Arguing About Aliens (And Other Ridiculous Pop Culture Debates)

The day that my cousin died, I came home early from work and I needed something to focus on, so when I saw AMC was playing the first two Alien movies back to back, it was kind of perfect. I could lock into several hours of mind occupying programming. Watching the first two movies, I had three thoughts:

1) There is such a thing as a well thought out and well paced action movie, so people who make excuses for $h!tty ones under the pretense that action movies don’t have to be smart are full of it.

2) The 1986 version of Michael Biehn was kind of hot.

ROWR!

3) I needed to see the following two flicks.

For some reason, whenever there are three (or four) movies in a series, I always managed to miss one. In the case of the Alien franchise, I had missed three and, although I had seen four, I had blocked it out of my mind, so it seemed like a good time for a rewatch.

But before I knew it, the rewatch turned into one of the longest ongoing painful cinematic experiences of my life.

Let’s start with Aliens3. I originally watched the theatrical cut of this and was sorely disappointed because . . .

1. They unceremoniously offed Newt and Hicks right at the beginning, which to me, was like bringing someone to their grandmother’s deathbed only so they can watch you pee in her face. Un-freaking-cool movie!
2. All of the prisoners in the movie were wildly interchangeable, save for Charles S. Dutton, and the pawlty attempts at humanizing them only served to be annoying. Sure, it was a nice idea to allow Ripley’s doctor boyfriend* a moment to sorrowfully recount how he came to be in the prison colony, but since he died almost immediately thereafter, I didn’t give a crap.
3. Even though they had had five years to work on the effects, the alien really didn’t look that good.  In the previous movies, perhaps because of budget or perhaps because of pacing, you really didn’t see that much of the aliens in any sort of detailed or prolonged way and when you did see them, they looked a little softer and more organic like a real life animal would. In this one, you see the thing feeding and running around and practically the entire time, it has that horrible, shiny, hard-edged, George Lucasy, CGI look to it which is no good and made things less believable.
4. The story and the dialogue felt a little uneven. Granted, the director was working without a finished script and the studio was constantly sticking its fingers into things, but this is still a concern with a finished movie.

But it didn’t end there. Upon reading my disappointment regarding this movie, a friend of my friend Henry (the one who works for TIFF and who got us tickets to our ill-fated movie) insisted I watch the Assembly Cut of 3 because it was a far superior movie. Not wanting to be unjust in my assessment, last night I popped the modified version of the movie into my DVD player and gave it a spin. And you know what? It actually worked for me. It only added about 30 minutes to the run time, but just by adding a little more moodiness to the atmosphere, throwing in some extra reaction shots and playing up the religious aspect of the prison colony a bit more, it smoothed down some of the edges and made it a lot more watchable.

The same however cannot be said for Alien Resurrection. About half an hour into that movie, I realized why I had blocked it out: Because it is horrible. No matter what cut of this movie exists for me to watch, I cannot even begin to imagine it being even half way enjoyable.

And the sad thing is, it should have been.

It had Sigourney Weaver back as Scary Ripley. It had a Joss Whedon script. It had the talents of great backup character actors such as Brad Dourif and Ron Perlman (Ron Perlman!). But it didn’t work.

The atmosphere didn’t feel right. The characters sucked and were little more than their props or affectations (Toe Sucking Girl and CSI Guy with wrist guns, I’m looking at you!) and there were so many weird/dumb things going on it was just distracting.

I have come to believe the Christie was a prototype for those dumb dredlocked twins in the 2nd Matrix movie because he looked cool but was similarly useless.

