"Come on up and..."

I'm sure you know the rest.

I've finally gotten sick of all the things Blogger won't do. I'm tired of juryrigging the damned thing and I'm tired of the lack of apparent support Google is giving the service.

So, for the next little while I'm going to be testing out a new site on WordPress.com.

Please come over and visit me at Red Crow.

This site is going to remain as it is, posts, links, fluffs, and all. This isn't a permanent move yet -- I may discover some dealbreaker with the free WordPress service -- but for the time being all new content will be on the WordPress site, not here.

And as of right now there's the first in a new series of posts: Horror Movie Homework. So come over and watch me flail! Comment on my flailings! Suggest things I could flail at!

So What?

No, this isn't some sort of horrifyingly nihilist first post for 2013. This is a comment on a piece of rubbish masquerading as a history called Travelers and Travel Liars by Percy G. Adams.

(Not to be too childish, but I suppose I should've known I was in trouble right from the "Percy," yes?)

I picked up a Dover copy of this little darlin' on a $1 cart somewhere in Boston and thought it would make a nice quick vacation read during the past 10 days. Well. It was quick. -Ish.

Writing in 1962, Mr. Adams would like to blame all travel authors prior to 1890 -- or thereabouts -- for their egregious mistakes made in not consulting basic 20th century reference works before composing their own manuscripts. He would also like travel authors to strip themselves of any and all personal biases, political or religious beliefs, or reasons for travelling prior either to travelling or writing about their travels. For preference, he'd like it if people drew maps -- carefully checking them past Rand-McNally first -- or encyclopedia articles -- checking them past Britannica or Americana as necessary, of course.

Outside of meeting those few simple standards, Mr. Adams has no hesitation about clapping various terms of opprobrium straight on the chests of authors: liar, falsifier, mendacious, prejudiced -- he does everything but resort to calling authors who don't meet his rather peculiar standards for a 'truthful' travel tale 'Fibby Fibby McFib Pants,' but he's not far off.

I'm not entirely sure how the original explorers of, say, North America were meant to be aware of the exact cartographic outlines of major rivers like the Mississippi or Missouri or the intricacies of Hudson's Bay when travelling 50 miles could be an adventure involving not only new landscape but new people, new languages, new bugs, new animals, new weather... But apparently they were supposed to know all this and Mr. Adams is going to hold them responsible for not knowing it.

This is a deeply frustrating book to read if for no other reason than Adams seems to have absolutely no wider vision about his topic at all and treats all authors who strayed from his particular vision of the -- historicized, 20th century, cartographical, mathematical, statistical -- truth as wilful liars.

If nothing else, has he never heard of 'a good story'?

Beyond that fairly facile explanation, how about 'they didn't have satellite maps' or 'money' or 'telling the king/queen what he/she wants to hear so you don't end up dead' or 'received truth'? While Adams claims that making money or getting famous are perfectly reasonable explanations for most of the authors he decries as liars to have done what they did, he never says that any of them got particularly rich. In fact, several he mentions as dying relatively impoverished, their grandiose travel narratives having gotten them very little.

Adams writes as if those authors who strayed from the absolute, 100% truth were deliberate, wilful liars with some agenda to push that the lies would forward.

They weren't.

Mostly, they were confused, trying to keep themselves afloat, perhaps trying to gain royal attention or get a patron for another voyage or pay the rent or tell a good story. Some of them genuinely believed their confused narratives or found them getting more confused over time as more people traversed the same geography and came back with conflicting narratives: "Hey, wait, I saw a mountain there, I swear -- how did he see a valley?" Explanations that seem simple to us -- and Adams -- like obscuring fog rolling in off a nearby body of water that was unknown at the time are brought up as partial excuses for some authors but only for those who otherwise adhere to Adams' 20th century vision.

One of my friends in graduate school used to talk about the 'sin of presentism' and I've never seen a worse example of that very sin than this piece of rubbish that ate several hours of my life.

Don't bother with Mr. Adams' ill-thought out piece of work. Go and read a real travel narrative instead: Mary Kingsley or Mungo Park, Fridtjof Nansen or Roald Amundsen, R.L. Stevenson or Robert Goodsir.

Friday Fun Times

It's the worst to have lots of ideas for blog posts and no time to write them down.

But here -- have a Welsh steam engine.

