Ray McKinnon wrote, directed, and has a supporting role in 2004’s Chrystal. Lisa Blount (McKinnon’s late wife, best known as Lynette from An Officer and a Gentleman) delivers a heart-wrenching performance in the lead role.

This is not a movie you should watch if you’re feeling suicidal. It’s not a pick-me-up, blow sunshine up your ass kind of flick. Except for a somewhat humorous fight scene between Joe and the local hillbilly drug lord Snake, there isn’t much comic relief. Overall, it’s gritty, subtle, and heart-breaking. Chrystal’s pain is so obvious in her stiff gait that it’s difficult to not have neck pain while you watch. She has random sex to temporarily forget the chronic pain. She sees a spiritual advisor who tells her that the baby is in her neck and she needs to find a way to let it go. That causes more weird shit. Through it all, Chrystal manages to maintain a sense of humor. That could be because she’s a bit loony.

Chrystal was filmed on a shoestring budget, and there are a few indie clichés. For example: Lots of staring, even from the dog, which is pretty creepy. But it carries an emotional depth that compliments the quirks. There’s a satisfying and happy-ish ending, so the horrible indie habit of ending the movie without wrapping up the plot was completely avoided.

Filmed in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, Chrystal captures the deep-south in a way that is both beautiful and shameful. The scenery made me miss the summers I would spend at my grandparent’s in the Ozarks. I love it when I find an emotional connection with a film, even if I don’t relate to the characters. The shameful aspects are the hillbilly meth-cooks and small-town politics, with a little racism thrown in for good measure.

Why should you see it? Chrystal reminds us of the simplistic splendor that is possible in film, even though it’s rarely accomplished. It’s a beautiful, understated film that unfolds like a poetic novel.

I can’t actually recommend that you buy the DVDs currently available, because for some weird reason, they don’t sell entire seasons? Who knows why. Happily, you can see episodes on Cartoon Network.

The cartoon has huge, strong colors and a fluid style. The show focuses on Finn the Human Boy, tireless seeker of funtimes and pure-hearted and chivalrous defender of the helpless, and his adopted brother Jake. Jake happens to be a magical dog who also enjoys adventuring, as well as hanging with his girlfriend (the Lady Raincorn, who is, as her name suggests, part rainbow and part unicorn), and playing the viola. Finn may exclaim that something is “mathematical!” if he thinks it’s boss, and the show itself is… as weird and vivid and bonkers as a fever dream.

The first episode I ever saw was called Memories of Boom Boom Mountain (thanks, Mel!), and it was soooooo out there that it might not be the most ideal introduction to the show – I encourage you to start at the beginning, so you can catch the show’s rhythm and then let the wilder events rock you in some kind of context.

The show has adorable voicework, and the raspy comedy stylings of John DiMaggio (who also voiced Bender in Futurama) as the foundation for a kaleidoscopic mix of color, imagination and a curiously charming respect for non-traditional gender roles. On the one hand, it seems nearly every female that Finn and Jake run into happens to be a princess; on the other, Jake in particular is completely cool with getting in touch with his feminine side.

As for the princesses themselves, Princess Bubblegum is the iron hand in the pink velvet glove that rules The Candy Kingdom – and she’s also a brilliant yet reckless scientist! Hotdog Princess and Slime Princess also adorn the Land of Ooo, but the bossy, dismissive Lumpy Space Princess, known to her pals as LSP, is hands down my favorite, and also voiced by Pendleton Ward, the show’s creator. In continuing with the theme of royal girlness, we finish with Marcelene The Vampire Queen, a perpetually teen goth badass who plays the electric guitar and pretends to be Evil now and again. You know, for kicks.

My “real” introduction to Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time was actually the first issue of the Boom-Studios comic, written by Ryan North. Yes, that Ryan North!

The art in the first story is naturally just like that of the actual cartoon, with an original second comic by a guest artist who riffs on the Adventure Time gang on their own. In the comic, you can take more time to really look at each page to get the tiny details and the groovy in-jokes. (Keep your eye out for the T-Rex cameo! ) And there’s hovertext! Woo!

So, to sum up: Adventure Time is demented, thrilling random genius, both in film and comic form!

The second issue of the comic comes out today, so go buy it at your local comic shoppe!

I know I’m not telling anyone about a movie they’ve never heard of. Taxi Driver launched the careers of legends and is referenced in countless films and TV shows. If you haven’t seen it in a while, so long that you don’t remember every detail, watch it again. Right now.

