin li-berry.

Ended up in the Museum of Norwalk. Raggedy-Anne's creator lived here. Pepperidge Farm started here. SoBe is here.

Ate at a gorgeous little cafe called Caffeine. Everything inside had little dangly tags. Everything was for sale.

I'm gonna buy this huge orange head for 350 bucks.

Had an open-faced tuna melt with garlic mayo, fennels and capers. It was good.

Came home to a distressing email. Made me feel shitty.

Latest "fan favorite" Friends episode was The One Where No One is Ready, That cheered me up. But I'm renaming the episode, The One Where Ross Almost Drinks the Fat because I'm fucking gay. I know that title ruins the gag. But I don't give a shit.

The Apprentice is still amazing.

So much Eternal Darkness, so little time.

End Day.

I stepped on a thumbtack today. Pushed it way in, all the way to the hilt. All the way to the thumb part of the thumbtack. I pulled it out, cleaned it up and put on a sock.

Not fifteen minutes later I dropped an 8x10 pane of glass and out of instinct tried to hackey at it to break its fall. I was so relieved it survived the drop that I didn't notice the three seperate lacerations on the tender bones of the top of my other foot, until I stepped in a pool of blood five minutes later.

Both of my feet are injured.

I have deified Entertainment Weekly. I don't hide this. When Schwarzbaum or Gleiberman verbally bash a new film, I've been known to say...

"Well, Entertainment Weekly said the movie sucked."

And likewise I will go out of my way to see a film that may not have been high priority, based on their praise of it.

The magazine is just biblical to me. Like talking entertainment with a friend, only a friend who knows a shitload more than I do.

So when EW -in this case Miss Schwarzbaum- gave the "remake" of Romero's Dawn of the Dead an A, a letter grade they are usually quite frugal with, well I just had to shell out the nine.

As always with "friends," there will be differences in opinion. With that A in my head, the film began. The quick shock start, the scope and confusion. Cars crashing into things, exploding. Helicopters chopping at the skies. The clever news footage credits with Johnny Cash's When the Man Comes Around plinging over it... Still an A

...

Honestly one of the first movies I can remember really scaring me, was the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead. (Don't lash me, Romero's original was 13 years before I was the fastest sperm.) That was when the concept of ZOMBIES first terrified me, and it was because of the sheer number of them. Because they have no other priorities than to corner you, and eat your fucking brains. They have no weapons, no powers, no sharp claws; they just get you like bees, like pirhana, by overwhelming you. Sure you can shoot what, 10, 15 of em, what about the other drillion? What is universally scary about zombies is that they corner you, like a lone King on a chessboard backed up by deliberate, plodding pawns. They get you in whatever trap you choose, and then pound and gargle on the walls of it... forever.

Frankly, there couldn't be a more frightening retro-trend to me right now. The 70's exploitation fell flat with The Texas Chainsaw remake, and Rob Zombie's<--huh huh House of 1000 Corpses. But Zombies are back. And you know what... now they can fucking run.

NOTLD's mindless meandering corpses were creepy, but about as spry as a legion of turtles descending upon the old farm house. The Zombies of this Dawn -along with those in the far superior 28 Days Later- want to chew on your cerebrum, really bad. Even the 300 pound female zombie sprints like a football player.

Everything is faster these days, including the undead.

...

Now I have a soft spot, for movies where a ragtag group of strangers have to set aside their differences to duct tape together some survival plan in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. I wrote one, The Bags,(and Tremors is an all-time favorite) So naturally I got a little giddy during parts of this film. Moments I know I would have written had I been given this job. I love when characters make intelligent decisions. Something as simple as, painting SOS on the roof of the mall.

Sadly, that's as far as the smarts go.

The A drops when we meet the three security guards already holed up in the mall. Just plain JACKASSES for no reason other than forced movie conflict. It almost seemed as though they thought the other survivors were lying about not being zombies. Quarantining them, taking their weapons. Just forced conflict BULLSHIT.

A drops to B+

Two more complaints.

One. Mekhi Phifer. Whom I love as an actor, don't get me wrong. But he got the shaft here, the most bullshit extraneous character ever. When he goes off into hiding to deliver the zombie baby of his pregnant zombie-bitten Russian girlfriend, and then dies in a bloody shootout with a nice old lady because he was trying to protect his Zombified family. It's just asinine. Two perfectly healthy, still-human characters killed off by each other in an obvious filler scene.

