A Chronology on Elm Street - The Final Chapter

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Star Wars vs. Star Trek, Using Math

Arguing about whether Star Wars or Star Trek is better is a pointless exercise, because nobody who matters or is good at life really cares. But people are going to do it anyway, so with all these new Star Wars movies coming out now seems like as good a time as any to answer the question once and for all, using math, because you can't refute math, end of discussion. Keep in mind I have no preconceived agenda here: I like both series a little bit, enough to watch most but not all of their installments, not enough to buy the action figures, but enough to buy the Lego sets. There's only one Star Wars character I'd fuck (Shira Brie) (look her up) and only one Star Trek character I'd fuck (Sulu). There's only one person involved with either franchise that I want to punch in the face. (Walter Koenig and George Lucas. Plus J.J. Abrams, of course, but he worked on both so he cancels himself out.) So from my standpoint Wars and Trek are pretty evenly matched going in. Now let's see what happens when we apply the numbers.

I would ask Shira Brie to wear this though, obviously.

First off, let's throw out all the novels, video games, comic books, and so on and so forth. First of all, most of it doesn't "count" anyway, because it's like imaginary to the second power or some stupid shit, plus there's just an assload of it and I don't have the rest of my life to write this article. Math is supposed to save people time. We'll stick to the material everyone pretty much agrees on, the movies and the TV shows. Since some crybabies will insist that some of these also "don't count" (The Star Wars Holiday Special) we'll do it like this: everything good "counts" and everything bad will simply be ignored, accruing no negative points. This couldn't possibly be more fair, so I don't want to see any whining in the comments section, got it? We'll begin with Star Trek, because alphabetical order.

So there are plenty of solid episodes of the original Star Trek TV series, but I'm gonna lowball it and say that ten of them are way above average. Taking commercials into account, that's about 450 minutes of quality Star Trek action. The old cartoon was pretty good too, so let's assume there are also ten of those worth seeing, giving us a grand total of 675 minutes. So far, so good.

Of course there has been a lot more Star Trek since then, but it actually gets easier from here. There were only two good episodes of The Fake Generation (the one where the Borg went bananas and killed nearly everybody, and the one with Mark Twain), but they were both two-parters so that adds 180 minutes to our total. There was only one decent episode of Deep Throat 69 (the tribble one) (+45 minutes), and I've never seen the one where the captain of the starship was a chick (Star Trek: Vagina?) and I'm not gonna start now (+0 minutes). Despite suffering from a slew of politically-correct bullshit (where are the short skirts?) Star Trek: Quantum Leap was criminally underrated though, so let's lowball it again and assume that five of those were pretty good (+225 minutes). There were a bunch of movies too, but only three of them don't suck (Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock, Voyage Home) so we'll add two hours for each of them. Grand total: 1485 minutes or 24 hours and 45 minutes of quality Star Trek. You could watch Star Trek for a solid day, without a break, and none of it would piss you off. You'd be a total loser though.

Luke Skywalker vs. adorable space bunnies!

Now let's see how rival series Star Wars fares. The original is great (120 minutes), and so is The Empire Strikes Back, even though that's a really stupid, clunky name for a movie (+120 minutes). The Holiday Special sucks though, and so do both of the Ewok movies (+0). Nothing happens in Return of the Jedi after they rescue Han Solo, but his rescue is pretty cool so I'll give them 30 minutes for that part. The Prequels were all total shit, The Force of Bacon was just a remake of the first one with a Death Star that went to 11, and everything since is basically disposable crap because J.J. Abrams (+0). There have been a shitload of Star Wars cartoons from the 1980s on (Droids, Ewoks, Clone Wars, Teenage Mutant Yoda Turtles, Han Solo Meets the Fonz, etc.) ranging in quality from "kind of crappy" to "mercifully short" so that's +0 again. So we're stuck at 270 minutes, 390 if the next movie is any good, which, may I remind you, J.J. Abrams. That's only six and a half hours, and then it still only works of you stop one of the movies a third of the way in. That's fucking pathetic. Star Trek for the win.

