Into Un-Flickchart-ed Waters: Halloween Alien Invasion Edition

For someone who has the second highest quantity of total films seen on Flickchart and spends an undue amount of time ranking films there, I have not commented very much. I only have around 30 comments after 18 months on the site (not counting comments to other users of the site), and for someone that likes to blab on about films as much as I do, that's an odd thing. It's probably because Flickchart comments are better suited to brevity, which is something that I don't normally like to approach in my own time. I save that for work.

Some of my comments on Flickchart have essentially been entire essays, such as the type I used to post on here in days past before I was systematically calculating my own demise due to an unbearable recent depression. In a dual effort to pique my interest in writing personally again and to maintain a healthy presence on that site, I have determined a single, firm ground rule be applied to my next round of Flickchart posts and beyond. The ruling shall stand that I may use no more than 250 words -- TOPS -- on any comment where two films are pitted against each other. Personal posts on the site are different, but for the bread and butter of Flickchart -- that of the film vs. film ranking battle -- I must heed this rule.

And now, since the intent of The Cinema 4 Pylon this month is to serve as a Halloween Countdown destination (and I apologize for not being as committed to the cause as I was last year, when I posted every day in October), I will use Flickchart's Genre ranking tool to have several alien invasion films climb into the ring and go at it, uh, film-o y film-o...

 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) vs. War of the Worlds (2005)

This one was an easy decision right off the bat. These titles are from two of my favorite books, but only one book also stands as the progenitor of two of my favorite movies. Snatchers has been made twice into one of my favorite movies, as I also love the 1978 Philip Kaufman version with Donald Sutherland, and especially because it takes the same basic concept (that of the loss of identity to emotionless alien interlopers) and also makes it into a satire of the then burgeoning New Age trendiness. It the original Don Siegel version, however, that rules my universe, not least because it has Dana Wynter in it as my all-time favorite damsel-in-distress. I zeroed in on the film as a teenager after growing hearing about the film from my parents, and it hasn't failed to break my heart since, even if I am tired of the discussion about the film's true political intentions. An interesting discussion, yes, but after a while, I just want to watch it again to be scared to death. H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds also has a version in my list of favorite films, the 1953 original by George Pal, but Spielberg's 2005 re-do is only marginally successful, though it has much visual appeal. I really should give it another look one of these days.

Predator 2 (1990) vs. Not of This Earth (1988)
I am not a fan of either one of these films, but I can still make a pretty easy choice on this match-up. Predator 2 was no match for its original (though that film's appeal has definitely worn off on me since its original release, when I was excited to see it initially), but the second iteration is still a pretty worthwhile monster movie. Some good urban warfare, and I liked Danny Glover just fine in the role as the cop hero. An interesting assemblage of actors as well: Blades, Paxton, Alonso, and Busey the elder. I couldn't wait for Not of This Earth to come out on video in 1988 as we were still in that era when there was great interest vested in our part (my boys and I) in seeing Traci Lords' cans... and legally as well. To this date, I have still not seen the 1957 Roger Corman original (odd for me, yes, but it is now out on DVD and I will have my copy in mere days), so I cannot compare the two yet, but I remember being both mildly amused by the intentionally mega-cheap remake and rather bored at the same time. In the end, the scenery was nice but too brief, and by this point, I no longer care about that scenery. I will take Predator 2 for being an actual film, not just a publicity stunt.

The Creeping Terror (1964) vs. V: The Final Battle (1984)
OK, I will admit a massive fondness for the ridiculously terrible The Creeping Terror, a film so low-budget that they had to hire a newsman to read narration over most of the film because of the poor sound quality of the dialogue throughout (though there is actually still a lot of contention over why this occurred). A monstrous shag carpet-laden space creature with a downed spaceship, dines on various citizens of a small town, and eventually attacks a dance hall and swallows teenagers whole (and spits out their shoes)... oh, it is just so anti-awesome. Watch the MST3K version if you do, if only to keep you awake, but the regular film is a wacky, crappy time on its own. I loved the original mini-series V when it was first on television, and I stuck with it through its run in the mid-'80s, if only to chiefly ogle Faye Grant and Jane Badler. (Honestly, I lost the plot early on in the regular series.) Regardless, I have rewatched the two original minis (of which this was second) in the last few years, and still had a pretty good time. Not so with the newer remake series. I am flashing V for Victory... 

