"I have to return some videotapes." - Patrick Bateman

     This post is inspired/ripped off from a similar couple of posts on the excellent site Dinosaur Dracula. The dude that writes that site is more or less me in a different body. It's kind of freaky how similar our taste and experience are, so it's only fitting that I steal his idea. And I'm punk as fuck, so that's OK. This post is...

VIDEO STORE MEMORIES

     I grew up loving video stores. When I 5/6/7/8 years old, I lived in a small town in Illinois (Jacksonville, birthplace of the Ferris Wheel and Ken Norton, and immortalized on Sufjan Stevens' Come On Feel the Illinoise album). There was no Blockbuster, but we had two mom and pop video stores. They each carried both VHS and Beta, to give you an idea of what an old man I am. There was Stars and Stripes Video, and I can't remember the name of the other one. The nameless one had a hook hanging below each box cover, and there was a red and a yellow tag hanging on it, red for VHS, yellow for Beta. 

     It was an in store play in Stars and Stripes Video that first made me fall in love with The Little Mermaid, but other than that, I didn't spend too much time in the kids section. I rented every wrestling tape in the store, tons of comedy of varying quality (my holy trinity were Chevy Chase, Bill Murray and John Candy), and horror. I'm a horror nerd, and a lot of it is due to these video store experiences. I'd stare at the crazy box art and imagine what kind of insanity these movies contained. I was allowed to rent horror tapes, even R rated ones, but there was some limit. To me it seems like an arbitrary limit (I was allowed to watch Hellraiser but not Nightmare on Elm St.), but that only lent some of the forbidden titles more of a mystique. Almost without fail, the film failed to live up to its amazing box art when I actually ended up seeing it.

     When I was a little older, 13/14/15, I lived in Land O' Lakes, Florida. Mash up Bully and Gummo and that was Land O' Lakes. Land O' Lakes had Video View, the kind of video store nerds dream of. It had all the pop culture obscura you could wish for. It had a coin op vending machine with holographic WWF stickers that were at least 10 years out of date. They even had a video there which I can't even find referenced on the internet. It was called Faces of Torture and consisted of really bad special effects of stuff like guys with their eyes bugging out and dams breaking and flooding towns and nails driven through hands. There was footage of Marilyn Monroe doing some tame nude modeling while a devil voiced narrator talks over it: "Oh Norma Jean, what have you let them turn you into?" and some interview footage with James Dean talking about racing cars with weird echo and effects laid over it.

      It also had a legit porn section. I never actually went it there, but it is a transition to mention the somewhat erotic element of these movies. Like a lot of people my age (ie, those who came of age pre-internet) a lot of my sexual awakening was by way of gore movies (so of course I'm very well adjusted today). Sex and violence go together like beans and weenies. And again, a lot of it was just the cover art. They don't make 'em like this anymore. Here's five VHS covers I have a special relationship with:

Exterminator 2 (1984)

     Look at that shit. That's one of the most iconic images of my childhood. So much so, that I didn't actually rent this movie until close to a decade later, and even then it was a case of "I should watch the movie that went along with that cover I loved so much." Even at eight years old, I somehow knew that the movie could never live up to the cover, unless it was just an hour and a half of that guy standing there spraying fire over anything that moved. I knew if I rented the tape that there would be scenes of people talking and stuff, and I was not interested. I drew this cover over and over in school, sometimes adding speech bubbles that said "DIE, SCUM!" and so forth.
     You can see an influence on some of the wonderful Doom cover art that would so overshadow those games. (Much of the reason I never got huge into first person shooters is that the games weren't as awesome as the box). The fact that this is Exterminator 2 is also a good way to mention the fact that I was often introduced to film series with the sequels, and the box art is a lot of the reason. Sequels often went more over the top with their cover art, because the films were usually inferior and they had to sucker you in. Clearly it worked, too. Everything from Toxic Avenger to Revenge of the Nerds, I saw part two first.

Monster High (1989)

     Really inappropriate movie for a child, and there's no way my mom would have rented this for me if she knew what it was like. The cover looks fairly innocuous, and that's why I wanted to see it. I thought the idea of some demon slam dunking the planet was amazing. I wasn't a basketball fan, but I did have a fascination with monster hands. Is that strange? I was enamored with the Amityville 3D cover because of the giant monster hand sticking out of the house. Remember the scene in Ghostbusters where the hands come out of Dana's chair and hold her down as she's sucked into... the realm of Zuul, I guess? I used to rewind that and watch it over and over. I used to try to imagine the monsters who those hands were attached to, gave them back stories. I guess I was an odd kid. I particularly liked the one with two fingers and a thumb, just like the one of the Amityville 3D cover.
     Anyway, that's why I was drawn to Monster High. I liked high school movies, both horror and comedy. I used to fantasize about growing up to be a cool high school guy (my idea of this was basically the scene in Billy Madison where he pulls up in the Firebird Trans Am blasting "The Stroke"). I also had a vague idea that there would be a monster in this who was big enough to palm the Earth. I suspected that it might not be true, but the "final boss is huge" trope was legit from enough video games (as well as Killer Klown from Outer Space, and Ghoulies 2) to give the idea some legs.
     No. This movie is just tits, tits and more tits. It's actually really degrading and disrespectful to women, even by monster titty movie standards, too. The fact that "Monster High" went on to become the name of a line of dolls beloved by me and preteen girls everywhere is perhaps the final insult. I imagine some innocent child stumbling across this in a video store and being traumatized, but then I remember that there aren't video stores anymore.