Friday Fun Times

You're welcome.

Interesting Things

Anna and I are in the process of -- or recovering from -- taking our beloved kitty Gerry to the vet, so have some Things That Are Nifty.

• Nightmare Magazine's 100 Horror Books.
• 11 Zombies We Didn't Want to Kill (from SciFi Wire or Blastr or whatever the hell it calls itself)
• Unofficial (but very familiar) fandom superlatives (from WhoQuotes)
• Marzipan. Icing sugar. Joy.
• Amazing thoughts from Anna Guest-Jelley of Curvy Yoga on home practice.
• And Bradley Harding of Planet Fury takes us through his (hilarious) dark tea-time of the soul when it comes to found footage horror movies.

And just to make sure you have a good midweek, one of the ravens from the Tower of London.

Source: Uploaded by user via Christian on Pinterest

Photo Monday: Cats Being Cute

Cross-posted from the feminist librarian. 

Yesterday was a rainy autumn Sunday here in Boston, so in order to combat the rainy-day blues we assembled this post full of pictures of our cats being cute!

Teazle is undecided about sitting on shoulders

Human book shopping means paper bags for kittens to play in!

Gerry likes the advent of fleece bathrobe season.

Shortly after Hanna snapped this photograph Teazle tipped
right off the pillows onto the floor. So much for her Princess and
the Pea imitation!

Gerry has become protective of our little one ... 

... or perhaps it's just long-suffering toleration!

Wishing you all a peaceful and productive week!

Friday Fun Times

Rush Hour at Waterloo Station (1970).

Friday Fun Times

I was dubious about using this because it's my normal rule not to re-use songs where I don't understand the lyrics.

But then I thought, "So perfect for Friday!"

So I went and found translations and, well, it's an odd song, certainly, but no more offensive than your average run of English-language pop.

Short Thoughts: Horror on the Weekend

I rather liked doing a mass movie post last time so I'm going to try it again and see what happens.

I apologise for not having graphics or anything to make it look a bit spiffier but my home internet connection is currently so logey that Blogger is not reliable. Getting IMDB.com or a Google Image search to work at the same time is pretty much impossible. Even GMail has been hinky lately -- GMail, people!

Anyway.

The Omen. Everything is wrong with this movie. Gregory Peck? Wrong. Lee Remick? So wrong. The little no-neck chubby-faced demon kid? Super wrong. The dogs? Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. And yet... and yet.

It's not scary -- at least, not for me. I have friends who have informed me it was a totally traumatic experience for them and I get that. If I had seen it 15 or 20 years ago, doubtless I'd've been kicked in the back of the skull by it, too. I also don't have a thing with dog fear -- caninophobia? -- so the hellhounds chasing people around just look like dogs who want cookies to me. Plus, I saw Resident Evil first and after zombified Dobermans, these just didn't have a chance. I'm much more sympathetic to Dean having his minute with the Shih-Tzu he thinks is a hellhound because I hate those yappy little motherfuckers -- and the pink bow is just the finishing touch.

Ahem, anyway. While I didn't find it scary at all -- it was...intriguing to watch. David Warner gave a great performance as the 'reluctantly involved outsider' -- always a bit of a tricky part to play -- and I loved his 'Well, this is probably real because I'm seeing it and feeling it and hearing it, so I better go with it as reality' approach. Also, his darkroom. And what is not to like about a movie with Patrick Troughton as a semi-crazed priest with a morphine habit? Also, Leo McKern as a...I don't know what. He didn't seem to have much point. Van Helsing with no Hel?

And I feel much more confident that I get more jokes in Good Omens and Supernatural than I did before. So there's that.

Hellraiser. Well. Er. I want to love it. I really really do. I want to love it like I want to love Candyman.

Bits of it, I do love: "Jesus wept." The Cenobites. The house. The stepmom's freaky-deaky hair. The juicy zombie dude in the attic sexually harassing his girlfriend into bringing him fresh meat. Wait, scratch that last bit -- but the whole thing is just...meandery. Who's the main character? The stepmother? The dad? The daughter? The uncle? I suggest we just pick Pinhead who seems to actually know what the fuck is going on around here and go with him.

