I found out earlier today that comic book legend Peter David died at the end of May. (I don’t know how the news escaped me.) He was 68 years old. He passed away in East Patchogue, NY, which isn’t too far from my childhood home.
What a loss. David was an amazing talent — his writing in the early 1990’s (especially Spider-Man 2099) was one of the things that made me truly love comics as a medium.
He was also an outstanding advocate for the freedoms of speech and press. He wrote a truly enjoyable blog that I followed for years, where he occasionally focused on constitutional issues. He broke them down with admirable ease and clarity. (He had an instinctive grasp of concepts that doubtless contributed to his success as a writer. I often thought that if he hadn’t decided to be a storyteller, he would have made a great attorney.)
Yes, this is indeed one of those “magic eye” images popularized in the 1990’s. (I still think these things are neat, even if I am pretty hit-or-miss at being able to see them.) “Autostereogram” is a new word for me, but it makes sense if you break the word down.
Incidentally, the “Mallrats” (1995) scene to which I’ve linked above is a blooper. The image contained by the poster at the mall is not a sailboat; it’s a pattern of different geometric shapes. None of the characters could have seen a sailboat. (Seriously, pause the image on a laptop and look.)
Flashback to the early 1990’s. I worked the cafeteria at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia. (It was a work-study program.) Southern kids would line up at the counter for me to serve them Worcestershire sauce, because they laughed at the way I pronounced it.
It’s “wista-SHEER sawce.” Years of seeing it passed around my New York Irish dinner table could not have misinformed me. It was the Southerners and their adorable “WAR-is-to-Shire” pronunciation that deserved laughter.
(And hopefully low-sugar too? I honestly don’t know. My girlfriend told me that grapes and mangoes have a lot of sugar in them, and that seems cosmically unfair.)
Disclaimer — I am a neophyte when it comes to any kind of diet. I cannot replace your doctor, no matter how much the idea might appeal to you. But feel free to refer to this, if you can read my disordered, hyperactive chicken-scratch. (Under the “Yes” column, for example, it is supposed to be “B-E-A-N-S,” and not “bears.”)
My source here is primarily the Mayo Clinic. But I also had help from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and from my girlfriend, who is far smarter than me in all subjects, except possibly free-verse poetry and 1990’s-era comic book villains.
YES, we looked like this — and we looked ****ing AWESOME. We need to bring this whole style BACK.
My only concern about this meme is that it originates from the 1980’s Memory Lane Facebook page, and I was dressing like this at Mary Washington College in the early 1990’s. Was I just behind the times? Maybe that was why people looked at me funny.
But I was big man on campus with these. I had people literally congratulating me on my pants — and that has not happened once since the 1990’s.
I’m enormously proud tonight of my old friend and Mary Washington College alumnus, Jason Buckland — a.k.a. Scorpio Static. His new trance/electronica album, “Utopia,” dropped worldwide yesterday and it’s damned good stuff.
“Utopia” reminds me of the progressive and alternative dance music that I danced to as a student in the 1990’s. (Jason was the actually the guy who introduced me to it as a kid — jamming to Erasure and New Order in the dorms of MWC and in the clubs in Washington, D.C. )
“Utopia” is fast paced and trippy, and I enjoy it even more than Scorpio Static’s 2011 album Tranceformation. This time out, my favorite track is probably a toss-up between “Genesis” (Track 3) and “Journey to Heaven” (Track 6). If you’re a writery-type like me, you might find it makes good work music.
So I’m introducing a dear friend tonight to “28 Days Later” (2002). It is possibly my favorite horror film of all time, maybe even narrowly beating out “Aliens” (1986), “Alien 3” (1992), John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982), the Sutherland-tacular 1978 version of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” and George A. Romero’s first three “Dead” films (1968, 1978, 1985). (Whenever “Star Wars” fans refer to their “Holy Trilogy,” I muse inwardly that those last three are its equivalent for zombie horror fans.)
My friend thinks it’s funny that I refer to “28 Days Later” as “my sacred cow.” I’ll be crestfallen if she does not like it, and I told her as much. And that’s weird for me … I usually don’t feel let down when someone doesn’t enjoy the same books, movies or music that I do. Not everything is for everyone. Art would lose its mystique if it weren’t subjective. If all art appealed to all people, it would lose all its appeal altogether.
Part of me feels, unconsciously perhaps, that “28 Days Later” is the kind of film that “redeems” the horror genre (even though no genre needs such redemption — if art is well made or if it affects people, then it’s just fine).
