Random

“Star-Crossed Lovers” by De/Vision

I figured the theme of the week these two posts should be lovers, so I’m going to give you a visual/auditory synthesis of epic proportions! Last post we talked about Plath’s poem that deals with inverted love and the benefits and dangers thereof. This post, we’re listening to a Germanic synth-pop/darkwave interpretation of a Shakespeare classic!

(Yes, this is what being in my brain is like. If you’d like an even broader example I will direct you to my notes that I wrote at 3 this morning for short story ideas: Hates colors in LL Bean — replace w/ Raskolnikov’s yellow, Prynne scarlet, etc. Hates mirrors — sister Frankensteins bikini bodies like he paper maches literature. Likes dulling of darkness like B&W TV — hates when TV goes off — reflection, darkness for ppl inside TV. It makes vaguely more sense to me than you, but, there you go.)

This song plods along, building tension, scratching out a melody before going back to a simplistic metronome-like piano rift until the climax and eventual denouement. And boy, howdy, does this song deliver. There are two things that always get me with songs: an awesome bass line and grungy, crunchy percussion.

Don’t lose your heart
We’re made of sterner stuff
We like a bit of rough
Nothing in this world
Can keep me away from you
Lights up the night like you do

Life goes on
It holds no fear for us
Taking the smooth with the rough
Everything seems familiar
Weightless like a dream
Sometimes I can’t even feel

Nothing too amazing in the lyrics here, but, remember this is the same country that gave us “Du Hast,” so you have to be patient. There’s a creeping sense of an unhealthy relationship dynamic here, just like the bottom-of-the-wheel, luckless chap whose passion is turned against him in Plath’s poem. In the song, he’s a controlling, Sting-listening creeper whose entire existence is pivoted on the object of his devotion, and he sees himself as a soldier-of-fortune, a fatalistic man who makes his universe die around him just so he can show how great his love is.

They are, to his mind, “star-crossed lovers / like no others.” He will make her his possession* until there’s nothing left of her; her “heart,” her light, even her dreams are “familiar” because he’s made them for her. He’s unable to anything else because, like Leo in Inception, he can’t tell what is his own creation and what is merely reality, and even if he did, it wouldn’t matter. This is Romeo and Juliet today because there’s no way in hell any parent would allow their 14-year-old daughter to run off with some Don Juan who may or may not be a ladykiller. Shortest play, ever.

Love and what it does to people, good and bad, is obviously a universal theme in poems, songs, *ahem* novels about vampires, but I tend to like the somewhat inching, lurking covetous lust that suffocates all else until love is perverted into a mockery of its true form.

No, I’ve had healthy relationships with all of my boyfriends. Why do you ask?

Also: naked ladies. Your argument is invalid. Is it me, or does that hand on the left there look like it belongs to someone else?

*My father upon listening to Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Possess Your Heart”: “Ooh, it’s the stalker song!”

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All is Not Quiet on the Western Front

And by “front” I mean “vampire movie remakes” and by “western” I mean just that in one of the two cases. And by “quiet” I mean “good.”

I’ve been keeping y’all* updated on the two vampire movie remakes due to be hitting theaters near you in the near future. The first is the Fright Night remake and the other is the Americanization of Let the Right One In, retitled Let Me In.

I’m sorry to report that neither is looking promising.

They’ve turned Peter Vincent into Criss Angel:

Doctor, why? This is worse than when the Daleks and the Cybermen fought each other. Exterminate! Exterminate!

Even Roddy McDowall didn't wear that much makeup for Planet of the Apes

No one should look like Criss Angel. Not even Criss Angel wants to look like Criss Angel, which is why he always looks like a douche-canoe different.

They’ve turned the morally ambiguous, romantically turmoiled, sparsely intense Swedish thriller into an oh em gee she’s evil, dumbed down, American snore-er with the subtitle: INNOCENCE DIES. ABBY DOESN’T.

Half of the dialogue is stolen from the Swedish and half of it is made up to fit into the black-or-white-there-is-no-gray mentality that Mr. Cloverfield thinks American audiences want. He’s also reporting that he’s “written” the screenplay. I feel as though I need to have a talk with Mr. Cloverfield and tell him the difference between “writing” and “adapting.” One involves him choosing to acknowledge a respected source that simultaneously guides and shapes his work, but leaves him room to grow as a movie director and the other involves my fist.