Great look, though, don't get me wrong. Love the box and, like I said, the Cenobites who were, I think, the best part of the whole film. I thought we were going to get a pretty kick-ass final girl until Kristy started facing everything by whimpering, cowering in a corner, and viciously crying at it. Not your best call when confronted by a transdimensional dude who thinks an open laryngectomy wound is the height of fashion. I thought we could expect something better from someone who nutpunched a reconstituted undead -- but I guess every girl has her limit.

Perhaps I will love it like I want to love it after I see it another time.

An American Werewolf in Paris. Disclaimer: seen on the SciFi Channel, therefore "edited for time and content." But still -- fucking hilarious! Not sure it was meant to be but please! The duelling ghosts? Hiding in a morgue drawer to get away from the cops? Amazing injectable werewolf fluid? What is not to love about that!

Wigglewigglewiggle Wigglewigglewiggle

If this isn't what Monday needs, folks, I don't know what it does need.

Short Thoughts: Winners on Netflix

You don't get to say the words "winner" and "Netflix" too often in the same sentence these days.

Anyway.

Here are some movies I've enjoyed on Netflix in the last month or two but that I don't have time and energy to write a full post about.

Salvage. Quiet little British thriller about a military operation gone wrong spilling over into suburbia. Starring the always wonderful Neve McIntosh who gives a stand-out performance in a cast full of pretty damned good performances. Pay attention to the guy playing her boyfriend -- he's doing very nice things in the corner when no-one's looking.

Wilderness. Not-so-quiet British thriller. This is more if you're feeling the need for blood splashing around the screen and lots of yelling. Oh, and "attack dogs."

If you like Sean Pertwee, this one's definitely worth checking out although the whole "juvenile prisoners on a character-building weekend trip" framework is bizarre to the point of unworkability. I'm willing to buy "juvenile prisoners" and I'm willing to buy "character-building weekend trip" --  but maybe not partnered in the same movie? And there's a whole bullying-leading-to-death storyline that is, ostensibly, the trigger for all the violence in the film that appears and reappears at somewhat random intervals.

Don't focus your eyes entirely on Pertwee -- although he gives his usual, slightly exasperated performance here -- there are several of the young characters who are more worth watching. I'm on a network so slow I can't access IMDB (or, indeed, poster graphics), so I can't look up anything like performer or character names but there's Annie from Being Human and the two young (male) skinheads.

Super 8. This one really does deserve its own blog post and I really do want to write one. I put off seeing this because I figured it couldn't possibly be as good as everyone said it was.

Wrong again!

It's totally as good as everyone said it was. I described it to my parents as "the best homage to E.T. and Close Encounters that Spielberg could have asked for on bended knee." And it's better than that, too, because it steps beyond being a nod to bigger and better things and becomes its own thing -- a little awkwardly at times but that doesn't matter because you're so in love with it, you don't care.

Captain America: The First Avenger. Not my fandom. Not my thing. Not going to be my fandom or my thing any time soon.

Thor. Ditto. But a step beyond the above by being directed by Kenneth Brannagh and including Anthony Hopkins and Idris Elba. Has the single most wooden kiss that I have seen in a long time.

Graveyard Shift. A film adaptation of a Stephen King story. You already know so much from that phrase alone, don't you? But this is better than most -- if for no other reason than there's Doc from Deadwood in a leading role as a crazy ratcatcher.

Friday Fun Times

Spiffyness

Here are some cool things for midweek because I haven't finished my post on "The Girl Who Waited" yet...

• A Master's thesis on literature and the black death: "Living on the Edge."
• "Grub Street in 1641."
• Some wonderfully porny fanfic:
• It's Surrender (TeenWolf)
• Three fantastically damaged Thor/Loki fics (Thor/The Avengers)
• Body Memory (Stargate: Atlantis)
• A fantabulous clip from an English TV show called The IT Crowd which I didn't know of before cthulhuchick was kind enough to link it.
• Great vintage ads for libraries and reading.
• Fandom teas. Seriously. You can buy Doctor Who tea, Supernatural tea, Firefly tea...

And, finally, an owl getting his/her head scratched:

Friday Fun Times

I think I may have already used this but y'know what? I don't care. This song is that awesome.

Night Not-Very-Terrors

Working it out.

Night Terrors, season 6, second episode of the second half of the season.

To be honest with you, the idea of writing a review of this episode has slowed me down more than once.