Body Snatchers (1994) vs. The Faculty (1998)
Abel Ferrera directed the third official screen version of Jack Finney's seminal science fiction novel, and the story still holds up well in its relocation to an army base. Third in my heart, though, after the first two, but this effort is still rather creepy and the special effects are pretty well done. I was really excited for The Faculty from Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Williamson when it came out. In a slightly different sense, it is also a "body-snatching" film -- this time, teachers are taken over by alien parasites -- but the results are decidedly mixed. The cast is fun, especially the teachers, and it is more than a tad hammy in presentation. Seeing it recently, it is a serviceable enough sci-fi thriller, but no more than that. It seems to have been lost in the Rodriguez oeuvre, though there are other films on that list (Sharkboy or Spy Kids 3, anyone?) that deserve relegation far more. I am snatching "Body" on this one...

Returner (2002) vs. The Mysterians (1957)

Twin Japanese alien invasion films, but only one really connected with me. Returner, while fun for portions of its run, was far too much of a hodgepodge of just about every science fiction film that ever came down the pike, and I just grew weary of its dodging anything genuinely original in order to get to its underwhelming finish. Cute stars, though... The Mysterians, on the other hand, crosses over into that treasured kaiju era of the late '50s and early '60s, and I crossed paths with this and the rest of its Toho ilk as a teen. Moguera, the crazy-looking, pointy-nosed mecha controlled by the Mysterians, is a particular favorite of mine (its supposed to represent a giant robotic mole). It doesn't have a star nose like my favorite moles, but it gets the gold star out of this pairing. As candy-colored silly as it looks, it's The Mysterians for me.

The Twonky (1953) vs. The War of the Worlds (1953)

Arch Oboler's The Twonky is one of those films that seems, as you are viewing it, that you are lost in the course of a particularly devious but playful fever dream. (I resist describing things as "an acid trip," first because it is stupid, and secondly, because I have never been on one.) When I first saw it years ago on a UHF channel, it was in the middle of the night, and I actually was barely conscious due to illness. I kept images of a walking, manipulative but loyal television set tormenting poor Hans Conried in my head for ages, always wondering "what the hell the name of that movie was?" I would tell people about it and they would think I was crazy. I have seen it a couple of times recently, and while I treasure having the film in my knowledge, it is almost best remembered as that very fever dream. No matter my joy over The Twonky, it can't compare for my long-standing adoration of George Pal's still scary version of H.G. Wells' sci-fi classic. Many of the scenes still define screen science-fiction for me, despite years of directors trying to outdo it. It's not just sight, but the sound of the film, that live in my memory. If you don't know what I mean, then you haven't seen it.

Village of the Damned (1995) vs. Monsters (2010)

John Carpenter pulled off a remake (The Thing) that was equal to (and sometimes better) than the original over a decade before he tried to do the same thing to one of the creepiest films of the 1960s, Wolf Rilla's The Village of the Damned. All those eerily staring, blond-haired kids... I can't even think about it. And yet, this time, Carpenter really dropped the ball to such an extent, that I think it really affected the way that I viewed him. Everything is off in this film, and all even five minutes of this version does is remind me of exactly why I grow nauseous when I hear the word "remake." Hollywood has "Clockwork Oranged" me into turning fearful every time they decide to savage the culture of previous generations. Which is why I cling ferociously to a film like Monsters, which, despite a couple of missteps, is still one of the more original visions I have seen in several years. All the film did is make me want to know more, at every portion of the journey, and I was able to shake off the "Blair Witch"-style shooting of the film, which by this point has been done to death. But as long as the occasional good comes out of the style, then I guess that I will just have to learn to accept it.

It Conquered the World (1956) vs. Without Warning (1980)

This one comes down to choice of monsters. Do I go with what is widely considered to be one of the worst examples of an alien costume in Corman's It Conquered the World (which I genuinely enjoy as a goofy '50s sci-fi film despite this) or with the deadly alien Frisbee things with tentacles and teeth that devour their victims throughout Greydon Clark's neglected Without Warning? I saw this film for the first time on cable television at a friend's house late one night. Then I had to walk home about two miles alongside a forest that never seemed quite that creepy until after I watched these evil alien Frisbee things fling about and kill people. Without Warning was shot with the proper amount of spooky menace by Dean Cundey, who lensed Halloween just before this film and then broke through to the big leagues. The makeup effects by Greg Cannom, who would also go on to bigger things, are pretty nifty as well. Man, I want both of these films on DVD, but between the two, Without Warning is my choice.

