Aw Man. RIP Mr. Steele

I'm adding my personal note to the outpouring that appears to be building on this bit of news:

Peter Steele, front man for Type O Negative died yesterday of (what appears to be) heart failure at the age of 48.

I'm not going to go into a big personal entry on how much Type O Negative influenced me, or meant to me... or any of that shit. Music is personal, and I'm not introspective enough to define EXACT effects of music on me... though it is hard to overstate how important music is in my life.

But Peter was unique. A unique voice and personality. I liked Type O Negative A LOT. I've seen them live and a lot of people (in more than one locale) have walked up to me and said I looked like him. I don't really look that much like Peter, but people cue in on the height and the long hair. And he was well-known enough in metal, goth, and rock and roll circles to be a name people could put to their impression.

Now I'm going to be the same position as people who resemble Elvis I guess.

Anyway, the point of this is not to be super-maudlin or turn anyone onto Peter's work with TON posthumously. If you don't like their music or somber goth-metal (with dark humor served in heavy doses) than there's no sense in changing that. But his work (and humor) meant a lot to me.

Too bad, sincerely. He made a sort of peace with himself in recent times after being quite the tortured soul most of his adult years. He probably had a lot of good music and showmanship left in him, despite the band's constant sarcasm about always being on the verge of breaking up. Josh and Kenny are making noise like TON will still continue but this is one band who definitely will suffer without its first, best voice.

And Now A Somewhat Un-Nerdly Topic...

Summer is baseball season, hot dog season, grass-cutting season… a lot of different things to different people. Where I live summer is all those things and also very very short. We don’t really even have a traditional spring, which would be NOW (as this is being typed) everywhere else.



Here the weather is warmer than it has been for months and months but still not literally ‘warm’… not to the point I want to spend a lot of time outside anyway. But warm-enough-to-be-outside temperatures will here soon. That means in addition to all the other things summer is, to me its cigar season.


I don’t smoke cigars in my domicile. In winter that means I have to go smoke ‘em in bars that allow it. A lot of bars here have gone smoke free, and only a few that do still allow smoking really allow cigars. This makes winter smoking do-able but a big enough pain in the ass to not be done much. The lion’s share of cigar smoking has to be outside. In winter that just isn’t desirable. Folks addicted to cigarettes DO smoke outside here, but they are a miserable lot huddled outside the doors to restaurants and workplaces, hunched over in their parkas, trying to keep the wind and snow off their smokes. And trying to suck down those smokes as fast as possible to get back inside where it’s warm.


Since cigar smoking for me is optional, summer (such as it is here) is a time of opportunity. I might get in an average of one cigar every three weeks in winter. In summer this goes up to about three a week. So I’ve gotten some money together with a couple of other dudes at my workplace and fired off an order to stuff my humidor and get me through most of the summer months. See the link for Famous Smokes in the sidebar if you want to visit my cigar vendor of choice. I bought a selection of different 5-paks. Its more expensive per stick than buying boxes, but because I’m pooling money and there’s a greater array of tastes to cater to this was the choice to make. I think I spread the purchases out amongst six cigar brands, and it is typical for Famous to throw in samples and freebies.


Now I have to figure out what I’m drinking with these babies when they arrive in a week. I am a fan of most of the traditional cigar drinks. But being a so-called luxury item, the booze typically paired with cigars is also pretty lux so it can be expensive… typically more expensive per use than the cigars themselves. Good cigars can actually be had for less money than a lot of luxuries. You CAN fork over ungodly amounts, but you don’t have to… particularly if you take advantage of good vendors and special offers. In this order the cigars are going to run about four or five bucks apiece. All good brands in big sizes that would typically run seven to eleven dollars each in stores. Each smoke will be good for sixty to ninety minutes. That’s cheaper than going to a movie. Is going to the movies considered a luxury?


The booze I typically pair with cigars is the stereotype: port, cognac, and whiskey or whiskey-based drinks. There’s a reason these are considered cigar booze… duh, they really go good with cigars. But the better marks of all these things can get pretty pricey. And I don’t have the ducats available to buy all sorts of booze to pair with all different cigars. It’s like food. You’re supposed to match a strong cigar with a heavy drink, lighter cigars with milder booze. I can’t do that too much. I tend to smoke mostly fuller cigars, so I have to go with one premium ‘hard’ booze at a time… and maybe use a cheaper drink, like a microbrewery hefweizen for lighter cigars. Because I’ll blow through the alcohol much faster than the cigars (typically I get two drinks in for every cigar), over the course of the season I will have eventually enjoyed the cigars with most of the booze that goes well with ‘em.


