Member of the Swarm
I have told many people about my experiences as an extra for Kaiju Big Battel two weekends back, and at the conclusion of my recountings, most people take a breath and ask the question they have clearly been sitting on, waiting on during the length of my description:
“How did you hear about this, anyway?” As if a comedic organization based around a cast of faux-Japanese movie monsters wrestling each other was a concept so bizarre, so foreign that a regular person (read: to whomever I’m speaking) would never have heard about it via conventional means, like conversation… or hearing.
I heard about it in the same way I’ve heard about most fascinating cultural advances over the last six years, through people I’ve met or “met” through the WEF Delphiforum and its bastard, spin-off progeny. I’ve met comic book writers, artists, and publishers, sent money to world travelers, starving small presses, and robophilic collectors. I’ve received postcards, stickers, Christmas presents, and Amazon.com purchases from a worldwide variety of people with whom I’ve never actually laid eyes on or spoken. The whole deal has made my family vaguely nervous, but it’s been good fun and has kept me distracted from a large number of clerical duties, as well as introducing me to a fascinating series of authors, musicians, filmmakers, and the like.
“And the like” being a good enough phrase to describe the antics of a bunch of amateur wrestlers who dress up in huge foam-rubber outfits for the enjoyment of the Boston and New York youth counter-culturists.
And honestly, who hasn’t been sufficiently entranced with the lure of Hollywood to pass up the chance to be an extra in a movie? Even if the movie is being released directly to DVD. And even if the movie is less of a “feature film” and more of an entertaining excuse for people to dress up as crazed zombies or mutant space insects and meet together for an eight-hour day of mêlée combat in the middle of a New Hampshire cow pasture.
Which, by the way, leads me to state the following: I never want to hear any of my snooty, big city friends try to claim that “there’s nothing to do in New Hampshire…” Zombies versus insects in a knock-down, drag-out farmland battle royale. If that’s not something to do, I don’t know what is.
Despite some brief efforts to make this a large group thing, it ended up that the only person to accompany me to Kaiju’s corporate offices in Jamaica Plain and thereafter to the Taylor Farm in Windham, NH was Peter. At the costume fittings, the Properties Master had looked at me and said, “You look kinda Swarmy…” which, I discovered, meant that I was the right shape and height to be a giant foam rubber insect soldier. Having seen the torsos and heads and green spears lying about in various stages of construction, I was excited to be chosen as an insect instead of a zombie minion. However, as I struggled to pull my exoskeleton on, the Properties Master finally noticed my glasses. Upon the confession that I could see practically nothing without them, I was relegated to zombie status and tossed a set of medical scrubs. Peter was thereafter dubbed Swarm #7.
I was initially a wee bit put off by the fact that he was getting such an honor when he wouldn’t have even been there if it weren’t for me, but I was more disappointed that we would be fighting on different sides. Not that I was worried I couldn’t take him… no, no, far from it. But I expected that there’d be lots of idle time. From what little I knew about making films from having watched dozens of Behind The Scenes documentaries and from having watched Basil be filmed for day in Oxford, I was anticipating some serious standing around. And whilst standing around, it’s best to have allies, people one knows for light conversation and amusement. If Peter was going to be on the wrong team, then we wouldn’t get to stand idly about together.
Luckily, on the day of, Peter switched himself to the righteous side of Dr. Cube, and all was well. There was something about running about encased in foam rubber on a seventy degree day that didn’t sit well on his stomach.
In addition to our medical scrubs, the zombie minions were given a hastily-sewed green mask and one of a variety of weapons with which to attack our enemy. I had been eyeing a silver gladiator’s helmet and a huge double-bladed axe, but when the time came, they handed us the weapons and we didn’t get to complain. Peter received a length of padding that was constructed to look like a car muffler. I was given something that vaguely resembled a dagger, but looked more like a badly-realized Christmas tree, spray-painted silver. It was not the sort of thing that one could brandish successfully, let alone menacingly. So it was some consolation that I also was given a colander to wear as a helmet. It didn’t stay on my head very well during the initial charge, and during a break I fashioned an elastic to be used as a makeshift neckstrap. Continuity be damned.