And in case you’re wondering, The Vampire Diaries is back and I’m still hoping that SOMEONE OF IMPORTANCE (read: Elena**) is going to die and stay dead. This has yet to happen. I have a feeling it never will.

*VAM-pie-ur. SUH-kie. She-YET. These are all words I’ve learned from True Blood.

**I named a character in my novel Elena. She died. A horrible death. There was much gnashing of body parts, but not so much of teeth.

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Goodbye, Mr. Van Dien

I finally did what I’ve been threatening to do for months now: I canceled my cable. So, watch out, Internet, you could be next. (Let’s just say that horse head didn’t get into your bed because of a freak accident involving an airplane, a clown car, a travelling miniature pony circus, and the propeller from the prop boat from Jaws like I originally told you.)

I found that there was nothing on that I necessarily liked watching and was, rather, getting into a state of a lobotomized Jack Nicholson whenever a marathon of America’s Next Top Model came on, but without a redemptive escape involving the Chief. (Which, in this metaphor, would be watching the original Doctor Zhivago or something.) And so, because I have the willpower of a three-year old who has to go pee, I though it best to just let my viewing of infomercials, horrible reality TV shows, and re-runs of CSI go softly into that quiet night. (Which is, in and of itself, a metaphor for me cussing out the cable man who wouldn’t let me calmly and quietly cancel my cable, but was much more like trying to pull teeth from a three-year old who has to pee.)

With all of my new-found time, I intend to finally see how many vampire movies I can watch in a row write much more,* but with every gain comes sacrifice. Like Uncle Ben said: eat more rice with great power, comes great responsibility, and now that I’ve given up cable, I must accept the fact that I will never see Casper Van Dien’s face again. Ever.

Mr. “King-of-Crappy-Sci-Fi-Movies” Van Dien is, quite possibly, one of the most handsome men ever to grace my television screen, but, unfortunately for him, he is not a good actor — I have a hard time admitting this about him and Mr. “Whoa” Reeves — and, unfortunately for me, he doesn’t star in movies that make it to the big screen anymore. Or really, ever.

But, Emkay, you might say, because you too, have a ginormous crush on Mr. “Perfectly-Square-Chin-for-a-Superhero” Van Dien: “you can always watch him on Netflix, or the Internet.” To which, I will respond, “Yes, but I will never intentionally seek out any Casper Van Dien vehicle because, well, they suck giant monkey balls.” (I learned my lesson from Modern Vampires, and Mr. “I’m-Once-Played-a-Indiana-Jones-Look-a-Like-in-a-Horrible-Sci-Fi-Movie-Which-Makes-MK-Love-Me-Even-More” Van Dien is one of the very few people to not make me happier by starring in a vampire movie. Another is George Clooney in From Dusk Til Dawn because, to me, that’s a clear case of a “You got some Tarantino in my vampire movie!” and “You got some vampire movie in my Tarantino!” and while I like both separately, I apparently don’t like them together.)

So, with my cable goes my friendly neighborhood ghost. It was a pleasure, Mr. “I just. . .I can’t. . . .” Van Dien. May your made-for-TV charms grace the flickering screens glittering in the dark in living rooms across the world, but never again in mine.

Until I give in and get my cable back, that is.

*I have a very sensitive ambience-o-meter that gauges where and how successfully I can write. As it is now with my crappy, insensitive, annoying, loud neighbors, the needle is steadily pointing at 2 between 0 (what the hell does a pen even look like?) and 10 (this is like when I was 12 and writing the very first draft ever of my novel and I could just write and write and write until the idea that it needs to be good ever entered my brain.) Even though I will not be distracted by psychic pets from Jersey or scantily clad ladies with bubble-gum dispensers for brains — or both — I doubt I’ll be able to effectively write anything until I feel as though my apartment is my own again, and isn’t just a battleground between my raucous neighbors, my apartment manager, the police, and myself.

