Because I don’t feel like writing my movie review yet, here’s a Japanese body powder commercial that is guaranteed to make your head hurt. Just when you thought things couldn’t get any crazier in the world, at one point people wanted to smell like Charles Bronson. Seriously.
After that, I got nothing. Japan has to be either the greatest or most frightening place on earth. It’s like a combination of Hell and Disneyland.
I was watching clips of Dolemite (don’t ask) tonight when I stumbled across a blaxploitation trailer I’d never seen before. I clicked on it and found myself watching the red band promo for Black Dynamite. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that not only is it a new movie (with Michael Jai White of all people), but it’s also not a spoof! I think we’ve got a real live blaxploitation move on our hands here, gang.
Needless to say, I’m excited.
Normally I loathe those horrible AMVs where they mash up scenes from Japanese cartoons to comedy routines and music and whatever else they make them with (I don’t like them, so I don’t explore too deeply into the world). However, I have to admit that the one below is probably the best-done one I’ve ever seen, and it was funny enough to share with the world. I’m sure it helps that I kind of like Naruto, but still.
Call it an anti-Melancholy Monday. I’m ready to laugh!
I figure since these guys were one of Doug‘s favorite bands, I’d best make them my Feel-Good Friday.
I wrote the following for the fifth anniversary of the September 11, and reposted it last year for the sixth anniversary. I figure I’ll run it again, especially since it got a comment from someone who undoubtedly knew Douglas Farnum a hell of a lot better than I ever did. I’m glad I could do something remotely resembling a fitting tribute to the man.
A bunch of words written five years after the fact, one most of the emotions of the moment have cooled, doesn’t feel like much. God knows I wish I could’ve done a hell of a lot more, both then and now, for Doug and all the other innocent people who lost their lives that day. I can only do what I can do; I figure if I brought back good memories for one person, then I did all right by Doug and his family.
Now it’s time for an old-school op-board line break. Nobody who reads this blog will get that reference, but I will. Doug would have. Hopefully he doesn’t mind me remembering the guy I knew from the Internet.
DC Roe undertook the challenge to recruit over 2,996 bloggers to write tributes to every individual casualty from the 9/11 attacks, both at the WTC and on the jets that were turned into bombs by stomach-turning Islamic terrorists. When I heard about the project, I had to join in, because like so many of you I was personally affected by 9/11 in that I had a friend of mine, Douglas Farnum, die at Ground Zero.
Doug, known as “Sick of it All” or “Sick” (after his favorite band) in his various online writing ventures, worked for Marsh & McLennan on the 97nd floor of Tower One. I wrote alongside him at various ventures for two years, at wrestling opinion websites and at Doug’s nascent business BrooklynHookers.com. Yes, it was an adult website, started with the blessing of Doug’s beloved wife Amy, to make the family a little extra scratch and hopefully get Doug out of a job he wasn’t quite crazy about at Marsh. I wrote in the opinions and review section of the website, because as I always said, you can’t jerk off all the time.
Doug was a devoted fan of professional wrestling, particularly the hardcore antics of the Philadelphia-based Extreme Championship Wrestling, which had a large New York following. He’d meet wrestlers, hang out with them, get them to pose in Brooklyn Hookers teeshirts, and write about how cool it was to meet the guys he’d watched on TV and how they were good eggs. He was always there to talk to, either on AIM or on forums he frequented.
The online wrestling opinions group is a small, insular group of writers who generally cannibalize off one another, but no one ever had a bad thing to say about Doug. He was always there, always friendly, and usually always cool. I’d talked to Doug the weekend before 9/11, as I was expecting a package from him containing my Brooklyn Hookers staff teeshirt.
I got it Monday, the afternoon of September 10th, and I IMed him to tell him how thrilled I was with it, how well it fit, and to thank him for sending it to me. He thanked me for writing for him and said all he wanted in return was a picture of me in the shirt to go up on the site alongside the pictures of other writers who had shirts. I complied and sent him the picture sometime after he’d gone to bed.
He had work in the morning, after all.
That was the last time I’d spoken to Doug Farnum. I’d like to think that before he left for work, or before the planes hit, that he’d opened that email and saw my smiling face in a Brooklyn Hookers tee shirt, proudly rocking a little slice of New York City attitude in the rural South.
I still have the tee shirt. I still have the box it came in, smelling of sandalwood incense. I still have the note he included, green faded marker on a yellow piece of notebook paper, telling me how he’d see me on Stern, where he was hoping to promote the website that he’d started.