I Spit on Your Grave (1978)

     Oh man. This movie. I was definitely not allowed to watch this as a kid. I did rent it from Video View much later, but the box was an iconic image of my youth. It was on a high shelf, probably due to the content, but also because it was in an oversized box for some reason. To address the film itself, this is sort of the reverse of Monster High. You see this box and you're struck by two things: the title (had to be my first exposure to "death metal song titles". Just words strung together in that way to form that kind of sentiment. You know what I mean, I hope. I had never seen anything like before), and "Nice ass." You might think it's a sexy times movies, but it's so not. You watch this and there's a rape scene that, for my money, is the most harrowing and difficult to watch from any movie, worse than Irreversible or The Accused, and then just the most brutal, cringe inducing savage violence and death. And then it's over. I honestly can't think of many fictional films that have this kind of visceral impact. Maybe Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and even that is somewhat diminished by the fact that Michael Rooker went on to become a well known actor.
     Some say the film is feminist, and this argument is supported by the fact that the rape in this movie is not sexualized at all. If you're titillated by I Spit on Your Grave, you're dangerous. So why the cover art? It's so misleading. And, as a standalone, it is a great shot. People remember it. For evidence of this, there were quite a few rip offs of this film made (I Piss on Your Grave, I Spit on Your Naked Corpse, etc., as well as the utterly tasteless 2010 remake), and every single one of them has a sexy girl's ass on the cover. So, sex and violence, unforgettable title... looks like one of the most memorable, best designed covers of all time. I'd hang the poster on my wall. So why is it attached to one of the most soul eviscerating films ever made? Because God is dead and we're alone.  

 Faces of Death IV (1990)
     Speaking of heavy metal, I'm using part 4 here, but this could really be any of the Faces of Death series. I could only find the DVD cover, but the VHS box art looked the same. I wanted to rent Faces of Death because of it's amazing death metal artwork, but I was told I couldn't because it contained real footage of people dying, and was a sick movie. Of course, this skyrocketed it to the top of my list of things I had to see. Matt in the previously mentioned Dinosaur Dracula article makes a point that's very applicable here, so I'm just going to quote him:


"As a kid, I never realized that movies like this only appealed to a certain segment of adults. I just assumed that all adults watched this stuff, and that there was nothing “weird” about it. It almost seemed like a rite of passage, and I guess it was, but certainly not in the way that I imagined.
I’d spy on the gory horror movies, and the purely adult movies, and the ones (like Slashdance) that mixed the two, and be simultaneously horrified and exhilarated by the thought that, someday, my time would come. As sure as I’d have to get my driver’s license, I’d have to watch movies about demons ripping naked people in half and eating whatever spilled out. It was a strange feeling that’s hard to put into words. Hopefully, many of you get it."

     I so get it. I felt exactly that same way. I used to imagine growing up and renting porno tapes when I didn't even know what porno tapes were. I just knew they had something to do with sex (I also didn't know what that was), but it was something that adults did, so it was something I was going to do. Faces of Death was that exact same way. I used to watch tons of horror movies, but this was where I got the idea that there were scary movies for kids, and there were also scary movies for teens (which is what I watched, and many of my classmates weren't allowed to see these), but that there were also really bad movies that you had to be a grown ass adult to watch. And I couldn't wait. I had no idea what they were, but I wanted to be first in line.
   Of course, when I actually saw Faces of Death, it was the corniest, fakest thing you can imagine. I actually purchased Faces of Death IV from Video View on the dark day they went out of business (the space became a fucking nail salon), and it's probably the funniest entry in the series. The original host, Dr. Gross (haw haw) is gone and a new bug eyed doctor has taken his place. He's a terrible actor, and he has a lava lamp in his office. The film closes with a song (!) which I have embedded below. Just let this wash over you, and be sure to take note of some of those names.

Return of the Living Dead (1985)
     I don't need to say much about Return of the Living Dead because anyone who's even slightly interested in this sort of stuff has seen it. I just have to say that it may well be the coolest box cover of all time. At my local, they actually had a poster up in the horror section, giving me an even better look at the most amazing artwork in the whole store. Remember back at the beginning of this post, I said almost without fail, the films failed to live up to the artwork? Return of the Living Dead is the film that made me have to include that "almost".
     It's truly a miraculous film. It hits you with an untouchable cover, a cover that's impossible to live up to, and then it fucking lives up to it. I can only compare the experience to the first time I heard of GG Allin. "You won't believe it. This guy comes out naked, takes a shit on stage, beats up the audience and rolls around in broken glass." and I'm like "Okay, I'm sure this guy's out there, but there's no way he can live up to hype like that." and then you see him and he's even better than the impossible hype. Return of the Living Dead is like that. It has everything. It's funny, gross, sexy and punk as fuck. I didn't really realize it until writing this blog, but if I had to sum up my personality in one movie, Return of the Living Dead is a damn good choice.
     I suppose it's only fitting that they changed the godlike cover art for the special edition DVD. Return is a product of its time, and if you didn't come to it in a mom and pop video store (or a grindhouse theater), you can enjoy it, but it's not really your thing. I think I've just talked myself into a RotLD  tattoo.

"Be sure your sin will find you out." - Numbers 32:23

     This is sort of an extension of the nineteen Chuck Klosterman questions I answered in a previous post. These are also Chuck's questions, this time from Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, and he describes these as the twenty-three questions he asks people to determine if he can really love them. Can you love me? Let's go and see.

1. Let us assume you met a rudimentary magician. Let us assume he can do five simple tricks--he can pull a rabbit out of his hat, he can make a coin disappear, he can turn the ace of spades into the Joker card, and two others in a similar vein. These are his only tricks and he can't learn any more; he can only do these five. HOWEVER, it turns out he's doing these five tricks with real magic. It's not an illusion; he can actually conjure the bunny out of the ether and he can move the coin through space. He's legitimately magical, but extremely limited in scope and influence.
Would this person be more impressive than Albert Einstein?