Flickchart Comment #30: Career Opportunities (1991) vs. The Coca-Cola Kid (1985)

vs.

I don't think it would be out of bounds to state that most of us who engage routinely in cinematic discourse live somewhat of a lie. The same could be said of anyone who delves into any art form deep enough to begin to believe that their selections within their chosen medium are bred solely from a studied and intellectual set of criteria. Sure, it's fun to puff oneself up with pretension and attempt to convince others that the reason one attended a certain film was because of the director's mise-en-scène, the subtleties of framing used by a particular cinematographer, or one's appreciation for the underrated mumblings of the film's scruffy, cult figure of a star.

But, sometimes it just comes down to the boobs.

Possibly the truest models of the range of my youthful lust, Career Opportunities and The Coca-Cola Kid both came out within my twenties, and I saw them both in theatres. I saw The Coca-Cola Kid first, in what would now be described as an "arthouse cinema," but which was really the only true form of alternative movie theatre in my hometown at the time (they also showed pornos back in the day, so it was only part-time in its art leanings). And I didn't go to The Coca-Cola Kid for the boobs, but rather because the film had garnered some decent press on its way to being released in the States, and I wanted to see something different than that which I had been practically force-fed up to that point in time by Hollywood. (OK, I wasn't force-fed -- I qualified it with "practically" -- but when you are a film fanatic, you takes what you can gets sometime, and back then, Hollywood flicks were pretty much, outside of video, the only game in town.)

When Kid came out, Eric Roberts was young and freshly scrubbed and rather oddly interesting in his acting choices, and for a brief period, could actually get people to plunk down into a movie seat (briefly). He wasn't that great, but he could get you to pay attention. (My personal favorite film with him is Larry Cohen's truly absurd The Ambulance, where he is teamed up in the over-the-top but low-budget thriller with the great Red Buttons.)

I went to The Coca-Cola Kid with the hopes of seeing a halfway decent film... and I came out with Greta Scacchi on my mind. I have fallen in love a hundred times or so looking at a movie screen, and in that tiny movie theatre in 1985, the immediate object of that desire was Ms. Scacchi, so different from that which I was used to, but absolutely adorable. She also happened to be naked in the film, which cut out a lot of mystery (chiefly, answering the question "Would she get naked in a movie?")

Scacchi invaded my brain enough for me to rent Heat and Dust (one of the first Merchant-Ivory films I saw), and see White Mischief, Good Morning, Babylon and Shattered in theatres. After Altman's The Player in 1992, I pretty much lost track of her, but as she has matured yet still retained her classic Italian beauty over the years, I have caught her in a role here and there. And each one reminds me of when I first saw her in The Coca-Cola Kid, which still holds up as a fine, offbeat comedy to this day.

Career Opportunities, like many of John Hughes' offshoots, really doesn't hold up in the same way 20 years after its release in 1991, nor is it of the same quality by any measure of the Scacchi/Roberts film. At the time though, fresh off dragging some friends to Dennis Hopper's The Hot Spot the a few months earlier (which they hated), they at least agreed with me that the ample nude footage of Jennifer Connelly and Virginia Madsen were to be commended. All we knew is that the teen star of Labyrinth, whose name we really had not committed to memory, had truly grown up.

Then the poster for Opportunities showed up, and while I am not necessarily all that focused on what Zappa termed "mammalian protuberances" (I am an elbow guy), if ever there was a poster designed to sell tickets to me instantly at that moment in the universe, it was the one for Career Opportunities.  If there was a guy in the theatre lobby in that period who saw that image and didn't dream of being in the same exact position that Frank Whaley was in that one-sheet (see above), then it would have been immediately evident the guy wasn't batting in even the same league, let alone team.

My friends, male and female, would have gone to the film even without the poster such as it was, since we pretty much were attending en masse any film with John Hughes' name on it. But, for the boys in my little gang, the poster made it a sure bet we would be there opening weekend. I distinctly recall being only mildly amused but roundly disinterested in the film outside of the actors, and Connelly's part in the film really can't be chalked up as a performance. Performance art, perhaps... but acting was not her strong suit in the early days of her career. In fact, despite her ample charms and the various means by which they are exploited in Opportunities (and yet, in a very PG way), her character was almost vapid enough to almost dispel the notion from my mind at the film's close that I adored her absolutely earlier in the film. Talk about a 90-minute stand.

