Dark Sides

"The Lunatic Is On The Grass"

I'm on holiday and feeling sorry for myself. That's the long and the short of itI've been off for five days now, on a holiday that I've been looking forward to for a long time, because, you know, my last time off was the middle of February.

But this holiday was supposed to be about me and Debra. We were supposed to be off to Carlisle tonight for her friends wedding tomorrow and then we were supposed to be off to Yorkshire or the Lakes or somewhere on a camping trip next week.

So there I was, dumped and depressed as all hell, and I think fuck it, I'm not going to let it get me down. So I make some proactive choices. I rejoin Match, getting emailing to some people, and I think, ooh, I have two whole weeks off, if I make a concerted effort, I can get a lot of writing done. Inspired by a semi-drunken text that Blades sent me following Adrian Nightingale's stag do 9and there's a name I would love to steal) I come up with an idea. Basically, it's three friends who've known each other since school reuniting for a stag do. It allows me to play with my pet theme of the moment which is about realising you're not that young anymore, while one of the main characters (Adrian Monroe - I stole the Christian name at least) has inherited the storyline from Weeknights, which was far too tied up in what I felt for Debra the first time she broke up with me.

"Daisy Chains"

Funnily enough, when Blades and Gilli were up, he asked me, in front of Debra, how Weeknights was progressing. I was vaguely ashamed that I'd started writing a book that was, essentially, a true story (echoes of Sheryl Crow's 'The Book' from her self-titled second album) with someone who I was in love with (and who would, the following day, admit that she was falling for me in a big way, although we all know how that turned out).

"The Lunatic Is In The Hall"

Initially entitled 'The Stag', it has subsequently inherited the title 'The Violet Hours' which is a quote from TS Eliot's The Waste Land (but which is also, a quick Wikipedia search tells me, an album by an idie band called The Clientele, well, theirs is The Violet Hour - no plural - but the lyrics are vague enough so that they could be applied to me book too).

Except... I wrote a thousand words and a bit on Monday, a thousand and a bit on Tuesday. Then Wednesday and today, nothing. Maybe I'm just tired. Maybe I'm not really cut out for this whole writing life. I don't know.

"Everyday The Paperboy Brings More"

So, tomorrow I'm going on a date with someone I've met on Match. She seems nice, but I've already got the butterflies. We're going out for a few drinks. Nothing structured, which is terrifying. On the one hand I've got my first date with Debra which went better than I could have possibly hoped for, then on the other we have Angela, who never texted me back.

It's a surreal situation. You're going on a date with someone that you've never met before, but you've spoken by email (and we've exchanged a few texts as well) so there's a mutual interest there but you never know; you meet in real life (is there still a small corner of the world where netheads refer to it a rl?) and you might just not click. It can happen. So no pressure there then.

"I'll See You On The Dark Side Of The Moon"

So where does this all leave me? Sure, there's hope on the horizon, but if nothing else, these few days off have hammered home the point that my life isn't very interesting, even to me. Today I've sat and watched a couple of episodes of Star Trek, Sliders, Stargate, Fanily Guy apiece, thought about rearranging my books, faffed on the internet far too much, wrote a couple of blogs. Nothing much. And I'm upset with myself, because it was not supposed to be this way. I was supposed to do great things this holiday. I was supposed to get my life back on track.

We'll see how tomorrow goes. Peace out.

Love Will Tear Us Apart

A Time To Love, A Time To Hate

So, the new Star Trek movie. How awesome was it? Aside from a few minor niggles (how does a supernova threaten the entire galaxy?) it was a marvellous thing to behold. People who don't even like Star Trek have admitted to enjoying it. It has been the kick up the arse that the franchise has needed since - ooh - about season one of Enterprise. Of course it still remains to be seen whether or not this is a false dawn for the franchise or whether they can follow through on it.

It's strange that so much of Nemesis, that unloved entry (and justifiably unloved at that, it doesn't even have the sense of fun that The Final Frontier has) has revitalised Star Trek, most explicitly in the book line. Since Nemesis, the books - in particular the Next Generation line itself - seem to have been revitalised, almost becoming proper science fiction adventures instead of just 'Oh, it's only a Star Trek tie-in, this will do' hack jobs. It's also telling that a lot of writers who had in the past made Trek novels their bread and butter (Susan Wright, Dean Smith & Kristine Rusch, Diane Carey, LA Graf) all of whom had gone off the boil somewhat (Smith and Ruch's early Trek novels were somewhat magnificent, but then they quickly becamse shoddy rush jobs) have moved on to pastures new while leaving the cream behind (Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman - who admittedly has had his fair share of turkeys, but when given a decent deadline turns in solid work - JM Dillard) and introducing a new cadre, a lot of whom, it must be said started out with entires in the Strange New Worlds competition, not open to anyone living outside of the US. Led, it seems, by Keith RA DeCandido this new batch of young and aggresive writers (and when was the last time Trek writers were visibly trying to write a great book? In my humble opinion, it was probably back in the early days of the novels, when they weren't afraid of commissioning new writers or hiring hard sf stalwarts like Greg Bear and Vonda McIntyre). So, a good time for the novels. It's ironic, of course, that just as the Trek books get their act together the Doctor Who novels are reduced to the level of junior novelisations to tie in with the new series (especially since the New Adventures are still perhaps the high water mark for tie-in novels) with only a few eceptional entires (Gareth Robert's Only Human, Stephen Cole's Sting Of The Zygons and Justine Richards' Martha In The Mirror) among a range of books that are very rarely anything less than readable (the only true turkeys I can point to in the series are Stephen Cole's The Art Of Destruction and Mike Tucker's Snowglobe 7 - both authors who are responisble for above average entries - although Cole, it must be said, oscillates wildly between quality and dross, he works much better in an historial or present day context (his Timeless, for the EDA range was a true masterpiece) than a truly SF setting).

Autobots Assemble!

Other movies I have seen recently:

Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen - A big bag of candy, highly enjoyable to watch, ludicrously exciting, hilariously funny, Mega Fox looking even sexier than she did in the last movie, but so much happens in the two and a half hour running time that by the end of it you feel slightly sick. It's overwhelming, and shines with moments of brilliance. A true blockbuster, in the best sense of the word.