The entire community of writers, readers, and wrestlers held its breath, hoping desperately for a miracle that would never come. A month would pass, and life would slowly return to normal, save for the Doug-shaped hole in our lives. It sounds cliché to say he touched everyone he knew, but in Doug’s case the cliché was true. He was a great man, a talented writer, and a loyal friend.
I think about him every day. I miss him every day. I can only imagine how hard things like this are on his family, if they’re this tough on his friends. I hope that wherever he is, he’s enjoying himself with a stack of comic books, NYC hardcore, and a good ol’ barbed wire match on the TV.
Rest in peace, Doug.
Last weekend was the first weekend in months that I didn’t go see at least one (if not three) movies. I’m feeling strange ‘lack of big-screen radiation’ withdrawals. That’s probably why I’m craving popcorn almost constantly these days, though it could be due to the fact I don’t eat as much exploded food these days since they took Kellogg’s Napalm Krispies off the market after those kids died.
Your top movie last weekend was Nicolas Cage in Bangkok Dangerous. No doubt he was wearing another terrible wig and doing his best Elvis sneer throughout the entire movie. People must eat that stuff up, because distributors were so scared by Frank’s nephew that they didn’t bother opening any movies against his new action shooter.
I’d be scared of Nic, too. He might take my face off, like in Con Air.
This is kind of a melancholy FGF, because this is my favorite local band, I’ve seen them like 20 times, and their last show is September 13th. It’s sad when things like this happen, but at least I’ll know to get down to Headliners and catch their last performance, no matter what. (They played on my birthday, but I didn’t go. D’oh!) It’s only $10, so I have no excuses despite my mild distaste for the venue of performance’s lack of parking.
Yes, I am in the video. Repeatedly. Mostly it’s my back, though, because I’m a moron. Still, that’s me in the BrooklynHookers.com teeshirt (black, lettering in a circle, fat guy… you can’t miss me). This video was one drummer and two or three rhythm guitarists in the past, so probably about 2003 or 2004. Just my best guess.
I can’t get this song out of my head, so in an effort to save myself, I’m going to spread it to others. Misery loves company, and I’m on a major rocka/psychobilly kick lately. My undying love of all things cheesy and horror-themed spills way over into my musical tastes, too.
The HorrorPops are touring the States come October, and that means I’ll be driving to either Chicago or Atlanta to see them. And I’ll probably buy this shirt, too.
I’ve been going to the movies a lot lately, and every time I do one of my weekend box office reports at Den of Geek, I’m reminded of my previous moviegoing experiences. I’m kind of a movie experience snob (though I do love eating and drinking during movies when it’s beer and real food), but considering that most people shouldn’t be allowed to leave the house, I usually abstain. Meanwhile, everyone around me is crunching, texting, talking, gesturing wildly, shifting around, kicking the back of my chair, and generally causing me to fly into a rage.
Rather than rant about that, I’ll just show you the trailer I think needs to play before every movie. Maybe the morons will get the message, then. Plus it’s absolutely the funniest part of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters.
That’s going to replace the Mercenaries 2 commercial song as my newest ear worm.
Dear Kiefer,
I just saw Mirrors this week. Here’s my review, if you’re interested. I’ll give you some time to have your personal assistant read it to you.
Okay, are you done? Good, good. Let’s continue.
Listen, Kief… can I call you Kief? Too bad. Anyway, Kief, you’re on a hit TV show where you play the indestructible secret agent Jack Bauer. You run around and shoot all the terrorists, save America, and never once shower or go to the bathroom in the course of 24 hours. It’s a big hit, everyone loves it, everyone loves you, and life has to be pretty sweet when you’re not drunkenly assaulting Christmas trees.
There’s a problem, though. The show 24 is on hiatus until 2009. Most actors who play a well-known TV character end up getting typecast, because everyone looks at you and they don’t see David from the Lost Boys, they see the guy who has been killing terrorists on TV for years. Most actors, when given a break from their series, immediately go out and try to make a movie that will remind everyone that the face on TV is that of an actor who can play any sort of role.
But not you, Kief. You’re different enough, and drunk enough, to go out during your break from playing a gun-toting, mystery-solving, terrorist-chasing badass to… play a movie where you play a gun-toting, mystery-solving, ghost-chasing badass. You used your break from 24 to make a crossover movie between The X-Files and 24. Congratulations, you fucking genius.
I look forward to seeing you on Sci-Fi Channel Original Pictures chasing horribly-done CGI gorillas 5 years after 24 comes to a close.
Cheers,
Ron
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Subtle Bluntness 