Such is the price paid for having kids and a video game habit. Do yourself and everyone you know a favor and find an excuse to get outside this summer. Away from the games. I’m gonna break out my bike this weekend, and work regular rides back into my routine, too.


Not that my enjoyment of booze and cigars is particularly healthy, but it beats nothing but TV-based entertainment and it doesn’t pack the weight on quite as bad as food! Huh. Actually I see barbecuing in my future too.

Lipschitz and Lipschitz, Name Change Specialists

So I've gotten back into playing Kaido Battle: Touge no Densetsu for the PS2, known in the USA as Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2. A Genki racing game that I started last year, but then wound up putting off when I got an Xbox 360. I am again making good progress (huge game) despite trouble getting back into handling drift events. I can't believe I was good at these several months ago.

Anyway, the point of the post. Genki racers all have rivals, named opponents for you to race. The game also gives YOU a street name, that changes as you progress. Sometimes your street name is cool, sometimes its lame, and sometimes it doesn't make sense.... a combination of the parser Genki uses and how the Japanese translates to English. So I frequently get stuff like 'Meteor of Destruction' or 'Money Maniac'. Yesterday the game bestowed a street name on me that is somewhat disturbing and I hope really inappropriate to me:

Essence of Boy

Now I realize this is just an unfortunate pairing in the parser of 'Essence of' (which goes best with stuff like 'speed' or 'power') and 'Boy' (which could be a suffix for just about anything; 'racing', 'drifting', Nissan, etc). But those two together?

I have to hurry up and gain another milestone that'll flip that name over. Not something I'm particularly comfortable with my kids seeing up on screen either, even if I don't actually have to explain it. Makes Cho Aniki's Holy Protein obsession seem almost tame.

Yes, yes. I'm sure there are plenty of funny and derogatory comments to be made. Let fly, everyone! I may have to forego publishing the comments on this post if it gets too nasty!


Note: The post title is an SCTV reference, kids.

The King Baby, The Motherfuckin' King

Lots of video game stuff has been appearing in this ‘blog. Partly that has to do with the cyclical nature of hobbies… you have an interest rise to preeminent position, the others fall down the priority scale. It also has to do with the activity level of a fan community. There’s just a lot going on with fans talking about and playing games and getting into all the nerdy details. My other interests like aren’t ‘fed’ in quite the same way. I buy music still, but a lot of the active fanboy aspect of that pastime is torpedoed by lack of concerts where I live. In fact, the fuel for many of my interests is by my location. There are only so many things you can do in a tiny isolated town where it is winter seven months out of the year. But a hobby where you can just stay inside, waggle a little controller, and fatten yourself up on cupcakes and Doritos? You can manage THAT shit anywhere.


I’m not here to talk about video games in this entry. Nosirree. Today it’s all about my oldest, deepest, most insidious, yet most misunderstood fanboy interest of all.


Godzilla.

Oh yeah, baby. Break out the sneers, chuckles, and looks of disbelief. In a tale spanning my considerable years on this planet, I’ve had a deep abiding passion for the big gray metaphor (as opposed to the common misconception of big green dinosaur).
Actually, my passion is more properly understood as ALL kaiju (lit. legendary beast, but often translated ‘giant monster’) characters and films, not just Godzilla. So that scoops Gamera, Mothra, Rodan, and in fact any tokusatsu (lit. special effects, but usually applied to Japanese fantasy and science fiction cinema/television). I have been an unabashed fan of this genre since I was but a wee lad.
Like a lot of kids, I was drawn to the excitement of SF and fantasy in all its forms. I read comics. I watched cartoons, I went to the movies, I read books. That last one might not be all that common today. This is some time before the advent of video games… ahem. Importantly, I was a regular reader of ‘monster magazines’ specifically Famous Monsters of Filmland and The Monster Times.

Now these rags are famous for use of stock photos, corny humor, crappy paper, and loads of inaccuracies. But they had what is missing from a lot of fan and genre magazines these days:
FUN.

These mags just exuded love for monsters and monster movies. They talked about the directors and the screenplays and the actors. They talked about the old things and the new. They had big sections in the back where you could order masks, film clips and back issues. These days, periodicals about supposedly fun things all start with a healthy dose of cynicism. While I don’t want magazines I buy to degenerate into maelstroms of idiocy, everything is just so serious. Nowadays. Fangoria might be the closest thing I’ve seen in a mainstream magazine to still capture some of this spirit. I don’t buy it but I glance through every now and then. If you can find some of the kit mags like Amazing Figure Modeler, those are pretty upbeat and fun too.