First of all, there is no "real" magic. Even under a hypothetical, no one can act outside the laws of reality. If that were to happen, that would only mean that we don't understand the laws of reality as well as we thought. Arthur C. Clarke's "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." is well known, and I also like William Blake's "What is now proved was once only imagined." 
Sometimes, when I make this point, I don't convey it well enough and people don't understand what I'm getting at, so let me try an illustration. Ancient Mayans could predict eclipses, right? Okay. But they had no idea what an eclipse was. Just because they could predict every solar eclipse to this day, that doesn't mean that Kinich Ahau was transforming himself into a jaguar, right? So it goes with magic.
That said, this rudimentary magician would not necessarily be more impressive than Albert Einstein, even by demonstrating these new scientific realities. Einstein's work was more impressive than a new understanding of physics which allows the conjuration of rabbits, etc. I reject Chuck's hypothesis, but if "Albert Einstein" just means "smart guy" to you, you're not getting the full depth of this question. If you actually have some knowledge of what Einstein did, the question is kind of absurd. I suspect that may have been what Chuck was getting at. There's also not enough information. Where did he learn to do these tricks? Did he study arcana and obscura for decades? Did he sell his soul? Was he just born with it? These things matter. Is the kid in your class who was double jointed more impressive than Galileo? Is Tiger Woods more impressive than Stephen Hawking?
A more reasonable question might be is a real world Gandalf or Dumbledore more impressive than Einstein. And still probably not. It's kind of an insult to Einstein.


2. Let us assume a fully grown, completely healthy Clydesdale horse has his hooves shackled to the ground while his head is held in place with thick rope. He is conscious and standing upright, but completely immobile. And let us assume that--for some reason--every political prisoner on earth (as cited by Amnesty International) will be released from captivity if you can kick this horse to death in less than twenty minutes. You are allowed to wear steel-toed boots.
Would you attempt to do this?

I'd say yes, but I'd have to have a pretty solid gameplan for how to kick the horse to death. It would be very difficult, and the worst case scenario would be a battered, tortured but still living horse at the end of twenty minutes. This depends on how strict the word "kick" is. I could probably get the horse on the ground by kicking it's knees backwards, soccer style, at which point the best bet would be to either stand on its throat until it suffocated (probably harder than I think... horses have powerful necks), or else stomp on its head until its skull shatters. I could probably do this if the head were flat on the ground and the horse wasn't writhing around or fighting back. So just how immobile "immobile" is would also be relevant. Under those conditions, I'd try. I'd insist the horse be eaten afterwards.


3. Let us assume there are two boxes on a table. In one box, there is a relatively normal turtle; in the other, Adolf Hitler's skull. You have to select one of these items for your home. If you select the turtle, you can't give it away and you have to keep it alive for two years; if either of these parameters are not met, you will be fined $999 by the state. If you select Hitler's skull, you are required to display it in a semi-prominent location in your living room for the same amount of time, although you will be paid a stipend of $120 per month for doing so. Display of the skull must be apolitical.
Which option do you select?

Easiest question yet. Hitler's skull, no hesitation. I kind of have to work to imagine why someone wouldn't do this. "Oh, he has Hitler's skull, he's a Nazi!" Let's think. I'm a student of history, and specifically WWII, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. It's a historic artifact. This would have been a better question if Chuck specified you had to display it as a shrine to Hitler. Even then I'd probably do it. It's in my home, but I don't have people over. Even if they did: "Oh, that's Hitler's skull. Sorry about the Nazi shrine, I'm required to do that by the state. *shrugs, rolls eyes* But I get paid every month for this. It'll be gone in two years. Crazy, huh? Hey, you can piss on it if you want, I don't care."


4. Genetic engineers at Johns Hopkins University announce that they have developed a so-called ‘super gorilla.’ Though the animal cannot speak, it has a sign language lexicon of over twelve thousand words, an I.Q. of almost 85, and--most notably--a vague sense of self-awareness. Oddly, the creature (who weighs seven hundred pounds) becomes fascinated by football. The gorilla aspires to play the game at its highest level and quickly develops the rudimentary skills of a defensive end. ESPN analyst Tom Jackson speculates that this gorilla would be ‘borderline unblockable’ and would likely average six sacks a game (although Jackson concedes the beast might be susceptible to counters and misdirection plays). Meanwhile, the gorilla has made it clear he would never intentionally injure any opponent.
You are commissioner of the NFL: Would you allow this gorilla to sign with the Oakland Raiders?

This would undermine the whole idea of pro sports, but since I don't care about sports at all, and it's not like pro sports have any integrity anyway, fuck it, why not?

5. You meet your soul mate. However, there is a catch: Every three years, someone will break both of your soul mate's collarbones with a Crescent wrench, and there is only one way you can stop this from happening: You must swallow a pill that will make every song you hear--for the rest of your life--sound as if it's being performed by the band Alice in Chains. When you hear Creedence Clearwater Revival on the radio, it will sound (to your ears) like it's being played by Alice in Chains. If you see Radiohead live, every one of their tunes will sound like it's being covered by Alice in Chains. When you hear a commercial jingle on TV, it will sound like Alice in Chains; if you sing to yourself in the shower, your voice will sound like deceased Alice vocalist Layne Staley performing a capella (but it will only sound this way to you).

Would you swallow the pill?

No. There's a couple reasons for this. First, "You meet your soul mate." is pretty vague. What exactly does that mean? There are no souls, therefore no soul mates. If it's just shorthand for "Your perfect partner.", I think, somewhat contradictorily, that there is no such thing and also that there's more than one. Summarily, I don't think there's one perfect mate for everyone. There's seven billion people in the world, what would be the odds of you meeting them if there were? Not just meeting them, but interacting with them, etc. It's like when you were a kid, your best friend just happened to live right next door to you, or be in your class. It's just proximity. This isn't to diminish the significance of relationships, it's just that you have that capability with many, many more people than you're going to get a chance to experience it with. It's sort of sad, really.
Now, on to the collarbone question. If I'm with my perfect partner in every way I could imagine, I still wouldn't do it, and there's a very short reason why: I wouldn't want someone to do it for me. If this question were reversed, and it were asking "Would you agree to have your collarbones broken every three years so that your soul mate doesn't have to hear nothing but Alice in Chains?" I definitely would. Music is very important. Not to everyone, but it is to me, and by extension, it probably would be to this hypothetical soul mate. Like a lot of things, I don't think most people really get music. Don't get me wrong, many, many people do, probably more than, say, film. But while everybody likes music, if you treat it like an accessory, you're not getting it as an art form. If you consume what's offered to you, if you care about say, album sales, or what your friends listen to, it's not really speaking to you the way it does to other people. This question would be like asking, say, Picasso if he'd agree that everything he painted and every painting he looked at would look like Thomas Kincaid.
Having your collarbones broken would hurt, but it's not the end of the world. I'd definitely have my own collarbones broken for this, so I guess that's really what it comes down to: if the situation were reversed, I wouldn't want my soul mate to do it for me, therefore, my soul mate wouldn't want me to do it.
For the record, I like Alice in Chains. Dirt is an excellent, dark drug album.