Of course, I recovered my initial adoration once I was left to my own devices (ahem...) to reflect upon what I had seen in the film, and after The Rocketeer solidified my feelings later that year (playing the part named and designed in the original comic book after Bettie Page), Connelly became my gold standard for film beauty for a good decade. (At least until she read her Oscar speech a few years later from a piece of yellow legal pad paper. Improv is apparently not her strong suit...)

To recap: two beauties from my past, who have turned out to have lengthy, distinguished careers, starring in two movies that I watched a lot back in the day. In the end, as always, the overall quality of The Coca-Cola Kid tips the balance in its favor. See, it's doesn't always come down to the boobs. But it is a damned attractive way to reach such a decision.

Gamera Vs. All Mankind - Act III: Requiem

An impromptu storyboard page by my brother for Act III

A little, long-unfinished business here to which I must attend...

Under the Cinema 2 tab that now adorns the top of the Pylon, alongside the brace of other tabs to which I was recently given the means of installation, I have built a page featuring the initial sketch version of Gamera Vs. All Mankind, a short, operatic, animated film that my brother and I contrived based on somewhat of a dare from my best pal Leif.

I will dispense with the full story here, as I will be adding it to the Cinema 2 screen in the near future, where I have also placed the libretto for Acts I and II for those interested in what the wholly synthesized voices in the cartoon are singing. However, as all of this business was initially published on the website that I had built as the ultimate destination for those who visited the Pylon, it seems that I neglected to published Act III of Gamera vs. All Mankind here as a regular post.

If you are at all interested, click here to watch the very rough sketch version of our would-be kaijû opera cartoon and read the first two acts. We never got around to doing the sketch version of the third act, and the music for it was never completed either, but you can read the lyrics to get the general idea of how it was to be concluded. At some point in the future, I would love to finally get around to fully producing the short to completion, but there are a lot of obstacles to work out first.

Gamera Vs. All Mankind

A kaijû opera in three tiny acts

Music by Mark Otis Johnson
Libretto by Rik Tod Johnson

ACT III: Requiem

[As the two ships head furiously for the island’s shore, the pirates/scientists have turned their theme “Bigger and Better Things” into a near-sea shanty, which they indulge themselves in as they prepare their weaponry for landfall... ]

Pirates/Scientists
Yo Ho! Ho Yo!
To bigger and better things!
Yo Ho! Ho Yo!
To bigger and better things!

We’ll add Gamera to the extinction list
And put wads of money in our fist!
Yo Ho! Ho Yo!
To bigger and better things!

[The ships reach the island at positions far down the beach from each other. Hasigawa, now seemingly mad in love with a girl he has never really met, lifts his eyepatch to search down the beach for Rainbow. As it turns out, each of the major players is searching for something at this time…]

Hasigawa
Where?
Where did she go to?
Once I thought my heart would fill
Now I fear it’s empty still…

[Rainbow is searching her cabin desperately so she can doll up for Hasigawa; Mr. Aoyagi, the translator, stands behind her trying the missing object out on himself, smacking his lips and dabbing them on a tissue in a mirror.]

Rainbow
Where?
Where is my lip gloss?
I want to plant one on that hottie!
What the hell! I want his body!

Morimoto
[Peering through a telescope]
There!
Far down the shore!
In that quay there lies our quarry!
Men, we must hurry
Or poor Gamera may die
And we’ll all be--!!

Takada
[Peering back through his own telescope, reading Morimoto’s lips…]
Sorry??!!
Why must he worry?
He doesn’t realize
That everything I do
Is for our country’s greater glory!
I will lead us…

Pirates/Scientists
[Wheeling cannons, howitzers and all manner of arms across the beach…]
Yo Ho! Ho Yo!
To bigger and better things!

[All of the parties start rushing across the sands towards each other, each one singing their part of the quartet…]

Hasigawa
Where?
Where is she now?
Rainbow
Here!
I'm ready for him!

Morimoto
Now,
I fear the worst, men!
Hasigawa
Where?

Rainbow
Here!

Morimoto
[pointing at the pirate/scientists]
There!

