"Heroes Aren't Born ... They're Cornered."

Bravo, SciFi. Bravo.

This week's Saturday night B-Movie, MAMMOTH, is finally what these things should be. Before tonight, SS DOOMTROOPER, MANSQUITO, et al, promised classic B-movie fun but wound up laying there (SS DOOMTROOPER culminates with a 15 foot tall gamma-radiation hulked-out Nazi ... losing a knife fight with Corin Nemec).

MAMMOTH was knowing, goofy fun from the great William Castle-style score, the truly amusing credits through the lovely little cheesy 50's ending beat. Vince Ventresca channelled the great dorky 50's scientist characters flawlessly. The script did what it could with being, well ... a script about a giant unfrozen wooly mammoth. A giant unfrozen wooly mammoth with vampiric powers.

Where the scenes had to look like a real movie, they did, and when they needed to be big B-Movie fun, they were. Don't get me wrong, it was by no means great cinema -- but it did its damn job. It is head and shoulders in style and tone above almost every other one of the Sci Fi originals.

Guys, if you're really committed to grinding out 26 of these accursed things every year, give them all, right now, to the team who made MAMMOTH.

Limited Index

for the folk I'm talkin gto next week.

New Media Writing (Rage against the Studio Machines, Baby):

4th Generation Media
Video Ipod: 4GM Baby Steps
Where Anime Gets it Right
4GM: Perception Wars

Writing:

Writing Life
Writing: Beginning
Writing: Whose Viewpoint?
Eternity Has Residuals
Writing: Adaptation (Pt.1)
Writing: Adaptation (Pt. 2)
Writing: Adaptation (Pt. 3)
TV: Corner Gas
Writing: Adaptation (Pt.4)
Writing: Software
Writing: Adaptation (Pt. 5)
Writing: Plot and Story
Writing: How Small a World?
Writing: Q&A #1
Writing: Q&A #1 Followup
Writing: You Don't Need Pg. 11
Writing: Agents & Managers
Writing: The Pitch
Writing: The Pilot Pitch - Background
Writing: The Pilot Pitch - Prep
Writing: The Pilot Pitch - The Room
Writing: Screenwriting The Sequence Approach - Book Review
Writing: Action Sequences
Writing: Characters and Race
Writing: Writing the Freelance Episode 1


Our attempt at screenwriting academia:
TV Jargon Preservation (Pt.1)
TV Jargon Preservation (Pt. 2)
TV Jargon Preservation (Pt. 3)
TV Jargon Preservation (Pt. 4)

Global Frequency

It's a "Global" Frequency Now
Miranda is ... annoyed
One Last GF Question
GF wow
GF Reviews and E-mails
GF Update #1

The True Geek Conversations(tm)

#3892: Batman vs. Punisher
#651: Catwoman Edition
# 5643: Ju-On, Red State Version
#36679: In Which Bo & Luke Duke Kick a New York Jewish Election Worker to Death
#36679 cont'd: Sophie Mae's Choice
#436: I Love Lucy -- Issue Zero! The Origin Issue!

New Doctor Who

Feh, you cranky bastards. It was damn fine. I can forgive its flaws for the fine Tom Baker heart thudding away in its chest.

Lunch Discussions #213: Canaries and Meth

John: ... so just install Foxit, and your pdfs rip open.

Tyrone: I'm fine with Adobe Acrobat.

John: But you know that long, slow grinding Adobe does every time you open a pdf, like an '88 Ford Escort with a bad tranny? You don't have to wait for that.

Tyrone: I don't mind it's slow. Gives me time to go to the fridge, collect my thoughts ...

John: ... are you saying that Adobe Acrobat is on CPT?

Tyrone: White people, always in a rush, go go go, gotta got your pdf file open now.

John: I just want you to look at these docs, maybe write something for the blog. You have fans on the site, and out on the net.

Tyrone: Are you nuts? I'm not going on record and criticizing this Administration!

John: There aren't a ton of black bloggers, your voice --

Tyrone: That's because we know what's going to happen! I'm on enough lists, thank you!

John: After the election, you'll be perfectly safe.

Tyrone: See, you're still under the impression that those voting machines will actualy be connected to something.

John: I'll admit, there are problems with e-voting machines, but your idea that they'll just toss the election and declare martial law seems a little paranoid.

Tyrone: Yeah, it's not like a black man's paranoia about the government has ever paid off.

John: It's not like anyone's ever tried to intentionally suppress the black vote --

Tyrone: Mmm-hmm.

John: -- killed your political leaders, let you be over-represented in the military while under-represented in the government, abandoned a primarily black city to destruction in a hurricane, um --

Tyrone: -- actually used us for medical experiments.

John: ... ah. You're saying whenever black people are paranoid about something, you tend to be right --

Tyrone: We are right.

John: -- and so in theory white people could use that paranoia to anticipate when a larger-scale equal-opportunity screwing is coming.

Tyrone: Government that fucked up Katrina isn't going to suddenly pull its pants up and get hypercompetent when Boston gets nuked, or gas goes to $8 a gallon and those white suburbs start collapsing.

John: Canaries in the political coal mine.

Tyrone: Damn straight.

John: C'mon, if all your conspiracy theories are right, does that include the crazy crack conspiracy?

Tyrone: Manufactured by the Man to keep us down. Absolutely

John: Then how do you explain the plague of crystal meth on white poor? That just happened naturally --

Tyrone: No. That one's ours.

John: Really? So a couple black chemical engineers said "Payback time! Get me some rubber tubing, cough medicine, Draino, we're going to whip up a drug even crackers can make in their kitchens!"

Tyrone: "We know what kind of drug they want, something that'll make them edgy and keep 'em up all night, make them go go go -"

John: "Because they are always in a rush to get shit done."

Tyrone: OH! Brought it all the way back around. Nice to see a litte craft.

John: We are professionals.

Left You a Note

Easter at Joshua Tree Park, a me-and-Lovely-Wife tradition, was slightly less colorful than usual owing to our dry winter. I was a little ticked I didn't get as many great photos as I did the year before.

Then we stopped at the Country Kitchen in Twenty-Nine Palms. In a place with a surfeit of trailer and trailer-homes, I don't know why this one attracted Beth's attention. But it merited a second look, and that's when we saw this little slice o'Americana:



I hope they kissed and made up before the Spring Social.