Further Proof There's a Microchip in My Brain...

I just remembered the time I woke up a couple of months ago with Jimmy by MIA stuck in my head, after having not heard it for weeks, only to turn on the TV and find it RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF BEING PLAYED ON RAGE. Which is really weird, because that video is over two years old and if they're going to play anything it's going to be Paper Planes.

It's proof, I tell you! PROOF!

Frank Darabont Is Stealing My Ideas!

A while ago, I was idly coming up with ideas for TV shows - it's something I have a habit of doing whenever I'm on one of my country trips (that's not some kind of drug metaphor. I mean, whenever I've driven out to the country for my job).

Aaaaaanyway, just as I'd thought a free-roaming zombie video game ala Grand Theft Auto would be cool, I also thought a HBO/Showtime TV series about a group of survivors in a zombie-infested world would be pretty cool. Then I found out about The Walking Dead, which is pretty much that idea except in comic book form.

Well, I figured, if they can adapt Dexter from novel to top-rating TV show, and make changes as they please, why couldn't they do the same with this? So I put my The Walking Dead-as-TV-series into my Good-Ideas-That-Will-Never-Happen pile and left if at that.

And then today, I find this on Chud.com;

Frank Darabont is close to finalizing a development deal with AMC to write and direct a tv series adaptation of The Walking Dead [...] Joel Stillerman, AMC's head of programming, production and original content says that "The series will stay faithful to the tone of the original novels. This is not about zombies popping out of closets,this is a story about survival, and the dynamics of what happens when a group is forced to survive under these circumstances. The world (in 'Walking Dead') is portrayed in a smart, sophisticated way."

Next thing you know HBO will be announcing a Batman TV series. And I'll have to start checking for microchips in my brain.

Top 5 Women of Rock

5. Sioxsie Sioux

So we have her to blame for all the emo punks sitting on the front steps of Flinders Street station. Seems like a fair trade. Just.



4. Shirley Manson

Forget the fact that these days she’s a Terminatrix camouflaged as a urinal. That doesn’t stop her from being awesomeness personified. In fact, it might even add to it.



3. PJ Harvey

I remember her being at Big Day Out about ten years ago and Jabba from Channel V was trying to get her to put on some trucker cap or something because Fred Durst was at the festival. She refused. And then she made Jabba bleed.

I might have made that last part up.



2. Chrissie Hynde

Pretender? I hardly knew her!

No, it doesn’t make any sense, but roll with me on it. Or not.



1. Joan Jett

Joan Jett is so freaking cool that they’re making a movie all about how cool she is. What’s that you say? It’s starring Twilight’s Kristen Stewart?

…

Ah, shit.

Top 5 Macho Men of Rock

I've been meaning to post random Top 5 lists for ages, because I'll often be composing them in my head. I thought I may as well try to do some more blogging by subjecting you to this numerical misery. Enjoy!

Top 5 Macho Men of Rock

5. James Hetfield

The lead singer of Metallica, James would be higher up the list if not for that whole Some Kind of Monster thing, as well as the fact that he appears to be playing an effing banjo in this picture (???). But that said, even after he’s given up the booze and the hard-rocking lifestyle, his still a dude who leave in the middle of recording to go bear hunting. I know I wouldn’t want to mess with him. Oh, and also? He’s a giant.



4. Josh Homme

Hardest rocking ginger. Ever.



3. Henry Rollins

Sure, he doesn’t drink, smoke or do drugs. But that just makes him even stronger. Strong enough to kick your head in if you pissed him off…or at least say mean things about you in his spoken word shows. Henry’s pushing 50, and you can tell he’s feeling a bit self-conscious about it because he’s singing in shirt and pants now, rather than his trademark gym shorts. Surely, ‘tis the passing of an era.



2. Lemmy

It’s amazing that Lemmy is still alive after all the years of self-abuse he’s put himself through. But not as amazing as our next entrant…



1. Iggy Pop

Cutting himself on stage, rolling around in broken bottles, and generally absorbing every form of mind-altering substance known to man. For decades. And he still looks like a python ready to strike. Also, forget the fact that he’s the godfather of punk; he inspired the look of Peter Jackson’s take on Gollum! Pa-chow!

Dear Blog,

I am sorry for abandoning you. It's not your fault. Really it isn't. And it's not like things haven't been happening that aren't worth blogging about. I mean, my God, I blogged a crapload about the Justice League movie and nobody gave a fuck about that, am I right?

No, the truth is I just haven't been bothered. I've been working for the most part, but the times I haven't been working I just, well...haven't felt like writing. Which has made the fact that I've been writing a book a bit difficult.

Yeah, I've been writing a book. Another one. After flogging a dead horse with the last book for about five or so years I figured I'd get back on a different, living horse and give this whole "being an author" thing another crack.

And you know what? I actually finished the damn thing! It kind of helped that the last book I wrote was a 110,000+ word monster and this one was planned out as being a slim, fighting fit 50,000 word effort. I even came in under the word limit, which is kind of like coming in under budget, only there's no money involved and no one really gives a crap.

I've printed it off twice now to take it through the personal editing process, and I'm actually very happy with how it reads. This is a good thing, as I've actually had a real, honest-to-God publisher say they'd be interested in taking a look at it once it's finished.

So with that offer on the table, you can understand why I'd be devoting my time to trying to get this thing into shape, and why blogging would be a thing I wouldn't have the right mindset to get into, right? Right?

Right?