Robert DeNiro plays Travis Bickle: Vietnam vet, insomniac, and taxi driver. His stability is held together with pills and routine. Sometimes in a film that centers on a descent into madness, I can find something relatable in the protagonist. That spark that says, ‘Oh, yeah. I can see why he/she is completely losing his/her shit.’ Not so much with Travis Bickle. Vietnam screwed a lot of folks up, but that’s really the only root the viewer has to grab. We don’t know if Travis was picked on in high school, if his fiancée left him for his best friend, or if his childhood dog contracted rabies and had to be put down. Scorsese left the character vague, perhaps so we can attach our own issues to the madman.

Travis spots a beautiful blond woman (Cybill Shepherd as Betsy) one day and she becomes the bright spot in the cesspool that is his version of New York City. Travis pursues her and she agrees to go to the movies with him. He, for some asinine nut-job reason, takes her to a porno theater for their date. Then he doesn’t get why she’s so mad and he starts full-on stalking her. Enter Iris, the barely post-pubescent prostitute played by Jodie Foster. She wears short shorts and big hats, and Travis is desperate for her to go home to her parents. Her pimp Matthew (Harvey Kietel) and Betsy’s senator boss become the targets of Travis’s rage. He needs to kill someone to feel validated and he’s not messing around. In case you haven’t seen it or don’t remember, I won’t give up the body count.

His crazy sundae has a base of PTSD, topped with rejection, a 12-year-old prostitute, and one too many jerks. NYC is in for a crazy man shit-storm.

Travis’s breakdown is accessorized with guns stashed in various parts of his clothing and an unexplained Mohawk. Though Travis Bickle the man pretty much remains a mystery throughout the film, the beauty and horror of complete loneliness is captured in a grungy, violent fashion that demands the viewer’s complete attention.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell shares one trait with Tolkien’s books: it is slow and methodical, building up an atmosphere and world view, and taking a leisurely pace on its way to the actual plot. And by “slow and methodical” I mean “Jonathan Strange doesn’t show up until page 139”. This isn’t the sort of book where people start throwing fireballs around in the first chapter…or indeed at all.

Instead this is a book about people who live in a world that is almost our own. Set during the reign of King George III in England, the Napoleonic Wars are raging and England is looking for a way to stop the would-be emperor of all Europe. Little by little, however, it’s revealed that their world is not as simple as ours. Magicians used to consort with faerie princes and travel to their kingdoms, or take servants from among the faerie race to help them in their spells. Now, for some reason the magic seems to have ended, and faeries no longer walk in England. Until Mr Norrell shows that English magic is still very much possible and alive…by making all the statues in York Cathedral come to life and start talking at the top of their little stony voices. Suddenly there is a great interest in magic and its application to modern day life, including the war with Napoleon. And the ball gets going from there.

The book is deeply woven, with several story lines coming together and making one cloth, and it would be a disservice to the reader to talk too much about any of them too deeply; you should read it for yourself. But one of the central themes (and I don’t feel I’m giving too much away by saying this) is the interplay between the two magicians: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

Norrell is a fussy, older man who has spent his life learning all he could about English Magic and is convinced that he is the one that will bring it into the modern era, leaving behind all the mysteriousness and dependence on faeries and turning it into a science as respectable as medicine, or even politics. He is deeply selfish and would never admit to any flaw in his own behavior. He desires importance, but at the same time has no desire to give up his own personal privacy and comfort.

Strange, on the other hand, is a younger man who sort of fell into magic because he didn’t really want to try hard enough to succeed at anything else. And he happens to have a great gift for it. He’s not so interested in studying magic, because he doesn’t really need to study, he just does it. Sometimes he does it wrong, but that doesn’t bother him over much, he can just do more magic to fix what he messed up last time. Unlike the older magician he gets along well with people and enjoys their company.

And here’s where the book gets personal to me. When I first read Strange and Norrell I was working as an I.T. guy for a local university bookstore. The I.T. staff at the time consisted of me and my boss. My boss had been in the business for decades, whereas I was almost finished with my degree. Between the two of us we were expected to not only keep the bookstore running but also come up with ways to move it forward into the twenty-first century. Being a young guy with most of a bachelor’s degree in I.T. under my belt I spent maybe two months listening to my boss explain how things got done before I decided that I knew far better ways to do things and quietly started doing things my way. The problem was all those times when my boss was right about things and my new and revolutionary ideas were wrong. How does that work?
Anyway, about this time I read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and I found someone who understood; like the magicians in the book, we were often asked to do completely insane things by people who didn’t understand what we were doing, we were often at odds with one another, and, long story short, I inserted myself into the book like crazy.

