Prawn to the People / District 9

District 9, the South African science fiction tale of exoskeletal aliens segregated in Johannesburg townships, is the best foreign genre film since last fall's Let The Right One In. Its' mockumentary format, which breaks down after about thirty minutes, is so deadpan and hilarious that I thought I was watching an ultradry comedy, more Mars Attacks than Independence Day. Wikus, a moronic bureaucrat, heads the project to relocate the disliked, unwanted catfood noshing aliens. After being exposed to a mysterious fluid, his mangled right hand is replaced by a prawn claw, giving him the ability to operate alien weaponry, which requires alien DNA to work. Humans can't fire these weapons, at least not until Wikus, who's become the most wanted man in Johannesburg after news of his transformation spreads. He falls in with Christopher Johnson and his son, little CJ. Big CJ has a very interesting secret that it would be unfair to reveal.
As a matter of fact, as much as I'd like to babble on about this movie, its' various borrowings and the really weird treatment it's gotten from reviewers, ranging from the clueless types who have no business writing about this sort of film to more perceptive mainstream / "alternative" critics who don't seem quite sure what they've seen, I'll keep my peace until at least one of my four readers has had a chance to see this unexpected gem.

OP ALAS 1 - I,JFK

( first in an irregular series of posts about books which have gone out of print to my great sorrow)

I, JFK is a comic fantasy by Robert Mayer, author of Superfolks. It was published in 1990 by St. Martin's and appeared in paperback in time to get on the Oliver Stone JFK fantasy bandwagon. Kennedy is in heaven with his brother Bobby, LBJ, Martin Luther King and Marilyn Monroe. He must explain himself before moving on to heaven's next level. I bought this book in paperback and initially suspected that it was the work of Gore Vidal or perhaps Thomas Disch. Wrong. It's the work of a novelist who is proud that he never repeats himself.( That's fine but it makes the people in marketing reach for the Xanax.)
It's an awful temptation to recount the funniest parts of this book but I shall resist. I'll only say that Mayer's vision of November 22 Dealey Plaza outdoes Robert Anton Wilson's fantasia of multiple assassins in Illuminatus! It's topped only by the account of what really happened the night Marilyn Monroe died. A book that deserves more readers.

WV or Terror of the Random

Blogger likes to keep the spammers at bay with its word verification device. In order for his comment to appear, the poster must type a more or less random series of letters that sometimes form an actual word but more often are a bizzaro portmanteau wordoid. At times the WV seems to possess an oracular editorial spirit. Some have called it the I Ching of the internet.
That way lies madness, according to Portland writer Ronnie Cordova, who refers to the wv as a schizophrenia test. If you think its cybergibberish means anything, you should be on Prolixin maintenance. Cordova's brutal common sense approach to anything spooky or outre' has its merits.
But I must disagree. The wv is the happiest, and most treacherous, verbal accident since Brion Gysin's discovery of the cut up technique.

Ten More Things About Me

or, when in doubt, post a list.

1. Someone gave me a zucchini the size of an Invasion of the Body Snatchers pod.
2.A friend and I invented hip hop rhyming in 1975, aided by a rhyming dictionary.
3. I have never seen Gone With The Wind.
4.I own a copy of The Wind Done Gone, the revisionist version of the novel.
5. If we wrestle, you'll win.
6. I am afraid to be alone with the zucchini in #1.
7.If you send me a SASE, I'll send you the recipe for that powerful cocktail, the fantod.
8. I have never actually drank a fantod.
9. After waiting for three years for the new Morrissey album, I got around to buying it a couple of weeks ago.
10. I hate it ( not really).

Truth in Blogging,or, Ask Me No Question

As a shy type, I am not a natural blogger. I don't feel compelled to show pictures of my pet or significant other, although I've seen some very saucy ones recently. My blog is personal but not terribly autobiographical. If it's the minutiae of everyday life you're after, I'm not your boy. However, just this once, I'll tell the tale of a blogger who got blogged down in his own version of the truth.
When this individual lived with a friend of mine in Baltimore, he sent me a link for his livejournal or whatever he was using at the time. I was surprised to see him describe the house where he rented one small smokefilled room as " my investment property." He posted a photo of himself nude that had been hideously photoshopped to make him the envy of Dirk Diggler.
He inherited some money and bought himself a Vespa, which was eventually stolen but not before it became the love object of a phantom fetishist who jacked off on its' smoothrunning leather seat before dawn each day M-F. He began disappearing regularly and calling. he claimed, from the ICU of various local hospital. He was dying of a rare cancer triggered by recovered memories of witnessing the murder of his older brother in childhood. At last he moved out of my friend's house. I stopped receiving e mails from him.
Two years ago I idly Googled him and found that there was an entire site devoted to the discrepancies, pseudonyms, embellishments and plain damn lies that permeated his various blogs, posted under various names. The photo he displayed of his bf turned out to be a dj photo of a childrens' book author in Texas. He has complained of cancer in nearly every organ of his body and lives camped at death's door much of the time. Unmasking his online personae has almost become a cottage industry in da blogosphere. I suspect that some of these disgrutled folk expressed support, sympathy,etc. on one of his many blogs before smelling a rat. Not nice, Steve, not nice at all.
It's 4:17am, rain and thunder, lukewarm Diet pepsi at my elbow. Isn't reality revolting?

Famous Authors 2

blogger Viddy Knobs said...

Vida and I are in Maryland looking for chiroptera. As this is a nocturnal activity, our days are free. We eat horrific food at unspeakable "joints" as Frank and Peggy and Tony vocalise on the jukebox. Yesterday I ordered a bowl of oatmeal at breakfast. A moth came flitting through the room. "Maybe we should be collecting them instead of bats, darling."