In any case, and in summation, no I haven't committed blogicide, but at the same time I won't be making any promises that I'll be changing my ways and becoming a multi-post blogger dynamo. I hope that's cool.

All the best,

That Guy.

Forgot to Mention...

... Simone and I have tickets to see this gentleman performing stand-up next week;


(!!!)

Of course, am very very excited. Can't wait for him to insult Australia and Australians and for me to absolutely love it.

Somebody Get Me a Stake

If it not's bad enough that the top ten highest selling books in the country are pretty much all from the Twilight series (or companions to the Twilight series), we also have to deal with all the watered-down, creatively bankrupt imitators that are now springing up.

But they're not just ripping off Twilight. Check this out;

I won't even get into speculating on whatever the hell a "vampire academy" is. But I'm sure it'd be full of emo losers.

Bright Lights, Big Albury

Yes, I'm back. Again. And once again, I'm writing to you from the comfort of my Albury-Wodonga hotel room. What can I say? It's boring in a hotel by yourself, which gives you the proper opportunity to catch up on the blogging you've been meaning to do. Or go crazy and try to kill your wife and child. Whichever comes first, I guess.

So what've I been up to since last we met? Well, getting the new place sorted. Working. Going to prom parties (photos available on Li-Kim's blog, if you haven't seen them on Facebook already).

Mum stayed for a couple of nights before heading off to Tasmania. PK visited from the UK, after Simon had visited from Bris Vegas. PK gave me shit for not updating my blog. Simon vowed never to end up on Facebook... only to end up on it what felt like five minutes later.

Went on a bit of a spending spree recently, all of which was contained to online book buying. Bought Vol 4 of the Absolute Sandman collection at a $100 ($60 under the rrp!), as well as managing to track down the last two parts in William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy.

I'm also considering reading a Jodi Picoult book after finding out the main character is a comic book artist and it incorporates pages from his comic. Given that it also references Neil Gaiman, I think my fate has been sealed. Turns out the ol' JP is a big comic fan, even having written a short run on Wonder Woman (which I've also bought, but has yet to be delivered).

Went to our half-yearly conference for work and got ....... quite drunk. Simone can field any questions you may have, if she isn't too ashamed to be associated with me as a result.

Also went to yum cha for Carol's birthday, which was fantastic. In fact, I liked it so much that I took Simone to the same place the very next weekend, and had another fantastic meal. A fantastic meal with custard buns. Need I say more?

I'll try and start updating a little more regularly, but I make no guarantees!

Watched-men

When I first read Watchmen back in 2004, it occurred to me both the potential it had to be made into a movie, and how incredibly difficult a task it would be to actually accomplish that. Five quick years later and we have director Zack Snyder’s take on the material, and the results are… well, a little bit mixed actually.

I could go on and on and on about this (and you all know I could!), but I’ll boil it down to this; I was surprised at both how incredibly faithful to the material the film was and how, when it deviated, how wild that deviation was.

Maybe I’ll go on just a little bit more…

Small moments of violence in the comic were magnified into entire sequences where compound fractures were dramatically and grotesquely depicted, where blood splattered like white water at Wet ‘N’ Wild, and where the two most relatable characters (Dan Dreiberg and Laurie Juspeczyk, aka Nite-Owl II and Silk Spectre II) come across as stone cold, murderous psychopaths.

It’s this level of violence that warps entire meanings of these characters, who themselves stand in now hypocritical judgement of the hyper-violent methods of vigilante Rorschach. At least, in the cinematic version, he makes no excuses for who he is and what he does, unlike the other “heroes” who call him unhinged and then go around stabbing muggers to death.

Combine that with Snyder’s extrapolation of a brief image of a couple kissing and undressing into a full-on, multi-position sex scene and you start getting the feeling that this is what it’d be like if a 14-year-old was behind the lens of the film, staying as close to the source material as possible, choosing only to delve deeper than the printed page when it came to the sex and violence.

Not to say I didn’t like the film overall; compared to most superhero movies, its moral ambiguities and uncompromising adaptation of the graphic novel means it’s a difficult movie to outright dismiss. There were quite a few moments where I was staggered – happily so – that they’d managed to keep a small, throwaway moment from the comic that I’d regarded as special, yet unnecessary to the development of the plot.

And the changes that are made to the finale help to streamline the story in such a fashion that you can’t help compare it to the original story and wonder whether or not it might have made more sense to come to the conclusion that the film did.

I even liked the music selection; what’s not to like about an opening sequence set to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A’Changin”, or a fight scene to Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable”, or a third act opener using Jimi Hendrix’s cover of “All Along the Watchtower”? Multi-million dollar studio films don’t get soundtracks as diverse or interesting as this these days, and that’s a downright shame.

I wouldn’t recommend it to a non-comic fan. Certainly not as a cinema experience. Better to wait for DVD, stripped of the artifice of a night out and the expectation of some high-octane superhero action. It is, instead, a slowly unfolding mystery film with a rich tapestry of characters, each of whom get their moment in the spotlight… but it’s also a flawed adaptation of a superior source, where the cracks in the foundation are so fine you don’t see them unless you know where to look. Otherwise, you’re too busy staring at the ceiling just as it starts to cave in on you.

Maybe it’d have been better off in the hands of Terry Gilliam, or done as the HBO mini-series that fans dreamed about for years. But it’s here now, and overall, it definitely could have been worse. It ain’t no Dark Knight, but it’s no X-Men 3, either.

Consider This a Tease