But even without the ties to the world of being a tech geek, this is a great story. The magic is well-written and atmospheric, the characters are realistic and nuanced, and the writing has moments of incredible realism, dreamlike surrealism, seeming historical veracity, quiet humor and wonderfully meandering footnotes. Seriously. One of them is like three pages long, and fascinating.

So, if you’re looking for deeply atmospheric, moody, slow fantasy that’s brilliantly written, look no further. this is the book for you.

I think this was a nice way of saying, “Melodie, you are weird, intense and delusional about your gross devil movies,” but of course I can never prove that.

It’s just a little embarrassing, is all, because that same day, I actually was getting weird, intense and (perhaps) delusional about a movie in which–among other things–we see a she-devil going into labour as she prepares to whelp the Antichrist.

(Why did you have to suffer through labour for that, demon lady? You’re the devil. [Or A devil, at least.] Victoria Beckham is Too Posh to Push; why aren’t you?)

You have to be a little bit open-minded about devil movies, okay?

I’m not saying Hope for the best, because they are basically never the best, except maybe Rosemary’s Baby, and these days especially, mostly what you’re looking at with devil movies is some bullshit found footage pastiche of successful devil movies of yesteryear, as micromanaged by focus groups comprised of whoever was lined up at Del Taco that day.

(PROTIP: if the title has any iteration of the word exorcism in it and it is not The Exorcist, don’t watch it unless you are a) in night 17 or later of a horrible insomniac episode, b) trapped with relatives over a long weekend, or c) drunk. They could’ve cast six hundred Laura Linneys in The Exorcism of Emily Rose and it still would’ve sucked the root.)

Here are the building blocks for a kick-ass devil movie that is not The Exorcist:

That’s it, okay? Of course you want your devil movie to distinguish itself from the others somehow, maybe with an unusual plot, three-dimensional characters and the like, but if you follow my simple plan, and skip the Doubtful Priest™–because the Doubtful Priest™ is always ineffectual and doomed in devil movies–I think you’ll be all right.

Take Devour, for example.

I mean, full disclosure: I only took an interest in this movie because Jensen Ackles is in it, Supernatural is one of my favourite series ever, and it looked like it was up my alley to some extent (unlike Jared Padalecki’s Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Cottage.)

Mostly when you watch a movie or TV show purely to satisfy the fangirl/boy in you, you come away from it feeling like you just jacked it to an extremely shameful search result on YouPorn. I’m not going to name names, but I’ve seen movies for fannish reasons over which I would kill you and eat you to prevent you from ever telling anyone my terrible secret.

I don’t know if Jensen Ackles has a great agent, great instincts or just a great big horseshoe up his ass, as they say in the parlance of our times, but I hit 3 for 3 on genuinely enjoyable movies made by him when I saw Devour.

It’s part slasher film, part psychological thriller, and part glorious, loopy throwback to the golden age of devil movies–the 70s, obviously–when everything was strangely lit and psychosexual and visceral, and Weird Stuff happened that you could almost understand, but then not really, because you aren’t a Satanist and you haven’t been dropping acid for four months straight.

Our Jensen Ackles is Jake: a sweet, protective, fundamentally decent college kid who is pleasant but has issues. Jake is coping with his headcase BFFs, his drunk dad who blames him for his mom’s quadriplegia (inexplicably!), his dillweed boss, and also, terrifying hallucinations of violence, surreality and gore, which he has not reported to anyone and for which he has therefore sought no treatment.

He might have done if there’d been a Visine for that, but there’s not.

There’s not.

Everything changes for him when his buddy signs him up for The Pathway: a mysterious community which at first seems to be a blatant rip-off of The Game, but turns out to be a kind of Satanic thrill ride where sometimes you exact petty revenge against your enemies, sometimes you see vast, leathery, horned beasts in your basement, and sometimes your friends go mental and bump themselves off in grisly, improbable ways.

(I’m just saying: if you ever find me having cut out my own tongue and jabbed pencils into my ears, maybe don’t leap to suicide as the only logical conclusion. I don’t have much to live for, but I also don’t own pencils.)

It turns out to be the worst birthday present ever, basically. And I say that as someone whose birthdays are like a box of chocolates filled with strychnine, cyanide and live baby scorpions.

Luckily, Jake is smart enough to follow the metaphorical trail of breadcrumbs far enough to determine that “the pathway” is also (supposedly) a Satanic term for the connection between the Devil and his possessed.