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Late Afternoon Bonus: Gnats

I was eating popcorn the other day and it’s a new flavor: salt and pepper, emphasis on the Gwenyth Paltrow. The pepper stuck to the sides of the bag, but some condensation was left, making the floating pepper pieces look like tiny little gnats. For a second I thought I was in The Lost Boys and David was asking me how those maggots tasted. And then I snapped back into cruel, cruel reality.

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Dear John

I wanted to write to you to let you know why I’ve been avoiding, nay, boycotting your stupid ass for the last two months. (Just call me the Rosa Parks of the electronic webz.)

We’re bad for each other. You’re somewhat possessive — which may be from watching all of that Twilight pr0n, nerd — and I like my freedom and creativity. I’m wacky and you’re a little stuck in the box, able to see only what’s right in front of you, and, to tell the truth, somewhat disgusting. I’m a simple girl and you’re a complex series of tubes that allows someone to instantly get any information — correct or not — by a few clicks of a mouse and several keystrokes.

See, we’re like those Mac vs. PC commercials and I’m Justin Long and you’re that other dude. I can talk smack with Bruce Willis in a completely unnecessary fourth-quel and you just, well, have eight roles on your imdb.com profile. And some of those aren’t even named characters, so watch out if you’re ever in a horror movie, because boy, are you going to get it.

We’re also like Xander and Anya when they sing in that musical episode of Buffy. So watch out, because you’re gonna leave me at the altar and then I’m going to become a Vengeance Demon again and try to kill you but then have lingering doubts, sleep with a vampire, and eventually get hacked in two. Wait a tic… I mean we have all of these things we hate about each other and we’re just so different that we’re unable to communicate about them. (And I doubt you can even blame the Shumash Tribe for all of those disease you have. Whew, man.)

Even Joss Whedon wouldn’t kill one of the two of us off, because we just don’t have that special chemistry, even if we did eventually end up kissing because we’re in a life-threatening situation and you’re about to get married to your childhood sweetheart and I’ve sworn off men altogether. We have as much romantic tension as the wooden boards actors in The Covenant.

You’re frustrating and I know I’m rather inept at keeping you clean and updating you occasionally. You take everything too literally and I haven’t learned how to do anything with you other than writing a blog that seven two people read and using an electronic version of a thesaurus that’s sitting on my computer desk right now.

But, alas, like most symbiotic relationships that don’t end with a bell tower and eyeliner, we need each other. Well, you don’t actually need me because you’re just an anthropomorphized version of something that allows me to write really horrible puns. But I need you because I hate people in real life, but people on you are kind of less annoying. Or maybe just less corporeal. Same thing, really. I also need you because then I don’t feel so alone in this world. Sad, but true.

So, Dear John, I hate your stinkin’ guts. You make me wanna vomit. You are the scum between my toes.

Love,
Emkay.

PS: I know your real name isn’t John, internet, but, like the song says, I’ll never tell. That’s the one thing that’s sacred between us, Jedediah. Oops.

PPS: God, is that what being Nicolas Sparks is like? Jeezy-chreezy.

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One of these things is not like the other

Sometimes I feel as if I should be a movie director instead of a writer because I’ll get really intense flashes of how something should look that can’t be properly conveyed with mere words. I admit it: I’m a child of the big-budget, flashy CG-ism that has infected movies as of late, so I love the mind-bending realities created by imaginative directions like Guillermo del Toro, Timur Bekmambetov, Spike Jonze, and Peter Jackson James Cameron Jean Pierre Jeunet.

(For example: in my novel, there are flashbacks — the most wonderful exposition pieces ever created by mankind. For each flashback — I take the Forever Knight and Highlander* approach — if I were to be directing a movie, I would focus on a specific body part, say a back or an eyeball or lips and use that as a transition to the past. The camera would zoom into Gwennie’s gray colored iris and watch as the pupil spiraled outward like ink through water and then pan back to reveal a completely different time and setting. Likewise, I would have a scene where Gwennie starts hallucinating and sees a carriage from the 19th century walk down a modern-day street, and everywhere a hoof touches, time ripples outwards in small puddles until the entire shot would turn sepia and be suddenly in the past.)