6. At long last, someone invents "the dream VCR." This machine allows you to tape an entire evening's worth of your own dreams, which you can then watch at your leisure. However, the inventor of the dream VCR will only allow you to use this device of you agree to a strange caveat: When you watch your dreams, you must do so with your family and your closest friends in the same room. They get to watch your dreams along with you. And if you don't agree to this, you can't use the dream VCR.

Would you still do this?

This might actually be easier than the one about Hitler's skull. No, no, a thousand times no. I wouldn't agree to let people watch what I daydream about, much less when the gloves come off. Of course I can't go into details, because that would defeat the purpose of keeping it to myself. I am a very vivid dreamer, and I actually remember them pretty well, so it would be kind of superfluous. The other thing about dreams is that they can't always be depicted in the way described. My dreams often involved (for lack of a better word) dimensions which don't exist in the natural world. There would be no way to "see" what was happening, it's happening on another plane of experience than the five senses. Also, yes, I do dream about sex a lot. 

7. Defying all expectation, a group of Scottish marine biologists capture a live Loch Ness Monster. In an almost unbelievable coincidence, a bear hunter in the Pacific Northwest shoots a Sasquatch in the thigh, thereby allowing zoologists to take the furry monster into captivity. These events happen on the same afternoon. That evening, the president announces he may have thyroid cancer and will undergo a biopsy later that week.

You are the front page editor of The New York Times: What do you play as the biggest story?

While I personally find the cryptocreatures to be the more interesting story, I would play the president story. The other stories, while I'm sure people would be interested, don't really have any significance as news, they're just curiosities. 

As far as whether the Nessie story or the Sasquatch story is bigger, it would depend on the details of the creatures themselves. If one of them is a fierce, monster like creature, that one draws the most interest. I'd probably say Nessie is the bigger story on paper. That specific legend has a mystique which is rivaled, but I don't think equaled, by the Bigfoot legend. This is because lots of cultures and lots of wooded areas have apeman legends, and while, yes, there are probably an equal number of legends about lake monsters, Loch Ness stands tall as the most well known by a country mile. There's no one Sasquatch, but a lot of people think in terms of "The Loch Ness Monster" just being one specific creature, although of course, if there were anything in the loch, it wouldn't be. 

Also, once they were captured and studied, these creatures would just be animals. An undocumented apelike animal in the Pacific Northwest is interesting and fairly unlikely, but, assuming the popular image of Nessie, a plesiosaur-like animal in a Scottish loch is much more interesting and unlikely.

8. You meet the perfect person. Romantically, this person is ideal: You find them physically attractive, intellectually stimulating, consistently funny, and deeply compassionate. However, they have one quirk: This individual is obsessed with Jim Henson's gothic puppet fantasy The Dark Crystal. Beyond watching it on DVD at least once a month, he/she peppers casual conversation with Dark Crystal references, uses Dark Crystal analogies to explain everyday events, and occasionally likes to talk intensely about the film's "deeper philosophy."

Would this be enough to stop you from marrying this individual?

Not a problem. In truth, this has actually happened to me. I dated a girl for a while who was obsessed with both The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. (Dark Crystal was definitely a notch below Labyrinth to her, but close enough). I didn't marry her, but it never bothered me. I actually quite like those films myself, and I prefer Dark Crystal, since it's much darker than Labyrinth. 

Nerdy obsessions are par for the course with me. If you don't mind me talking about the deeper philosophy of pro wrestling, having Batman tattooed down the entire side of my torso, or flying into a rage when Cartman calls Slayer a death metal band, you can watch The Dark Crystal as many times as you want.

9. A novel titled Interior Mirror is released to mammoth commerical success (despite middling reviews). However, a curious social trend emerges: Though no one can prove a direct scientific link, it appears that almost 30 percent of the people who read this book immediately become homosexual. Many of these newfound homosexuals credit the book for helping them reach this conclusion about their orientation, despite the fact that Interior Mirror is ostensibly a crime novel with no homoerotic content (and was written by a straight man).

Would this phenomenon increase (or decrease) the likliehood of you reading this book?

Increase. You can't turn someone gay, and since 30 percent of the population in general isn't gay, this book is somehow attracting closet cases. It also doesn't say what happens when people who are already gay read the book. This question is slightly offensive in that way; it assumes hetero until proven otherwise. But anyway, I'm so far beyond gay and straight, that element would be meaningless. It's like Q: "Democrat or Republican?" A: "Anarchist." I'd just be curious as to what's in the book that's making this happen. If I could venture a guess about this entirely hypothetical book: like I said, closet cases. Once word gets out about this phenomenon, it's going to attract people who are struggling to admit to themselves that they're gay. It's totally psychosomatic. 

 10. This is the opening line of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City: "You are not the kind of guy who would be in a place like this at this time of the morning." Think about that line in the context of the novel (assuming you've read it). Now go to your CD collection and find Heart's Little Queen album (assuming you own it). Listen to the opening riff to "Barracuda."

Which of these two introductions is a higher form of art?

I haven't, and I don't, so I'm going to alter this question to my personal tastes. The opening line of Stephen King's The Gunslinger: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.", and the opening riff of Black Sabbath's "N.I.B.".