1. The Company’s been bought by Wal-Mart? Exactly when did Wal-Mart become the hallmark for smart, technologically advanced things? Because from where I sit right now, that is a giant leap.
2. Why, when all of them went through the checkpoint and scanned positive for weapons, did no one actually take away the weapons? Did security think that it was no big deal that the scary faced mercenaries were carrying guns and missle launchers with them?
3. If Ripley was trying to be humane to her messed up table clone, then why did she set it on fire to suffer a horrible painful death instead of using one of their handy-dandy guns to shoot it in the head? Torch ‘em later if you must, but cut the poor blob lady some slack!
4. How long can people in the future hold their breath underwater for? Did the movie go all Harry Potter for a moment and did everyone have some Gillyweed with them? Because that scene went on forever and nobody seems to go up for air.
5. Why did Christie kill himself? Sure, he’d gotten some acid to the face, but so did Hicks in Aliens and he sucked it up and kept moving. Was Christie secretly so distraught that his handsomeness was tainted that he couldn’t go on? If the gimpy French wheelchair dude could keep going, he should have been able to too.
6. How could Call fall all the way down the shaft and then get back up to the top and on the other side of the door in like two minutes when the only way up was supposedly up the tube on the inside? Does she have some magical I-Dream-Of-Jeanie blinky power that allows her to travel through metal plated walls through sheer force of will?
7. What was their logic for bringing the infected guy with them? He served no purpose aside from supplying some twitchness and a kill later in the movie.
8. How in the hell did the hybrid actually come to be? Because the Queen that was in Ripley died in her in three so were they crossbreeding backwards into another Queen or what?
9. What was the deal with Ripley and the hybrid caressing so tenderly? I mean aside from the fact that it looked a little bestial, Ripley was supposed to be its mom, so trying to slip her the tongue was creepy and needed to be shut down immediately.
10. If the wind was strong enough to suck the hybrid out the window and into space**, why did it not suck everyone else into space? I don’t even remember anyone covering the damn window***!

It’s like if V.C. Andrews was writing a space soap opera!

My friend Jack has tried to debate the goodness of this movie with me but no matter how he extoles its virtues, I cannot now, nor will I ever be able to see the value in it.

So now that I have watched what feels like an entire day’s worth of Alien movies, I put it out to the audience. What say you of the Alien movies? Do you like them all or, like me, do you find the later chapters taint the legacy of the franchise? Also, as a super awesome extra dose of geekery, who do you think would win in a fight: Sarah Connor from Terminator 2**** or Ellen Ripley?

*I’m sorry, but if she was going to knock boots with anyone, putting aside my weird Michael Biehn crush, it should have been Hicks because he earned it.
** Sorry if I spoiled this for you, but the movie is 12 years old so you’ve had your time to see it if it was important to you.
*** I’ll admit this could have actually happened during the movie and I missed it because I was wildly rolling my eyes.
**** I’m specifying in this case because if it were Sarah Connor in her pink tie dyed shirt and mom jeans, Ripley would be the obvious winner.

Adventures in Redo Thanksgiving

Because Boy’s parents are divorced, Thanksgiving has always been kind of hard for us because most of the time, it has meant running from place to place to make everyone happy. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Thanksgiving, but once we’d crammed our faces with three seperate dinners in the space of approximately 48 hours, the feeling we’d get afterwards (what I like to call “turkey bloat”) is horrible. We’d feel all tired and sore-stomached and by the time we got back home (we do not have a car so our schedule was left completely at the mercy of family members willing to drive us back into the city), it was almost like we hadn’t had a weekend at all.

So for the past two years, we’ve bailed on having a proper Thanksgiving weekend with all of the families and instead opted for raincheck dinners on different weekends and I have to say, it’s worked out pretty well. Not only does it allow us to really enjoy the meals, but I think it is a lot more relaxing, since we know it’s not going to be some sort of crazy gauntlet of stress and stuffing.

This year, our first of the Redo Thanksgiving dinners was this past weekend which could not have been more perfect timing. With everything that had been going on, I had almost forgotten about it when Boy reminded me on Friday afternoon, but having something to look forward to perked me up as it was definitely a more appealing prospect than sitting around the apartment feeling upset.

So Saturday afternoon, Boy and I grabbed what had to have been the world’s smallest car from the car rental place and hit the road to Logan and Charlotte’s place to have dinner with them and my Mother-in-Law.

This is a fairly accurate representation of how Boy looked driving our little compact rental.