B+ to a B

My other qualm deals with the fact that so many of the ragtaggers we're supposed to care about, get their asses killed doing really really stupid things. All I ask -and, I don't think it's a lot for a ZOMBIE movie- is that if our protagonists are going to die, they be killed by ZOMBIES!

Not guns, each other, chainsaws or stupidity.

B to B-

There, now that there is a letter grade more befitting, the film does have it's good points. A lot in fact.

Sarah Polley and Jake Weber are two.

The lounge singer version of Disturbed's Down with the Sickness over a montage.

A lot of humor, great gore.

The dry-erase relationship across rooftops between Ving Rhames and a gunshop owner he never met is downright beautiful.

Beware the bullshit I've warned you of. But see it for the scares I can't give away. See it because frankly...

Zombies are fucking scary.

Some nice Indian girl asked if she could sit at my table in Barnes and Noble.

Her name was Najra or Najira, I know it had an N and a J. She moved here from India a year ago.

We chatted about the change in climate, she mentioned the dense population in the north and I thought how that should be no real change for someone from India. 800 million people scraping elbows over there.

She wished me best of luck on the job I was applying for, and when I left I was sad I hadn't asked her if she had any interesting snake stories.

Cobras and kraits and adders by the assload in India, she's got to have at least one interesting anecdote.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no hater. I was a gamer in the days of the NES. I could trap a shell in a constant state of ricochet to get a hundred lives. I was Mariofabulous.

Then I went outside for like eleven years.

And now that I'm an inside dog again I find my hands gripping a rare anomaly. A game controller.

We're playing Eternal Darkness and I'm at the helm. In this game, Your character slowly goes insane.

And when that happens, the game FUCKS WITH YOU.

Pretends to shut off. Warps and bends the camera angle.

Whisks your character off around some corner or hallway you just left.

Tells you that you've beat it. The walls bleed and you hear crying babies. And none of it is real.

A volume control graphic appears and turns all the way down. Makes you look to your friend like, "Dude, what're you doing? You sit on the remote?"

NO.

The game is FUCKING WITH YOU.

So, I'm real perturbed by it. There are monsters, and runestones. And this huge "Combining of the Corpse God" blob monster, that has tons of big purple eyes and tons of huge purple sucker mouths full of razor teeth. It's been venting its misty secretion discharge to settle all over statues for like, millenia. It's enormous, fills the floor of this temple in Cambodia.

I turned it off to watch Average Joe: Adam Returns, on my way to find Charlemagne in France, to give him this demon-disease-blasting scroll-thing that has made me deathly ill because I looked at it when it was for Charlemagne's eyes only.

So, I'll let you know how all that goes.

Hi, my name is Noah Genda.

That's because I feel I have No Agenda.

Sometimes, I'll walk into the kitchen, and stand on one foot.

Then I'll go take a pee because... it's a different room.

Then I'm back in here scrolling through the cable guide for something starring Diane Lane. Anything.

Then I put in Friends, watch four or five episodes.

And sleep to do it again.

I am Noah Genda.

I need to fucking get one.

I cannot explain to you the cosmic waste of money, resources, intelligence and talent I just witnessed.

But I can tell you the name of it.

Discovery Channel’s much hyped Animal Face Off: Saltwater Crocodile vs. Great White Shark.

If you were to tune in unawares, you might think you’ve stumbled across UberBattlebots! Some robot fighting show on a massive scale. Because you see, this hypothetical beastly showdown can only truly be imagined by engineering colossal tank-monsters forged from aluminum and steel. Unbelievable rolling battering-rams with razor-metal teeth and red light bulb eyes.

Let me set the scene for you. Hypothetically of course.

INT. BAR – NIGHT

A group of Discovery Channel engineers, veterinarians and zoologists chortle around a cocktail table littered with beer bottles. Empty glasses etc.

DUDE 1
(tipsy)
Hey guys, guys guys. Check it out ya’ll. I’ve got the ultimate question for you. Okay okay, who would win… in a fight between a saltwater crocodile… and a great white shark!?

DUDE 2
(drunk as well)
Aww, dude. Are you kiddin me? Of course the shark would win.

ZOOLOGIST DUDE
(drunk too)
Not so fast Dude 2, Crocodiles are tough. I think the crocodile would kick the shark’s ass!