Takada
[pointing at the Greenpeace team]
There!

All
NOW!!

[There is a beat as Hasigawa and Rainbow come face to face in front of the two warring factions. Rainbow jumps at Hasigawa, throws her arms around him and knocks him into some nearby bushes. Clothes come flying out into the air. Another beat, as the translator looks at the warriors, and then he, too, jumps into the bushes. The battle commences, with much bloodshed and death and general gnashing of teeth. After several moments, the noise and din of the battle is broken up by something even louder… the terrifying cry of Gamera, the giant flying turtle.

All of the survivors stop to stare at the creature, who is standing there holding a giant cup of tea, and wearing fuzzy bunny slippers on his feet, looking as if his solace has been disturbed. In the palm of one giant turtle hand sits little Toshio, who has at last found his protector. The pirate/scientists raise their weapons and charge Gamera, putting up siege towers and blasting cannons at him; the Greenpeace warriors raise their weapons at the pirate/scientists and charge them at the same time.

Gamera, however, having no need for either side, shoots flames out of his mouth, incinerating the whole lot of them. Soon, every human on the island is a charred pile of ashes except for Toshio, Rainbow, and Hasigawa, who have come up for air from behind the rock where they were making out, and Mr. Aoyagi, the Translator, who pops up with them. Gamera growls at the Translator.]

Toshio
I beg you, Mister Man,
What did Gamera say?

Mr. Aoyagi, the Translator
He, uh, asks what brings you here today?

Toshio
Oh, you see…
My daddy told me,
Because he works in the Diet…

[Gamera raises an annoyed eyebrow, and then burns Toshio to a crisp, either because he hates politicians or the kid’s annoying sing-song voice or both.]

Toshio

AAAAHHH!!!

[Gamera then starts to spin about, jets blasting from the four limb-holes in his shell and jets off into the sky.

[As he and an ever-smiling Rainbow get dressed behind the bushes, Hasigawa lights up a cigarette from the flaming skull of a nearby burnt body, puts his eyepatch back on (but over the opposite eye), grimly looks at Rainbow, and walks away without saying a word. He climbs aboard the IKR ship and sails off.]

Rainbow
Wait! Tadashi!
Where are you going?
Why must love bring such stings?

[The translator walks up behind her, also smoking a cigarette that he lit from the charred remains of Toshio. He stares at the boat sailing off and looks unblinkingly at the sad, skimpily dressed girl.]

Rainbow
I don’t understand.
How could he ever go?

Mr. Aoyagi, the Translator
It’s… it’s…

Rainbow
Complicated.
Yes, I know.

Mr. Aoyagi, the Translator
[winking at Rainbow]
To bigger and better things?

[Rainbow grabs him and throws him behind the bushes. Clothes go flying into the air.]

FINE 

Gamera Vs. All Mankind, Copyright © 2006-2011 Silly N' Serious Productions.
Libretto, Copyright © 2006-2011 Rik Tod Johnson.
Music, Copyright © 2006-2011 Mark Otis Johnson.
All Rights Reserved.

The Return of the Blogger Named Me

Yes, that is Marley and Me in the background.

My apologies to anyone setting down here briefly over the next couple of weeks. Having gone AWOL from the blogging scene for roughly ten months (not entirely of my own choosing), and after weeks of telling myself that I just needed to jump back into it, I finally ran smack-dab into yesterday.

Luckily, yesterday was a Saturday, so I had the time I needed to deal with what I found when I opened up Blogger for the first time in ages. If it had been a weekday, I would have been in trouble. I would have gone to work thinking about everything I needed to do on Blogger instead of concentrating on my job (and right now, concentration is rather the most important weapon in my work arsenal, given that we are trying to complete the next issue of our magazine).

I returned to discover that Blogger had undergone several major changes. Thankfully, they were all to my liking. A cleaner, more efficient user interface and immediate access to site statistics were nice additions, and there are several others I won't mention. The actual editor for creating posts is now far more pliable, with more room given to write (I have never understood why so many WYSIWYG editors give you such a tiny box to write in that makes it possible to see only the barest portion of your post. The original Blogger editor only allowed me to see about a paragraph and a half. Frustrating...) But my favorite new item was the ability to build stand-alone pages that create tabs which you can display across the top of your homepage. Suddenly, your blog could get a little closer to looking like a real website!