Terminator Salvation - There's nothing actually wrong with this film, it just doesn't offer up anything new (aside from a fight in Cyberdyne between Bale and - oh yes! - Arnie). Anton Yelchin - still a comedic highpoint as Chekov in the new Trek - gives us a pitch-perfect imitation of Michael Beihn, Christian Bale looks broody, Sam Worthington - the true star of the movie - rediscovers his humanity. But any film with Michael Ironside in, I'll watch. He was pretty much the only reason that seaQuest 2032 was anywhere near watchable.

Coraline - Fantastic, even if the 3-D elements did seem to be somewhat a last minute addition. As an adaptation of Gaiman it's more faithful to the text than Stardust, but perhaps lacking in that films heart.

Angels & Demons - I'm going to say out right now I haven't seen The DaVinci Code, but I did read the book before going to see this. I wasn't too bothered about seeing it, but Debra wanted to, so we did. I'm glad I read the book first. The film washes over everything, simplyfying things which didn't need simplyfying and complexifying others. And, although it cuts down on the soap operatics from the end of the book, it's still ridiculously over the top, and not in a good way.

Harry Potter 6 - And I'm glad I read the book of this before I saw it as well, because there's only about a hundred pages of it on screen, almost all towards the end. Everything else has been subsumed by an apparent desire to forefront the Ron-Hermione-Lavender love triangle and the burgeoning Harry-Ginny romance. Tonks and Remus' troubles aren't even referred to (the one scene in which they appear they are already a happy couple) and the film lacks even the soporific pace of the first two films. It comes as a shock following TOotP, which was by far the most cinematic of the films to come to something that looked like it was edited by a monkey who wanted as much Lavender as possible (who at least is as annoying as she is in the book) and didn't care about the big arc, namely the escalating paranoia among the wizarding community and Harry's own increasing belligerance.

And Now, The News

Yes. It's true, me and Debra have split up. A month and a bit ago, as it goes. We'd spent a wonderful weekend together. I'd worked all weekend previously so that Natalie could ahve the Sunday off, so I was off Saturday - Monday. We'd gone to Durham on the Saturday, looked round the Cathedral, Debra had bought a lovely dress, we'd had a bit of a drink and watched The Abyss on the night and then headed out to the pictures on Sunday. I'd stayed over again on the Sunday night, she'd dropped me off in Sunderland on Monday morning with an 'I'll see you tomorrow,' for the quiz.

That afternoon I got a text from her saying that she didn't feel about me the same way I felt about her. Which was upsetting to say the least.

Now, six weeks later, it doesn't hurt so much. Of course there's still this hollow feeling at times, but I'm moving on. I'm determined not to let this get me down as much as it did last time.

But she still has a fair few DVDs I left over there. That does piss me off.

Peace out.

Some Latin Bollocks

Okay, okay, I know, it's been a while. A long while in fact. You may surmise from my prolonged absence that I'm preoccupied elsewhere, and you would be right. Me and Debra have been back together since her birthday party (which occured the night of my previous entry) and have been official 'we're an item and I'm not ashamed about introducing you as my boyfriend on facebook' couple since Easter. It's going well, apart from the fact that she's persuaded me to read Twilight and I enjoyed it. I'm now onto the sequel and since her flatmate Louise owns the film on DVD I will be watching that very soon. Actually, is that a bad thing? For so long in my life I've just had myself to rely on, live with my own opinions and I never had to watch anything I didn't want to. Of course that's not necessarily a healthy way of living. It's always a good idea to have external influences. There's stuff on the telly that I would never have watched if not for Debra.

"I'm Not Locked In Here With You! You're Locked In Here With ME!"

For my birthday, me and Debra went to see Watchmen, a film (much like Star Trek) that I've been waiting for with baited breath for - literally - years. And surprisingly enough, Debra likes it. She complains about it being a bit long and the plot being a bit nebulous, which are both fair comments, but I'm somewhat amazed that someone who has never read the comic can enjoy it and follow the storyline.

I think it's amazing, but for a couple of weeks in 2005, I immersed myself in the comic, borrowed from the library. I then went out and bought my own copy, which I am now slowly rereading, with specific reference to the movie.

Like I said, I loved it. It wasn't perfect (The Dark Knight and Superman: The Movie still trounce it as films) but what astonishes me is how faithful it is. There are a few token changes and that's it. In terms of being faithful to the source material, it even beats the first Spider-Man film into the ground. And, somewhat surprisingly, most critics who have given it a kicking (and several of them have) cite this faithfulness to the text to be a downfall. They would no doubt - had the film diverged from the comic - complained about how it would have been so much better if it had remained faithful. Sometimes you can't win.

The other sticking point, one which is fairer, is the relative lack of empathy for the characters. But again, that is a 'problem' which is dealt with in the context of the movie itself. None of the cast are 'good' people really - the Comedian (a fearless performance from perennial nice guy Jeffrey Dean Morgan) shoots a pregnant woman dead and attempts to rape one of his team mates, Rorshach is psychotic and even the ostensibly normal Nite Owl is bitter and misanthropic. In fact, Doctor Manhattan, the least human of the cast, is the only one the film allows us to empathise with.

I assume the irony was lost on most reviewers. My Blu-Ray is on order.

Peace out.

Putting The Re-Boot In

Skeleton Crew

Contains Spoilers for Friday The 13th

Here's the thing. As you might have guessed from a few of my previius blogs, I am A) A huge fan of horror films and B) The owner of hundreds of DVDs, a great majority of which I haven't got round to watching yet. Hell, I've got a Marilyn Monroe box set I bought about seven years ago that I haven't even opened yet. Mainly it's a time issue, but a lot of it has to do with mood. As in, what film/TV show am I in the mood for tonight.

So that's part of the reason the Rob Zombie remake/reboot/rimagining/re-whatever they're calling it these days has been sat on my shelf for - ooh - years now. I bought it even before it came out over here. I jumped the gun and got the Region 1 DVD. And yet it's still. Just. Sitting. There. It mocks me sometimes in the middle of the night. But I made the mistake of soaking up all the reviews which sad that it was a bad film. And that was most of them. I don't recall a single positive review (and now Zombie's making a sequel, but they made a sequel to the Steve Martin starring Pink Panther so that's not a sign of quality as it once was). You know, don't get me wrong, sometimes a bad review actually encourages me to go and see it. Not that I'm a sadomasochist or anything, but I'm a great champion of the underdog. That's why in my DVD collection today I own films like Tank Girl, The Phantom and the entire run of Enterprise (more on which later).