DRUNK VETERINARIAN WOMAN
I think the shark is simply too fast for the crocodile.

ZOOLOGIST DUDE
Shut up woman, you don’t know SHIT about interspecies super-predator sparring!

DUDE 1
Guys, there’s no sense in arguing. It’s silly. Why don’t we simply head on over to the lab, quantify the power, strength and prowess of these creatures and then, based on our results, design and engineer scale model biomechanical versions of the animals which we can then use to bite surfboards and rip fish in half.

DUDE 2
Ooh ooh, yeah and- we’ll film it. All of it. The conceptual design, the manufacturing, the fish ripping, everything; and we’ll use the footage to fill the bulk of a show about the notional concept of these two animals facing off. At the end of which the robot creatures will have taught us nothing that lifetimes of natural research hasn’t already taught us.

ZOOLOGIST DUDE
And what if we build it up as if we could possibly have come up with a clear champion on such an evenly matched fight and then right at the end, we switch over to a simulated battle done with state-of-the-art computer animation in a biased environment with completely biased results! Proving that the tank-monsters were a significant waste of time, money, intelligence and resources.

That’s about how it went. Massive metal monsters with tank tread, rolling down their respective hallways with flashing strobes and fog. Cheesy close-up “face-offs” between a Crocodile expert and a Shark expert that recall playground pissing contests.

“The crocodile’s gonna kick your shark’s butt.”
“Hardly. And don’t even think that croc’s hide is gonna protect him. Great White’s can shear straight through a sea turtle.”
“Well, we’ll see who gets the first bite in.”

Asinine.

In the end, the thrilling CG display shows the Saltie and the Shark squaring off just off the coastline. Shark bumps croc, to see if it is prey. Then, croc grabs shark by one of its fins, goes into the infamous “death roll” and tears the fucking thing off. They square off again and this time croc grabs shark head on, by the snout. He goes into the death roll again turning both croc and shark on their backs. What we learned earlier –not from the robots of course- is that both crocodile and shark become immobilized when upside down. They begin to sink, which could mean the end of both animals. But then, croc lets go, needing to return to the surface to breathe. This is the fatal move. The croc’s ascent to the surface exposes his soft underbelly. Now, from another piece of scientific entertainment –JAWS: The Revenge- we know that sharks, (especially Great White ones) hold grudges and seek vengeance even when mortally wounded. So, instead of darting off into the depths erratically, which is a very wounded-fish thing to do, shark heads straight for the surface. Straight for croc’s belly and NAILS him. Killing him. End of story.
So there you have it. Scientific as it gets ladies and gents. Even though both sides of the battle admitted the first bite, the right bite would win. In the end, the undisputed predator of the water is… Great White Shark. That’s the way the CG animators did it. And so it is.

Of course Orcas and dolphins kill the fuckers all the time.

Next time on Animal Face Off

Elephant vs. Rhino.

Fuck that.

Left at Wendy’s
Right at Dunkin Donuts
Left at Meineke.

That’s the way I got to the Crown Regent theaters last night. My first solo navigation of Norwalk. Christian was shit run over twice in his bed so I decided I’d go see Taking Lives. Having skipped Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life, and Beyond Borders, it had simply been too long since my last twenty-foot dose of Angelina Jolie.

It was dark out, a crisp 37 on all the bank clocks, and raining. The roads were black, all the gas stations asleep for the night. 10pm on a Saturday up here is middle-of-the-night Monday down south. Here they roll the sidewalks up at dusk.

Taking Lives, wasn’t half the hype of its champions. Hitchcock might be amused, but hardly proud. And you won’t keep guessing till the very end and “STILL BE WRONG!,” which was the promise that roped me in. You’ll guess once- maybe twice -at which point you will have exhausted your options, and in time be disappointed to learn that one of them was correct.

Taking Lives takes aim at SE7EN -which was a 10- and falls short as a five. The characters weren’t so well fleshed as those in Seven, which makes the fat of the detective work less amicable, more boring. Jolie needs to steer clear of the deadfall roles Sandra Bullock has been diving into, detectives and cute-meet lovelies; and challenge herself with something more audacious. (i.e. Charlize Theron) Ethan Hawke was solid, Keifer Sutherland was wasted. Overall the film would have been a good popcorn flick, if it had come without the expectations.