1.
Whew! Lot happened in the last couple weeks. Went
down to Florida with the family to attend a friend’s wedding. It was a very
long trip, but a lot of fun (the drive was broken up by visits to my aunt in
Atlanta), and the first time my immediate family has all been together in the
same place for several years. Also, my 3 year old niece completely dominated
the dance floor at the reception and didn’t quit until sometime after I’d gone
to bed (I’m not really the dancing type). She needed a couple days to recover
from her several hours of non-stop dancing (no, seriously; that’s not an
exaggeration).
2.
For the ride home I brought my audio copy of Hard Magic to listen to in the car. My
parents seem to have enjoyed it, though perhaps not as much as I’d hoped they
would. My mom in particular was a little put off by the violence and language
(I didn’t have the heart to tell her that this was actually the less gory of the two series I’ve read by
Correia. Guy likes his blood). But on the whole, it was a success.
3.
On the subject of violence, the gore in
Correia’s books always struck me as being less disturbing than the violence in,
say, the Odd Thomas series. There’s
more of it, but it’s played with a
lighter touch so I don’t find it as cringe-inducing. Maybe it’s because of the
surrounding context (pulpy adventure story vs. spiritually-aware
horror-comedy), or because there’s kind of a boyishly gleeful tone in Correia
that would be inappropriate in Koontz. Cheerfully over-the-top is more
palatable than deliberately horrifying, even when the former has more actual
violence than the latter (see also: Evil
Dead 2). So, a gun-fight involving dozens of people who then turn into
horrifically shambling zombies is less stomach-churning than killing two or
three people. It all depends on what tone you’re aiming for.
4.
Well, I did it; I made 52,000 words before the
end of November. Go me! The book is still nowhere near finished, unfortunately
(I’m a little hazy on how the whole middle section should play out), but at
least I made the word count. My plan is to work on it some more this weekend
and then maybe start posting either next Friday or the following one. If
nothing else, that should motivate me to keep working at it.
5.
Last night was Rifftrax Live: Santa Claus. Santa
Claus is a Mexican Christmas film that they’d previously riffed on MST3k
(though using a heavily-edited copy). It tells the story of how Santa delivers
presents to all the good boys and girls of the world (read: maybe four or five
houses in Mexico City) while engaging in a battle of wits with Lucifer’s right-hand
devil, Pitch, who intends to foil Santa’s gift-giving so that he (Pitch) can
rule the world. Santa is aided by the magical items given him by Merlin the
wizard and the god Vulcan and by the quick-thinking of his young
second-in-command, Pedro, who monitors his journey from Santa’s crystal palace
floating in space above the North Pole. Meanwhile, poor little Lupita
desperately wants a doll of her very own and engages in a struggle for her soul
against the temptations of Pitch, who tries to get her to steal a doll instead
of waiting for Santa to bring her one.
I did not make any
of that up; it’s all actually in the film. And I didn’t even mention the three
bad little boys who plot to kidnap Santa and make him their slave, or the fact
that Santa’s sleigh and reindeer is a giant wind-up toy that laughs evilly when
he starts it, or that instead of elves Santa employs children representing a
dozen different nationalities to labor in his sweatshop, or the nightmare
sequence involving giant, dancing, two-faced dolls, or…well, you get the idea.
The movie is ridiculously bizarre, and would be pretty hilarious even without
Mike, Kevin, and Bill, but they pretty much knocked the riffing out of the
park. The sequence of Santa taking off had me gasping. Then there was “Andrew
Lloyd Weber’s Paradise Lost” and “Did
Daddy really expect to find work at 4 AM on Christmas morning?” and “Meanwhile,
the other demons are causing a terrible famine in Africa.” So, yeah; it was a painfully hilarious experience.
6.
A Thought: There has been, to my knowledge, one
non-isolated society in history (Okinawa) that voluntarily disarmed. The result
was first that it was annexed by two empires at the same time and second that
it developed one of the most effective styles of hand-to-hand combat in
history.
The
moral: If you beat your sword in a ploughshare, sooner or later you’ll have to
learn to fight with plowshares.
7.
Concluding Quote:
(as
the main character explains how all the information he’s telling the audience
can be found at the library)
Mike:
“Most of these shorts should just be titled ‘Go Get a Book.’”
-Rifftrax: Get that Job