The shots were filmed by three handheld digital cameras, and everything was done quick and dirty, guerrilla-style filmmaking. There were three series of shots. The individual sides were filmed shouting and rushing into the fray. Then, after a break, the cameras shot the first clash of the warring factions, the initial meeting of the two sides. We were instructed not to actually engage with the enemy, but to rush past them, and the editing and some sound effects would make it seem as if we were actually striking each other. After doing that for a little bit, we then moved on to the body of the day’s shot list: the mêlée. Our job, as extras, was to provide a wild and effective background for a series of dynamic, dramatic foreground confrontations where the main characters would either be dispatching us small-fry warriors with, well… dispatch, or would be engaged in Epic Conflict with another Kaiju character.
By the way… Some Kaiju regulars may have heard rumours to the effect that a Kaiju character DIES during this storyline. Unfortunately, as my own character died — many, many times — and dead men tell no tales, I can’t tell you who the character is. I did have fun as Blood Wrangler, though, holding the sticky spray bottle aloft so that the pressurized water and food coloring mix would flow more easily through the hose to the severed limbs. I was also stabbed dramatically by Kaiju hero Silver Potato. Peter, on the other hand, established himself early as a deft punching bag, and is in a number of close-up shots getting trashed by Uchu Chu, Mung Wun, and a variety of other big shots. He claims to have been in seven special shots to my three. That’s fine. I had a colander, after all.
3-D Lomography
Apparently, the new fad is lomography. Everyone else who writes random crap on the medium of the world wide web has already weighed in on the perils and pleasures of the LOMO Kompakt Automat camera, so now it’s my turn.
I have been a careful and precious photographer for many years. When I travel and vacation, I prefer to travel alone. This gives me a sufficient amount of time to take photographs of minutiae and landscapes from dramatic, calculated angles and to sit in hunched, spiderlike positions until the sunlight suits my fancy. I am patient and particular, which is why it’s good that most of my photographs are not of people. If you look at many photo albums from people’s travels, you will find that most of the photographs are almost exactly the same. Here are Joe and Amy in front of the Acropolis. Here are Joe and Amy in from of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Here are Joe and Amy in front of the airport. The smiles are the same, the clothing has few variations, and while the order may change (Here are Amy and Joe in front of…), the only real difference is the background.
What is the purpose of these photographs? Proof? This photograph categorically proves that the vacationers have in fact stood in front of something homogeneously famous. Woo. In the days of Adobe Photoshop, this is not particularly categorical. Also, I’m not precisely sure what the merit is of a) having dozens of virtually identical photographs of you and your traveling companion are, or b) taking photographs of partially obscured great works or scenery and architecture. You already know what you and your traveling companion look like, but the details of the ruins of the Glastonbury Cathedral are not so easily brought to mind without photographic assistance.
My father, on the other hand, prefers photographs with his traveling companion standing near the edifice. “For scale,” he says. Not a bad use of people in photographs, but I still prefer my pictures human-free. I will wait for a considerable time, my eye squinting through the view-finder and my finger tense over the shutter release, waiting for the split second when tourists are no longer marring the composition of my picture of, say, the Lion’s Gate of Mycenae. Bloody tourists.
So I am perversely interested in the LOMO camera. With such precision and pain-staking attention to exactness, I occasionally yearn for a camera sans buttons and knobs and dials and settings. A camera that you wave at the intended target, take a picture, and damn the consequences. A camera that doesn’t make people squirm and shift and demand that you take the damn picture, already. The versatility of its light meter and automatic shutter functions apparently allow for excellent and sometimes unintentionally artsy photographs in almost any condition or setting. When I first heard about these babies six months ago or whenever, I knew I wanted one as my second camera. I figured I probably go LOMO before I went digital.
With the recent deterioration of my primary camera, you’d think that I’d ratchet my LOMO-purchasing plans a notch closer to actually happening, but this is not the case. Han Duong recently brought my attention to another camera available under the LOMO umbrella, the Loreo 3D. The Loreo creates stereographs, photographs that are the 1930s predecessor the the View-Master.
While it may seem silly to buy a secondary camera that doesn’t take normal photographs, especially when my primary camera is essentially non-functional, I will have this camera. It dovetails nicely with a recent resurfacing of my love for View-Masters, and the ability to create my own 3-D images is just too cool for words.
Jedi Knight
When my coach tried to get me to hit a baseball, I could never make contact. When my older brother tried to teach me to skateboard, I wasn’t goofyfoot, I was just plain goofy. But while some semblance of coordination has happened to me over time — except being able to dance… always excepting being able to dance — I have always been and have resolutely continued to be an absolute waffle when it comes to video games.