One of the most memorable and visually striking movies I’ve ever seen is a Japanese flick by the very talented, yet highly disturbing, Takashi Miike called Gozu. He’s best known for Ichi the Killer and Audition, but Gozu is my favorite.

On the surface, it’s a Yazuka coming-of-age movie, but it’s also steeped in Chinese and Buddhist symbolism. Now, I haven’t seen it since it came out seven years ago, and I’ve learned much more about its sources and Mr. Miike’s inspirations since then, so I can only guess what the hilarious, creepy and intense movie is actually trying to say. The image that’s been burned into my mind — in a very long, long list of things that will scar you stick with you — is the ox-headed man as seen on the cover:

Takashi Miike -- like my dreams transposed into real life. And in Japanese. And with sweatier men.

In Chinese mythology, there is the figure of Ox-Head, a guardian of the underworld, sort of like an Anubis-type. To me, this symbolizes the death/rebirth cycle that’s at the heart of Gozu, but more importantly, gives me more fodder to scare the living daylights out of myself. Remember the frangipani dream about the flowers that were symbols of ghosts and death? Guess who made a guest-starring role in my dreams last night?

This was on par with Mr. Fedora and the bear-headed man, only this time Mr. Ox-Head up there was kneeling by my bed and breathing his ring-nosed, Theseus-bashing, Osiris-reincarnating, acrid breath into my face.** I was partly awake, but paralyzed, and I could feel my hair moving with every snort; my eyes must have been open because it was dark and I could see things in my room and just his bare outline. Like the frangipani, Mr. Ox-Head is connected to death, or more specifically, the guardian of the place that happens after death.

Go talk to Haley Joel Osment, m’kay? Oh, how about Jennifer Love Hewitt? Patricia Arquette? FRACKING JOHN EDWARD. Don’t talk to me if you’re dead. Unless you know, you’re undead, but not like a zombie undead, but a vampire undead. And not a 30 Days of Night undead, but a Dracula or a Buffy undead.

It’s either I’m haunted or my subconscious is telling me I really, really want to be a furry.

*Whenever I cut any sort of meat in two with a cleaver, be it a chicken breast or a fish head or even a piece of tofu vaguely shaped to resemble an animal, I pretend to get a quickening. New roommates have learned this the hard awkward way.

**We have a quotations book at the coffee shop where I work and my co-worker (hi, Stevie! And Stevie’s mom!) has many, many of her sayings jotted down for the hilarity of future generations. When I told her about my latest dream, she said, “It’s like heaven and hell — in your face!” That immediately got written down. Another gem? “Is today still yesterday?”

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Re-Vamp

I have a copy of the movie version of Buffy the Vamprie Slayer. (I mean, of course I do. And even though it’s not considered canon by a lot of Whedonites, I still love it like the concrete business loves mobsters. However, in order to be fair to the ravenous hard-core Whedonites out there — which I imagine to be a little bit like Reavers, with their houses decorated in Fox executive guts and skins — the canon version of Joss Whedon’s original script can be seen in Buffy Omnibus #1, the graphic novel released by Dark Horse. I’ve read it and like it too, but PeeWee Herman’s death scene just makes the entire movie for me.*)

The copy I have looks like this:

Like, OMG a vampire!


Cute, funny, and not unlike Ms. Summers herself. The whole reason behind the non-canonical movie adaptation is that Mr. Whedon wrote a darker, edgier script that just so happened to have a cheerleading blonde named Buffy slay vampires. That was the source of the hilarity — the jarring juxtaposition of a somewhat ditzy girl having the fate of the world in her hands. According to story, the executives — the ones that are still alive and not part of the decor — decided that it needed to be lighter and they changed the mood and composition of it entirely. The series is much closer to Mr. Whedon’s original vision and he wrote it as a continuation of his original script, not what went to the big-screen.

The other day, however, whilst shopping, I ran across this:

Who ordered the stake?

Now, this is dark, edgy, and closer to feel of the series than the original movie…but it’s the same damn movie, just with different packaging. They did this with Near Dark as well, as the version I own has a disfigured and burnt Bill Paxton smiling like a crazypath and the new cover looks like, well….

Let's stare off into the sunset that we can't see without burning our eyes out, m'kay?

Fracking Twilight.