But where I stumbled with Halloween was all the reviews made a big thing about how the film explores who Myers is. And that's wrong. That's a method born out of hundreds of trashy goth romances. It doesn't enrich the character; it destroys him. Michael Myers is the Boogeyman. He cannot be killed, he cannot be reasoned with and he absolutely will not stop until you are dead (that's actually the Terminator there, but both him and Michael Myers come from the same stock). You flesh him out, give him a background, give him motivation, then it's just another nutter with a knife on the loose.

That's why the Blair Witch was so scary; you never saw anything, you never understood anything, it just happened. As soon as you get a guy in a big rubber costume running around it's simply not real anymore. And so you have Michael Myers explained away and he stops being a force of evil and he's just a guy in a dodgy mask.

Another film with a man in a dodgy mask is Friday the 13th, the remake of which I have seen. I wasn't sure about going to see it but I'm sorta not-quite seeing someone at the minute and I knew she's like to go and see it. And it's good. It essentially compresses the first three movies down into one (the first movie comes off the worst, given that it's three minutes of the credit sequence and the second movie becomes a half hour prologue to the main bulk of the story, starring Sam Winchester off of Supernatural.

This compression is by no means a bad thing, given that the first three Friday films, as I've already discussed here, have much the same plot.

It's an enjoyable hack and slash movie, with acres of completely gratuitous nudity (all female, as if you couldn't guess, although nothing as rampant as one of the main cast of My Bloody Valentine runing around starkers for about ten minutes) and some wonderfully gruesome deaths. It isn't in any way revolutionary. It doesn't take any liberties with Jason's heritage.

Well, apart from one thing. In the original movies, Jason just kills. He doesn't take prisoners. Yet here, he takes Sam Winchester's sister hostage and holds her in his little underground den for about six weeks. Of course, when Winchester Jnr turns up, if she's dead then Winchester has to get his revenge. If she's not dead then... actually, there we come to the problem. The movie tries to gloss over it by having Clay's sister take a locket that belonged to Mrs Voorhees (a wonderful if crininally underused Nana Visitor, a long way from DS9's Major Kira) and that's the reason why Jason doesn't kill her, but why would he then slap her in chains in his little dungeon?

It's a niggle, a small one admittedly, but one which edges this film into Texas Chainsaw territory (and I'm sure I hardly have to remind you that producer Michael Bay and director Marcus Nispel previously teamed up on the Texas Chainsaw regurgitation, the only highlight of which was seeing Jessica Beil bloosom), and while Friday might borrow liberally from other horror franchises (it is in effect Halloween with a bigger knife and a rural locale).

But overall, a good film. So, have a plucked up the gumption to subject myself to Zombie's Halloween yet? Not quite.

The screens these days are so flooded with reboots and sequels and what-have-you (probably the best film of 2007, Transformers and this years GI Joe (which has potential to be one of the worst film of all time, even if it does have the mighty Ecclescakes as shiny slaphead Destro and the fantactically grizzled Dennis Quaid as Hawk, were both inspired by toys for fuck's sake). A couple of years ago Stardust made an impact simply because it was based on a book and the last actual-honest-to-God original movie I can remember seeing an enjoying thoroughly was Juno. The big films I'm looking forward to this year are:
1) Watchmen - Graphic Novel adaptation
2) Star Trek - Long awaited reboot of a sixties TV show
3) Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince - Movie 6 in a long running series of adapatations of the novels by JK Rowling.

It's a harsh world out there, one in which the executives obviously think that having a hook, a pre-established presence to lock on to. This is the only explanation for the glut of remakes that we're currently wading through. I can only hope it stops before someone decides to remake Nightmare On Elm Street.

Oh. Too late.

Faith Of The Heart

You know, a lot of Star Trek fan hate the theme tune for Enterprise. It's true. They're so indoctrinated into what a Trek theme should be (bombastic, orchestral, full of rising crescendoes and strings) that a soft rock ballad sits ill with them.

Am I one of them?

Well, yes and no. I don't think it's a particularly good theme song, but I applaud the decision to do something a little different. If only that philosophy had continued on over into the show itself.

I've recently been reading a book in the BFI TV series about Star Trek, by Ina Rae Hark. She starts out with a lot of good stuff on the original series, TNG and especially DS9, then trails off when it comes to Voyager and has clearly exhausted herself by the time she comes round to discussing Enterprise. And it's really not her fault, because there's very little to talk about concerning Enterprise. Despite the alleged efforts of Berman and Braga, it's a very vacuous show. It doesn't even have the strong backbone of characters that saved Voyager (even if those characters only accounted for a third of the cast). Archer is a dullard, continuing on Trek's seeming obsession with giving characters obscure hobbies. In this case water polo.

Water polo. Fucking water polo? This is a series which, it was claimed, would get back to basics and make the characters more like us than the idealised versions from the 24th century. And what sport do they make the captain a fan of? American football? Hockey? Hell, by this point I would even accept basketball. But water polo? I mean, do you even know anybody who likes water polo let alone watches matches religiously?

Hark also points out that each of the writers of TNG who went on to DS9 and Voyager all had their own little niches - Ron Moore would do the big military stuff, Joe Menosky would handle the relationship things - and by the time of Enterprise, most of them had moved on, leaving Enterprise with a writing staff composed of two very old hands - Berman and Braga, who took writing credits on well over half the first season) and a bunch of newbies. It's telling that when they get people in who do know Trek, as when the Reeves-Stevenses are hired for the fourth season, the quality of the storytelling improves dramatically.

Enterprise's biggest flaw is that it is dull. And I'm halfway through watching Season 2 of it now. Unlike Stargate, where I was enjoying myself so much I was binging and watching a dozen or so episodes a day, I can barely watch two episodes of Enterprise back to back. They suck my will to live. And I'm speaking as a hardcore dyed in the wool Trekkie here. It's painful to see the Trek name get dragged through the mud by a show which obviously only survived as long as it did because of the network it was on and the fact that it was stamped with the brand. Had it been around instead on TNG in the late eighties, Trek would have been dead long before now.

Except it's not dead, is it? We have the movie to look foward to. Another reboot. But hopefully one that will return us to what made Trek great in the first place (and it's worth pointing out that the Trek movies still haven't surpassed Wrath Of Khan, a movie which is now twenty seven years old). And it's worth hoping that this movie brings us into the present, because modern Trek has always been a product of the eighties; like it or like it not, those first formative years of TNG established a great deal, some of which was very much a product of the time (the presence of a counsellor, the overwhelming biege-ness of it all, Picard's proclivity to call meetings while the Enterprise is under attack) and some of which was sound judgement (the Federation-Klingon alliance, the Romulans).