I could get into all the family related tidbits, but instead I’ll just highlight some of the best parts for you folks at home with a list:
1. Sending the boys out to get bread to go with dinner and having them return with the ingredients for Rice Crispy Squares and no bread at all (a second trip out was made).
2. Seeing pictures of my Father-in-Law (who was not present) when he was in his twenties. Polyester pants and a mustache!
3. Debating with Logan about who the best Ninja Turtle is. (I say Donatello, he says Raphael).
4. Playing Rock Band and hearing:
a. Logan dorkily yell “Bass Groove!” every two minutes.
b. My Mother-in-Law sing AC/DC’s Hells Bells in her best choir voice.
5. Eating a dinner of chicken wrapped in jalapeno harvarti cheese and proscuitto and hearing my husband say “It’s like the chicken and bacon were doing it and then the cheese laid down some ground rules and jumped in!” (He’s so classy.)
6. Finding out Charlotte has a secret thing for bad boys. (Colin Farrel!)
7.  Discussing whether or not Ralph Fiennes is sexy or scary. (I vote scary!)
8. Me overpouring my wine when my Mother-in Law admitted she had a thing for Robert Carlyle.

Who loves you, baby?

I’m sure there are other things that happened after that as well, but unfortunately, I would not be the most reliable source as the excess of wine that ended up in my glass then ended up in me and I became happy and gushy Girl for much of the night.

In any case, long live Redo Thanksgiving! May every year bring more for us to be thankful for.

**In honour of my debate with Logan, here’s a little video I thought might be amusing – Twenty Something Normal Turtle!**

It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times . . .

After I wrote my last post, I kind of fell apart. I had managed to get through the writing of it and I had run off to the bathroom at work to shed some tears but I seriously thought I was okay to make it through the day.

This was not the case.

At about noon, Boy saw the post and called me to express his condolences. The night before, I had heard that Tassy wasn’t doing very well and I had been upset then, but hearing that she had passed made me feel like I had been emotionally dropkicked. Opening my mouth to talk felt difficult so with a strained and clipped voice, I tried to keep my sentences short and to the point.

“Yes, I know.”
“I am okay.”
“I will let you know.”

As I work in a very small office, my nearest coworker could hear my end of the conversation and came over to check on me.

“I know it’s none of my business but I could hear you talking and I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said. And then, she touched my shoulder.

The entire morning I had felt ready to burst and someone touching me was like releasing a valve so I let out a sharp, strangled sound (“Hurgh!”) and started to cry. It took me a minute or two of hot tears streaming down my face before I was even able to explain what had happened.

When I finally managed to collect myself, I was told I was free to go home, but I said no because the last thing I felt like doing was going home to sit and be miserable. However, the longer I sat at my desk unable to think about anything else, the harder it became to stay composed. I couldn’t focus and my body was shaking with all of the contained emotions that threatened to spring forth from my eyes and throat at any moment. So, at around two, I managed to croak out my desire to depart and after throwing on my coat, I sprinted towards the subway.

There is nothing more embarassing than making a scene in a public space, so while I sat on the matted corduroy apolstery, I tried my best to concentrate on my damp even breathing and to fix my brimming eyes on the subway map.

10 more stops to go.
7 more stops to go.
5 more stops to go.

Finally when we got to my stop, I bolted off the subway car and made my way back towards the building where Boy and I live. As I walked, a song that I love came on my iPod and I felt my throat constrict with my happiness for the music and my sadness for Tassy.

“This is a hammer, this is a hymn,
This is a match to a ball of lies . . .”

I sped up my step and made my way into our building as my eyes blurred. I swiped my security fob maniacally in front of the lock and ran up the stairs to our apartment. And then, once the door closed behind me, I finally let myself explode the way I had want to all day. I dropped all of my things on the floor and made a gutteral bellowing noise as Boy swept me up in his arms where I remained for what felt like an hour,  just sobbing and shaking.

During this time, I don’t know when, my earbuds had dislodged, but I could still hear the tiny music playing from where they lay on the ground.

