Query of the Day

I was gonna get into my ride back, which was harrowing. But this... I couldn't pass up.

Also: it's a reality show.

"Think twice before you want to hurt any girl boys! This is a mainly massage the girls want to pass to all men. Warning for to they respect the girls and care about. If not they meet 3 bad girls - the host of the show - and takes very unpleasant lesson to don't do that no more. The show has two parts. One at the studio (talk show) where the host girls talk about the men. How they are and what to do to don't be use by them. Second outside devoted the reality action show the record of the revenge acts take to the male kind deserve for. This will be most fun, "dramatic" and emotional part, crazy ride unforgettable for the men who will be a main characters and the targets. The inspiration and the targets for will be base on the female viewers watching the show and has a very bad experiences with men - was use or has been hurting. It will be very interesting show for both sex. Girls see how be stronger, how takes revenge and what to do to not be use or hurt no more. Men see what can waiting for them in the revenge of theirs bad behaviors. Both sex watch this in curious what happening on the show this time? Who and what for be a target and what way he paid for. It will be very fun and valuable for all. The plot of the show will be base on the story of the three girls advising the hurts girls on the phone line. The girls and the boss will be base on the Harry's angels movie. This show the angels will be fighting with chauvinism, stupid and more men "qualities" making damages in girls life. The angels will be as bad as hot of course."

The Ride

Yesterday, I rode my Honda Rebel 250 from LA to my parents' house, just south of Phoenix.

Leaving

I ran around Saturday morning, shipping out most of my stuff so I wouldn't be encumbered on the ride. On the one hand, I was able to take the trip with nothing but about five pounds of clothes in a duffle bag strapped to my back. On the minus... I spent half the day dealing with the post office. By the time I was done, it was after 11am. No way I was launching in mid-day. I decided to go home, get my lair in order and hit the sack at about 8:30. I wanted to be well-rested.

I checked the weather on Friday, and saw that a system was moving south along the coast. They predicted LA was going to get rain at about 6am Sunday morning. Not wanting to ride through rain, I tried to beat it by setting the alarm for 5am. To my amazement, I was able to pry myself outta bed when the alarm went off, grab a shower, get dressed, throw on the duffle and hit the road.

Cold and Rain

Five minutes into my trip, it started to rain.

High beam on, 45-mph, I tooled through sleeping downtown LA, hoping not to run into any drunks on their way home. It was cold and raining and it sucked the camel's ass. But I pressed on.

I got out of the city and made my way through the suburbs. Little-by-little, the megamalls thinned out. When I stopped seeing Home Depots and Wal-Marts and started noticing truck stop-type places, I figured it was time to grab some juice.

First Stop

I stopped off at a gas station just outside Indio. It took less than three bucks to top off the tank with premium. The Rebel's milage is amazing, and continued to amaze throughout the trip. When I went inside to get my change, I warmed up just enough to start shivering. Damn, my knees were cold.

But the weather had said the rain was sticking to the coast. All I had to do was get far enough east and I'd be fine. I pushed on.

As I took off from Indio, the bike was making a weird sound, and wouldn't kick up past 60 or so. Then I realized I was still in fourth. Shit, what noob maneuver.

The Hills

After LA, you get into roads twisting through the hills, their tops spiked with dozens of windmills. I ran into another obstacle: wind. It swooshed around into the hills and came at me at random, from every direction. With the rain and dark and cold, it was a fight. I started to freak out a little bit.

And then I was passed by three middle-aged men on bikes. These guys were obviously experienced tour riders: they rode huge bikes piled with lockable storage, and were dressed like they were going for a space walk. They didn't acknowledge me (I sometimes get nods and waves from random people riding past on bikes), but that didn't matter. It's like what Anthony Hopkins says in The Edge: "What one man can do, another can do." Just by seeing other bikes on the road, I was able to even out my head. I pushed on.

Which paid off. Just a few minutes after that, I crested a rise. The clouds broke on the horizon, and a clear and golden sun shone through that little sliver of space in the darkness. The clouds were low enough that they covered the tops of the mountains, silhouetting them with this bright, bright light. Nature's chiar oscuro. It was beautiful.

Inclines

I kept riding, and left the rain behind. Though it was still early-morning cold. (Note to self: leave after 9am next time). I increased my speed, charging up a long incline. The drawback of the Rebel is it's kinda weak against hills... I would have the full throttle open, and the speed would still decline.