Peace out.

Saturday The 14th

Here we are again...

The New Blood

Okay, before I get into this whole self-loathing and talking about how shit my life is, let me just regale you with a brief tale of tradition. You see, it's Saturday the 14th today, which means that it was Friday the 13th yesterday (and in one of the least imaginative marketing ploys ever, the new Friday The 13th remake opened yesterday, creating a rather amusing situation where the two Winchester brothers off of TV's Supernatural both have a horror film out at the same time, Jared Padlecki (or whatever his name is) stars in the aforementioned return of Jason Voorhees, while Jensen Ackles (what? did the producers of Supernatural look for the two people with the silliest name available?) stars in remake of 80's slasher My Bloody Valentine - this time in 3-D! but only in selected cinemas). And while I could talk about the paucity of good horror films- when was the last time I saw a new horror film that wasn't a remake or a reimagining or a sequel... er... well, I did quite enjoy Shrooms, how does that float your boat? - I'm not in the mood. The horror genre is changing, half the books in the horror section are actually 'urban fantasy' which is basically a posh term for stories about having a vampire boyfriend. And it's always a boyfriend, because these stories are all written by women. Horror, friends and neighbours, has been defanged. It would be easy to lay the blame at the feet of Laurell K Hamilton, whose Anita Blake series, started way back in 1993, seems to be the taproot of this whole movement, although you could point out that Buffy and Angel have a hand in it as well. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing (well, it the case of Twilight it is very obviously a bad thing) but it has neutered horror - not many of the writers of these kinds of series' (and they are all series, Anita Blake runs to sixteen books now with another one due in the summer, Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan books, despite only being five years old, are almost at double figures) are as good as Joss Whedon and Marti Noxon and Jane Espenson and all those other people who made Buffy and Angel what they were. Too often they forget the horror and lay of the romance so thickly that what they are writing is essentially Mill & Boon but instead of the wealthy industrialist of whatever, you have a dark and mysterious vampire.

Big fucking whoop - it's anathema to what vampires used to be. Sure, there's sexual frisson in Dracula and most of Hammer's output would be rendered moot if it were not for the allure of Christopher Lee and Ingrid Pitt. But there was also an ever-present danger. Vampires kill people; it's what they need to do to survive. Joss Whedon and Co never forgot that; it's no shocker that Season 2 of Buffy, in which Angel reverts to evil and turns on Buffy - because Whedon knew that if there was no danger there then Angel might as well have just been a Care Bear with fangs. And if anyone can tell me who said that originally, you win a cookie.

Sorry, got a little digressed there. Where were we? Oh yes: Tradition. You see, every Friday the 13th, if possible, I watch a Friday The 13th film. It's kind of a similar tradition to the one where I watch a Halloween film every Halloween. And there's eleven of them, so it's quite a batch to pick from, although many don't offer much to differentiate between them.

Friday The 13th has always been an unloved middle child of the slasher crowd. Less artsy than both Halloween, which preceeded it by two years and whose success is likely the impetus for the production of that first Friday and Nightmare On Elm Street, which came four years later (the same year as Friday The 13th Part 4 - The Final Chapter hit the big screen). It's often seen as a cynical cheap exploitation film, which it is at it's heart. Forget about the whole subversion of Psycho present in the first film, where Mrs Voorhees has completely flipped her lid and has adopted the personality of her (as she sees him) vengeful son Jason (the flipside in Psycho is obviously Norman adopting his mother's personality - both ultimately caused by extreme guilt), that doesn't even last till the end of the final act; it's a bare bones stalk and slash (or club or axe or whatever happenes to by handy. There's nothing even remotely supernatural here, not even an I-shot-him-and-he-somehow-got-up-and-walked-away moment like at the end of Halloween. Mrs Voorhees is dead - her body and head quite decisively have a falling out, that's to an axe.

It's a mildly entertaining film, one which ticks all the necessary boxes and, unsurprisingly, it did the business. So a sequel followed. Then another, and another, ad nauseum. By the end of the eighties there were eight Jason films (and let's not make any bones about it, by then they were Jason films - any pretence towards the audience rooting for a series of increasingly inept horny teenagers was abandoned by the time of Friday The 13th Part 8 - Jason Takes Manhattan) compared with five Nightmare films and five Halloweens. Not that many of them were any good.

Part 2 is a virtual re-run of the first film, only this time starring Jason (although he doesn't obtain the hockey mask till Part 3, in this film he adopts the Elephant Man look). Part 3 does exactly the same thing, just in slightly less bloody fashion and with a dose of ill-advised 3-D (like the few other 3-D films of this period, especially Jaws 3-D and Amityville 3-D - isn't it handy that so many franchises reached their third point just in time for this brief resurgance of people looking like dicks wearing their multicoloured specs? - the 3-D doesn't really work all that well). Part 4 attempts to do something different and is probably the best of the sequels by presenting us with a main character - pre-pubescent Corey Feldman - who is a lot different to the usual horny teenagers (which isn't to say that this film lacks in the horny teenager department) and who actually kills Jason. Feldman's character, Tommy Jarvis, is one we follow through the next two films, A New Beginning and Jason Lives!. A New Beginning attempts to be just that, it is Jason-less, aside from a dream sequences at the beginning. It focuses on a now grown up Tommy (and yes, the timeline of these films is so decompressed it's worse than Jaws, there's a five year gap between the first two film and at least ten years between 4 and 5, despite the fact that the films were, at this point, being churned out at the rate of one per year) and a copycat Jason killer, sadly not taking up any of the hints at the end of 4 that Tommy himself might actually have flipped his lid (in a similar way, Halloween 4 - made later kids - kills off Michael only to have his neice assume the mantle only for it all to be retconned in Halloween 5). The hardcore horror fans got Jason back for Part 6 and it is really here that Jason assumes the role of invincible zombie. Parts 6-8 are generally unremarkable (save for the fact that Part 7 - The New Blood, stars Kane Hodder as Jason for the first time - it's a role he will play up until Jason X and which he has been very vocal about and a great spokesperson for the films, in much the same way that Robert Englund became Freddy to an extent, so too Hodder became Jason and he got justifably aggreived when they recast him for Freddy Vs Jason and the remake) and end in a confusing psuedo-mystical mish-mash where Jason is washed away with toxic waste that floods Manhattan's sewer system every night (?) and becomes a young boy again (?) and then fades into nothingness (?). It's the sort of thing that only makes sense after a crateful of sambuca or during a meeting of executive producers and a pissed off writer. J

Jason Goes To Hell - The Final Friday (and at this point I'd just like to make note of the fact that several slasher franchies have used the word 'Final' in their titles, Friday The 13th is the only franchise to have done so twice and they lied both times) marks a change of tack. For the first time, Jason is truly a supernatural creature, a black smooshy blob capable of possessing people (?). It's a movie which no-one really likes, and certain rights issues notwithstanding, there's a Friday The 13th box set available with contains Parts 1-8. You're not missing much is you don't shell out for a seperate copy of this one.