Shit. I don't know why I put myself in this position. That's really, really hard. I'm going to go with my gut... and say... the opening of The Gunslinger.

11. You are watching a movie in a crowded theater. Though the plot is mediocre, you find yourself dazzled by the special effects. But with twenty minutes left in the film, you are struck with an undeniable feeling of doom: You are suddenly certain your mother has just died. There is no logical reason for this to be true, but you are certain of it. You are overtaken with the irrational metaphysical sense that--somewhere--your mom has just perished. But this is only an intuitive, amorphous feeling; there is no evidence for this, and your mother has not been ill.

Would you immediately exit the theater, or would you finish watching the movie?

I'd finish the movie. I'm not one to believe in premonitions. Also, leave the theater and do what? Call her, maybe? If she's dead, that's not going to make her any less dead. I guess it's just asking if this feeling would ruin my enjoyment of the movie. No, it wouldn't, because I'd dismiss it.

12. You meet a wizard in downtown Chicago. The wizard tells you he can make you more attractive if you pay him money. When you ask how this process works, the wizard points to a random person on the street. You look at this random stranger. The wizard says, "I will now make them a dollar more attractive." He waves his magic wand. Ostensibly, this person does not change at all; as far as you can tell, nothing is different. But--somehow--this person is suddenly a little more appealing. The tangible difference is invisible to the naked eye, but you can't deny that this person is vaguely sexier. This wizard has a weird rule, though--you can only pay him once. You can't keep giving him money until you're satisfied. You can only pay him one lump sum up front.

How much cash do you give the wizard?

I'd go all out. All the money I have and can scrape together, selling plasma and everything. Not because I feel unattractive, I think I'm a fairly good looking guy, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Why not milk it for all it's worth? Also, if I paid him thousands of dollars, I'd become really, really ridiculously attractive. For better or worse, in this society, I could use that to easily regain all the money I paid the wizard. Win/win.

13. Every person you have ever slept with is invited to a banquet where you are the guest of honor. No one will be in attendance except you, the collection of your former lovers, and the catering service. After the meal, you are asked to give a fifteen-minute speech to the assembly.

What do you talk about?

Ecology.

14. For reasons that cannot be explained, cats can suddenly read at a twelfth-grade level. They can't talk and they can't write, but they can read silently and understand the text. Many cats love this new skill, because they now have something to do all day while they lay around the house; however, a few cats become depressed, because reading forces them to realize the limitations of their existence (not to mention the utter frustration of being unable to express themselves).

This being the case, do you think the average cat would enjoy Garfield, or would cats find this cartoon to be an insulting caricature?

Garfield is a shit comic strip, so I don't think anyone reading at a twelfth grade level would enjoy it. Remember the Seinfeld where Bryan Cranston starts telling Jewish jokes, and the priest asks Jerry if it offends him as a Jewish person? "No, it offends me as a comedian." That's how I think cats would react to Garfield. I think this sort of generalizes cats, too. It's like asking "As a person, do you enjoy Homer Simpson or find him to be an insulting caricature?" And how is Garfield a caricature of cats? Do any cats you know hate Mondays, scarf lasagna, hit their alarm clock, have an alarm clock, kick dogs off tables, etc.? In fact, forget Homer, as a cat owner, are you insulted by Jon Arbuckle?

My answer: a little.

15. You have a brain tumor. Though there is no discomfort at the moment, this tumor would unquestionably kill you in six months. However, your life can (and will) be saved by an operation; the only downside is that there will be a brutal incision to your frontal lobe. After the surgery, you will be significantly less intelligent. You will still be a fully functioning adult, but you will be less logical, you will have a terrible memory, and you will have little ability to understand complex concepts or difficult ideas. The surgery is in two weeks.

How do you spend the next fourteen days?

I wouldn't get the surgery. I'd spend the six months writing a full, uncensored document of my life and ideas. Good, bad and ugly. Possibly some other things which I won't tell you because I'm not dying. The process of turning oxygen into carbon dioxide and food into shit isn't so all encompassingly important that it must go on at all costs.

16. Someone builds and optical portal that allows you to see a vision of your own life in the future (it’s essentially a crystal ball that shows a randomly selected image of what your life will be like in twenty years). You can only see into this portal for thirty seconds. When you finally peer into the crystal, you see yourself in a living room, two decades older than you are today. You are watching a Canadian football game, and you are extremely happy. You are wearing a CFL jersey. Your chair is surrounded by books and magazines that promote the Canadian Football League, and there are CFL pennants covering your walls. You are alone in the room, but you are gleefully muttering about historical moments in Canadian football history. It becomes clear that—for some unknown reason—you have become obsessed with Canadian football. And this future is static and absolute; no matter what you do, this future will happen. The optical portal is never wrong. This destiny cannot be changed.

The next day, you are flipping through television channels and randomly come across a pre-season CFL game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Knowing your inevitable future, do you now watch it?

There just isn't any way that could be true. The machine would be wrong for the first time. You might as well say the optical portal shows you raping your mother in twenty years, or tap dancing with Bing Crosby and Danny fucking Kaye. I'd have no interest in the CFL game, of course, but I would be very curious as to what this could mean. My best guess: my future self remembers looking into the optical portal, and so must remember to dress up in a bunch of CFL shit and watch a game on a certain day to fulfill a prophecy, or I'm in witness protection or something. 

17. You are sitting in an empty bar (in a town you’ve never before visited), drinking Bacardi with a soft-spoken acquaintance you barely know. After an hour, a third individual walks into the tavern and sits by himself, and you ask your acquaintance who the new man is. “Be careful of that guy,” you are told. “He is a man with a past.” A few minutes later, a fourth person enters the bar; he also sits alone. You ask your acquaintance who this new individual is. “Be careful of that guy, too,” he says. “He is a man with no past.”

Which of these two people do you trust less?