I saw a sign that said: "No Service for 60 Miles." My dad had made this trip a couple of times, and had warned me there were stretches of deep desert, with no cell reception, nothing but sand and rocks for miles. This was the first one. Milage or no milage, I wasn't gonna chance it. I pulled into the gas station/rest stop, fueled up (another three bucks) and called the parents. My mom picked up, and was pleased to discover I was alive.

I launched. By this time, the sun was up and the air warmed. No rain, no cold and full visibility: I was ready to rock.

Rocks

Outside an Indian reservation, I came to a part of the road that wound between two steep hills. A sign said: "Watch for Rocks." Just as I read it, a rock kicked up from an 18-wheeler and beaned me in the head. I thought, Found one! I was wearing a helmet, so no big deal, but it cracked one of my vent adjusters off. Small price.

Butterflies

Not long after that, I saw the first butterfly flit across the road. It was big enough to see it flapping around long before I passed it. I reacted like most people would: Huh, big butterfly.

Then I saw two more. A-hah, more butterflies. This must be their, uh... territory, or something.

More butterflies. And more. Within a minute, there were dozens ahead of me at all times. They started hitting me -- or rather me, them. Rebounding off my jacket and helmet, they left huge, bright-yellow splashes of butterfly guts. I looked like I'd gotten my ass kicked at paint ball. But when they hit my legs, protected only by denim, they felt like BB-pellets. I figured I could handle a few "Ow!" moments, when...

...thousands of butterflies filled the road. It was exactly like watching heavy flurries get blown sideways by wind, except instead of snow, they were butterflies. One smacked my visor, directly over my right eye. I spent the next forty miles riding with my head tilted so I could see around its corpse. The hits on my legs came by the dozens. But I refused to get killed by fucking butterflies, of all things. I lowered my head and pushed through the main swarm. Rain and wind, sure... but butterfly swarms? What the fuckin'-FUCK?!

Blythe

I made it to Blythe, where I used the windshield wiper to clean off my helmet, and some rags to get the majority of the butterfly goo off my jeans and jacket. I filled up (less than three bucks) and pushed on.

I hit another butterfly swarm. This one was minor by comparison, just a few dozen at a time. I was like, Shit, not again! But after a few miles I realized I'd already hit the main butterfly force.

I crossed into Arizona.

Deep Desert

This was the second deep-desert stretch, about 75 miles of nothing. A fierce wind came up. But at least this was steady -- I was able to predict it and lean. It was later, and there were more trucks on the road. They were good and bad, depending... If the wind was coming from the south when I passed them, I'd get a few seconds of respite. If it was coming from the north, the wind would rebound off the side of the truck and hit me from weird angles, like in the hills.

I'd been riding long enough that my ass was killing me, my legs and arms were tightening up. I tried to find subtle ways to stretch while flying across the desert at 75-mph.

Phoenix

I'd been seeing signs for Phoenix for a while, but they just depressed me: 294 miles, 275 miles, etc. By now, I was cracking 100: Phoenix 94... Phoenix 75... Getting there.

I finally, finally, finally got to my turn-off, and ran into normal street traffic, which had become strange after spending hours in flat-out speed. Suddenly, I had to brake and shift gears again... everyday riding had become bizarre.

Long/short, I arrived seven hours after leaving LA. Whew.

Now all I have to do is ride back on Sunday.

Hittin' the Road

I'm getting up at the crack of dawn Sunday morning and hitting the road, heading out to AZ to visit the fam. I'll be there all week.

This'll be my first big ride since getting the motorcycle, about 300 miles. My parents are nervous - as parents will be - but I'm fine. It's about the same distance from Chicago to SIU. The first time I drove down to Carbondale, it was an epic journey, like I was taking the Ring to Mount Doom. But by my senior year, I was cracking that drive out whenever I felt like it, no big deal. I have a feeling it'll be the same with LA-Phoenix... tomorrow's gonna be something huge, and after that it'll just be a drive.

I'm looking forward to this trip for more reasons than one. It's been very busy at the day job... all good stuff, but still. And concurrently I've been slamming between two big writing projects, jumping from one to the next as notes came in. Again, I wouldn't do it if I didn't love it, and I'm really excited about both projects, but I was red-lining myself for a while there.

With both titles turned in, I tried to do what I usually do... jump straight into something else. Nothing came... or, at least, nothing I liked. I was hating everything I wrote, which just made me more pissed, and more unable to get anything going. I finally just threw the project on the roof; I'll climb up and get it down if anything cool comes to mind. But I ain't gonna force it.