Anyway. Through those old periodicals I came to discover Godzilla. A lot of older kaiju fans can tell you that Famous Monsters #144 was the turning point. A special all-Japan science fiction issue it brought the awesomeness home to a grade school age kid. In my hometown Godzilla movies were not shown on TV all that frequently. If I’d run across one I’m sure I would’ve watched it, loved it, and sought more of the same thing. But mostly my childhood was Harryhausen, Hammer, and Universal… all awesome to be sure. Famous Monsters opened the door on this hitherto unseen-by-me universe of city crushing fun and after THAT I made it a point to chase down any local listing that might be a kaiju film. I even bought some of the 8mm trailers and shorts that Famous Monsters sold in its back pages. I found out about The Monster Times and Godzilla was a favorite of theirs. They were constantly running pages about him. It was rough, intermittent going but eventually I started to accumulate kaiju-watching experience.

Like any kid fan I drew the hell out my obsession. I had little notebooks cataloging the monsters. Comparative size charts too. I bought the Aurora model kits, some more than once! Sometime after 1978, after home video cassettes started appearing in homes, I landed the ultimate item, a VHS copy of Destroy All Monsters. Somehow the stars aligned and I was at my uncle’s house (he was the first family member to have a VCR), he had a blank tape, and I had caught a late TV showing of the movie. Fortunate too, that although it isn’t the greatest of the first-gen Godzilla movies it is a pretty good one, and it had the benefit of having so many of the other kaiju all in one film. A new level of accuracy now permeated my drawings. I made all my friends watch the movie that’s for sure. It didn’t make any of them become a frother like I was, but they understood my enthusiasm.

Over in Japan, the fan object marketing craze was not what it is today, but there were a number of Godzilla toys, models and such available over there. But there was little to no connection here. I had the Aurora kits for Godzilla, Rodan and King Ghidorah, but that was just about it as far as ‘official merch’. I didn’t get much chance to tape further movies either. At some point in here I got Mattel’s line of big ‘Shogun Warriors’ that were derived from the jumbo machinder toys from Japan and Godzilla and Rodan were late additions to that range. Now, there is no shortage of crap for kaiju movies, but back then every little thing was like gold to a little fan-kid like me.

Growing up (but not completely obviously) I never lost my love for this genre. As time has worn on, I have always carefully acquired new editions of every kaiju film that comes available. I have collected more modern model kits that make the old ones look crude by comparison. I have burdened my own son with my love of giant monsters. Now he’s as big a fan as I am. For him, toy collections come and go, but the one he always comes back to and continues to actively collect for is his collection of Bandai Godzilla vinyls. He is up to around forty or so. It is easy to find info on kaiju now in fan magazines like G-Fan or on the internet.

Occasionally I get asked to explain just what the big deal is… why hang on to such a kitschy interest? A lot’s been written about this in recent times. As seems inevitable with older pop culture items and icons, kaiju films have been undergoing a reassessment. Since the mid-80s when the first of the so-called Heisei Godzilla films was released (and actually came to US theaters!) tokusatsu films have been given another look, and fans old and new have found a voice in books, magazines and online to focus more appreciation, at least in this country. Godzilla in his home country has usually been given the benefit of the doubt. With more information available, the west has sought out these films in the original cuts with widescreen prints in clean colors. Shown this way, their value culturally and as entertainment becomes much more apparent. Formerly scratchy, faded, and cropped, these were seen as crude, jumpy, camp wrestling fests (and some deserve that description no matter how you clean up the print), the best of the kaiju films now are considered on par or even better than contemporary films from the west.

Japanese sensibilities for what sort of spectacle should be shown are different than the western take on the same subject. Western filmmakers have typically tried to go as realistic as possible, believing the closer you get to ‘the real’ the more the audience gets caught up in the work. Some older western SF films don’t hold up very well because that was the best that could be done with the technology… and the best that a shoestring budget would allow, SF not exactly commanding the blockbuster audience it does today. If viewed through an appreciation for the times and technology these old movies can be fun. The Japanese don’t need the realism so much. They aren’t necessarily averse to it, but more importantly they want the striking image. They want the indelible impression. The awe and the art. Many viewers find that kaiju films hold up well on a number of levels even now when compared to American B-movies and monster films because the Japanese didn’t treat them like B-movies. If you watch a good widescreen DVD in the original Japanese language you will see expansive colorful cinematography. Decent acting from a roster of names that were well-known for other genres not just SF. The special effects may not be realistic, but there are times when the craft of it becomes so apparent, especially today in an age of clicking and dragging our special effects into place. Look at the intricacy of any Tokyo Tower model used in Mothra. Or think about what it would take to marionette King Ghidorah with three heads, two wings, and two tails. NO CG, man. No CG.

