David Foster Wallace Channels Hunter S. Thompson

I don't know if you've ever read Hunter S. Thompson but he's crazy; entertainingly crazy, but he's still crazy. He goes on wild political speeches and accuses a great deal of people of being on drugs, which is something that people on drugs often do. Underneath it all though he was a damn good reporter who gave readers a fresh and interesting look at politics without the usual 6 o clock ho-hum boredom. David Foster Wallace channels the great Thompson in his article The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and the Shrub, the best piece of political reporting I've read in a long, long time.

It was a very good choice on Rolling Stone's part to send a writer as talented as Wallace on the campaign trail. His description of daily life on the campaign trail is interesting, funny and not too secretly scathing of the whole broken political process. He disects, the yes men, the snotty upper crust journalists, the hanger-ons and the poor schmucks who have to film it all with an eye for detail and a vocabulary that portrays how great a writer he really is.

A lot of the details he catches are the kind of things that you just don't imagine happening on the campaing trail, mostly because reporting on it is usually so bland you'd mistake it for plain white rice if you tried to eat it. The exchange between Mike Murphy, McCain's Aide-de-camp and one of the 12 monkeys on page 10, made me chuckle pretty enthusiastically.

I also really agree with his portrayal of John McCain turning into a salesman while trying to run for president and that the real John McCain is still in a box in Hoa Lo, waiting to come out. I remember watching the 2008 elections and seeing McCain and wondering "How was this once a level-headed man, who I could respect?" It's easy now to see how advisors and marketers can manipulate a peson until he becomes a product they want to sell you. It's sad really.

The one complaint that I'd have against the article is the same thing that's kept me from reading anything other than Foster's short fiction. It's so damn long! I mean it's entertaining the whole way but I think a good editor could've sat David down and helped take a little off to help slim the article down.

Though in the end this is an amazing piece of journalism and an excuse for me to crack open a Blue Moon sit by the window and cry tears of intellectual sadness at the fact that we lost such an amazing talent so soon. Oh, David Foster Wallace, I know you're writing really long, immaculately worded, beautiful stories in heaven right now with Hunter S. Thompson.

Halloween! Essential Under rated Horror Films!

It's that time of year. The leaves are turning color, the winds getting a bit nippy and everybody's filling their yards up with fake dead bodies! It's Halloween Bros and Broettes!

One time honored tradition of Halloween once you're too old to trick-or-treat and too poor to go to a haunted house (25 bucks to have a sweaty guy in a trench coat and a hockey mask jump out from behind doors at me? No thanks) then you can always watch scary movies. But you've seen the Friday the 13th movies a thousand times and Nightmare on Elm St is on AMC every 4 hours, so what do you watch? Some crazy foreign and underground horror films that's what! And I've compiled a handy list of some of my all time faves with pictures I don't have the copyright too (what's scarier that copyright violation?)



-la Orfanata (2007) - This is a Spanish film which means most people haven't heard of it because American theaters do a terrible job of showing foreign films and the public does a worse job of watching them. This is one that might be for the better. If the public had seen this then there would be a universal fear of old, abandoned orphanages... Oh wait. The film is about a husband and wife who purchase an old orphanage that the wife used to go. They plan on opening it as a home for mentally challenged children, but things go bad when their own kid starts seeing things and then a creepy kid with a bag over his head starts shoving people around. This is a film that ratchets up the tension without ever resorting to gore or jump scares. It's also got a twist at the end that rivals such movies as the Sixth Sense. Just don't watch it alone on your laptop. I nearly threw mine across the room in fear.

-The Thing (1982) - This movie came out the same time as E.T. and couldn't have been more different. It's the story of a group of scientists sent to a remote part of Antarctica to find out what happened to the group before them (hint: they were killed by a "Thing"). The Thing has two things going for it, tension and amazing special effects. The Thing in question can take on the appearance of person on it's own which means that it could be anyone of the characters at any moment so no one can trust anyone. The special effects on this film are the best I've seen in a horror film. They're not amazing computer generated blue-cat people or any crap like that it's just amazing hand made effects pain-stakenly created by men who truly love what they do and it shows. Its a movie that will make you wish filmmakers stopped relying so much on cgi for their monsters these days.

-The Human Centipede (2009) A demented doctor kidnaps people and stitches their mouths to another person's... anus, thus creating a human centidepe. If you didn't throw up just thinking about that then trust me, this movie will make you heave chunks no matter what.


I hope that one of these gory, tense or just outright messed up films is interesting enough for you to Netflix because trust me they are all movies that will stay with you long after you see them. So Happy Halloween and don't get too scared!

Don't put a taliBAN on free speech. Yohohoho, a pun...

Video games, they've come a long way from an Italian plumber chasing mushrooms to the widescreen, high-definition cinematic experiences they are today. It seems like every other one of them is a military shooter these days though. Modern Warfare 2 from publisher Activision was the most profitable media launch of 2010 and, surprise it was a military shooter.

The weird thing though with the slew of modern shooters is that none of them have been based on real modern conflicts, until Medal of Honor that is. The game is based on the actions of the tier 1 operators in Afghanistan (Tier 1 is just military babble for most-super-bad-assiest dudes). Which is no big deal but the game has a multiplayer component and who do we fight in Afghanistan. The taliban. So what has this all been building up to? A game is going to be released that let's people play as Taliban insurgents killing American Soldiers.

Well it was going to be...

There was a chain of events that lead to this, first, the classy folks over at Fox News got a hold of the info and of course they were totally fair and sensible. LOL No they weren't. Anyway, after that the people at the Army weren't super happy so they decided to ban sale of the game on military bases. Not long after the publisher buckled and they changed the name of the Taliban to Opposing Force to which I say C'MON!!

The developer addressed the issue (I've got so many hyperlinks in this free post) but really the whole hubub is kind of a joke. A lot of gamers and 1st Amendment enthusiasts cried fowl but really, the Army has to be aware that somebody has to play as the badguys. You can't both be the good guys! That'd just be the Civil War!

No but seriously this kind of buckling under pressure always reminds me that the video game industry is an industry first and a medium for artistic expression and political commentary second. I mean, they didn't change the look of the taliban or any single aspect of the game except for the word Taliban. I reiterate, C'MON!