Less luckily, Jake learns that he’s adopted.

But if you have a long, long history of seeing Weird Stuff in your mind’s eye, and if you’re under an unusual amount of stress, how can you be sure of anything, really, when the people you love and trust keep telling you you’re wrong?

I love this movie. I do.

It’s not full of surprises, but it’s an incredible standout among today’s offerings for its faithful, modern take on that trippy, drippy 70s devil movie aesthetic.

In clumsier hands it could’ve been a ho-hum POS, but it has good production values, a gifted cast among both the hot dumbasses and the veteran character actors who support them (Oh hai, William Sadler!) and a sleek, intelligent script that never sells anybody short, even when it’s presenting a character like Jake’s slutty friend Dakota, whose backstory is basically a trope at this point.

In short: Devour! Don’t let the title or the cover put you off.

(And don’t think about how creepy it is that they used real childhood photos of Jensen Ackles for the title sequence where they all morph into skulls and devils. It’s a weird feeling, okay?)

Group SEX, am I right?

YA was hardcore in 1983, yo.  I bought my original copy of The Grounding of Group Six at Barnes and Noble in Boston when I was 10 – the huge one on Boylston that looked like a half-melted White House, and I’m not going to lie to you: I bought it because of the cover.

In fact, before I even get into the book itself, I’m going to rhapsodize about the cover.  THE COVER.  It’s one of those shady, “serious” YA covers from the 80s, and everyone in the group shot looks like they would CUT YOU.  Which is totally misleading, because they’re all just total dorky sweethearts, and also “rich kids,” which is apparently shorthand for a bewildering lack of basic life skills, so they’re kind of adorably helpless and then they learn to camp out because, and this can’t really count as a spoiler since the basic premise of the book is plastered all over the jacket and the back cover, although it would have been fucking mindblowing going into it blind: Front cover – “Parent’s don’t kill their kids for just one reason. They’re afraid to get caught.” Back cover – “Nat had been hired by the Coldbrook Country School to make sure Group 6 never came out of the woods alive. And their own parents were paying the bill.”

So, you’ve got that tag line, and then each kid looks like a sullen little bitch, so you kind of WANT their parents to kill them: Marigold looks like you’ve already bored her into a coma, Ludi looks like you smell incredibly bad, I mean, she has to breathe through her mouth just to even look at you,  and Sarah has her “Knickerbocker, please,” face on; she’s clearly thinking about punching you in the neck.  And the boys!  None of them look like how I pictured them in the book (Ludi, too, is way tougher looking on the cover than in my mind’s eye) and poor Sully looks like he’s tweaking.  Of the lot of them, Nat’s face is the most passive, the least defined.  He’s sort of imaginary compared to the others, like, if an Elf escaped a Dungeonmaster’s Guide and got lost in a romance novel cover before he crept into the YA section?

Anyway, despite/because how misleading it is, the cover is awesome, for reals: just look at it! Marigold, vaguely Cher-like, and obviously comfortable with her teenage sexuality, Coke hunkered down and relaxed, with his hand in a casual yet non-sexual curl around his friend’s leg, his friend who is totally organized and competent and a girl, and Nat… Nat  looks like an ad for the Bon Jovi Hairclub for Men, sporting this stylin’ mullet (yet clean shaven, even though in the book he has a blond goatee OMG) and also? He’s wearing supenders and an unbuttoned shirt over a smooth, naked chest (clearly something he picked up in the romance section). So you already know what you’re getting into, babies. That’s right: HEDONISM.

Oh, did you think it was a coincidence that the title practically says “group sex?” Because it’s totally not. I mean, group sex doesn’t happen in the actual book, but it’s easy to imagine that it happens at the end when they all  quit school to move in together! SO IMPLIED. Also, teachers fucking their students, but it so totally doesn’t count because I don’t think Nat fucks Ludi until the book technically ends, and she’s probably 17 by then, maybe? Plus, he’s only 22 and fresh from college, so yeah, older, but not 42, and not Buffy/Angel old.