But the two most recent entries into the saga are like those specials you get on TV at Christmas of old shows they don't make any more, like when the Two Ronnies had all but retired, they still rolled out for the Christmas day show. And because it's a special occasion, you do something big and spectacular. So, first up chronologically, we have Freddy Vs Jason (although Jason X was made first, FvJ fits into the gap between Jason Goes To Hell and Jason X) which is the Wrestlemania of slasher movies. It's a big dumb movie that belongs more in the Elm Street camp than Jason's oeuvre. It's all about Freddy getting the Elm Street kids to fear him again and as a monster mash, it works. It's certainly better than Universal's efforts from the forties when they started shoving every horror icon into the same film (Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, House Of Dracula) in a desperate bid to get bums of seats. It doesn't take itself seriously and it is a shame that the proposed sequel, which would have featured Bruce Campbell as Ash from the Evil Dead movies seems to have sunk without a trace (well, not entirely without a trace, a comic book series emerged last year which seemed to confirm that the movies was dead a buried, especially now there's a remake of Friday and a remake of the original Nightmare on the way, I'm sure that New Line aren't keen on having divergent continuity to confuse the cinema-goers).

And then there's Jason X. For me it's the crown jewel in the Friday series. Most other fans seem to hate it, and I can sort of understand why. It's not terrifically gory, a lot of it is played for laughs and it's another one of those entires in a long-running horror franchise which is usually suffixed with the words 'In Space!' (exclamation mark optional) which includes Critters, Hellraiser and - God help us - Leprechaun. Yes, it's Jason In Space. And it just so happens that it was this entry with which I celebrated yesterday's Friday The 13th.

Why is it my favourite? I know I'm biased, being much more of a science fiction buff than a horror fan but that's not the whole story. Sure, it's a great idea, and it takes the series away from the Camp Crystal Lake locale which - let's be honest - was tired even way before Part 4 (and let me just pause there and point you towards a very informative timeline which confirms the guess I had that Parts 2-4 take place over a very short space of time, and attempts to iron over some of the time-jumps in Tommy's age: http://www.fridaythe13thfilms.com/saga/timeline.html). It is essentially Alien, but instead of a phallic xenomorph with a vagina dentate, we have Jason, an unstoppable killing machine. And it has the most attractive cast for a long while, headed up by Lexa Doig who subsequently went on with co-star Lisa Ryder to do five years on Andromeda, a show which no one seemed to like but which inexplicably lasted five years.

The main problem with the series is the character of Jason. What is his modus operandi? Where do his powers come from? With reference to the other two titans of slasher film, Michael Myers and Freddy, he comes up rather short. His regenerative ability, referred to in Jason X as a freak ability, is nebulous at best - he spends twenty odd years at the bottom of a lake, emerges still as that child (if you accept the theory that the dream at the end of part one is actually a vision) or lives out in the woods by himself without actually killing anyone for all that time, only going on a murderous rampage when his mother has her head lopped off - then he has his skull chopped in half by Corey Feldman, spends another ten years or so in a grave before being reanimated by a bolt of lightning, another year at the bottom of a lake, gets blown up by the FBI, frozen beyond all capability to revive, blown up again, blasted out into space and finally (?) burns up in the atmosphere of Earth 2. Not bad for a little retarded kid who couldn't swim.

His goals are equally nebuolous. Most of the time he just wants to hack his way through anything in his way - unlike Michael Myers there's nothing malicious about his actions, where Michael would lay out bodies and hide things for greatest shock value, Jason just hacks them to pieces and leaves them where they lie. His mother had a very simple goal; she wanted to stop the camp that killed her son, in her eyes, from reopening. Jason seems to have had a psychotic break following the death of his mother (like all good psychopaths, he has mommy-issues) and while at first he seems content to 'defend' the area around Camp Crystal Lake, he doesn't stop at those trying to reopen the camp. Anyone in the general vicinity becomes machete-fodder, and when Jason is taken away from the lake, he simply continues on with his hacking, as witnessed in Jason Takes Manhattan and Jason X, although in those cases, they manage to stop him before he can cast his net wider.

In Jason X we hear of Jason's reputation as a mass murderer, apparently he's responsible for over 200 deaths, and isn't that a lot for a sleepy little town like Crystal Lake? You would think that people would generally avoid the area if it had a death toll like that. After all, there are hundreds of lakes in America, what's so special about this one? Leaving aside the issue of morbid curiosity (as most of the casts know nothing about Jason till he starts picking them off) it's still a stupid holiday spot.

So, final verdict on the series. It's a guilty pleasure, full of gratuitous nudity and classic cliched horror movie behaviour. It's the cinematic equivalent of a Chocolate Orange, sure it looks nice and at the time it's damn tasty, but it's not very good for you and if you eat too much, you'll just make yourself sick.

A New Beginning

I was going to talk about myself a little here, but I got carried away talking about Jason Voorhees. It happens.

So, I've been on holiday for the past week. I'm back at work tomorrow. And what have I done with my time off? Absolutely fuck all. I have watched a great deal of Stargate SG-1, finally seeing the entire damn thing right up through until The Ark Of Truth. I just have Continuum to go and I shall have seen the entire canon. It's only took me the best part of three months. Season 8 was a definite low point, it was water-treading season and it looked for all the world like they'd ran out of money. Luckily, once Richard Dean Anderson eased himself out of the show totally, making way for Beau Bridges as General Landry and the mighty Ben Browder as Colonel Cam Mitchell, things looked up again. And they even managed to get Lexa Doig of Jason X fame in as the new regular medical officer, a role that had remained empty since Janet Frasier's death on Season 7. Unfortunately they named her Lam, so you had a Sam, a Lam and a Cam all at the same time, which isn't good timing.