Because... y'know how green types will say the first sign of a bad environment is how it affects frogs? I guess because they breathe through their skin, and they're the most sensitive to pollution. Point is: the writing is the closest thing to my soul, scripts are the frogs in my swamp, and when I start having trouble in that arena, I know something's chewing on the back of my head.

It's likely I just need to plug myself back in the wall and recharge. I usually keep myself even by scheduling in down time... a few hours playing Left 4 Dead here, grabbing a few beers there, etc. Though - I've been slamming so hard since '09 started, I'm feeling like I have to throw a switch and just shut the whole damn machine down for a while, let it cool off. I'm shipping my laptop out so I can write in AZ, but I'm not gonna pressure myself for results. I'll likely hit some rewrites I've been meaning to get to for a while: PAR FOR COURSE, DEMON, etc.

A week with the fam couldn't have come at a better time. And there's no better way to get there than six hours riding across the desert, with nothing but sand, wind, speed and my thoughts.

Australia

I saw AUSTRALIA. Some people didn't like it, and it underperformed in the domestic box office, but I thought it was fine.

True story: I was visiting my family in Arizona, and we trooped out to the theater to catch DARK KNIGHT (which was my third viewing). There was a HUGE line in front of the ticket-taker guy. It became apparent via overheard conversation that all of those people weren't there for DARK KNIGHT, they'd lined up for AUSTRALIA. Huh.

I wish I'd seen it on the big screen - it's a big, sweeping historical epic of a film. I like epics... I think they're expressions of filmmaking at its most ambitious. I'm a fan of Baz Luhrman. Though it took me several attempts to get all the way through MOULIN ROUGE, I've since come to really like that movie. Act one of AUSTRALIA is the most "Baz." As it drifts into cattle drivin' and war fightin', it's more about incident and less about personality. Still, it's fun.

It's a looong movie, long enough that I was a bit glad when the credits rolled. You could say that's the nature of epics - this isn't the genre for 85-minute features.

David Wenham plays the main antagonist. It was interesting seeing him as a villain. I think the guy's really talented... he was great as Faramir in LOTR.

Like most epics, it plays kinda old fashioned. It felt like this movie could've been made in the '50s, with little more than the names of the stars changing. This works for the movie... I think Nicole Kidman has the classic Hollywood thing going on, so the casting fits. She seems to get more attractive as time goes on, as if she were growing into her looks. Plus, she's funny.

Long/short - I didn't love AUSTRALIA, but I liked it a lot more than it seems most people did. Watching this movie, it felt like Baz had pulled his Bazness back so it'd appeal to a broader audience. I prefer Baz when he's batshit insane.

Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002)

When I was a kid, I was a huge fan of Godzilla movies. A Saturday afternoon spent watching Godzilla on Son of Svengoolie was pure, sugary-cereal bliss. They didn't have to specifically be Godzilla movies - I loved Gamara, too, and any Japanese TV series that involved beating up on monsters on a weekly basis: Ultraman, Spectreman, etc.

But Godzilla still held a special interest for two reasons:

a) Godzilla started out as a villain and, though he morphed into a good guy, would sometimes be villainous again. I loved - and still love - the idea of a series built around a character who could be either good or evil from one installment to the next. You never know until the movie starts playing if you'll be rooting for Godzilla, or if you're supposed to be scared of him. That moral ambiguity made these movies interesting. In some, they split the difference: Godzilla is evil, but gets wrangled into a situation in which he ultimately does something good, anyway... defending the Earth from aliens or whatnot. The upshot is: Godzilla is a personified force of nature. There's no controlling Godzilla, no bargaining with him or swaying him or killing him. You might as well ask a hurricane for help. He'll do whatever the fuck he wants, and all the long-suffering people of Japan can do is cope.

b) Godzilla fought the coolest monsters. Gamara had some real contenders... especially that shark guy who shot ninja stars out of his head. But Godzilla battled with (and against) the classics of the kaiju genre. If I had to pick a fave, it would be King Ghidorah... mostly because in DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, it took every monster on Earth, teaming up and coming at him all at once, to even have a chance against the guy. That, my friends, is evidence of serious badassery.

Yet... there's always been a special place in my heart for Mechagodzilla. He represents the end result of the question: "If Godzilla is the most awesome thing ever, how do you make Godzilla even more awesome?" And the answer is: what if you had a version of Godzilla who was also a giant robot?!

That is the core of geek thought.