See, because Vulcans bottle up their emotions? It's a metaphor.

There you have it. Comments welcome, as long as you agree with me. Posting pictures of your hot girlfriend in a metal bikini is also encouraged.

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Keeping up with the Satanisms

I know I haven't blogged much lately, but rest assured, things are happening. If you want to keep abreast (heh) of all things Mr. Satanism, like and/or follow my editor's official Facebook page, here: https://www.facebook.com/BradDSibbersen/

Mother of Tears - The Third Mother (2007)

Some jokers unearth this old urn, but something about it freaks out the local Catholic muckamuck so he sends the urn to Rome to get it checked out. (What doesn't freak out the Catholics? My mom's boyfriend nearly had a heart attack once because I was eating a Big Mac on the wrong day of the week or something.) The cat in charge of Esoteric Horseshit is out of the office though, so two bimbos open the package instead and naturally one of them bleeds all over the thing and suddenly the whole city is going crazy and every witch with enough frequent flyer miles is showing up to get in on the fun. Which makes Rome sound like the place to be, until you remember that 98% of witches are lesbians, and the ones who aren't are already going out with a guy who's in a band. And judging by the witches in this movie, that band is Cinderella.

Meanwhile, the mega-tasty Asia Argento is right in the thick of it, but she's so busy being chased around by hipsters, cops, gothic lolitas, and monkeys that she barely has time to expose any nipple much less figure out what to do. Eventually though she realizes that she's the main chick, so she decides to take down the queen witch once and for all, which turns out to be surprisingly easy. I'm not kidding, it takes me longer to open a bottle of beer with a cigarette lighter than it takes Asia to trounce this bitch.

I wouldn't have expected a 1000-year-old witch to look so much like one of the
Bangles. Not that I'm complaining. (Hair by Ken Paves, fake tits by Satan.)

So the end's a fizzle, and there are some pretty stupid parts along the way – like when Asia nearly drowns in raw sewage, then two seconds later doesn't have a drop of poo on her – but there's also a head crushed in a door, eyes gouged out, a spear up the cooch, a guy set on fire, an arm whacked off with a machete, a surprising amount of infanticide, rioting, vandalism, some lesbo action, and plenty of tits, so really, I got no complaints.

Asia Argento, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.

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Beneath the Mississippi (2008)

There are two groups of people who can never be succinct: conspiracy theorists and low-budget moviemakers. Seriously, there is no reason for this Blair Witch-on-a-boat nonsense to be nearly two hours long, but I'm a sucker for movies that take place in flooded/submerged towns (I actually paid to see Hard Rain, in the theaters), so here I am again, wading (heh) through another badly-made shitfest just because it toggled one of my weird, highly-specific triggers. (Other bizarre, specialized triggers I instantly respond to are: cute Asian chicks dressed as ladybugs; any movie where someone has sex, willingly or otherwise, with a tree; and anything involving giant bees). Unlike giant, Asian bee sex however, this movie is completely incomprehensible. The picture looks like shit -- alternately too dark or super washed out -- pretty much 100% of the time, which means that while you could say that you've watched this movie, you can't honestly say that you've seen it.

Beneath the Mississippi - the thrilling climax. I'm totally not kidding here.

You can't hear a goddamned thing either, because the sound is usually completely muffled, except of course when they suddenly get one sound effect or scream right and it blows out your speakers because you had them cranked to maximum to hear the dialogue. (Maybe their microphone guy was recording the dialogue portions from... beneath the Mississippi! Ha ha! Seriously though, I wouldn't be surprised if that really was the case.) Hell, even the size of the picture keeps changing: it's like watching two people with dueling remotes fight over what aspect ratio they want to watch the movie at. I kid you not, the only way a movie could be any more visually and audibly inaccessible is if it was shot by tying a video camera to the back of a truck and dragging it around the parking lot. At night. And of course it's too fucking long, even for a movie that wasn't a fucking torture-chore to watch. (The back of the DVD case says that it's 109 minutes; when it reached the 110-minute point and still wasn't over I'm not ashamed to admit that I started crying.)