Thoughts? It didn't need to end when it did. Unlike many shows upon reaching their end (naming no names but X-Files, Babylon 5, Lois and Clark) it didn't feel tired. Maybe it was the infusion of new cast members and the jolt of the Ori storyline (both things which other series, X-Files comes to mind, had tried and failed to do) but Season 9 felt very much like a new series. I suppose it's a good idea to quit while you're ahead but you get the feeling that there was at least another couple of season's worth of stuff in there. And the lovely Caludia Black as Vala Mal Doran, we hardly knew ya.

I had made some tentative plans with Debra, but they feel by the wayside. I don't really want to get into the specifics of it all, but I kind of get the feeling that she doesn't want me. At all. When she said she wanted to be friends, I think she meant it, but friends merely in the sense that we don't actively dislike each other. Any hopes for getting back together have been somewhat dashed.

So, where do we go from here? There's not much happening on the dating site front; had a couple of people show interest, exchanged a few e-mails and, since Monday, nothing. Again we come to the conclusion that there is something wrong with me. It's happened to me too many times for it to be a simple coincidence. Now, I'm a nice guy, or at least I try to be. I know I'm selfish and self-involved and sometimes me and tact aren't the closest of friends, but I try, I really do, yet no one seems that interested in me. Not in 'that way'. And all my friends seem to think I'm great; in fact I just got a text from Emma not five minutes ago telling me not to feel down (it's a bit late for that; about ten years too late) and that she thinks I'm a great catch. Well that's all fine and dandy but all those people who think that are people I've known for a long time and subsequently people who have long since passed into the Friend Zone, which is kinda like the Death Zone on Gallifrey but less welcoming.

Every now and then I think that I should just give up on the whole idea of ever finding happiness with someone else and sequester what happiness I can from myself. And while that sounds like a reference to masturbation, it isn't. I could focus my attention on my writing and on being a science fiction fan - watching all that Stargate did make me happy on some level, and not in an entirely facile way. But at the same time, I can't imagine just giving up hope of ever finding anyone.

We'll see.

Peace out.

Selling Out

Go To The Mirror, Boy!

I did have a lot to talk about for this blog, but it's been a long day and it's all just slipped my mind. Oh well, as Fleetwood Mac once sang.

So let's talk about my love life instead.

Come on, you know you want to. Anyway, the only interesting thing I've seen at the pictures recently was the wonderfully disastrous Spirit, by Frank Millers to have sunk without a trace, perhaps not undeservedly. It's a bad movie. There's a lot to admire about it, and it's hideously enjoyable, but it's a bad movie all the same. To criticise it for being overblown would be missing the point entirely. Its lunacy is one of the key factors in its favour (along with a wonderully hammy performance by Scarlett Johansson) and Eva Mendes once more proving that she is foxy, a fact which so many of her movies recently have been in denial about. What it is lacking is a strong throughline - the plot, such as it is, is so perfunctory that it could have been written in large print on the back of a postage stamp - and a charismatic hero. Just because all the women in the story tell us the Spirit is appealling does not make him so. At the centre of the film is a vacuous gap that really needs a Tobey Maguire or a Ron Perlman, hell, even a Nicolas Cage would do.

So, now that's out of the way. Me and Debra. Yes, we're still split up, unfortunately. We're going out this Friday though and there's a big part of me that wants to break down in her arms, beg her to take me back. We haven't seen each other since that awkward night in November when we went to Fitzy's in Sunderland together. Sent her a Christmas card over Facebook, got one back. Sent her a text New Year's Eve, got one back wishing me a happy new year. So, at the urging of Andrea, among others, I got in touch with her again (and this is the part that bugs me, it's always me that does the chasing - it would be amazing if she would just get in touch with me and want to see me for a change - and I'm worried that I'm starting to feel a bit like a pest, but then, hopefully, if I was being a pest in Debra's eyes, she would tell me so. Right?) and ask her if she fancies doing something sometime. She does, but she's skint. So we're waiting till payday (this Friday - this month, despite it being 5 and a half weeks since we got paid last is just flying over) and then we're going to the pictures to see the new Underworld film (not starring Kate Beckinsale, not directed by the same guy that did the first two but by a special effects gadge - and we all know how well that turned out for Starship Troopers 2 - so it could be awful but there's in built entertainment value, it's vampires versus werewolves for fuck's sake how could it not be entertaining?). Hopefully we can have a drink beforehand, catch up, have fun. Part of me wants it to be like that magical first date we had when we went to see The Dark Knight. Everything just clicked that night and, yes, it was the start of a period of my life (a very brief period, but a period nevertheless) when I was actually happy. Another part of me knows that it'll just be like Fitzy's and nothing will happen and I'll come home feeling like shit.

It has been getting me down lately, you know. Shaun has recently embarked upon a relationship and despite the fact that his new boyfriend looks like a complete twonk, Shaun seems overly happy. There have even been proclamations of love from both sides on Facebook. Natalie, despite various incidents is still with Simon. Even Kayleigh is with someone (and again, very happy). So what's wrong with me? I'm going to be twenty eight in little under six weeks. 28. Ten years since I left 6th Form. Twelve years since I wrote Cold Heart and started on the path to the writer I am today. Eleven years since Sarah. And that's the thing that hurts the most (actually, it's not, the thing that hurts the most is how completely fucking oblivious everyone is to it and how they have always been) in that eleven years, including Sarah, I have spent something like four months in relationships. Four months out of a hundred and thirty two. Like I'm sure I've said before, I've probably spent more time in those years watching Star Trek. So, just what is it about me?

At school everyone was in relationships. Jav seemed to alternate between Lorna and Tasha on a regular basis, and no ill will seemed to be spent; Emma went through an unbroken stream of boyfriends. Actually, not everyone was in relationships. But those who weren't (Amy and Blades, mainly) didn't seem to want to be with anyone. It's like they didn't feel the need to latch onto someone so early in their lives. Like they were too busy deciding who they wanted to be to decide what they wanted in a partner. Or maybe they were just scared. I have a feeling that's what it was on Blades' part.

But me? I wanted someone. I've had the (mis?)fortune to have erected a pretty solid sense of self at a very young age and I know what I want. It's getting it that's the had part.