The first Godzilla movie (1954) has since drawn critical attention because it's seen as a reaction to the atomic bombs dropped on Japan... idea being that Godzilla (or Gojira, which is his actual name) is the personification of those events, but in a form which is defeatable... at least in the first movie. I like this train of thought, as I firmly believe that movies are dreams made into a tangible and sharable form and - at their best - are the collective dreams of the society which creates them, the product of the zeitgeist. That's a lotta weight to put on the shoulders of a movie starring a dude in a rubber dinosaur suit, but I believe it to be real.

Most people are aware of the classic '60s Godzilla movies. But it's not as well known outside Japan and geek circles that Tojo kept making Godzilla movies, on into the '90s and oughts. I've seen a few of them over the past couple of years: FINAL WARS, GIANT MONSTERS ALL-OUT ATTACK, the one where Godzilla fights a giant rose bush, etc.

(It should be noted that the 10-year-old version of myself is still a strong enough aspect of my soul that, having been informed of its existence, it's impossible - impossible - for me to go through life without watching a movie entitled GIANT MONSTERS ALL-OUT ATTACK).

All that said, I watched GODZILLA AGAINST MECHAGODZILLA (2002).

Apart from the pro-wrestling-with-monsters fun, I've come to love the corny human stories that round out these movies. Make no mistake - they're always stiff, goofy sub-plots, and frequently weird. I don't mind... it's a course in a prix fixe meal.

In GAM, we have an evil Godzilla. As many of them do, this movie ret-cons the Godzilla backstory. In this one, Godzilla showed up in 1954 and was killed. A couple of other giant monsters have attacked Japan since then, specifically Rodan and Big Foot (?) - but no Godzilla, 'cause he's dead, remember? It's a frequent enough occurrance that Japan has a monster defense force.

Godzilla shows up to stomp the crap outta Japan. But this is a new Godzilla, who's just like the original one. You may ask: where did he come from? How is this possible? In which case, you're missing the point that it doesn't matter.

The usual tanks and planes trundle out to "fight" Godzilla, in that they shoot at him, make him mad and get their asses handed to them. The monster defense peeps roll out their "maser" gun, which is almost equally useless. Our plucky heroine is in charge of the maser. Though it won't pierce his armor, she gets the idea of shooting Godzilla in the eye. This pisses him off enough that he goes back into the ocean, but not before killing a bunch of people and making the heroine look like a failure in the eyes of the military. She gets stuck riding a desk for the next couple of years.

Meanwhile, the Japanese PM realizes that tanks, planes and masers aren't much of a defense against Godzilla... and make no mistake, he will be back. So they cook up the idea of using DNA scraped off the original (dead) Godzilla's skeleton - still lying at the bottom of Toyko Bay - and using that as the basis of a cyborg, aka Mechagodzilla.

Luckily for Japan and the movie's characters, Godzilla is nice enough to lie low during the years it takes to get the Mechagodzilla project up and running. Our plucky heroine is given a second chance in life, and offered the lead pilot position. (This version of Mechagodzilla has to be driven from inside, you see). The team even wears baseball hats with the Mechagodzilla insignia, which made me smile.

Godzilla shows back up, as he must. Alarms sound, people run around, and the Mechagodzilla team assembles in a way that was reminiscent of what I think a live-action Voltron movie would be like. The first thing Mechagodzilla does is fire a bunch of missiles at Godzilla. I don't know what good they think that's gonna do. Whether missiles are fired from artillery or a pod mounted on Mechagodzilla's shoulders, the result is the same, and that's jack shit.

But it prompts what was for me the most interesting story beat... because the missile burn Godzilla's ass enough for him to roar his fury. The roar triggers the latent memories in Mechagodzilla's Godzilla-derived DNA, and he freaks out and starts smashing up Tokyo even after Godzilla has gotten bored and wandered back into the ocean.

I found this scene directly analagous to the "dream" sequence in ROBOCOP. It's a key thematic scene in one of my favorite movies, because it says that you can wipe a man's memory and encase him in robotics, but he's still a man. Thus it is the same for Mechagodzilla. But again we get into the moral ambiguity of the series... Alex Murphy is the good guy in ROBOCOP, so we're cheering for the man under the armor and booing the nogoodnicks who put him there. In GAM, it's considered a glitch in his program, which is fixed by the lead programmer. Mechagodzilla behaves himself and is brought back online to fight Godzilla again in act three.

Which begs the question: what if, instead of freaking out, Bob Morton had just gotten that chick with the giant glasses to fix the glitch that was Alex Murphy's soul trying to break free? The programmer in GAM says that it's a fixable situation because DNA sequences are similar to binary sequences, and can thus be programmed like a computer, repaired like a bug. It would seem that GAM argues that the soul in fact can be relegated to ones and zeroes, becoming nothing but a ghost in the machine.