I heard wonderful things about it: how scary it was, how clever it was, how apt the title was, what a brilliant script Mark Gatiss had written.

And I won't say any of those things are absolutely 100% wrong -- but I have watched Terrors two or three times now and every time I watch it I come away more strongly convinced of the fact that I paid for something I didn't get.

The story is simple enough but 'ware spoilers if you haven't seen the episode yet.

Small child is having nightmares: weird noises outside his window, in the closet, under the bed, etc., etc. The parents are powerless to do more than soothe and are discussing getting some kind of nebulous "professional help." The child overhears the conversation and, panicking, manages, without meaning to, to get a message to the Doctor. The Doctor arrives quite promptly and, with Amy and Rory, takes on the fun task of searching a multistory council flat for the child in question. Amy and Rory do not find him; the Doctor finds not only the child, but the child's father, and sets about solving the problem. Amy and Rory, meantime, have tried to use the elevator -- bad idea in council flats, apparently.

So far, so good.

My problem with the episode is not that you can figure it all out beforehand -- that's fine. The problem is that the end reveal is...exactly what you've figured out beforehand. And it isn't that interesting. The kid himself does little except pant and stare through the whole episode which makes your chest ache after awhile. The father is a great character to start with who gradually slides into being a cliche by the end. It's a nice difference that it's the father rather than the mother who has to undertake the journey and trials to get back the child but -- it's not enough to make the whole episode feel like it lives up to its publicity.

There are some clever startles -- "scare" would be too strong a word -- but they don't last. The dolls are only disturbing the first time you see them and after that...they lose punch very quickly. This is interesting because they're very similar to the Weeping Angels who simply become more terrifying every time you see them!

It is nice that this is another episode like "The Doctor Dances" where "...everybody lives!" but it doesn't put it up there with the best of this season as far as I can see. It's a solid entry but somewhere in the realm of "The Black Spot" rather than "The God Complex." This is only disappointing because I expected more from Mark Gatiss -- a fact which I'm sure causes him daily heartburnings.

Friday Fun Times

The easiest possible way to come back to non-work-blogging -- posting videos!



And the fun partner game: how many of these can you name?

Reassuring Visitors but Tempting Fate

"I aten't dead!"

Full points to anyone who recognizes the quotation.

Anyway, I aten't dead and neither is this blog. It's just been...well, lets call it hibernating while I work out a long, hot Boston summer.

I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do with this space -- not that I imagine anyone reading this has been bouncing up and down on a bed of nails wondering! -- and I have some ideas.

Although it may seem somewhat schizo, I'd like to write more about yoga and meditation and more about horror movies. Yes, I know. I'm weird. I've been told many times and it hasn't stopped me yet!

I will not, of course, give up my Doctor Who addiction (if you haven't seen the season 7 trailer, why are you wasting time here?!).

So -- watch this space, I guess, is what I'm saying.

I've spent a lot of time in the last -- well, my post listing tells me I last put up anything here in May, so I guess the last 3 months doing "professional" blogging and it's damn near killed me. I want to write about fun stuff again, guys! Blue boxes and hockey masks and stripey sweaters and vampires (who actually, y'know, kill people, not the stupid kind) and hearts sent in Valentine boxes and and black cars.

Friday Fun Times

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre do all of Doctor Who season 6 in under 10 minutes. :)

Did Anyone Get Hitler Out of the Cupboard?

Back to Doctor Who! Wheeeee!

After the pain, suffering, and loss that was A Good Man Goes to War, now we get the fun and frolick that is Lets Kill Hitler.

Really, Hitler is one long romp -- and that's not something you get to type very often, so bear with me while I repeat it: Hitler is one long romp.

I'll do my best to be spoiler-light, but seriously, folks, I had to have been one of the last people on the planet to see the end of season 6, so if you haven't seen it...well...seek help? Anyway, RAYOR.


I can say that everything you think about the first 5-10 minutes is true. When I say that one of the most important things about season 6 as a whole is "trust your gut," I mean it. If something seems -- weird, not quite right, strangely familiar, haunting, odd, off, or otherwise peculiar: go with it.

Lets Kill Hitler is a lot of fun with some seriousness wrapped up in the fluff: when Alex Kingston speaks, you listen. That's probably the best advice I can give you overall.