But maybe you’re totally fine with the age thing, and you’re hung up on the fact that he, you know, was hired to ASSASSINATE her? and that six weeks living rough in mortal peril manufactured some kind of Stockholm Syndrome Teen Romance? Well, sheesh, come on, he wasn’t actually her killer, so it’s not like he menaced her into bed with him. She actually has an entire school full of boys her own age and in her group to hook up with, so. She makes her decision with clear eyes! Which you can totally do if you’re an old soul and also a little psychic and 16 years old and abandoned/murdered by your rich parents!  ::ahem::

But the whole thing where he was hired to murder them? Well, he’s a gambler, but a doof and a sweetheart and he was just desperate, right? And he didn’t really think he was being paid to actually kill them, because he’s so simplehearted it doesn’t even occur to him that it’s not just some elaborate scared straight scheme? And once he realizes that he was, in fact, supposed to actually murder them and also, THIS JUST IN, be murdered in turn, he comes clean and tells them that their parents put them on a hitlist and then he turns them into this team of scrappy survivalists in an amazingly non-creepy way (kind of like Red Dawn, but with way less communist hysteria). He’s just a big goofy golden labrador of a man, who likes to be outside, and not to be kneecapped by the bookie he owes dough to.

It’s just, like, extreme Outward Bound.

To return to the theme so elegantly communicated by the cover, this book is basically full of attempted child murder from the get go. Also, it was a lot cheaper to kill people in 1983. I mean, rich people paid the actual administrators of the school who knows how much to put Xs in their kid’s eyes, but DollarTimes.com told me that the 3K the school would have paid Nat (instead they wisely gave him 1500 and promised to send the rest later) would only be like $6,995.07 in 2012. That’s not even 1400 bucks a head! Nat: assassinatin’ rich kids on the cheap since 1983! Group discounts, woo!  (Get it? )

Oh, and I kind of love the guy Nat owes money to: Arn-The-Barn Emfatico.  His uncle’s a gangster, and so he’s obliged to collect the cash, even though he likes Nat and he himself isn’t a huge fan of the old ultraviolence.  He’s a simple guy.  He likes nature and Pepsi and Milky Ways.  He has a girlfriend who loves motels: “they kind of turned her on.”

The Grounding of Group Six is amazing for so many reasons: the kids drink and fuck and bond, the adults curse and drink and plot to kill them, and somehow, although the kids go through some crazy deep trauma, they come out remarkably well-adjusted and quite likely to become just the sort of pleasant, relaxed, and totally self-actualized people who become casual billionaires, because they all got to have super cathartic moments that helped them get over their respective mommy and daddy issues.  At 10, my takeaway from this book was the steadfast belief that no matter how horrifying my family, I could make it through.

To recap:

1) Villainous parents/authority figures!

2) Healthy teen sexuality with a focus on birth control!

3) One girl is psychic for no apparent reason without any real bearing on the plot!

4) Like everything 80s, it features a training montage!

Seriously, why are you not reading this book right now?  It’s so totally great.  What I’m saying here is, you should read it. You should read it SO HARD.

Editor’s note: The current edition of this book sold on Amazon, both in print and for Kindle, appears to have been released by the author after getting the rights back from his publisher. This means instead of the magnificent cover to which fully half of this post is in praise of, you’ll instead get something he may or may not have created himself in Microsoft Paint. The good news, though, is that almost the entire sale price of any copy sold will go to pay author’s mortgage — purchase it with pride!

Full disclosure: no matter what anyone says, myself included, I’m on the fence about supernatural phenomena.

I’ve never actually seen one, mind you. My mother maintains that I was friendly with an old man’s ghost as a child, but I tend to fall on the side of “imaginary friend” on that one.

Even so, I’m just enough inclined toward magical thinking that I won’t say this stuff is definitely horseshit. I might believe it is, but I can’t accept it as absolute fact, because even if I can’t say for certain that it is legit, neither can I say for certain that it’s not. (Debunkery notwithstanding.)

For me, it comes down to how stupid the story is.

I won’t say there aren’t aliens among us, but I will say that the lady who told me aliens glued her eyes shut so they could hide her hairbrush probably had some untreated psychological challenges. (Come on, lady. They’re aliens. They can take your hairbrush whenever they want.)

I won’t say my apartment isn’t haunted, but I will say that ghosts didn’t tear down the blinds on my kitchen window. They had been held in place with cheap packing tape and a dirty old twist tie.

I won’t say that the little boy on Ghostly Encounters didn’t see a ghost in his sister’s bedroom, but I will say it’s kind of a funny coincidence that he saw it after spending hours painting a huge model car with nail polish.

Ghostly Encounters is the greatest show on television right now. I’m so sad that they haven’t put it out on DVD. (You can watch clips on YouTube, though, and you absolutely should.)

Every episode features one-on-one interviews with people who look like they don’t really understand where they are, talking about some spoooooky paranormal experience they had.

Then, just when you’re staring at your TV, mouth agape, thinking “Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?” they go to a re-enactment of the haunting, with a helpful voiceover from the victim to explain what you’re looking at and fill in the emotional blanks.

