Barsoom Blues

If there is any commonality in the sate of the fantastickal these days, it would be that the old is new, retro is the new…er, new-tro would be the best way to describe it. Writers, comic books artists and filmmakers are looking back at the past for inspiration, more specifically at older genres like pulp scifi and crazed mashups of westerns and who knows what.

Consider the following…A Princess of Mars being made into a movie by Disney (renamed as John Carter?) along with no les than three comic books coming out based on the Barsoom stories. Conan is being remade (looking forward to it…hope they recycle the Poledouris soundtrack…) Cowboys and Aliens…nuff said. All well and good…enough with the angsty irony-laden crap of the last decade. Many are in the mood for some good old-fashioned pulpy fun. As much as people liked to mock the old-timey stuff, you can’t deny it was a blast to read and watch…unlike all that doomy and gloomy pretentious nonsense that came out when scifi and fantasy began to take itself waaaaay too seriously as “art….” (Sword of Truth, anyone?)

Hopefully they soon turn to resurrecting Buck Rogers, the mother-lode of pulp. Flash Gordon too…now that the stink from the failed SciFi series has dissappated. But what would be really cool, what would really get the blood flowing (and make all the self-righteous lefty and righty bastards choke on their own bile) would be a FAITHFUL series adaption of John Norman’s Gor stories in all its S&M, masculine, defiantly politically incorrect splendor….

TARL CABOT FOR PRESIDENT!

First Draft

As Professor Farnsworth would say, Good News!

Just finished the first draft of my novel. Now follows a months percolation before the editing begins...in other words the real work has only just begun...

Setting Course On The Sea Of Eternity....

I'm thinking about using this as the cover art for my book...built it in Photoshop...surprisingly easy once you get the hang of it....

Zarkana

Got to see the latest Cirque du Soleil show at Radio City...loved the stunts and effects, but couldn't make heads or tails if the plot...there's a man named Zark. He's some sort of musician. He has a girl named Lia, who either leaves him of disappears. Clowns are involved in dome way, as is a giant snake...that's about all I could see from the back of the orchestra.

Maybe it was the French-Canadien accents?

On last nights party....

Free form essay follows...I head to my new friend Casey's (not his real name!) house on the lake. First sight of Casey a few hours earlier is an aging hippie who wears a pro-union T-Shirt. Nice guy, brought some free beer. Words lets slip that after the standard Fourth of July festivities in out town he's having a party at his place on the lake. i decide not to go, but then change my mind.

I find the place. Not bad, small house by the lake side...garden is overgrown with weeds, there are vines on the terrace that gives it something of a artfully disheveled look. free food being passed about...I forgo because I ate at a diner earlier.

I don't stay long, the party is a bore and there's no one there i know., but three things kind of stand out (and one of these things is made up, BTW.) First, that Casey has a dog which he named Marx. Friendly animal, better than naming him Spot. Second, a group of wanna-be artists sit in a corner discussing the pros and cons of polyamory and how it might apply to their lives....odd, hopefully they won't take the next step and film it. Third there's a fellow with studs in his cheeks and massive holes in his ears (a wanna-be punk if I ever saw one) holding court in a corner about the evils of religion and how the vast majority of people are gullible fools to follow anyone wearing a funny hat. I bail at that point - being catholic, I feel uncomfortable hearing religion being disparaged by undergraduate gurus...at least not without three shots of whiskey.

On the drive back, on reflecting, a few thoughts occur. Wen live in an age of nostalgia...the right-wing tea baggers at my martial arts dojo (another story for another time) equate Saint Sarah Palin with the Virgin Mary. They dream of a nation where the government never collects a penny in tax, yet somehow the roads get paved, and they get their Medicare and free gummint bennies. This is supposed to be libertarianism or something close to it...which boils down to essentially letting the rich people run the show...nostalgic for a country that never was.

But of course none of this had anything to do with the people down by the lacked, if anything they're on the other side of the argument. But it occurs, they're nostalgic for something else - a revolution that didn't so much fail as fade away. Listening to them gas on about the evils of Capitalism and Religion and America-Is-Evil-WesterS-Civilization-is-Evil-Christianity-Is-VERY-Evil...their rhetoric wouldn't have been out of place back in 1968 and back then it was cutting edge, but today its just old. They want to wave the red flag of revolution and build a new Utopia on these shores...problem is, their arguments seem filled withing but hot air and more than a whiff of hypocrisy. It's hard to take armchair revolutionaries seriously when they're preaching from an air conditioned house by a lake filled with recreational boaters...just one can easily dismiss the anti-tax ramblings of someone whose head would explode of there was even the slightest hint of talk about reducing his social security benefits...

Nostalgia...it seems that those who have the strongest opinions are the ones who never have to face the consequences should those ideas become reality. A good reason for any for everyone to shut the heck up.

Transmogrification

Three thoughts upon seeing the latest Transformers flick...

First, my IQ just dropped 30 points.

Second, I prefer the last piece of eye candy...

Third, a big enough FX budget will overcome any deficiency - or complete lack - in regards to plot, character or story.