There's a rock in my shoe.

I have to admit that I'm just not that excited about TV these days. When I was younger, there were always a few shows that I would watch religiously. But now... there really isn't anything on that I need to watch. Family Guy might have been the closest to reaching that point, but the new episodes just aren't doing it for me. It's quickly reaching the same dead end that The Simpsons hit years ago. That show just will not die. It's the monster in a shitty horror movie that keeps coming back. Your crazy uncle that's had 7 heart attacks, 5 strokes, kidney stones, anemia, broken hips, and a prostate the size of a dirigible. Someone, pull the plug, it's getting embarrassing. I guess we'll just have to hide it in the basement...

My favorite TV show of all time is undoubtedly Mystery Science Theater 3000. For the uninitiated, MST3K boils down to this: a guy is trapped in space with some robots, and a mad scientist forces them to watch really crappy movies. To make it through, the guy and the robots make fun of the movies. The movies are downright bad. Some repulsive. Some so stupid it seems likely that a 4-year-old was at the helm. So how does a two hour show of people making fun of shitty movies last 10 seasons? It's fucking funny, that's how.

There are literally hundreds of jokes each episode. Yeah, some jokes are duds, but that's to be expected. But at least it's not the same thing over and over again. [Side note: I came home from work today and had to sit through an episode of Will and Grace. A 30-minute gay joke. OK, I get it. Funnyfunny. Why 30 minutes? Why would there need to be more than one episode? Why more than one season? For the character development? Why? Couldn't it just be a 5-minute SNL sketch? Wouldn't that work better? How can anybody find that show funny over the course of one episode, let alone week after week?] The writing on MST3K was smart, and it was layered like a delicious torte - soft creamy goodness between spongey and crunchy, preferably chocolate. There's toilet humor, dick and fart jokes, pop culture references, cultural references (there's a difference), biting observations - and you know what? It's a show that grandparents, parents, and kids could probably all watch together and be entertained on different but equal levels. Fucking brilliant.

Sadly, MST3K got canned in 1999, and disappeared from TV all together in early 2004. Will it ever be back? Even in the current climate of digital cable and more channels than anyone could possibly need, I doubt it. You'd be hard-pressed to find a channel willing to devote 2 hours of its timeslots to "a puppet show making fun of movies." Our attention spans are just too short. Yet, Comedy Central airs something to the tune of 18 hours of MadTV each week. This does not compute.

Quick, order up 14 new series exactly like the thing we just cancelled last month! Let's make a show that's ever so slightly different than the hot show right now! What's say we cross "Groundhog Day" with "24"... brilliant!

Take 4 minutes of your time, and watch this clip. They're watching Space Mutiny. This movie sucks on toast.

It's not the best clip on YouTube, but it's relatively short and pretty good, in my opinion.

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Quick notes:
1. I hate it when I read or hear a speech that President Bush gave and he uses a word that I don't know. I can't tell you how stupid that makes me feel.
2. I felt like shit today, and then when I got home, I realized that there was a rock in my shoe. David Cross was right.
3. True Love is a gorgeous, gorgeous, heartbreakingly good song. More on this later. (Although I prefer this version.)
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Happy December.
xomatt

Batoru Rowairu, Man Vs. Wild, and the Rose Parade.

This year Zentsuji Middle School number 4's Class E was chosen from among 43.000 Ninth grade classes. This year's game, said to be more blistering than the last... Oh look, there! There she is! The winner's a girl! Surviving a fierce battle that raged 2 days, 7 hours and 43 minutes... the winner is a girl! Look, she's smiling! Smiling! The girl definitely just smiled!

So opens Kenji Fukasaku's 2000 Battle Royale, after the novel by Koushun Takami. Now, I'm definitely not an expert on the film - I've only seen it 2.5 times, and I haven't really pored over every detail. Basic premise goes like this (without giving too much away): Highschool class of (typically) ingrateful students is forced into a wickedly twisted game where they placed on an island where they must kill each other until only one remains. Each student is given an item or weapon toward that means. Lots of twists to this: there's a time limit, sections of the island become danger zones where, if anyone lingers too long, they'll die, etc. etc... Although this movie can turn stomachs and has some cringe factor to it, it's not all shock. There's a lot of meat here in terms of social commentary, teenage psychology and the teenage/highschool social behavior, groupthink and the human cattle condition, blahblah. I think the violence is used beautifully here to not only drive the action of the film but also to force the viewer to consider something along the lines of "ok, so what's here beyond the violence?"

I'm a strong proponent of the idea that violence can be used to tell a story with just as much emotional impact and symbolic significance (as well as serve all of the "technical movie things" and storytelling things like character development, cinematography, choreography, etc.) of a song in a musical or a one-liner in a comedy. Or a gratuitous topless shot in a cookie-cutter teenage comedy. Not necessarily condoning violence, but saying that it has a right to be used. RIP Robert Altman, and godspeed, but you were wrong about this, dude.

The pacing of the movie is decent - it's not your average ADD action movie, nor is it some yawn of an arthouse flick - and there are some parts that are downright hilarious. Keep an eye out for Chiaki Kuriyama (aka Gogo Yubari from Kill Bill.

Anyway. I'd love to go into this more, but I don't want to ruin anything. Do check it out. There's a sequel, which I haven't seen yet and have heard is inferior to the original. AND there's an American remake planned for 2008. ick. I won't be surprised if it's reduced to all shock. I pray it's not. BR would make for a pretty sweet multiplayer videogame, I think...

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A quick note about Man Vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel. This is on my current list of favorite TV shows. There's surprisingly little on TV that I'm excited about, but MVW kicks some mayjoor bootay. Show goes like so: Dude [Bear Grylls, former UK Special Forces] is airdropped into an inhospitable environment with little to no provisions, and he has to make it back to civilization. Dude tells you what you need to do to survive. Dude shows you what to eat, how to prepare it. How to keep warm, how to keep cool. How to build shelter. But Dude also tells you WHY. All the while, Dude relates stories about people in similar situations, and what they did right or wrong.

You get the idea. But yeah, amazing stuff. I don't think I could climb a canyon wall to harvest bird eggs (and eat them raw or fry them on a rock) if I had to. Granted, I fucking hate eggs.

Here's a clip of Bear in the Moab Desert of Utah, showing you how to keep cool in the 120 degree heat:



This week, Bear goes to the European Alps. Friday, 9PM, Discovery. Check yo' local listings, fool.

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Lastly, I'll leave you with a bit of aural goodness. Here's a live version of one of my favorite songs, Rose Parade by Elliott Smith. From a 1998 set at the Black Cat in Washington, D.C.
We'll talk about Elliott more later. Much more.


Gnight.
xomatt


Oh yeah, PS: any music I ever link to here will be stuff that's freely available online; i.e. it will always be stuff that you could download from, say, a record label or band's official site for free. no copyright warnings here. word up.

What's this all about, then?

Hi. I'm Matt. Here's what's what about this here blog. We're going to straddle between some parts personal blog (you know, like what I do in the day-to-day and how life in Mattworld is going), some parts things I'm interested in [or, things in which I'm interested. sorry, sorry everybody...] (you know, like music and movies and poker and video games and tv and books, and cetera), some parts society and culture (you know, like art and Massachusetts drivers and ::gasp:: polyticks), and some randomness. So we all gots lots o'straddlin' to do. And maybe some interesting conversations and debates? Who knows. With that in mind, expect the first real post real soon. Really.
xomatt