When I learned to drive, it was terrible. I was incredulous at the amount of actions one was required to perform simultaneously. You have to push on the clutch, step on the brake, downshift, put on your directional signal, turn the steering wheel AND not hit any pedestrians or other drivers? Yeah, right… good bloody luck. I gave up on ever being able to drive a standard transmission right there. But my brother required a standard in order to feel like he was in control. But then again, he was a drummer, and accustomed to using both hands and both feet in independent tandem. And then again again, he was the household videogame king.
We could sit for hours in the family room (read: basement) watching him tackle level after level of THE LEGEND OF ZELDA. He’d suffer through the sort of repetitious requirements that allowed the “unlocking” of special characters, and his siblings would sprawl on the floor or the natty green couch and stare at the screen. But whenever I tried to play the games on my own, I’d give up. I couldn’t manage all of the little buttons — and we’re talking Nintendo, here, where there was only an A-button, and B-button, and a joypad. As videogame systems have progressed from 16-bit to 32-bit to 64 and beyond, the controllers have increased in size and complexity, and watching me try to maneuvre in TONY HAWK 3 is just laughable. My fingers could never find nor remember which button exacted which command. It was as if I was trying to grind my avatar’s face and chest into a smooth, planar surface.
But last night I spent two hours playing JEDI KNIGHT II on my Mac. Sure, after two hours, I still haven’t reached the second checkpoint and I seriously doubt that I’m even near completing the first level (or mission or whatever), but by god, I’m still alive and I’m having fun. I am controlling my panicky reactions when I walk around a corner and find myself in a room full of storm troopers. I’m firing with my left hand and targeting with my right, and yet somehow still moving and maneuvring as well. It’s complex cognition and anti-intuitive, and yet I seem to be doing okay so far.
Who knew?
Suzanne and Nappy Pong Boy
I went to the X-Men sequel and to a comic book store on Free Comic Book Day this weekend, so you might think that I am used to the unpleasant odors that a body can emit. After all, comics fans are notoriously unwashed and uncleansed, and usually when I enter my local comic book store on a Friday night, it’s filled to the brim with pubescent Magic: The Gathering players, most of whom have yet to discover the sexual appeal of daily ablutions. However, when I walked in on Saturday afternoon, most of the Free Comics Crowd had dispersed, and when I went to see X2: Manchester United on Sunday evening, the panting first-weekend crowd had significantly thinned.
So, no, I can’t blame the smell I encountered on Saturday night on the usual gang of suspects. I was at a Suzanne Vega concert on Saturday night, second row seats. The seat in front of me was unoccupied for the first three songs of the set, when a nappy, bearded, dreadlocked young man sat down. And his personal odor was so strong, it made my eyes sting. And I wasn’t just imagining it, either, because the woman sitting next to me started rubbing at her eyes less than a minute after this humanoid stench had a seat.
I have had people tell me that scent is the most direct of the five senses, because the particles actually are transmitted all the way up to the brain and physically come in contact with the smell centers. Frankly, I think that’s hogwash. If the skin and tongue have receptors that translate sensation and contact with chemicals into impulses that the brain reads and interprets, why would the sense of smell be so much more connected to the outside environment? It also seems dangerous, since when we are smelling something, we are scenting minuscule particles of the object itself. New Car Smell? Because the plastics and rubber are so unstable, they are chemically deteriorating at a vast rate within the first few weeks of creation before stabilizing. New Car Smell is actually tiny pieces of New Car.
All of which leads me to the appalling, inescapable conclusion that my eyes were stinging and my nose was recoiling because I was coming into contact with actual spore-like particles of nappy pong boy.
There is no Sanity Clause
My employer requires — as good, litigious-minded employers do — that I read all of the rules and regulations of the school prior to signing my contract. Despite the presence of an insulting, fascist restriction, I did so.
The clause is as follows:
4.12 : Electronic Information and Communication Policy (E-mail, Voice-mail, Internet, Computers, etc.)
Personal Websites and Outside Computer Use
Employees are prohibited from maintaining home or personal sites that are, or may be, offensive to any member of the school community or which could detrimentally impact the reputation of the school.
Excuse me? I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to publish anything on the web that MAY be offensive to ANY member of the school community? And when my employer says “school community” they mean a huge spectrum of parents, trustees, past trustees, alumni, grandparents, faculty members… Trust me, if I had some of the normal everyday conversations I have with my friends in front of my colleagues, they would be offended. The odds are against me that I have kept this website pure enough to satisfy the unrealistic censorship standards of the above clause.