Even with scratchy crap prints, as a kid I was in awe of the spectacle. As a grownup, knowing more about what went into these things, I’m just as much in awe of what was done to put them up on the screen. In a western film if something was totally crazy—unworkable or out of budget—it got scrapped. In a kaiju film there was a better than even chance they’d figure out a way to get it up on screen. No US film would’ve dared to show something like King Ghidorah’s birth from a meteor the way it was done in his debut in 1964. We would’ve done something totally lame, or worse yet off-camera. What he actually happened is the meteor cracks open, spews steam, then showers of sparks and soon a fireball shoots up, with a combination of reverse photography and animation having it coalesce in full-view into the aerial monster. This whole process only takes a minute or so, but cripes, as a kid that kind of awesome wasn’t found all over the place. It shows the imagination and attention given, even if the sum effect doesn’t exactly knock the kids out today.

The attitude towards the monsters was different too. They weren’t ‘just animals’ to be eventually killed when the right weapon was found. Typically they were unstoppable, elemental forces, almost godlike. There’s no logic in a 150-ft beast being able to withstand tank shells, rockets, and enough electricity to power Tokyo. But these were ‘legendary beasts’, almost like our conception of superheroes who are more than the sum of mere tissue and bone.

Want to know where the American Godzilla film REALLY failed. It made Godzilla into The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. There is nothing wrong with Beast. It was a great movie, a tribute to Ray Harryhausen. But it is his work on it that makes it a standout. The beast itself is just another prehistoric creature running around ‘til the scientists or military figure out how to put it down. That’s all GINO (the American Godzilla, Godzilla In Name Only) was. With kids and eggs. Even if you don’t like Matthew Broderick or Hank Azaria, if the film had used American resources, money, and effects to make a film about GODZILLA—heat beam, indestructibility, massive skyscraper destruction, and an inscrutable purpose—you KNOW we’d all remember that film A LOT more kindly. Even people who aren’t into kaiju films ‘got’ on some level what was wrong with GINO. Godzilla has a rep as a super-destructive, unstoppable force. Where was that? Where the hell was that? So in the end, although it had been a long time since Hollywood had made a giant monster film of note, it felt lame. Americans have already had plenty of movies with a vulnerable misunderstood monster. One you are supposed to feel sympathetic with at the end. We have Kong.

How awesome was motherfuckin’ Cloverfield? THAT movie captured a lot of what a kaiju film should be about. The street-level personal camera thing didn’t hurt, though I wasn’t too keen on the monster design. That’s okay. I enjoyed that movie quite a bit. After a lot of rumors, sometime last year Legendary Pictures acquired the American rights to a future Godzilla project. Let’s hope they tilt toward Cloverfield and away from GINO.

Now that I’ve kind of opened the door on this not-so-guilty pleasure of mine, I’ll be picking through past (and hopefully future) kaiju films with a goal to proselytizing. More later.

A Little More Personal Info

Using this chart I've cribbed from ECM's site, I've used a painstaking 534 question worksheet, a panel of psychoanalytical experts, and the most advanced algorithms available run through a battery of gigacomputers loaned to me by CERN, I have definitively found myself placed here:

A Better Pic

I've had some questions about what my handle kog3100 stands for. There's been some inquiry as to just what it is a I look like. I realise the little pic to the right of my blog intro is less than no help in giving readers an idea of just what I look like.

I like to retain online anonymity, but this 'blog really isn't well-known, and we're all good friends here, right?

I won't do this but this once. I'm pasting in a recent pic of myself that ought to clear up the mystery. I'm still being free with my real name and other particulars, but its something.

Scroll down to see it, since I don't really want it to come up on thumbnail previews of this page.

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Hope that clears up any lingering interest.

More Film Bits

Alice In Wonderland. Partly a sequel to the book and Disney film, with aspects of Through the Looking Glass incorporated. The title is almost incorrect. If you like Tim Burton you know what to expect with this film. Highlights for me were the Mad Hatter’s (Depp’s) recitation of the Jabberwock verses, any appearance by Bonham Carter’s Red Queen, and the White Queen’s (Anne Hathaway’s) visceral squeamishness. Anyone notice how much Hathaway looked and acted like Tim Burton’s ex Lisa Marie? I still get a chuckle remembering Depp’s statement about Alice defeating the Jabberwock: ‘On that day, I shall futterwacken… vigorously.’


