destroy all monsters

My friend does this thing where he smokes some cannabis, takes a few puffs of his delta 8 vape, and watches movies that I guess are enhanced by his altered state of mind.

I know, I know, you’re like, “So what? We all have that friend, and it is me!” I hear you. The thing is, my friend writes reviews of these movies, and they are fantastic. Witness:

Lance’s Movie Joint Perhaps you think Marvel pulled off the world’s greatest film crossover event by designing a 10-year, multi-film, multi-character movie arc that would lead everyone to the same place at the same time, but I must respectfully disagree because I have seen the world greatest film crossover event and it happened in 1968. Consider that in one 90-minute film (not two 3-hour bladder contests) you get Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, Gorosaurus, Manda, King Ghidorah, Anguirus, Kumonga. and Godzilla Jr. (aka Godzooky) all in one film battling each other for world monster supremacy. And that film is Destroy All Monsters. I need to pause here and express a warning if you’re planning on smoking a doob or two and settling back with a party size bag of Doritos and a 6-pack of Coke Zero and watch this film and that warning is do not try to make sense of this film in the context of any other Toho kaiju movie because this one stands alone. Whereas in some other cinematic universes there exists a thread – however tenuous – that ties them all together through references and backstories, no such thread exists here other than “hey there are gigantic monsters on the Earth and sometimes they get pissed off.” I actually tried to piece together some kind of puzzle of all the other films leading up to this one to see how all the monsters ended up on the same island and why only Mothra needs two tiny women singing to him (her?) whereas the others act independently and do the monsters like humans or nah and why always Tokyo (though in this case they also destroy Moscow, Paris, and New York for good measure) but then I got higher and thought to myself, fuck it, nothing matters anyway. While the (SPOILERS!) costumed actors portraying this variety of monsters do their humble best to stomp all over the carefully and lovingly crafted sets of tiny buildings and real working vehicles, the real stars here are the set designer and the dubbing actors who manage somehow to be even more unbelievable (and awesome) than the monsters. Several times I had to rewind the film to re-experience a line or a look or, like, Godzilla performing some expert karate moves, and what higher praise can I give than that this film managed to overcome my brain’s fuzziness several times to provide things that were crazy awesome amazeballs? You’ll be tempted to talk over the dialog as the monsters engage in one of many, many, many scenes of Thunderbirds-like destruction, but don’t do it! The very next line uttered could be the best one yet – followed by an even better one. It struck me how much these films rely on an uneducated audience, and how much we all know about physics and space travel and gravity that we didn’t (care about) in 1968. Nothing makes much sense, but it’s all pretty and camp and awesome. [5/5 Weeds] (Currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and you must watch the dubbed version for the full THC effect.)

So I have never been a huge fan of Kaiju movies, but I think it’s because I never saw the right ones. I saw the Matthew Broderick Godzilla, which is damn close to unwatchable, and I vaguely recall being a teenager and seeing some Kaiju movie that was all about annoying little kids singing songs at a Kaiju monster while someone talked into a wristwatch. (It is distinctly possible that my brain has invented a single movie from random bits of TV I saw on weekend afternoons when I was growing up).

But after reading Lance’s review of Destroy All Monsters, I decided that I would give this movie a chance to be my proper introduction to Kaiju … and holy shit I loved it. It was so weird and so over the top and so badly dubbed and such a goddamn delight to watch! If this is a fair and representative sample of what Kaiju movies are like, I’ve TOTALLY been missing out for, like, my entire life.

If you, like me, are new to this genre, or are curious about it, I can’t recommend Destroy All Monsters enough. It’s got a TON of exposition so you don’t have any FOMO about complext character backstories or whatever (if any) thread connects the larger Kaiju film world together. There are no children singing songs, at all, and the Kaiju do a goddamn delightful job destroying all the carefully-constructed cities they stomp around in. There are no silly breakdancing moves, and everything in it is grounded in some version of reality, so I never felt like it was insulting my intelligence by pandering to any section of the audience with dumb fan service like, oh to pick a random example out of thin air, the final season of Game of Thrones.

The big brains at SyFy wire have you covered, too, if you are like “I want to watch one of these movies, but I don’t want to risk a three dollar investment because I am a savvy consumer.” Check out this Really Big List of Ways To Watch Kaiju Movies Online, and if you partake of the wacky tobacky, get ready to enjoy a sublimely weird and totally satisfying, supremely fun 90 minutes.

“We are the spark, that will light the fire that will burn the First Order down.”

We went to The Last Jedi at the Chinese theater last night. It’s the first time I’ve been to the Chinese since Pulp Fiction or 12 Monkeys, and I feel no pressing urge to go back any time soon. That area of Hollywood is just gross and crowded, like someone took the worst aspects of Times Square in the 70s and now, put them together, and concentrated them into two awful blocks.

But I digress before I even begin, because of course I do.

I loved The Last Jedi. It’s a little long, it has some humor that felt a little out of place to me, and some of the edits were a little jarring, but I am willing to overlook those flaws because it was just a really fun Star Wars experience. I felt like, if I were a kid today, this movie would be my Star Wars, it would the one I would still be talking about in forty years, the way the original Star Wars (that I refuse to call ‘episode whatever’) is for me today.

You may need a second to parse that, because I did and I wrote it so go ahead. I’ll wait.

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Eldritch Horror on Tabletop and some other things I want you to know.