You might think such voiceovers are unnecessary, considering that all they’re doing is explaining a one-minute clip of someone sprawled in bed looking kind of scared and kind of bored while a shadowy wraith walks into the room, does the hokey-pokey or whatever and then shags ass back to the afterlife, but lookit: although DuskTV shows Ghostly Encounters at all hours of the day and night, pretty much the only time I ever watch it is at the asscrack of dawn, hung over and trying to stay conscious while I medicate my cat.

At a time like that, you need some mushmouthed simpleton to explain that she was scared when she saw a huge black figure behind the shower curtain while she was trying to have a pee.

People come on Ghostly Encounters and say the dumbest shit you’ve ever heard in your life, without a trace of embarrassment or hesitation.

I saw one a couple of weeks ago with a woman whose father’s ghost appeared to her, not to pass on some important message or even to say goodbye, but merely to remind her that he was dead. He hadn’t gone missing or anything; he just wanted to drive it home for her so she could move on.

(I ask you: how could anybody truly move on from the loss of a loved one if they thought his ghost might return to them at any time? Get off the stage, you undead maroon!)

This morning I watched in awe as one of those people who phrase every comment as a question spoke of a man dressed in black who sometimes appeared next to her bed, did absolutely nothing, then disappeared.

“I called him The Man in Black?” she said. “Because that’s what he was?” (She was not referring to Johnny Cash.) Then she went on to say she was sad when her dog died, because she loved him.

This was a grown-ass woman, okay? This was a voter. For all you and I know, she could be the medical technician responsible for finding cancer in your blood.

Each segment ends with a cartoon pendulum sweeping it away like one of those cheesy flashbacks on Highlander: The Series, followed by barely credulous commentary from series presenter Lawrence Chau: a tragic man who is very obviously struggling to support these people respectfully.

If I believed that the stories of Ghostly Encounters were even based on supposedly real-life events, I might feel like a jerky jerk jerkface for making fun of them this way. I’m related to several people who tell ghost stories about their own lives, and I’d burn in hell before I’d make fun of them in public.

I just… refuse to believe that the doughy, mumbling dickweeds who give these interviews really encountered ghosts. Okay? I refuse this. To me, the only thing missing from Ghostly Encounters is a Maury-style graphic at the end, urging you to appear in an upcoming episode.

Have YOU ever seen a ghost in a police uniform while you were smoking hash in your truck at 3am and listening to Air Supply with the volume turned all the way up?

Ghosts are not the scariest thing, is all I’m saying.

If you have an aversion to Adam Sandler, do not fret. He’s a wingman in this flick, and he’s really, really hot. It’s weird and takes me by surprise every time.

The Lone Rangers break into Rebel Radio and accidentally take everyone hostage with very realistic water guns. Michael McKean plays Milo, the numb-nuts station manager who plans to turn the station into easy listening. He’s obviously the antithesis of rock and roll. Joe Mantegna (The Simpsons’ Fat Tony) is Ian, the cool-cat DJ who ends up as an ally to the aspiring rockers.

The parking lot of the radio station becomes a huge party, and Chris Farley the cop has to go find Chazz’s hot but bitchy girlfriend Kayla (Amy Locane- how much has her life sucked the last few years?) who has the only cassette copy of the song they want played. David Arquette plays a surfer guy who works at the station. He’s goofy as hell, and I think he wasn’t really acting. Judd Nelson is a greasy record executive, Ernie Hudson is a good-guy cop, and Michael Richards spends the entire movie in the duct work. There’s a scene with White Zombie playing in a club (swoon). There’s even a cameo by–wait for it–Lemmy!

There’s an abounding theme of injustice: suited fat cats controlling music. How many of us writers can find that somewhat relatable?

There are lots of quotable moments. For example, Chazz tells Milo, “You look like half a butt-puppet.” I don’t know what that means, but it’s hilarious! At one point, Chazz riles up the crowd by chanting “Rodney King.” The only black guy in custody is all “What’s that supposed to mean?” and Pip replies, “He’s that guy.”

So, they’re surrounded by cops and have a room full of hostages. The crowd outside is cheering for them, and the viewer is, too. They’re lovable dumbshits with pepper-sauce filled water guns. But they find a way to make their rock and roll dreams come true. Airheads is a throwback to the glitzy days of hair bands, and it just makes me freaking happy. Motorcycles, guitars, long hair, and leather.

Life was simpler back then.