“This is the howling at the moon,
These are the arms you fell into,
I am a fire and I must burn today.”

I don’t remember at what point the music stopped or at what point Boy moved me from my ridgid standing position to the couch, but once we were seated, he kissed my salty cheeks and hugged me tightly to him.

“I’m sorry I don’t have more that I can say,” he told me.

“It’s okay,” I told him, “This feels just right.”

And it really did.

When we’re growing up, we’re always encouraged to seek out the most attractive and the most intelligent person we can as a partner because appearance and brainpower count for something. And while these are things of value, you will need more than that. Because there are times when you will feel tired and dulled and pulled apart by grief and during those times, beyond anything else, the thing you will want the most is a partner who will hold you and tell you it will be okay.

Take it from someone who knows, if you have that, everything else is just gravy.

*****

This is the song I was listening to that reminds me of Tassy. It’s by AA Bondy and it’s called “I Can See The Pines Are Dancing.” The video is random but it is a very beautiful song, so I recommend giving it a listen if you have the time.

Tassy

 Even when you know something is coming, it can still feel like a punch to the gut.

My cousin Tassy was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the winter/spring of 2008 and given four months to live, but being the spunky Greek ass kicker we all knew, she defied the odds and fought back. Sadly for all of us, that fight ended this morning when she passed away about two weeks short of her 42nd birthday.

Tassy was not my biological cousin (she was married to my cousin Derek) but she treated me and pretty much everyone else in her life like family. She was the type of person who was generous with her laughter and who would do just about anything she could to make others happy. She loved to travel and try new things and she was so ethusiastic and full of life that was hard not to be the same when you were around her.

The week before Boy and I got married, she called the apartment bubbling with excitement and offers to help with the wedding. She asked me questions about my dress and questions about Boy and made me promise if I needed anything I would call her because she was just a phone call away. I didn’t end up taking her up on it, but the phone call left an impression on me because she sounded so assured and confident, whereas up to that point, I had felt a little like a big ball of nerves. Well, I thought, if Tassy can be confident with everything that’s going on with her, I can be confident too.

And I was confident. Confident about the wedding and confident that Tas would get better because she was smart and strong and good and because, frankly, that was the only way it seemed fair.

Never in my life has it hurt so much to be wrong.

I don’t know what comes after life, but I remember seeing a movie once where everyone gets to live their best day over and over for the rest of eternity. So, I like to think that right now, Tassy is doing that and having the time of her life away from hospitals and tubes and all the other horrible things associated with being sick.

Maybe she’s on a rollercoaster or maybe she’s eating ice cream with her family or maybe she’s soaking up the sun on the beaches of Greece like she did when she went last year. Wherever she is, I hope she’s happy.

Rest in peace, Tassy. We love you and miss you muchly.

Girl

November 8, 1967 – October 23, 2009

Taking A Chance

As anyone who is an Office fan knows, last night was a big night as the subjects of everyone’s favourite workplace romance got hitched. I remember watching the season 2 finale and being so excited at them just kissing so the idea that they were getting married brought some serious tears to my eyes.

I think the thing I liked most about it was that it enforced the idea, albeit with fictional characters, that life is malleable and built on the chances we take. Sometimes those chances seem small or we don’t even realize their significant to us at the time, but they can turn out to have big consequences. By doing something, by saying something, we can shape our whole lives and turn them into what we’ve always wanted them to be.

When I first came across Boy, I thought he was cute so I took a chance, said hello and cracked a silly joke. He responded in turn, amused, and a few weeks later, he officially asked me out. Neither of us knew when we made the plans for that night that by taking that little chance on each other, that it would lead to a happy life and marriage, but I am glad it did.

So here’s to taking chances – you never know where they might lead.

As a special little bonus, I’m including a short film I found on YouTube called Signs. As it is a little reminiscent of Jim and Pam, I thought it was appropriate.

Indie Pop Takes On Beyonce

I’ve never really been a Desinty’s Child/Beyonce fan, but I fully admit that their songs have serious earworm capabilities to them. The summer that “Crazy in Love” came out, it got lodged in my head about 435, 670 times – not because I thought the song was amazing but because it was working some sort of catchiness algorythym.