So, is the lesson here that people judge based on the covers of books movies, even though we’ve all been expressly told by after-school specials that it’s wrong? Is it that the people marketing these things think we’re all popularity-following drooling fools? I mean, they try to make a fluffy Buffy look gritty when it’s just popcorn fuzz, and a violent and grotesque vampire western into a cuddly romance. Is the lesson here that nothing is sacred?

I’ll go with the last one, because not only have they announced that they want to remake Buffy the movie — that’s right, the movie, without any of the characters we love like Angel, Willow, Xander, Spike, etc. — but David Tennant, the coolest Doctor, has been cast as Peter Vincent in the Fright Night remake.

Let sleeping vampires lie, dudes. And don’t redecorate their coffins while the sun’s still up.

*Rutger Hauer also makes me an extremely happy bunny because his last name is one letter off from mine. I think this makes me more like Buffy than the average citizen, because she too, has a thing for rhyming boyfriends. Pike / Spike anyone?

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Never the Twain Shall Meet…

My hair is now magenta and choppy and rock-star like. (Making it, officially, no longer Connor-like. There is no longer a great disturbance in the Force; you can relax.)

I’ve been compared to both Ramona Flowers and Hayley Williams by various friends. I had no idea who those two were until they were mentioned. And I call myself well-schooled in pop culture. I shall now commit seppuku.

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This is worse than talking in third person on Facebook…

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching all of the movies I’ve ever watched, it’s that if I’m ever in a horror movie, I’m moving as far away from the security guards, med lab assistants, and truck drivers as possible. If there’s another thing I’ve learned from movies, especially Kill Bill Volume Two, it’s that Superman is unlike all of the rest of the superheroes because his alter-ego is Clark Kent, not the other way around; he pretends to be human whereas Batman already is human and wasn’t Batman until Michael Caine said it was all right or something. (I mean, you can go into the psychological aspect that they’re just releasing their inner animae and that Bruce Wayne has always been Batman and Batman is even the truer expression of himself and he has to masquerade as Bruce Wayne in order to fit into society, but this is my blog, m’kay Jung? Get lost.)

So, who am I? I’m certainly not Spider-man, but am I only just Peter Parker? My friend wrote me a letter (hi, Jessica!) and PS’d that she wanted me to start up a twitter account, which got me thinking. Would I tweet — if I even tweet at all, because to tweet means tweeting about tweet-worthy tweets, in 180 tweets or less* — as Melissa Sauer or as MK Sauer? I know the difference may seem minute to you, but is rather upending to me. Does polyphony even happen to real people? Is this like the end of the second Matrix — Matrix: Uh, Crap, Did You Know Where We Were Going With This? — where Neo’s all “whoa” and stops the squiddies in real-life?

As Melissa, I’m a complex lady: someone who enjoys vampire movies and geeky things and dresses up as a pirate to go to the Renaissance Festival. As Em Kay, I am broody (with my broody-clapper that dims the lights whenever I clap to set the mood…if you know what I mean), obsessed with diction, and very picky about my writing utensils. It’s not like these two are incompatible, or really even all that distinct, but as Melissa I would tweet, “OMG, MY CONNOR HAIR IS ANNOYING THE SHIZ OUT OF ME.” As Em Kay, I would tweet, “OMG, IT TOOK ME 20 MINUTES TO WRITE TWO SENTENCES.” Melissa would be vastly entertaining, whereas Em Kay would be darkly intriguing.

I asked Jessica what she thought and she said, “Why not both?”

I responded, “That’s too schizophrenia-y for me.” Of course, writing this whole post about how I’ve come to think of MK as a separate entity outside of myself is rather strange as well. I guess it’ll be a sign of my maturing writer-dom if I wake up one day as MK and have to put on a Melissa mask.

But what do you think? To tweet or not to tweet? To go softly into that great night or just carry a big stick? I’ve never been able to write anything under the page limit since the age of 7, so I think twitter will either be a really good, or a really, really bad thing, but will MK eventually become a celebrity that needs to let the world know she likes Kraft macaroni and cheese the best? Will twitter even be around then? Inquiring minds want to know.

*Actually, I have no idea how twitter works.

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