I came across it in a collection of sci-fi stories I bought on my Kindle for a dollar, so that should tell you something.  Specifically, it should tell you that the book is out of copyright, and I paid a buck too much, since you can easily find this book free on any platform. Which makes sense, as it was written in the 1800′s by James De Mille, and not published until after he died.

Manuscript uses the framing device of a group of professors out on a yacht, who chance to discover the titular copper cylinder which does indeed contain a strange manuscript. Since nothing is really going on in their lives the professors read the manuscript in turns, and every once in a while take a break from reading to make comments on the action in the book.

The inner story is of Adam More, an English sailor who is marooned near the south pole and is taken in by the South Poleites (I know, we’re both thinking penguins here, but no. Apparently in the 1800′s the south pole was a subtropical paradise. Go figure). These inhabitants show More every courtesy, giving him gold, fine foods, money, and placing him in the company of a beautiful young woman named Almah, who thinks he ain’t bad himself. Almah is from a distant country (that is, somehwere else near the South Pole)and they bond closely. She calls him Atam-or, because his normal name doesn’t make sense in her language.

Eventually Atam-or learns that the South Pole people have declared every day opposite day: they love death and hate life, love darkness and hide from light, think that poverty is better than wealth, and unrequited love is better than requited love. If he’d just added that they drink Pabst Blue Ribbon “ironically” then he’d have described your common hipster to the ground.

A lot of work is put into making this entirely negative society seem plausible: Every person seeks to give all their goods to their neighbors, and thus sink to the level of paupers. Unfortunately, all your neighbors are trying to give everything they own to you, and you have to be very careful or else you’ll end up insanely wealthy and surrounded by servants and palaces and riches beyond compare. So, be on your guard! It’ll make your head hurt if you try to actually make sense of it. It certainly hurt the main character’s head. A number of conversations read like this:
Atam-or: Hey! Do you like life? Or death?
South Pole Person: Oh man, death totally rocks! I wish I were dead right now!
A: WHAT???? I think life is better!
SPP: WHOA! No way! Well, what do you think about having stuff? Do you like it?
A: Yeah, totally.
SPP: Holy CRAP, man! What kind of mixed-up freaky weirdo are you?

At any rate, Atam-or and Almah fall in love, which means that the people around them think they should give each other up entirely and maybe even be given the “gift” of being killed and eaten, which for them is apparently like winning a Nobel prize for winning so many Oscars. Atam-or and Almah decide they’re not so keen on that plan and try to run away.

The problem is that the manuscript is written by an Adam Moore that was clearly not killed and eaten, so I have a hard time worrying that he’s going to die. Which is why we have Almah, of course. Since it’s not clear she makes it to the end of the story you can go ahead and worry that she might get killed. (Spoiler Alert: Nope.)

Meanwhile, back on the SS Framing Device the professors are arguing about the story. Some say that More is just some sailor who was really bored and decided to write the same story in three languages as a way to pass the time. Others argue that it’s all real, and all the fantastic creatures he talks about are probably just dinosaurs (or “fossil animals” as they were called at the time). Another suggests that whatever the case, More is not a very good writer and probably should have tried harder.

But the thing that makes the whole book surreal isn’t backwards-land, It’s the “civilized” opinions of the “normal” westerners. In the 130-odd years since Manuscript was written our view of the world has changed considerably. For example, nobody at that time had confirmed that there was such a continent as Antarctica, and one character even asserts that “given a warm year you could sail straight across the south pole”. Even more shocking is the 1880′s view of gender relations. Atam-or is utterly surprised when a woman named Laylah romantically pursues him, a shocking aberration from “normal” behavior, and something that Almah would never do. The poor schmuck never seems to come to grips with a woman who shows even the slightest independence, and he keeps trying to get away from the kind, vivacious, competent and good-hearted Laylah, and back to the scared, totally dependent, constantly-swooning Almah. Finally forced to choose between the two he decides to stick with his sad-sack sweetheart who at least knows how proper women should behave. It’s a real triumph for feminism, is this book.

But come on, De Mille never intended to have the thing published. It’s obvious that he was just having fun and wanted to write a story where he got to choose between a couple of hotties who were both in love with him. (Why does that make me think of vampires and werewolves…?) The professors on the yacht absolutely skewer the novel, and take on the air of Mike and the Bots from MST3K. So if you’ve got a few moments and any kind of e-reader, check out a Strange Manuscript!

“Dude, you totally have to see Sucker Punch.”

“What’s that?”