On the other hand, GAM makes a strong argument in the life-over-machines set-up by the mere presence of Godzilla, who is not a machine, uncontrollable and indestructible. Is he a metaphor for the human soul, the soul of Japan's zeitgeist? Or is he just a dude in a rubber suit, jumping around on a soundstage for the amusement of the ten-year-old boys of the world?

I think both. The two are not mutually exclusive. I once had the pleasure of meeing Mario Van Peebles. He said that the best cinema is when it's both a film and a movie. I wholeheartedly agree. There are films I like, and movies I like, but when you're able to hit both with equal force - as ROBOCOP does - now you're talking about chocolate and peanut butter.

On a side note: I also watched DEATHSPORT (1978), produced by the great Roger Corman . Without going too much into it... the movie takes place in the year 3000, a dystopian future in which rangers like David Carradine and Claudia Jennings protect the innocent from an evil empire, which uses death machines to round up slaves to fight in the titular gladiatorial tournaments. Like the best of Corman's movies, DEATHSPORT is super-super cheap... the "death machines" are dirt bikes spray-painted silver. There's a wonderful scene in which the evil guys are discussing their evil plans as they walk across what's obviously a college campus, including a maintenance guy conspicuously working in a manhole cover in the background. So what did they spend the production budget on...? Blowing up motorcycles. They stick David and Claudia in the deathsport, where they proceed to take on dozens of "death machines." I don't know how they blow 'em up - they're armed with big, plastic swords - but they do. The point is: if you like the idea of watching motorcycles blow up, you might wanna check this one out.

Query of the Day

And here's this one:

"Jack Koufax is a lovable, nerdy nice guy who's the head librarian in a New York Public Library and has a side job as a couples therapist that he runs in his library. His friends who assist him as a couples therapist Bobby Romano and his wife Sarah, Bobby won two weeks swimming lessons in Lorelai Rosenberg Recreation Center and his anniversary party he has to plan in Ritz. He doesn't have time to take the lessons, so he gave the tickets to Jack and help him take the lessons. Jack meets an attractive swimming instructor named Lorelai Rosenberg whose owns this center and has a crush on her. The two hit off immediately and becomes friends; Jack wanted to be more than friends. Jack was going to work as a therapist and found out the girl he's in love with is a client, whose fiancée and her having difficulties of this wedding. Jack needs them their help to guidance to go on with the wedding or tell them to call off the wedding. While Jack is taking swimming lessons from his client and helping her wedding problems, Jack wanted to choose to profess his love to Lorelai or let her go and be with her fiancée. Jack and Lorelai are made for each other and find out who ends with whom."

Query of the Day

This one reminds me of SANTA VS. THE MARTIANS, which I saw on MST3K.

"Santa Clause, tired, feeling old and irrelevant in today's world, dutifully embarks on his annual toy delivery rounds. One house he visits is of a precocious 12 year-old, Wyatt, who sneaks onto Santa's sleigh. Sircoligians, amphibious creatures from another solar system, kidnap Santa and place an implant in his neck, which will help them control and use Santa for their own evil purposes. Wyatt and his best friend, Dwighty, must warn Santa before it's too late to stop the aliens."

Query of the Day

What would a half-ape, half-dolphin creature look like?

"Kamau was once a park ranger faced with a Hobson's choice: save his son's life or kill one of the last of the gorilla species. He chose to let his son die and is now a broken man.

Anna is a beautiful veterinarian who teams up with Kamau to protect Griffin, a half-ape and half-dolphin creature, at the zoo. There are many people in the world who want a piece of this unique animal. Anna's incompetence in the lab led to Griffin's birth and she now bears responsibility for his survival. For Kamau, protecting Griffin is a chance for redemption.

Erik Zimmer is both a brilliant surgeon and obsessive hunter. He at first pursues Griffin like he would any other animal, setting in motion a long chase out of the zoo and into the wild. However, once he witnesses Griffin's intellectual abilities, he begins to consider Griffin his equal. This causes Zimmer to question the true distinction between humans and animals and to re-examine his own moral compass.

Zimmer joins Kamau and Anna to protect Griffin from a group of sadistic smugglers. Will Griffin be able to survive in the wild without the medical care he so urgently requires? Will Griffin even be willing to go back to captivity? Is Zimmer really a changed man or does he still want Griffin's stuffed pelt on his wall?"