Forsaken, Almost Human - I Sink Beneath Your Wisdom Like A Stone

You see, Emma claims that I was fickle as a precocious teen. But I wasn't. What Emma doesn't understand is that I was constantly dealing with rejection. I would make a few moves towards someone, get rebuffed and - instead of embarking upon a Dan-like bout of obsessive behaviour - I would move on to the next person. It's not the most sound way of going about things, I grant you, but in my defence, I was young and didn't know any better. Plus, if you don't give it a go, how will you ever know? That's how I ended up with both Sarah and Anne (well, let's not count that one shall we?) and also two of my non-relationship fumbles. You never know. So maybe that's why I'm going out with Debra on Friday. Maybe I'll get some signal that she's prepared to give it another go. Maybe she's decided she does like me in the right way. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into this. Maybe she's just taking pity on a pathetic little shit. But she always asks me what I've been up to. The postive side of my brain thinks she's fishing for information to see if I'm seeing someone, the proof of the pudding being whether she's asking because she's interested in getting back with me or whether she's asking simply out of polite curiosity.

And, sidenote to Emma here, the two people who I - well, fetishised is probably the best word - in the 6th Form, who I knew well enough to still be friends with even now, I still have very strong feelings for. Gilli in particular, I would still drop almost everything for. So, eleven years (more in the case of Gilli, I can first remember fancying her in Year 10) and my feelings haven't changed. That's fickle how?

Past Prologue; A Man Alone

So that's pretty muct it. Christmas went well, or at least as well as can be expected. I got wonderfully drunk on Christmas Eve (two bottles of wine will do that, but in my defence, it was hardly my fault that no one else was drinking white wine) and offended Jan (like I care, she makes a big deal about it, but she manages to offend me every week and I manage to keep my mouth shut) but I had a big cloud of foreboding over me for most of that week and when it didn't turn to shit it was a pleasant surprise. New Year went well too, the best New Year since we stopped having them at Gilli's, I think. Well, there was the party at Emma's a couple of years ago when I groped Jennie which didn't suck entirely (but again, you've got to look at it from my point of view - me and Haz used to have a lot in common until he got with Emma and now he's forgotten what it's like to be single and to suffer from complete self-loathing, he's settled in to middle-class middle-age and my desperation/loneliness isn't as important to him as decorum). But it was good. Blades had to leave early to spend it with his dad, which was a bit sad, but perfectly understandable. We played SingStar (I acquitted myself surprisingly well, although the high-pitch I tend to sing in provoked guffaws) and fooled about on the Keerswell's new Wii (and that name still hasn't improved over time.

Oh, and my Playstation 3 broke. I got a new one swiftly though, as I was still covered by my HMV warrantee. The disc-reader portion broke and it was either send it off to Sony to get fixed (up to a month) or take it to HMV and get a new one. I took it to HMV. I got a better model (the 80 Gig harddrive, as opposed to the 40 my old one was, with the new Dualshock 3 controller and a free Blu-Ray of I Am Legend (not the greatest film - the first half is magificent, the second half is perhaps the worst vampire movie ever made, and that's saying something) and going through the MetroCentre, I also managed to read practically the entirity of a Doctor Who book, The Pirate Loop, which was fun. The only downside is that I lost the save data from Oblivion and GTA4. But I can cope with that.

So what am I up to now? Well, before Christmas I embarked upon (I'm fond of the word 'embark' today aren't I?) a bingy viewing of Stargate SG-1. Well, I had the DVD's lying around for ages so it was time I got round to watching them. Since the beginning of December I've managed to get through three seasons (and it would have been a lot more were it not for my enforced hiatus when I discovered that my Volume 25 had the wrong disc in and the first second hand copy I managed to track down on Amazon when delivered turned out to be Volume 51). I'm halfway through Season 7 now, the first season which I never really got round to watching on first broadcast. It's fun. It's a lot better than I remember.

And boy, Amanda Tapping is foxy...

Peace out.

It's Christmas (Once Again)

Now, don't get me wrong, I like Christmas as much as the next guy. Providing the next guy is a self-loathing atheist who wonders if he's a complete selfish hypocrite for celebrating Christmas (see last years Christmas Eve blog). But it doesn't feel like Christmas yet.

I don't know why. We had snow a couple of weeks ago. Proper blizzardy snow that turned to ice and hung around for days afterward. It's gone fairly mild now. That, coupled with the fact that the days are shorter than they've ever seemed to be (yeah, I'm aware that today is the winter solstice, but I'm talking about in the grand scheme of things; it's dark by about half three now - it was never that dark when I was a kid).

I've spent the morning writing out Christmas cards and wrapping presents and it still doesn't feel like Christmas (to add insult to injury, I've been listening to Christmas songs on 4Music, including all three versions of 'Do They Know It's Christmas' which should put me in a Christmassy mood at least).

So why? Well, I've been pondering the last year a lot this month. That's traditional, isn't it, you come up to a New Year, you reflect on where this year has taken you. And in my case, it's been overall a pretty bad year.

Pretty Good Year

You see, because although there was that six weeks or so or pure bliss when I was with Debra, the rest of the year has been unremittingly awful. I've had the Barley Mow Moving Debacle and the whole resultant fallout from that, my hideous relationship with Anne and the fallout from that and since Debra dumped me (unceremoniously by text, what is it with women dumping me by text?) I've just been plodding along with very little to keep me going. I'm going to be honest with you here; since Debra dumped me, my thoughts have been erring towards suicide again and nothing that has happened since has given me any pause to reconsider. Every girl (four or five of them) who I've contacted or been contacted by have either stopped emailing after a couple of times or have been so sporadic and such hard work that I have to stop and ask myself if it's worth the trouble (and that's before I go into the dozens of girls I've sent messages to who never even deigned to reply). The thing with Debra was that it was never hard work. If anything, everything came too easily between us. We clicked, very quickly on a very deep level. We understood each other on a sheer emotional basis. But then she dumps me. Either she never saw that in me or it was purely a one sided thing. I don't know.