Anyway, this morning I came across an awesome cover of Beyonce’s more recent aural epidemic and I thought I would share. Performed by the San Francisco based Pomplamoose Music, this cover of “Single Ladies” is presented with just the right amount of stripped down simplicity and humour (“Don’t make me sing this part of the song!”) to make it seriously listenable. So pop on your headphones and give it a whirl!

Sesame Street Mad Men

It’s not quite Ernie and The Tapdancing Sheep funny, but it’s still pretty awesome. “Good work sycophants!”

Be True To Our Schools!

Okay, so times are tough for everyone right now. There’s a lot of belt tightening going on these days and that sucks. But some of the people it sucks most for these days are the people who live in high poverty communities. I mean how can you tighten a belt that’s already run out of notches?

So for those of us who are lucky enough to have that little bit of disposable income, there’s a way to help. The lovely Sarah D. Bunting over at tomatonation.com is hosting a month long charity extravaganza in association with donorschoose.org. For those of you who have never heard of Donor Choose before, it’s an organization that puts donors together with specific projects in public schools. This is awesome because instead of donating to some weird amorphous organization and hoping that some of it filters down to kids, you’re able to cut through the crap and give straight to them. Your money will go directly to things like books and art supplies and science supplies and math equipment* which will end up in the hands of students who need them most.

If you just want to help, you can donate to the most urgent project or, if you have a geographical area or a school subject you always felt strongly about, you can kick your money towards that.

As for the money, there is no minimum dollar amount, so you don’t have to be a Rockefeller to participate. If you’ve got $20, $10, or even $5, that’s something great. Because what’s important is that, at the end of the day, some kid in Ohio or Texas or New York will get to create or experiment or learn because of you. And how can you not love that?

If you want to learn more about this whole shebang (including how Sars and other fabulous readers are awarding select prizes to contributors), you can go check out Tomato Nation overview page here or the Frequently Asked Questions page here. Or if you just want to get to the getting and donate already, you can go straight to the donation page here. The contest just kicked off today and already 2,448* students have been helped.

Because I love reading, I normally set aside about $ 50 a month for books for myself, but this month I’ve donated that money to Mrs. M’s classroom in Texas so that they can get to read kick-ass books like The Giving Tree and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. 

So skip a week of Starbucks, brownbag your lunch, dig through your couch cushions and kick a little cash towards this great cause because every little bit helps!

* I’m sorry, I couldn’t be more specific than math equipment because I’m not a math person. Protractor?
**As of 10:02 this morning.

Technology: You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby

It’s funny sometimes to think about all the technological advancements that have happened in our lives. When I was a little kid,  I listened to music on a little plastic record player. I called my best friend Snuffy on a stationary rotary phone. I handwrote all of my school assignments.
But slowly but surely, these things began to change. Records became tapes which became CDs which are now non-tangible digital files. Rotary phones became touchtone phones which became bulky yet portable cellphones which are now so small women everywhere spent half of their days rooting through their purses to find them. And computers . . . well they’ve gone from taking up entire rooms to being small enough to carry on our person*.
Anyway, I often wonder, with the kind of leaps and bounds we’ve experienced in the last couple of decades, what will happen in the next decade of development. I mean I like to think that the stuff we’ve got now is less crazy than the stuff in a Life Magazine gallery I came across recently . . .

(1963 TV glasses by Hugo Gernsback)

But who knows? Maybe my kids will look back at my now state-of-the-art iPod and laugh at how quaint it is in the face of their new streaming audio Cochlear implants. 

Not being an inventor/engineer it’s hard to anticipate how things will go from here and sometimes progress takes longer than expected (I’m still waiting for my hoverboard, Robert Zemeckis!), but it’s still pretty interesting stuff. What say you, blogging audience? What technological developments can you see taking place in the next ten years? Guess now so we can all marvel at your forward thinking/intellectual sorcery in 2019!