District 9. I was hoping this would be good, but it surpassed all my expectations. Blackly funny at times, it also contains some of the most harrowing scenes I can remember in any recent film… all due to Sharlto Copley’s incredible improvised performance. The rest of the film is certainly awesome, especially considering the budget. But the lead is such a believable everyman that the film could’ve been about making brownies and it still would have been entertaining. About the only criticism I’d have would be the heavy-handedness of placing a film about segregation and prejudice in South Africa. It makes a great and unique setting visually, but is really REALLY on the nose.


The Taking of Pelham 123. My expectations for this were pretty low, but I wanted to see Travolta’s psycho villain. It was better than I thought it would be and is pretty tense in places. Denzel and Travolta were both good, and both played very flawed, mistake-capable men. The direction and camera work might not be to everyone’s taste, but its Tony Scott, one of foundational directors for the jittery, ‘music video’ film style. Its been done to death perhaps, but he is the master of it.


Lone Wolf and Cub: Final Conflict (In That Little Hand). I had this on VHS ages ago, but bought it recently on DVD, so it got a rewatch. Frequently touted as the seventh and last film in the Kozure Okami film series, this is actually misleading since the film has little connection to the famous series from the seventies that starred Tomisaburo Wakayama apart from the title characters. New leads and a new style for a film made years after the original films stopped being made and the manga had ended. This movie is very revisionist, frequently putting spin on familiar scenes in the story. Even lead actor Tamura Masakazu is a completely different sort of Itto Ogami, making a much more emotional ‘hero’. He’s good but it rather works against the traditional story, which may have been the point. Ogami in the manga and previous films is supposed to be an immovable rock of a man. Centered in honor, but driven by vengeance to the point of being inhuman. The only one who regularly gets Ogami’s humanity to show is his son Daigoro. The kid is the lens through which the reader/viewer gets to sympathize with Ogami’s plight. With a less stoic Ogami, Daigoro’s role is seriously watered down. This film is well-known in cult circles for providing the ending to the story that the original film series never did. The conclusion here is heartrending (as is the whole film) but not a patch on the finale in the manga. I could recommend this film to anyone who wants a very melancholy style of action film, but Lone Wolf and Cub fans will have to be somewhat open-minded.


Ip Man. Donny Yen as the 20th century’s most influential wing chun sifu, who would later gain fame as Bruce Lee’s first formal instructor. This is a great film. I don’t know how accurate Donny is as Ip Man, but he does a good job with both the acting and the action. The fights as expected are awesome (thanks again, Sammo), but as has been common in martial arts films of late, a lot of questions get raised about the reasoning and practicality of their practice. In this case, Ip Man is kind of an idle dilettante just breezing through life practicing kung fu until the Japanese occupation prior to World War 2 crashes down on his reality. As has also been typical in these films recently, the Japanese get a much more even-handed treatment then they did back in the 60s and 70s. The trailers make the sequel to this film look even better, with Sammo actually stepping in front of the camera to fight Donny. Hopefully the results will be as awesome as they were in Killzone.

Ass Worship vol. 11. The level of talent on display in this… what? What the hell is this doing in the list. Uh…

I Love You Man. Paul Rudd doing exactly what you’d expect in this movie. A great premise, and executed pretty well. I’m not sure the character of his new buddy is quite extreme enough, but that probably made this film more believable. Part of the new breed of R-rated Apatow-ish comedies. More heartfelt and a little less about dick jokes. Has a great gag reel in the extras. While it is more of an odd-funny than a laugh-out-loud-funny thing, Rudd’s awkward, attempted-hip phrases were a highlight.


Halloween II. Rob Zombie’s followup to his 2007 film. I like Rob. He’s my favorite modern renaissance dude. I’m typically more lenient on his movies than the critics are. This one’s no exception. In the same way Rob transitioned to a harsher, grittier view when he followed House of 1000 Corpses with The Devil’s Rejects, his sequel to Halloween is a bleaker, more violent extension of the story. Michael Myers moves through the story almost as an elemental force (like Godzilla is frequently portrayed) and the story in Halloween II is mostly not about him. It is about the after effects of the first film on almost everyone else that survived. I’m partly convinced the poor reception to the film was its defiance of expectations as a horror film. It examines inherited insanity, the cult of celebrity, efficacy of psychoanalysis, and people putting their lives back together after a tragedy. The version I saw, the director’s cut, is apparently radically different than the theatrical version, including the ending. I’ll need to see the other cut and compare. About the only thing that really bothered me was the overuse of Michael’s hallucinations. In the first film, one of the scariest things was Michael’s descent into insanity as a child, the outward manifestation AND the viewers’ guesses as to what was going on inside. In this film, you see what is going on inside… and it is rather blah and disappointing