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Things I’m Watching, Reading, Listening To, Part _____

This weekend we injected some modern horror into our lineup with Jennifer's Body and  Inside/À l'intérieur. Jennifer's Body was a fluffy horror comedy that played like Heathers meets Ginger Snaps, only more annoying than the former in its hip "teenager" dialogue and less subtle than the latter in its commentary--and we all know how subtle Ginger Snaps was, don't we? Diablo Cody's writing strives for a Gilmore Girls snappiness but  instead of actually empowering her female leads the effect of having them nickname each other after yeast infection medications and talk about the "wetties" boys give them seemed a little too forced and self-aware. The basic problem here is that while horror is ripe for satire Cody targets the most obvious areas for ridicule (the gender conventions of killer/victim, the idiocy of movie teenagers, the chastity of the nerdy lead) and even then doesn't fully connect. So while I appreciate the attempt I thought it didn't quite pull off what it was going for--some decent scenes, however, and fun cameos from everyone from Amy Sedaris to Lance Henrickson, so it wasn't a complete bust, even if it did lead to me outing myself as someone who saw, like, half an episode of Gilmore Girls this one time.

À l'intérieur, or Inside in the states, on the other hand...its goals may have been less lofty than Jennifer's Body, seeking as it did to simply freak me the fuck out instead of subverting the genre, but at least it fulfilled said goals. A dark, mean, and utterly brutal little film, and much more disturbing than many a recent horror outing--sort of a non-comedic 2LDK, and way more effective than the overhyped Ils/Them which we also recently slogged through. Good horror if you're not averse to the red stuff.

Read and enjoyed Move Under Ground by Nick Mamatas last week. It really got me thinking on the old chestnut of writing about historical events and persons--do you write in such a way that someone with zero knowledge of the subject matter going into the novel will be able to follow--at the risk of being overly expository--or do you just plunge in and write for yourself and others who are intimate with the material? The way I write is to (attempt to) juggle the two, including tidbits the aficionado will appreciate that won't punish the ignorant reader, so that you're both educating the novice and rewarding those in the know. In re: Move Under Ground, I'm at least roughly familiar with the cast and especially of Burroughs so never felt lost though I'm sure a great deal of nuance went over my head, but never so much that I minded. Or rather, noticed.

I first heard about the novel before having read any of Mamatas's short fiction and so reacted to it in the same way I reacted to hearing about Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan way back when: like a complete dumbass. Hearing "it's a SF comic book about an obvious Hunter Thompson character" instilled me with the same amount of confidence or interest as "it's a novel about the Beats facing off against the Old Ones," which is to say, very little. Yet in both cases when I finally checked out the work in question all I could do was kick myself for being such a doubting Thomas--just because I can't imagine a successful fusion of such things doesn't mean it's not possible. Mamatas's novel is the sort of pastiche that makes you wince when you use the word "pastiche" to describe it, because it seems so much better than the p-word would imply. A very fun novel, excellently written.

Finally, I'm hoping to check out a local band called The Widow's Bane this weekend. All I really know about them is that they describe themselves as Zombie-Pirate-Polka, and that's good enough for me to spend $5. Here be a video:

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