This question doesn't provide enough information. What's the first guy's past? Ex con, sex offender, mob enforcer, Hell's Angel... what? I'm kind of going to cheat on this one and say the one I trust the least is my acquaintance who keeps telling me to be careful of people. People project themselves onto others. Someone who believes others are not to be trusted is probably not to be trusted. Having "a past" is no reason to mistrust someone, nor is having no past. Which, of course, he does. Everyone has a past. So just not knowing someone's past isn't a reason not to trust them. Why so suspicious?

18. You have won a prize. The prize has two options, and you can choose either (but not both). The first option is a year in Europe with a monthly stipend of $2,000. The second option is ten minutes on the moon.

Which option do you select?

I own Chuck Klosterman's Hypertheticals flash cards, which contain many questions like the ones on this list, so I can tell you he has some sort of obsession with going to the moon. He brings it up a lot. I really wouldn't be all that interested. There's nothing there but the opportunity to say "I went to the moon." Some beautiful landscapes (of which there are plenty in Europe), with ten minutes to enjoy them. Quite frankly I'd choose sitting at home with a monthly stipend of $2,000 over ten minutes on the moon. And what would I do if I already lived in Europe? Chuck again assumes his readers are too much like himself.

19. Your best friend is taking a nap on the floor of your living room. Suddenly, you are faced with a bizarre existential problem: This friend is going to die unless you kick them (as hard as you can) in the rib cage. If you don’t kick them while they slumber, they will never wake up. However, you can never explain this to your friend; if you later inform them that you did this to save their life, they will also die from that. So you have to kick a sleeping friend in the ribs, and you can’t tell them why.

Since you cannot tell your friend the truth, what excuse will you fabricate to explain this (seemingly inexplicable) attack?

I'd kick them, then immediately run out of the room and act like I had no idea what they were talking about. Or else say a black guy broke in and did it. That always works.

20. For whatever the reason, two unauthorized movies are made about your life. The first is an independently released documentary, primarily comprised of interviews with people who know you and bootleg footage from your actual life. Critics are describing the documentary as “brutally honest and relentlessly fair.” Meanwhile, Columbia Tri-Star has produced a big-budget biopic of your life, casting major Hollywood stars as you and all your acquaintances; though the movie is based on actual events, screenwriters have taken some liberties with the facts. Critics are split on the artistic merits of this fictionalized account, but audiences love it.

Which film would you be most interested in seeing?

The documentary. I'd rather see that approach in a film about anyone, and I'm no exception. The inaccuracy of the Hollywood movie would irritate me, but I'd be interested in who they cast as me and people from my life. I can enjoy a film as a film even when the "true story" totally isn't (Anonymous for  example. Great film, all bullshit.), but it being about me would add a certain element of difficulty in doing so.

21. Imagine you could go back to the age of five and relive the rest of your life, knowing everything that you know now. You will reexperience your entire adolescence with both the cognitive ability of an adult and the memories of everything you’ve learned form having lived your life previously.

Would you lose your virginity earlier or later than you did the first time around (and by how many years)?

Well, if I'm mentally 30, an inverse Josh Baskin, there'd be no reason to wait at all, I'd do it as soon as I went through puberty. There are unpleasant implications of doing it with either another 12/13 year old or with an adult woman, but I'd just have to figure something out (probably claim I had some sort of pituitary disorder and live as my true age rather than my apparent age), since that would persist no matter what age I did it. If I waited until I was 17, I'd be mentally 42, so it's the same situation. However, if I were to alter history, and choose when I would lose my virginity, rather than reliving my life with an intact memory, I'd make it later by three years.

22. You work in an office. Generally, you are popular with your coworkers. However, you discover that there are currently two rumors circulating the office gossip mill, and both involve you. The first rumor is that you got drunk at the office holiday party and had sex with one of your married coworkers. This rumor is completely true, but most people don’t believe it. The second rumor is that you have been stealing hundreds of dollars of office supplies (and then selling them to cover a gambling debt). This rumor is completely false, but virtually everyone assumes it is factual.

Which of these two rumors is most troubling to you?

Probably the first one, because stealing office supplies will be investigated and if I'm innocent, I should be exonerated, so that's the end of that. The first rumor isn't a big deal since most don't believe it, and in fact, being falsely accused of stealing office supplies would probably help deflect any flak from the first rumor. I'd be more troubled by doing the first thing than I would be by the second, but that wasn't the question.

23. Consider this possibility:

a. Think about deceased TV star John Ritter.

b. Now, pretend Ritter had never become famous. Pretend he was never affected by the trappings of fame, and try to imagine what his personality would have been like.

c. Now, imagine that this person—the unfamous John Ritter—is a character in a situation comedy.

d. Now, you are also a character in this sitcom, and the unfamous John Ritter character is your sitcom father.

e. However, this sitcom is actually your real life. In other words, you are living inside a sitcom: Everything about our life is a construction, featuring the unfamous John Ritter playing himself (in the role of your TV father). But this is not a sitcom. This is your real life.

How would you feel about this?

Great. John Ritter seems like a good guy. And since my real life is a sitcom, I'll never have any real problems. Everything works out on TV.

Go Team Venture!

     Today's blog is a special, collaborative effort featuring my dear friend Erik. We met seven years ago when he trained me for my first day at work (I came in drunk), we went to Vegas together, he was the best man at my wedding, and in between we've talked about everything. I thought it would be a good idea to write some collaborative blogs, so here, to kick us off, is our top ten Film Protagonists. We each did five, in no order. I'll alternate between our two lists.

Erik:  Before I start in on this list of my own personal favorite main dudes of cinema, I should probably introduce myself. My name is Erik and I'm a friend of Dave's. I write a blog called Apocalypse Continuum, mostly detailing America's sometimes toxic relationship with technology, though I do occasionally step outside that framework to do things like this that I think are interesting or fun or otherwise helpful to get me excited about writing again. I'm not a huge list person, mostly because the ones I have tend to change frequently, but that doesn't mean these picks or their respective rankings are any less valid. This is, hopefully, the first of many collaborations on here. Sorry, guys.