“You totally have to see Sucker Punch.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, okay. Okay, so you know how in the movie version of Chicago, Roxie copes with the horrors of prison life by fantasizing that everything’s some cheery musical number? And you know how in Flashdance, Pittsburgh’s horndogs would rather watch fully-clothed ladies do interpretive dance than see real peelers? And you know how in Showgirls, everyone talks about how Nomi’s the best dancer of her generation or whatever, but then whenever you see her dance, she’s jerking around so violently that you worry she’s going to hurt herself?”

“…I haven’t seen any of those movies.”

“Well, don’t see Showgirls, okay? You wouldn’t like it. I love it like a brother, but you wouldn’t like it, so don’t see it. Promise?”

“Okay…”

“Okay. So. Jeez Louise. Okay, Sucker Punch. This girl’s evil stepfather has her committed to a nuthouse, and bribes an orderly to forge a lobotomy order. And it’s one of those Hollywood nuthouses where even though it’s still fully operational, it’s so rundown that they could be shooting a haunted nuthouse movie at the same time and you wouldn’t even know. All the patients at this hospital are beautiful young girls, because screw you, that’s why, and so the orderly is also maybe whoring them out to guys who are like really really into banging crazy chicks in derelict mental institutions..? I don’t know. It was the 50s.”

“Oh..!”

“Right. And apparently there’s only one neurosurgeon on planet earth who’s capable of hammering a steel spike into someone’s head, so he’s not available to do the lobotomy right away, you know, this girl has five days to spin her wheels and work out an escape plan. So in between coping with her situation and trying to find a way out of it, she fantasizes about a more glamorous life. Only, I don’t know, maybe she doesn’t actually have an imagination, or maybe she’s crazier than the movie realizes she is, because of all the possible places she could go in the limitless landscape of human imagination, she fantasizes that she’s some kind of weird burlesque sex slave who mesmerizes rich men with her sick dance skillz even though she doesn’t take her clothes off or even, like, bare her shoulder for a minute.”

“That sounds a bit–”

“Listen. Jesus. So then even though it’s her own fargin’ fantasy, she then fantasizes that she wants to escape from the burlesque sex ballet or whatever the hell it is, because it sucks the big one. So whenever she’s asked to dance, she goes into this fugue state where she’s not a wronged mental patient or a disco-dancing road whore, but actually, part of an elite troop of skank warriors who prance around in tiny, fetishistic outfits, slaying zombie Nazis and dragons and maybe a gigantic terra cotta warrior or something? I don’t know. Maybe. I was drunk when I saw it.”

“I can tell.”

“Hey. I wasn’t that drunk. I’m a Ladner.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not. If you were really sorry you’d be online right now, buying this movie on DVD.”

“It doesn’t sound like something I would enjoy, Melodie.”

“Well, I’m not finished. If you let me finish, you’d see how great this movie is and then you’d hang up on me so you could watch it right away on VOD.”

“I don’t think I get VOD.”

“You get VOD. Oh my god. Okay. So the thing of it is, they never show her dancing. They start the music, and she sways a little bit like she’s maybe falling asleep standing up, and they cut to the action sequence from her doublethink fantasy hogwash, and then when we come back to the underaged fan-dance whores, they all pee their figurative pants over her mind-blowing dance chops even though we haven’t seen her do anything.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Right? All these actresses have to come running up to her going HOLY CANNOLI WHERE DID YOU LEARN TO DANCE LIKE THAT YOU ARE SO AMAZING THAT YOU CAN SURELY DICKMATIZE OUR WAY TO FREEDOM… but she never actually does anything.”

“…”

“Hello..?”

“Who’s in this… movie?”

“…Emily Browning…”

“…”

“But Zack Snyder wrote and directed. That’s the 300 guy.”

“Oh, I liked that one.”

“I know you did. And the action sequences in Sucker Punch are gorgeous. I don’t even really like action movies and I still loved them. Four or five richly imagined alternate universes, each one unique, each one designed to support the loony conceit that it really is that fargin’ hard to steal a fargin’ cigarette lighter.”

“Ha-ha!”

“And okay, so some people were kind of grossed out by Sucker Punch, and so Zack Snyder clarified that it’s actually a comment on sexism and the objectification of women. I mean, maybe he should’ve run a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie, you know, maybe it’s not totally clear that he spent $82,000,000 on Slutoween costumes and CGI to strike a blow for feminism, but he did, okay? It’s way subversive.”

“I think I have 300. Maybe I’ll pop that in tonight.”

“Whatever. I’m getting you Sucker Punch for Mother’s Day.”