This is something I had long wanted, and had spent a good amount of time a couple of years back trying to get a regular website up and running which would get me closer to my original vision of what I wanted to do. The problem was that I already had the Pylon going for several years at that point, and I became frustrated in trying to devise a way to merge both sites properly. I had so much material on the Pylon and on its then-current sister site, the Cinema 4 Cel Bloc, that I didn't see the point of transporting all of it to a new site. The logistics of such a move made my head swirl. And with time and money at a premium in my life, I gave up the proposition.

But now that I had pulled a Rip Van Winkle on blogging, and woke up several months later to find that the entire Blogger world had changed (but without seeing weird little men playing nine-pins or my having grown a massive white beard), I could consolidate my efforts into just improving The Cinema 4 Pylon.

And thus, you will discover that changes are at hand. After posting for the first time since mid-November (and I will not recount the reasons at this moment), I started messing around with the layout for the site. Because I ran into this just yesterday, I still haven't quite worked out exactly how things will look, but first  I corrected the banner on my header (one small reason I gave up on the site for a while was that I could not locate my original art files, which I also found going into this weekend) and also resized the site. I began to build the stand-alone pages, but I have not quite put up (or created, in some cases) the material that will eventually go into these, so please be patient.

And now I will celebrate with a round of figurative nine-pins and the dancing of a sprightly jig (also figuratively, since my back will not allow it) for posting two days in a row. Hopefully, my interest is piqued enough to keep me going.

Flickchart Comment #29: Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) vs. Killdozer (1974)

This isn't really that tough a choice... as a lifelong Apes series fan, picking Escape (the third film) is a foregone conclusion. But, however ridiculous the title may seem, Killdozer holds far more cachet with me than one might imagine.

Both films were very important to me at the time of my life where I was slowly being morphed from a kid with no clear loves except for baseball (at which I was, and remain, a horrible player), conservation (I was an avid Ranger Rick reader in my youth) and being a general pain in the ass into a full-on science fiction and horror fan. My sources were few: with just the original three networks (ABC, NBC and CBS), a small local library, two bookstores and zero local theatres (we had to drive 14 miles to see Star Wars -- or any film -- when it first came out) at my disposal (and, of course, no VHS yet and the internet was still light years away), I somehow made the change. The media which inspired me most was clearly film, beginning with the original King Kong a couple of years earlier, but around the ages of 12 and 13, I had convinced my mother that it was just fine for me to stay up mega-late on Friday and Saturday nights and watch movies until about three in the morning.

It was on CBS where I used to watch both of these films, not long after their original release. My friends and I would often play at reenacting Planet of the Apes in those days, not because of the films, but because of the NBC Saturday morning animated Apes series that was airing at that time. Escape was actually my first Apes film. I would see the second, Beneath the Planet of the Apes next, and finally the original, which became one of my favorite films (and frequent nightmare producer). As did Escape, with its very creepy ending and the sadness of its last reel staying with me to this day. Seeing Escape first is probably why I have always taken the apes side in the series, seeing that it rather ironically turns the tables on what the first two films set up, as humans are the real villains in this one. Perhaps not when seen through the eyes of the entire human race -- the apes seemingly do have to die in order to attempt to prevent an unthinkably hairy future -- but then again, when have I ever agreed with the anything the human race thinks is the right way to behave?

Around this same time, CBS late night programming granted me regular viewings of films like Killdozer, originally a made-for-TV production. In addition to the Night Stalker and New Avengers episodes that preceded these movies at night, this is where I first saw the Beatles in Help! and Yellow Submarine, as well as dopey films that became weird favorites to me like Hello, Down There. Killdozer, while the film is not all that great, did engage me enough as a youth to make me begin paying closer attention to credits sequences, where I discovered the name Theodore Sturgeon for the first time. A trip to the library, and I was suddenly having my fragile little teen mind truly blown for the first time. I was already reading Burroughs and Silverberg -- probably far more suitable to my age -- but Sturgeon was something far different. Sturgeon led to Sheckley led to Asimov led to Clarke led to Ellison. Ellison was a particular favorite early on, and because of this, by the time I swiped my mom's copy of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when I was 14, I was probably prepared for the onslaught a little bit more because of watching a seemingly stupid little TV movie called Killdozer.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled diatribes...

The Pylon is back and open for business. Sorry to disappoint you.