 Dave:    We ended up taking a similar approach, although we didn't discuss it beforehand. I'll let Erik introduce his characters, but for me, I tried to pick protagonists who reflected something of my personality and character. I identify strongly with each, for better or worse, and that's what sets these five apart. They're not just great characters; they're facets of myself. First up...

Dave/1) Andy Dufresne - The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

     He crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. He's a lot like me in that he tends to be quiet and introspective, has nerdy hobbies, and, through no real fault of his own, finds himself handed a platter of shit for dinner. He's a reserved, soft spoken guy, but in his own way, Andy's kind of a radical. He follows no code or law except his own. He won't be broken. He looks at impossible odds, overwhelming circumstances, and he just starts chipping away. He takes it one day at a time, puts one foot in front of the other, and he keeps going until he's out of that prison or he's dead. Andy's a likable guy, but he doesn't have many close friends. He’s an intellectual who still likes his girly posters. These are all traits I identify strongly with.

      If Andy represents one thing, I think it's doing the best you can with what you're given. And, all things considered, if I had to come up with ground rules for living my life, I could probably do a lot worse.

He has a lot of good moments, but my favorite is probably the scene with the record player. It shows his appreciate for the arts and aesthetic beauty, and that he realizes some things are more important than covering your ass and maintaining the status quo. He saw an opportunity and he took it. And he showed the so called authorities that he wasn't their pet, and that he let them use him only as much as he saw fit. There's a lot being said in that scene.

      Where Andy finally ends up, on a solitary beach in Mexico, fixing up and old boat, is close to an ideal existence for me too. Symbolically, Andy Dufresne represents an arc that I see my life following, and that's why he's one of my favorite protagonists. He is the myth I aspire to.

Erik: These are in no particular order. The only reason it's these characters and not, say, Indiana Jones is that either I relate to each one as a man or aspire to be like them in some way. As far as role models go, you could do worse than...

Erik/1) Virgil Hilts - The Great Escape (1963)

 This is your dad's favorite war movie for one reason: Steve McQueen. McQueen plays US Air Force Captain Virgil Hilts, one of many Allied POWs determined to escape a German POW camp during WWII. Known as "The Cooler King" for the incredible number of days spent in solitary confinement, referred to as "The Cooler", he spends what little time he gets outside of a concrete cell attempting to escape or otherwise pissing off his jailors and cracking jokes. There's an air of calm to him I'd love to say I'd have in that situation; a sort of ultimate cool. Almost in the way that if you put out into the universe that you're not a POW in a cell surrounded by Nazis, then you're not a POW in a cell surrounded by Nazis. Some Zen shit. The image that comes to mind when I talk about this character(who was based on a real guy, BTW) is Hilts starting his twenty-day sentence in the cooler by sitting in his cell bouncing a baseball against a wall. You can't keep this man down. He dares you to even try.

Dave/2) "Sanjuro" - Yojimbo (1961)

 

     The ronin of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, who, when asked his name, replies "Kuwabatake Sanjuro". Thirty year old mulberry field. He is thirty, and he has no name. Sanjuro is an island unto himself. In the time the film (a deliberate mashup of samurai and Western films) is set, the lifestyle of the samurai is on its way out. Sanjuro is a wanderer, and he uses whatever skills he has acquired to his own advantage. He is amoral in a sense, but, such as when he saves the farmer and his wife, shows that he will perform acts of charity and goodwill if he finds them personally worthwhile.

     We meet Sanjuro wandering, and he determines his path by casting a stick into the air. The directions it points upon landing is where he will go. This sets the tone for the character. He encounters a town with two warring factions, and true to his nature, he uses them each to his advantage. He effortlessly plays one side against the other, and watches, amused, from a bell tower.

     Sanjuro is a man apart, and that's why I like him. He has no loyalty, but he isn't a scoundrel. He also does the best he can with what he has been given. As a representative of an era whose time has passed, he must stand alone against the world. There is a scene late in the film where Sanjuro has a pistol pointed at him. Up until now, his skill as a samurai rendered him untouchable, as he could easily kill anyone in the town without taking a scratch, but the gun equalizes the matter. Rather than killing or disarming his attacker, as he could surely do quite easily, he calmly faces whatever outcome awaits. This, metaphorically, is what Sanjuro has done with life. This is how I relate to him. The world is trivial and absurd. Do what you can, take what you can get, go where you feet lead you. What happens will happen.

Erik/2) William Munny - Unforgiven (1992)

 I thought at first to include Eastwood's "Man with no name" on this list, but instead decided on a much more interesting character, and what is probably my favorite role of his: William Munny, a widowed pig farmer who used to be a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition. Hired to kill two cowboys that cut up a prostitute, Munny, along with his old partner Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) and a young gunslinger, do as much, leading each to different fates. By the end, Munny accepts his violent past as still being a part of him, calling up his talents to dispatch several men in the saloon decorated with his now-dead partner, Ned. I guess the thing to come away with at the end of it is that violence, however naturally it comes to you, is ultimately useless. Nothing comes of it but pain and death. It should be noted this was Eastwood's last western.

Dave/3) Daniel Plainview - There Will Be Blood (2007)

 

     Another loner in the extreme, Daniel Plainview loathes seemingly everything and everyone, including himself. He represents the darker side of my nature. "I look at people and I see nothing worth liking." he says at one point, and "I cannot go on doing this by myself. With these... people." I have felt exactly that way many times. He wants to make money, but even his greed is misanthropic: "I want to earn enough money that I can get away from everyone."