Tabletop’s Eldritch Horror Pt. 1 was released this week.

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5 things I want you to know

Here are five things I want you to know:

My friends, Kumail and Emily, wrote and produced a movie called The Big Sick. It’s about how they met and fell in love, and it’s wonderful. It’s a great date movie. It’s funny, it’s heartwarming without being saccharine, and it’s a true story! It’s a little indie movie, but it’s holding its own against big summer blockbusters, which is awesome. I want everyone to see it because it’s a great film (it should absolutely be considered during the award-o-rama season), but also because the way the studios work, it’ll only stay in theaters if it continues to outperform expectations. So please go see it, and tell your friends about it. (Those of you who are old enough to remember the early MeFi days will know where I got my linking style.)
Yesterday morning, Anne woke me up twenty minutes before my alarm did, because she needed me to hear the noise our air conditioner was making. It couldn’t have waited until I was ready to wake up, when I was starting to come out of my deep sleep cycle, because it was making a noise similar to putting a handful of ball bearings and some broken glass into a blender. It turns out that the motor blew out during the hottest three days of the year so far, because I am a fucking idiot who forgot to change the ten dollar air filter (in my defense, we did the math on the calendar and realized that Anne was in emergency surgery when I should have been changing it, so I may have gotten the reminder from my task list a whole second before I dismissed it forever). It was so hot in our house, things in our pantry were melting. I’m grateful that we had eighteen hundred dollars in a sock just for such an occasion, and by the time the sun had done its worst, it was repaired. So consider this your reminder to go look at your air filter and change it, if necessary.
I played games for the first time in months yesterday. My group was dealt a TPK when the last two members moved away in January, and I haven’t had anyone to play with. At first, I was happy to take the break, because gaming has been my job for the last four years. But as time went by, I became acutely aware of how significant gaming is to my life, my joy, and my reason for being. Tabletop is complicated for me, (and, honestly, Board Game Subreddit: maybe it just isn’t the right snow for you and you don’t need to rage at me about every single episode we do) and while I’m grateful as hell for everything it’s done to promote the hobby, the way Legendary has handled the fourth season and the relentless shitting on it and me by random internet strangers has taken its toll. I’d been so consumed by the things that made the show a bummer this season, and I’d been unable to play games for the sake of playing games for so long, I completely lost sight of how much I love gaming, how proud I am of our show, and the good it has done not just for my life, but for the thousands of other people who have shared their stories with me. So when we played Lords of Waterdeep and Splendor yesterday, it was like coming out of a fog of sadness for the first time in at least half a year.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Bob Marley recently, and just this morning I came across a record I didn’t know about: Dreams of Freedom (Ambient Translation of Bob Marley in Dub). If you enjoyed the ambient tracks or the dub reggae I played on Radio Free Burrito, you have got to check out this record. It’s beautiful.
Speaking of RFB, I had an episode about 3/4 finished two weeks ago, but I really just hated it so I sent it to the land of wind and ghosts. I know that I’m overdue to release a new show, but I didn’t appreciate just how challenging it is to do a weekly podcast that isn’t about current events, or features interviews. I feel like I have to go to this mental box to find stuff to talk about, and recently it’s been empty and sad (HEY JUST LIKE ME HA HA THAT IS A JOKE AND NOT REAL AT ALL EVERYTHING IS FINE I AM FINE HA HA HA). So rather than force something that I think is shitty garbage that sucks, I’ve just been waiting until I have something worthwhile to make.

So that’s five things I want you to know on this lovely Sunday that’s way too fucking hot. What do you want me to know?

EDIT OH SHIT I FORGOT I WANTED YOU TO KNOW THIS ALSO BUT SIX THINGS I WANT YOU TO KNOW IS WEIRD TITLE SO I’M NOT CHANGING IT: I am honored to be a guest on this week’s Lovett or Leave It podcast.

stuff and things and another thing

I’m nearly finished with Ravenswood, and just about ready to give it to my editor for his Red Pen of Doom. Before I jump back into the short story that became a novella that is dangerously close to being a novel, I’m going to reward myself with a couple of fun non-writing projects. One of them is building and configuring (and hopefully playing) my PiCade kit. The other is just an idea, but I think it’s doable: I have a 7″ Android tablet that I don’t use very often, because the battery on it is crap. But I have this idea to keep it plugged in all the time, and use it to display a scrolling news ticker, the current weather, and my security camera feeds. It’ll live on my desk. Does anyone know if there’s an existing Linux or Android project that does that sort of thing? I don’t have the knowledge or ability at the moment to put all that together on my own, but I think I could learn, given enough time.

I’ll be on the pre-game show tonight, before the Kings vs. Bruins, on Fox Sports West, around 7:15pm, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

My friend, Robyn, is an amazing woman. She made a video this morning that I want to signal boost.

Anne and I are way late to the party, but we saw What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? the other night, and it made me want to rewatchWho’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Sunset Boulevard. I’ve mostly been watching genre films (SF, Horror, Anime) and I realized this week that Classic Amazing Hollywood Studio Pictures is also a genre that I need to watch more of. I’m also on Team Bette Davis Forever, now.

I finished Dune. As I hoped, it affected me much more deeply and significantly than it did when I was 12 and didn’t have the ability to fully appreciate it. I kinda want to dive straight into Messiah, but I’m going to read Neil’s new book, first, and then maybe I’ll finally read Fall of Hyperion.