Try to ignore the worst of the dialogue ("...except, perhaps, the cruelest." She delivers it well but...it's a schlocky line.)


Nina Toussaint-White is awesome and if fans get to vote on the new, post-Pond companions, I want to vote for her! Her style as a pre-River River (I did warn for spoilers!) is fucking fantastic.


Rory has some wonderful moments here; I can't say how much I appreciate the time and attention he gets as a character in this season. While he's a solid back-up in season 5, he really starts to shine in 6 -- he steps out from Amy's shadow and wait for The Girl Who Waited if you want to see Rory and the Doctor start to get into it which, really, we've all been waiting for them to do, right? The Doctor has spent most of the last few seasons begging for a smackdown -- or smackdowns.

And the Tesselactor -- possibly misspelled here! -- is a lovely invention that I'm sure has Douglas Adams grinning to himself over some otherworldly cup of tea. The antibodies alone are worthy of a whome Adamsian side monologue along the lines of the towel or the Guide: "You will feel a slight stinging sensation -- and then death." "Please remain calm while your life is extracted." Fucking classic.

So enjoy it while it lasts, really. You've got The God Complex and The Girl Who Waited coming up before you get to Closing Time which is the only other episode that even comes close to being comic relief in the second half of this season so I'd suggest taking long juicy draughts of the craziness that is Lets Kill Hitler.

Homework

So I've been doing my horror movie homework lately: the first two Friday the 13th movies and the first Nightmare on Elm Street. I'd've hit up the Halloween series, too, but the first movie is gone from Netflix insty and H2O sequel is...quite, quite dreadful. I watched it out of desperation on cable once when I was sick. Even my massive childhood crush on Jamie Lee Curtis couldn't make it good; it only made it watchable.

(Admittedly, a cable edit is not ideal viewing at any time for anything except, perhaps, Stonehenge Apocalypse and then only because the ad breaks give you a chance to recover from your bouts of helpless hysteria.)

Lets do Friday first. I...wasn't unduly impressed with this. Slasher flicks are not my favorite movie meat at any time of day and, while I'm interested in the Friday series for a number of reasons, the actual content of the story isn't high on the list! I find the durability of the franchise fascinating (12 films, the last in 2009), the role it has in the development of modern horror, the impact it has on other films, on pop culture in general (who doesn't have some faint "back of the brain" recognition of "Crystal Lake" or "Jason"?), and so on and so forth.

But the slasher film per se doesn't do much for me: blood for the sake of blood...eh. The first Friday had enough other things to keep me interested: the characters were actually...a little character'y; it's always fun to watch the back-story unwind (even when you already know it); and, honestly, the setting is quite gorgeous. This, really, was one of the things working against the scare value of the movie for me; I grew up somewhere that looks very much like "Crystal Lake" and, while I've seen plenty of horror movies with a woods'y setting that work just dandy to set my adrenaline going, this wasn't one of them: there wasn't a nasty vibe coming out of those trees, at least to my mind.

What I found particularly interesting sitting and watching the first two Friday movies in immediate succession was, among other things (sex = punishment!), was that the surprise, the shock, the horror (if you will) is supposed to come from the kill itself. There isn't much emphasis put on the lurking killer, the mutilation of the bodies, the disposal or discovery of corpses, and all the trappings that I (and I suspect other viewers) have become accustomed to watching more recent films. The killer kills -- and that's it. If you're lucky (or unlucky) you get a shot of a corpse with a hatchet in her head or his throat slit (physiologically inaccurate, if anyone cares) and that's about it. If that doesn't scare you -- too fucking bad!

It's an interesting take: it assumes that your effect can be totally gotten across to your audience by a brief -- seconds only -- shot of a hatchet in someone's skull. Okay, yeah, Tom Savini did a great job with the make-up, but...perhaps my palate is just jaded but -- not really that scary.

In time and place, however -- I remember once having a conversation with my sewing teacher back when I was in 4-H as a child about, for some reason, Jaws and how she remembered the summer it had come out and how terrified people were. I'm not sure if I remember her saying she'd been to see it or not, but I've always remembered her saying how scared people were and how silly it seemed now, etc., etc. Well, I've seen Jaws on the big scene and it was fucking terrifying and that was in 2009, 30 years after first release. I can't imagine seeing Friday the 13th on the big screen and it having the same effect.