Most comic book fans of my generation can tell you how people can occasionally roll their eyes at their favorite medium. (Comics have far greater mainstream acceptance today than when I started reading them in the 1990’s.) For horror fans, it’s sometimes worse. Horror is a genre that is easily pathologized — and sometimes with good reason, because a portion of what it produces is indeed cheap or exploitative. I wish I could accurately describe for you the looks I’ve gotten when acquaintances find out that I’m a horror fan. They aren’t charitable.
“28 Days Later” and movies like it are so good that they elevate horror to a level that demands respect from the uninitiated. It is an intrinsically excellent film — it just happens to have a sci-f-/horror plot setup and setting. It’s beautifully directed by Danny Boyle, it’s perfectly scored and it’s masterfully performed by its cast — most notably by Cillian Murphy and Brendan Gleeson.
I just cannot be partial to slasher films. It’s never been my preferred horror sub-genre to start with, and, at this point in my life, these movies have become so predictable and devoid of story that I often find them boring. There are exceptions — some of the the original “A Nightmare on Elm Street” films (1984- 2003) and “Child’s Play” (1988) were grotesquely creative and had terrific supernatural setups that were well executed. But even the attraction of John Carpenter’s original “Halloween” films (1978, 1981) is still mostly lost on me.
With all of that said, I’ll still say that my horror fan friends were right when they told me that 2018’s “Halloween” was a superior sequel. It looks a lot better than the segments I’ve seen of of the campier followups in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
It’s far better filmed and directed, it’s occasionally scary and it benefits from a very good cast. (Jamie Lee Curtis is of course quite good as the film’s heroine and perennial “final girl.” I’m also always happy to see Will Patton on screen, and I like Judy Greer a lot.) The script occasionally shines unexpectedly, too — the screenwriters have a truly impressive talent for making minor characters vivid with funny throwaway dialogue. (One of the three screenwriters is actor-writer-comedian Danny McBride, who I liked quite a bit in 2017’s “Alien: Covenant.”)
I’d be lying, however, if I told you that I wasn’t occasionally bored by this latest “Halloween” — simply because its basic, boilerplate plot and conclusion seem endlessly redundant with those of other slasher films. There are few surprises toward the end — one “gotcha” moment was especially nice — but the overall story is just too tired. I’d rate this film a 7 out of 10 for its merits, but I can’t actually get excited enough about it to recommend it.
That means the ladies and gentleman of 90’s-era New Hall need to return to Dodd Auditorium for at least one of his performances and discreetly riff him afterward — in the same manner as the MST3K episode, “Girls Town.” It’s a moral imperative.
I’m surprised I haven’t mentioned “Girls Town” here at the blog before. It’s one of the show’s best.
As I’ve shared here at the blog before, “Mystery Science Theater 3000” was a pretty big part of my college experience. MST3K parties were indescribably fun. I honestly believe that I have literally never laughed so hard in my life.
I’ve previously linked to the priceless episode where Joel and the ‘Bots skewer Joe Don Baker and 1975’s “Mitchell.” Below are three more that were the unofficial required viewing for the second floor of Mary Washington College’s New Hall during the 1993-1994 school year.
What was maddening about MST3K was how difficult it was to explain to the uninitiated. (Bear in mind, this was before the days of Youtube, with which you could just send your friends a clip.) It was an amazing TV show, but my efforts to explain it to friends made it sound preposterously stupid: There are these three comedians that make fun of old movies — really bad ones — as the movies are playing. Two of the comedians are portrayed by robot puppets … There’s an ongoing skit in which they’re stuck in space. The special effects are really terrible — but that’s okay, because it’s kinda part of the joke …
The first episode below is 1966’s “Manos: the Hands of Fate,” which I understand to be the most popular among fans. (Even aside from MST3K’s satirical riffing, I’ve read that this is widely regarded as the worst movie of all time — a distinction I’m not sure it truly deserves.)
The second is the episode devoted to 1944’s befuddling and blithely moralizing “I Accuse My Parents.” (I and the other guys on my floor might have actually liked this one even more than “Manos.”)
The third is my personal favorite — the entry for 1951’s saccharine, preachy “The Painted Hills.” In a strange coincidence, I think it’s actually the first one I ever saw. And it’s also one that I’ve never heard named as a favorite by another MST3K fan. Seeing the Joel and the ‘Bots make fun of a poor defenseless dog (played by the same dog who played Lassie, no less!) was just too irreverently brilliant. SNAUSAGES! (And does anyone else think that this was a morbidly strange film when it was first conceived? It was marketed as a family-oriented “Lassie” movie, but it contains just a bit more murder and bizarre horror than you’d expect from that.)
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 