So what is it actually about? Well, since you can barely see or hear anything there's really no way to know, although the front and back of the DVD promise a flooded/haunted town so I guess that's what all the muffled assholes on screen (whoever they are) are looking for. (Of course, we never actually see this submerged town, because that might actually be interesting.) There was this ominous musical sting every so often, so I guess whatever was going on at those specific moments was supposed to be ominous, but it never seemed particularly ominous to me. Usually it was just washed-out blurs standing around mumbling. There's no sting when the audience (but not the characters) sees the first dead body though, something most people would consider pretty ominous, so maybe that's the key: maybe this entire cunt movie was made on Opposite Day, so that's why it has sound you can't hear and a picture you can't see and is ostensibly entertainment but in practice is simply waiting for it to be over. Honestly, it's all so jaw-droppingly incompetent that eventually I was just grateful that the picture was right-side-up most of the time. (Yes, at one point it isn't. But that was on purpose, probably.) 

I'm not one to engage in hyperbole and shit, but everyone who worked on this movie deserves to die.

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Want to avoid bad movies like this one? Mr. Satanism can help.

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Truth be told, I kinda like Keanu Reeves. Oh, he's a shitty actor (in any given role a potted plant could do better), but he's charismatic, in his own way, and he seems like kind of a nice guy. So I decided to go into this movie with an open mind, basically by ignoring everything I know about computers and, like the producers, pretending that the Internet really is an actual alternate dimension as portrayed in movies like The Lawnmower Man (1992) and Tron (1982) (and, inexplicably, again in 2010), and not merely a convenient conduit for thirteen-year-olds to call me a faggot on Reddit. Besides, the guy who wrote this movie basically invented cyberspace, so let's face it, anything he got wrong, fuck you, no he didn't.

Why?

So, Keanu plays portrays acts... Fuck. Okay, just accept that he's this guy, alright, this guy who's got computer hardware in his head and hires himself out as a sort of cybernetic courier. Basically, you upload information into his noggin and he smuggles it to another location where it can be safely downloaded. How this is preferable to just shoving a thumb drive containing the data up his ass is actually explained, but how it's easier than simply encrypting the information and e-mailing it to the intended recipient isn't. No matter, I said I'm giving this one a chance, so fine, I'll buy their (stupid) premise. It's fucking stupid though.

"He has the eyes of one who never awakes."

Naturally some bad guys are after the information in question, but Keanu's biggest problem is that the data currently loaded into his brain is 160 gigabytes over his personal capacity, which we're told is extremely dangerous. This is probably supposed to generate some additional suspense, although if Keanu Reeves shorted out half his brain I doubt we'd notice any change in his behavior whatsoever. There's plenty of violence; lots of trench coats; Ice T and Henry Rollins appear, apparently competing with each other to see who can give the most embarrassing performance (Rollins wins); the fashions are hilariously out-of-date 1980s futurisms (I can't remember the last time I saw so many people who looked like they were auditioning for the band Split Enz); the main chick is exceptionally hot and has a terrific ass; Keanu's mid-movie rant about wanting a club sandwich is fucking hilarious for all the wrong (and therefore right) reasons; and the thrilling climax, which involves a crossbow fight with the Yakuza, a junkie dolphin reading Keanu Reeve's mind, a last-minute rescue by an electronic ghost, and He-Man being cooked alive, is so delirious you can't help but love it.

Hey, baby, don't cover up on my account.

Ultimately, Johnny Mnemonic is no dumber than The Matrix (1999), and unlike The Matrix it doesn't blow its entire wad twenty minutes in and then just flail around for the rest of its running time plus two even-worse sequels. In short, I liked it. And no, I'm not being sarcastic or ironic - I actually liked it. Scout's honor.

You can see my eyes, you can tell that I'm not lyin'

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