**As an added bonus, two more of my favourite pictures from the dumb inventions gallery**

The 1937 Baby Cage! Attaching to the frame of any modern window, the cage was designed to allow infants to get fresh air and sunshine. I guess the idea of taking them for a walk in a pram paled in comparison/excitement to shoving them into a rickerty modified chicken coop suspended over a busy street. You go, baby daredevils!

The 1953 Curved Barrel Shotgun! If you’ve ever been in a trench shooting at Germans and thought “You know, I have way too much face to be doing this!” then this gun is for you! (It can also be used for shooting around corners.)

*Funnily enough, the save icon in many computer programs is still designed to resemble the floppy disk, the last version of which was produced in 1999 and the drive for which no longer exists on most modern computers.

The Messed Up World Of Canadian Literary Celebrity, Or Why I Hate Douglas Coupland Now

As you might know from reading my blog, I am a Canadian and proud to be one. There are many reasons to be proud of Canada. It’s a beautiful country. We’re down with gay marriage and universal health care. It’s awesome here.

However, what is not awesome here is our messed up version of Canadian celebrity, specifically when it comes to the world of words. There is a system that has been established over the years with publishers which pushes certain authors forward. If your writing or your style fit a certain bill, they brand you “theirs” and show you off to the world as an example of Canadian literary success.

One of the authors that has benefitted from this virtual literary caste system is the author Douglas Coupland. Coupland was something of a post-modern poster child in the 1990s as he wrote a number of snappy pop culture books that sold reasonably well in the national and international literary market. He was also deemed something of a nomenclator as he added the terms “Generation X” and “McJob” to the modern venacular.

Woo for him.

In any case, the way our system is designed here, once an author is in the upper echelon, they are pretty much guaranteed that everything they produce from then on out will be a success. While on one hand, this quaint insular system is nice because it promotes national talent, on the other, it  also  screws things up because, once someone is pushed to the forefront, they stay there. Whether or not they turn out to be a flash in the pan or they lose all inspiration doesn’t matter. Name recognition is a greater force than merit, so once you’re in, you’re in.

And, unfortunately, it seems as though Douglas Coupland knows this and, as a result, it seems he has pretty much given up trying when it comes to his writing. His last three books have consisted of two sequels (one of which he wrote himself into as a character – megalomaniac much?) and a book where it turns out that the entire story didn’t actually happen but was instead the result of someone’s adult education writing assignment.*

In any other case, mining old material for new and using a cop-out ending like that would be cause for concern. I can almost guarantee that, were I to have handed in any of these three texts to my old creative writing professor, she would have handed them back to me with the words “try harder!” written in big, bold, red letters on the front.

But coming from a notewothy author like Coupland, this literary laziness is perfectly acceptable. In fact, it’s lauded. It’s nominated for literary prizes. It’s worthy of fame and acclaim and works as a platform for other endeavours. Want to make a movie? Sure! Want to design a park? Great! Want to produce, not one but two pretentious art photography books depicting plastic loons drizzled in Maple Syrup? Fan-freaking-tastic! (In fact, why don’t you do a follow up book called “Turds in Tuques”? That’ll be super-subversive!)

I don’t know if it’s because people are still residually dazzled by his decade-old successes or because people are too afraid to admit they don’t get it anymore, but as far as I’m concerned, someone needs to cut through the unyielding circle of sycophantic f*ckwittery that surrounds the man and tell it like it is . . . so here goes.

Dear Mr. Coupland,
As someone who read and enjoyed your earlier work, I am writing you to today to ask that you stop believing your own hype and go back to writing decent fiction. If it takes a while to write another book, so be it. Do not let people confuse you into thinking that you are an industry first and an author second. This is very wrong. Read, recharge and renew yourself before you ruin your legacy with watered down knock offs of your original successes.
Please.
Thanks and best wishes,
Girl

** This is basically the post-modern equivalent of  the old “It was all a dream” ruse, a trick Coupland actually pulled in “Girlfriend in a Coma” where part of the book turns out to be based on someone’s apocalyptic coma dream. *sigh*