And let’s not even delve deeply into the fact that this sort of requirement goes far and above the ordinary expectations of an employee. My home life is my own, and my netlife is my home life, so long as it comes from my computer and not the computer at my office. I do not consider that my employer has the right to dictate the rigors of my behavior when I am not under the auspices of the duties and hourly requirements of my job. I showed the above clause to a colleague — who had signed her contract without reading the handbook — who said that it reminded her of thirty-year-gone finger-wagging by employers who told teachers that “living with an unmarried partner reflected badly upon the image of the institution…” Has the internet’s wages of sin become the new breeding ground for such mealy-mouthed moralizing? Freedom of speech is protected everywhere… except the internet? After all, it’s not really The Press and it’s not really Speech, so… it can be censored and regulated and monitored and controlled.
Please, make sure to e-mail my employer with any complaints about the offensiveness of this page and its linked content.
Gulf War II: The Vengeance
It’s been slightly more than three years since the factory-install cassette deck in my car stopped working. Well, that’s not strictly true, there was a two month period in there someplace when it magically started working again, risen like Jesus, before ceasing to play tapes any more. I have wrestled with this is many different ways, but the primary two ways have been: playing music in a portable tape player that sat on the floor, and listening to NPR. The first solution wasn’t; it was a terrible, scratchy, mono-audio substitution, and I can’t believe I spent about fifty dollars on D batteries over the past three years. The second solution was a good one, a mature one. It has allowed me to get in touch with the events of the world and start to form opinions based on evidence instead of gut feelings and knee-jerk responses.
So what did I do on the second day of Gulf War II: The Vengeance? Bought a new factory-install cassette deck from a local junkyard. Time to listen to some music for a while.
Lost Time
I feel like I’ve spent all day fiddling with my computer. Working on The Brothel for a good part of the afternoon, trying to follow Nick Locking’s directions on how to personalize colors and format choices. Then home where my irritation with my inability to download a particular BitTorrent file led me to the Digital Archive Project which led me in turn to eDonkey which led me to fiddling about with Mac OS X’s UNIX emulator, Terminal. Flush with my partial success at installing eDonkey, I decided that had the ability to install the CLI version of UnRar for the Mac as well. Which led me to remember that I couldn’t get that webcam driver to work the other day…
Long story short, I remembered what it is about computers that attracted me to them so much years ago: the ability to lose all sense of time as one spirals around the gravity well of perfection, getting ever closer with each successive pass. Time stretches and eventually loses all meaning in a gravity well, and I love the possessive way in coding and commands and tinkering and noodling can leave one gasping for air and sleep when one finally surfaces and switches off the cathode ray gun. And while air and sleep are sweet after such a dive into the darkness of minutiae, I find that the lure of minutiae remains undiminished the next morning…
I, however, have 150 pages to read before tomorrow, and now I have four fewer hours in which to read them. Time to make some tea.
Who Was That Masked Man?
Her car was standing, still, in a mostly empty parking lot, and yet she had her hazard lights on — that’s what first caught my attention. It’s not as if she’d pulled off to the side of the road, she was in a deserted parking lot, but still worried about accidental collision. That was my first instinct that some assistance might be required.
It was fun to swoop in, change the tire of a damsel in distress, brush my filthy hands together, and march back into the darkness and into obscurity. I explained certain things as I was changing the tire: she needed a better lug wrench, for example, as the one she had was standard issue, meaning it was too short to really get sufficient torque to unscrew a pneumatically secured lugnut. I had her put the e-brake on, so that the car would be slightly less likely to collapse and crush me once I had removed the tire. Hopefully next time, she’ll be slightly better prepared to take care of the situation herself, if some dashing stranger didn’t happen along.
But two things ruined the cinematic quality of the moment — nothing that I did; I was perfect. I had the trenchcoat, all the tools required, the hat that kept my face in shadow as I knelt beneath the streetlight. But she made two fatal missteps that hamstrung the cohesive, anecdotal quality of the circumstance. The second thing was that she screwed up my exit. Listen, I understand that she might not have been as familiar with the cultural standards of such an event, but when I start to walk off after a Job Well Done, shouldn’t she instinctively know that she’s supposed to wonder to herself, “Who was that masked man?” and tell stories later about The Man With No Name? She’s not supposed to call me back and ask what my name is.