     Plainview is an eminently watchable character. His diction and elocution are compelling. He's one of the less admirable characters on my list, but he is relatable just the same. His determination and his self-reliance are remarkable. One common theme I've noticed among my favorite protagonists is that they are each very solitary men. They are all self-sufficient, self-reliant. Daniel takes it to the extreme, but even he has his adopted son, H.W. Their relationship is tragic, but I think he does feel affection for the boy. He's just unable to be a decent, kind man. He doesn't have it in him. Like Sanjuro, Plainview takes what he can get from who he can get it from, but unlike Sanjuro, he is not at peace with himself. At all. This, too, is relatable, as I would aspire to be like Kurosawa's ronin, but it would be prideful and dishonest to say there's not a lot of Daniel Plainview in me too. He's also something of a drunk, which I can relate to, especially his hangover scenes. Those could have come straight from my life.

     That's life. We must take it as it comes. There's a perverse pleasure in Plainview, too. His rivalry with Eli is quite funny, and it's very satisfying to see Daniel snub Eli at the dedication, or laughingly explain about the milkshakes. One of the most cathartic scenes in any film though, has to be Daniel slapping Eli across the face and dragging him through the mud when Eli asks where the money is. I'm Plainview, the system is Eli.

Erik/3) R.J. MacReady - The Thing (1982)

If I had to pick a character I feel closest to, personality-wise, it'd be R.J. MacReady. A pilot for U.S. Outpost #31 in Antarctica, MacReady is a loner that would've gladly spent his nights in his shack drinking scotch and playing chess with his cheatin' bitch computer. Things didn't turn out that way, and he stepped up to handle the situation as best he could because no one else was willing to do it. Sounds like a role model to me. If you haven't seen it, it's based on John W. Campbell, Jr.'s short story, Who Goes There?, a kind of "Ten Little Indians" story where a group gets picked off one by one. I won't lie to you and say this one turns out well. The film's ending is one of the most nihilistic I've ever seen, and I've seen some dark shit. I could only hope to handle it as well as MacReady.

Dave/4)  Johnny - Naked (1993)

     Johnny is the darkest character on my list, even more than Daniel Plainview. He's smart, well read, clever and funny, but his good qualities end there. He definitely has a charisma to him, but he abuses it by being a selfish, basically awful person. It's not nice, but I've been very much like Johnny. Disillusioned with reality. I had no resources except my intellect, so I honed it, then used it as a tool to elevate myself over others and take advantage of them. Johnny is basically a nihilist, which I was for many years. It's not all bad. He is very, very funny. I think he could carry his quick wit even if he were to decide to stop being such a twat, as I hope I've done.

     David Thewlis plays him perfectly, and besides being the darkest character on my list, he's also probably the most quotable, which is saying a lot. His personal philosophy is quite similar to my own, I just hope I'm applying it in a different, better way these days.

     Johnny's best scene is with the security guard. He makes some very interesting insights into humanity and god, similar to stuff I've said (it could almost be word for word, just with a different accent and slang), but he's doing it to more or less fuck with a simple man who's only trying to be nice to him. This scene is the character in a nutshell.

     Johnny's a total loner, also, even more than Plainview, as he doesn't even have an H.W. Any positive interaction is a manipulation, as seen in the final scene. What a great scene, and what a bastard. I don't want to spoil it, because this film isn't as widely seen as the others on my list, but just the last shot of Johnny is incredible. It's the triumph of the human spirt and human cruelty and fuck all else rolled into one. It's an ugly world, and sometimes we're ugly people. Even me.

Erik/4) Chuck Noland - Cast Away (2000)

 How would you deal with being stuck on a desert island? Do you know how to build a fire? Make shelter? Catch fish? Deal with being completely and utterly alone? Maybe take a cue from Chuck here and learn to talk to a fucking volleyball to keep from going insane, if that makes any sense. Noland is a FedEx employee who gets stranded on an island in the South Pacific when his plane crashes. He uses what's left of the cargo to try and survive. That's a good summation of most of these characters. They make the best of a bad situation and attempt to pull themselves out with logic. Sometimes that process is a solo mission that takes years and is totally transformative, but you can end up a more capable, satisfied human being.

Dave/5) The Dude - The Big Lebowski (1998)

     Everybody loves the Dude. With good reason. The Dude is kind of the inversion of Johnny. Neither has much going for them, in a traditional sense, but the Dude is content, and basically kind and good. The Dude is closer to who I am now, and that's not a bad thing. He represents, again, doing the best with what you're given, but more importantly than that, being content with what you have. The Dude is almost like a real life Bugs Bunny. Think about it. Bugs just wants to be left alone with his carrots and his burrow, the occasional company of a lady rabbit, and time to read his book or whatever, and some lunatic is always hassling him, causing trouble. He rolls with it, and he comes out on top. Why? Cause he's just that kind of guy. Bugs Abides. 

     Bugs and the Dude are interesting because they're basically shiftless... I hesitate to say losers, because they totally aren't, but by the standards of the world, you could spin it that way. But I wasn't just talking fun, everybody loves the Dude. He's got to be one of the most popular film characters of the modern era. But why? There's really not much about him that sounds all that appealing on paper. And that's the key. It's his attitude. His joi de vivre. His contentment with the simple things. That's what I want to share with him. I'm a capital A Alcoholic, so no white Russians for me, but I enjoy pot, I've bowled, and I have at least one good friend to pass the time with (though Erik couldn't be more different than Walter if he was... black and lived underwater). What more do you need? Like the film itself and Sam Elliott's narration, this just kind of trails off, but so what? It's not about that. It's an attitude. A philosophy. The Dude abides, man. The Dude abides. 

Erik/5) Snake Plissken - Escape From New York (1981)

What can I say? Kurt Russell was a big part of my childhood movie watching experience. Seeing THE THING and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK as a kid did a lot to inform my outlook on life: No one is to be trusted implicitly, so be prepared to walk away at a moment's notice. I've since amended that to include, "Be thankful for the time you had with them and what you learned from it." Snake probably wouldn't use the last part and instead just shoot the motherfucker that wronged him, but hey, I'm a real person, not a movie character with a big fuck-off gun and a license to kill. The point is, with Snake and all the rest of these guys, survival is paramount. Adapt or die. That's my philosophy.

 

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change." -Charles Darwin