But I think that might be the reason why Christmas is weighing so heavily on me this year. When we were going out, I thought that everything was falling into place and I did start thinking about what I was going to do for her for Christmas. I even went online to find out how much it would be to take her to London for a weekend break to see Les Miserables, her favourite musical. There was the expectation that we would be together at Christmas and for me at least, with my hapless record at relationships, it would have been my first Christmas with someone. (The same applies to New Year, I was fully expecting me and Debra to be sharing a New Year's kiss come midnight on the 31st.) As it is, I'll be spending it alone again. Yeah, alone. You see, although my mam will be there and Terry, and our Clare and Richie, I'll be alone. Florence and Terry will be off doing there own thing, Clare and Richie will come over, have lunch, hang around for a bit and then go off and do their own thing. I'll be left alone. I'll most likely spend the vast majority of the day in my bedroom, watching DVD's. Which is how I spend most of my days off anyway. So where's the specialness?

I'll be fucked if I know.

To be honest with you, I'm more looking forward to Christmas Eve again. This year our continuum, celebrating (well, the Inner Circle are anyway) something like twelve years of solid friendship. Emma and Haz will be have been seeing each other for ten years on Boxing Day. An entire decade. My longest relationship didn't even make it to the six week mark. I've had longer holidays.

But it's nice to see everyone again. And it's nice to just be able to chill out and get drunk. Sometimes, when I'm out like that, I can just forget myself.

"What A Rush!"

Some movies and TV shows and books and songs you have an opinion of and then later on, years sometimes, you go back to them and find your opinion has been completely changed. Other times you find that your opinion was perfectly sound the first time.

For instance; I never really loved TNG the first time round. Sure, I liked it. Some of it was even great. But mostly it was just incredibly beige. Worf's Klingon politics arc was dull, Picard wasn't a match for Captain Kirk and Wesley Crusher was just an annoyingly precocious little knob. Now? Picard is a far better captain than Kirk ever was (but Kirk is a much better character, perversely) - I found myself catching the end of The Wounded the other day, the fourth season TNG episode that introduced the Cardassians, one of the few new races TNG introduced that went on to bigger and better things (you can count the other on the fingers of one hand; the Bajorans, the Borg, Q). The plot goes thusly; a Starfleet captain has gone rogue, blowing up Cardassian ships here there and everywhere. Picard is assigned to go and track him down and stop him. The rogue captain, Maxwell, claims that the Cardassians are building up arms in violation of treaty. Nevertheless, Picard brings him in, ending Maxwell's career. So far so simple. But the end of the episode has one of the most audacious twists ever and casts a much darker light on Picard than you ever could with Kirk: Maxwell was right; the Cardassians are violating the treaty. But Picard just did his job (Kirk would have done the 'right' thing, Starfleet be damned). And the Klingon political storyline? It's brilliant; Ron Moore, who was responsible for most of those episodes, is quite possibly the best writer TNG had. And Wesley? Well, yeah, he's still an annoying knob (and brings up a whole load of questions about how hard it is to get into Starfleet Academy? I mean, the little fucker's a genius and he fails the entrance exam!).

But what I want to talk about today is Stargate and its spin-off, Stargate SG-1. Because, in an attempt to cheer myself up (see above) I've been watching copious amounts of SG-1. In fact in the past three weeks I've watched the best part of three seasons of it and I'm not planning on stopping anytime soon (well, I'm waiting for the last DVD of Season 5 to be delivered as we speak as Ib ought a copy second hand ages ago and when I finally get round to watching it, it has the wrong DVD in, so I have to buy another copy off Amazon, luckily for me someone was selling a second hand copy for less than two quid including P&P) as it is quite frankly brilliant.

It's the longest running American SF show, it started in 1997, just as Babylon 5 was wrapping up and it was bought by Channel 4 and promoted in much the ame way. I remember coming home from university and getting in just as it started because it was on at six in the evening. I remember having cable at the house in Gateshead and watching Season 5 and 6 which were being repeated on Sky 1 at ten in the morning; at the time I was working at Global and never started before 5 in the afternoon, I was going to bed late, setting my alarm for Stargate and watching it first thing in the morning.

But I never loved it. It was a solid also-ran. It never had the passion that Farscape did. In fact, I have not yet seen anything beyond the end of that season 6 that I saw living in Gateshead. I bought the DVD's when I could pick them up cheap and pretty soon arrived at an almost full collection more by accident than design. But I never loved it. It was just one of those shows that I liked and would buy if there wasn't something more important (a Star Trek box set, a Doctor Who DVD, whatever). I made a concerted effort to own all of the Farscape DVD's; SG-1 slowly built up. It wasn't until they announced that Season 10 would be the last that I started thinking I should perhaps make an effort to both buy them and watch them. The fact that I had also completed my Star Trek collection had little to do with it.

But it is brilliant. The first couple of seasons are fairly shaky, but then very few shows can say they hit the ground running (Farscape didn't find its feet until the second half of the first season, TNG took till the third season - only the original Trek, in my opinion, hit the ground running). By the third season, however, it has become something so wonderful and - amazingly - real (which is a masterful achievement when the main premise of your show is about a bunch of people going to other planets through a wormhole). It has perhaps one of the fairest and most authentic representations of the military in the genre (a fact no doubt helped by the massive assistance the US Air Force supplies). The four main characters have clearly defined roles and agendas.

I don't know how much of this has come out of watching episodes in huge chunks of six and eight - enjoying it like that brings out a lot of the subtle themes and arcs that might otherwise be lost, like Daniel's uncomfortable position of being a pacifist with a gun and Sam's dichotomy of being equal parts soldier and scientist - but it works.

The Stargate movie however, is an entirely different story. I was never overly keen on it when I first saw it (and it's something of a sobering thought to think that next year will be it's 15th anniversary year, which also applies to Generations - god I feel old). I thought it was a moderately enjoyable action movie, the most memorable thing about it being Kurt Russell's gravity defying buzz-cut. And, in addition to my marathon-esque viewing of SG-1, I purchased myself a copy of the movie on Blu-Ray. And why the hell not? (Annoyingly, it doesn't have some of the extras from the standard DVD release on it, a crime that the Terminator 2 and Total Recall Blu-Rays are also guilty of). And my opinion of it hasn't changed. It's still a moderately enjoyable action movie. It does have a star turn (at least in the first half) by James Spader (completely overshadowed by what Michael Shanks does in the TV series, much like what Richard Dean Anderson does to the unfortunately coiffured Kurt Russell) and some enjoyable action sequences. But by and large it's been completely outshone by the TV series. In fact, one of the most enjoyable things you can do with the movie is spot what they changed for the TV series. It does have a great comedy decapitation though.

Peace Out.