But the first thing that set the whole thing slightly off-kilter was her response to my arrival. I strode up, cooly assessing the situation: hazards on, tools strewn on the pavement, wrappings clean and just unsealed, girl on cellphone trying to get instructions on how to change a flat. And upon seeing me, she said, “Oh, never mind. I’m all set,” and hung up. She just expected that I’d help her. She just expected that I’d have the expertise. And while I feel I ought to be flattered, as I don’t normally assume that I cut the sort of figure that carries about such absolute competence, my immediate reaction was to be put off. Don’t just assume that I can help you, Miss. In order for you to be properly grateful afterwards, you have to be wary at first. To blindly accept the assistance of strangers doesn’t elevate the moment sufficiently.
Rated P for Peril
Sometime in the vicinity of the V-Chip Ratings Flap, after which television shows started broadcasting small boxes indicating the potential danger of their subsequent content, I began reading film reviews that listed the reviewers’ thoughts on the reasons why a film received a certain rating. Some of these comments seem to be taking the piss, as it were — at least, I sincerely hope so. If one of the reasons why, for example, CROSSROADS received a PG-13 rating is because the three main characters drove without seatbelts, then I will have to seriously reconsider my already critical opinions of the MPAA and the CARA.
More recently, though, I have noticed that movie posters and film trailers have a box that lists the reasons why a rating has been merited. Some of these are worded flagrantly enough, and revealing of enough puritanical conservatism as to give their potential audience the wrong idea; can the “sexuality/sensuality” that appears in TUCK EVERLASTING really be so salacious as to bear mention if the film is only PG-13? Then again, I’ve noticed that casual drug use can be the sole listed reason why a film is rated R, and that a positive portrayal of a homosexual relationship will brand a film not only with an R-rating, but also the Red Preview Screen Of Death, indicating that it is not acceptable for all audiences and is not likely to even be shown at the majority of most commercial cinemas across the United States. Far be it from children to watch uncensored trailers that show men kissing with absent familiarity.
Still, the content preview boxes have provided me with entertainment, and have provided thousands of semi-observant teenaged boys with the ability to, um, pique their interests while searching for salacious content, much in the way that any television show rated TVMA will be worth their second glance. But by far the best rating reason I have seen is that of the upcoming Disney film TREASURE PLANET. Disney prefers to have their animated films judged as appropriate for General audiences, going so far as to release the PG-rated NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS under the Touchstone banner, in case it’s macabre trappings impugn upon the popular perception of the Disney family imprint. Still, the animated TREASURE PLANET will be rated PG.
And the MPAA stated reason? “Peril.”
Bwah-ha-ha ha haa ha ha haaaaa….
Oh my…
Christmas Gets Earlier Every Year
Yesterday, I saw huge banners hung in the window of my local JO-ANN’S FABRICS store informing me that Halloween was coming, and that Jo-Ann and her associates would be ready and able to help me with my pre-holiday needs so that I would be fully prepared on the eve of all hallows.
Now, I celebrate two holidays: Groundhog’s Day and Hallowe’en. I send out greeting cards on Groundhog’s Day, much in the way that ordinary people send out Christmas cards — the sort of empty correspondence that serves of a reminder that the sender and the recipient aren’t really what anyone would call friends anymore. The sort of card that makes sense when it arrives on the day that is the harbinger of Spring Cleaning. On Hallowe’en I celebrate by dressing up in a costume.
Okay, so, yes… I am already planning my Hallowe’en costume for 2002, but that doesn’t mean i need to see advertizements for it. I mean, what is this? Is Hallowe’en the new Christmas and Jo-Ann & Co. need to tell me that I still have FIFTY shopping days left until Hallowe’en? Which probably isn’t true, since most New Hampshire towns have abandoned the idea that a Holiday should be celebrated on the day upon which it falls. It’s bad enough that trick or treating starts at midday in order to prevent the successful molestation or injury of small children traipsing about the quiet New England hamlets in their pre-fabricated commercial culture plastic sheathes… It’s bad enough that parents drive their children from house to house and to other neighborhoods so that they can get the best loot…
…But the fact that Hallowe’en is being advertized a mere ten days into September means that the first commercial signs of Christmas will creep back as well. I fully expect to see Christmas lights and fake evergreen trees in store windows by November 20th. Mark my words.
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