Welcome to the Universe

"The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible." ~Arthur C. Clarke


I recently jumped feet first into the realm of Blu-Ray. I bought the latest and greatest player by Samsung (and still can't figure out the fucking remote) and a 1080p TV from Wal-mart (I hope I don't regret it in a year), but had failed to add any Blu-rays to my collection. Until now. My first personal Blu-ray was none other than Stanley Kubrick's science fiction mindfuck masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Wow. I forgot how fucking weird this movie is. (My next viewing requires copious amounts of LSD.)

The movie is divided into four acts. Act 1, the Dawn of Man, shows a group of hairy hominids cackling and shouting in apemanese at a different group of hairy hominids, scaring them away. Then after a long night of tick-picking and cuddlefucks, they awaken to the awesomeness of the SPACE DOMINO.

This megalith from beyond the stars telepathically teaches our good hairy hominid clan how to use an old femur to bash in the fucking ape-brains of bad hairy hominid leader. (I'm pretty sure they went on to sell car insurance.)

~"Try to get MY pubes off the bar soap, you hairless fuckwad."~

Act Two jumps forward a few MILLION years (without a montage song too) to the flight of Dr. Haywood Floyd (William Sylvester). Apparently a group of lunar geologists were digging around and discovered the SPACE DOMINO. This act is where we get our first sputterings of dialogue. Thirty  goddamned minutes into the movie I might add. So, after telling everyone there is definitely not a giant black crayon box on the moon, the group of scientists go touch the SPACE DOMINO only to have it burst their fucking eardrums apart with its sheer awesomeness.

~Haywood Jablowme~

Act Three is the meat and potatoes of the movie. Taking place another 18 months later, we get introduced to  our sidekick / villain HAL 9000. Oh, and some peeps -- Dave and Frank. This act, in fact, has a plot. HAL is the supercomputer aboard the spaceship Discovery with our human friends heading to Jupiter because apparently our SPACE DOMINO sent out a radio signal to the giant ball of gas. Now, HAL informs the peeps about the communication satellite going kaput in a few hours. No big deal, right. Except a HAL 9000 on Earth ran the same diagnostic and found no such malfunction. Since HALs are always right, one of em must be wrong. 

~He looks trustworthy to me.~

The peeps decide to disengage HAL, just in case he's a psychotic killer computer. HAL decides to kill the peeps because he's a psychotic killer computer. There's where the conflict lies.

Act Four is where you're hoping the acid REALLY kicks in,  because astronaut Dave from Act Three encounters our SPACE DOMINO, entering a psychedelic space warp into the very point where time and space and tacos combine to, to, . . . Ok, I'll admit. I have NO fucking idea what Act Four is about. Dave flies through the air. Then he's in a room as an old man eating. Then he's on the bed dying. Then he's the fucking spacebaby. Yes, spacebaby. 

~"I can taste the purple in your soul."~

Hey, I don't get it either, but it was the Sixties. Maybe Kubrick was hanging out with Timothy Leary a little too often. Or not enough. Either way, this is regarded as the first serious science fiction movie. It's the grandfather to every decent and otherwise space movie since. This is what George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg were jerking off to in Film school. 

And yes, this is what I was jerking off to last night. 

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

"All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity." ~William Shakespeare, Hamlet




I have a soft spot for Disney. I wish I could write up some diatribe about the evils of Disney, with their blatant misogyny; their recycled story lines, characters, and even whole animated sequences; or even their weird obsession with orphans, but i cannot. I was a Disney kid. Thanks to the Magical World of Disney, I set sail around the world in search of flying elephants, ostrich-riding island children, and BDSM. It was a joyous time indeed.

 ~"You've been bloody naughty. You deserve a proper spanking."~

SWOON!

So I jumped at the opportunity to re-view one of the best, The Lion King (1994). It is the retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet on the Serengeti, with a pride of . . . LIONS! That's right, Disney doesn't want to confuse the children.  Let's see here. The story centers around Simba, the new cub (voiced by Jonathan Taylor Thomas of Home Improvement fame, oh and apparently the wall of my girlfriend--she obviously had bad taste from an early age) to King Mufasa (voiced by Darth Vader James Earl Jones.) Our conniving uncle Scar (brilliantly voiced by Jeremy Irons) concocts a double-assassination attempt with his hyena friends to initiate a   coup, allowing both lion and hyena to coexist in fascist harmony. Seriously, have you noticed the not-too-subtle visual references to Nazi Germany.

So Spoiler Alert after Darth Vader Mufasa dies, Simba is ran off by the Hyenas into the wilderness. What got me, even as a child, was the hyenas used the word "KILL." I don't believe that movie had ever been uttered in an animated Disney classic before. Another first is, THE FATHER DIES. Seriously, in every other fucking Disney classic, it's the mother who gets whacked. Bambi, Snow White, Cinder-fuckin-ella, each had their mothers ripped away. I suppose you can't have a Hamlet story without a dead father, the male lion is where all the action is. Even if they are a bunch of lazy fucks.

~Look at my noble nuts, bitches.~

So the newly orphaned, newly homeless, still-fucking-maneless Simba befriends the comic reliefs of Timon and Pumbaa, and learns all about the carefree life of taking care of numero uno. They even have a fucking montage song. (They seriously sing that song for about 2 years.) 

But it's Disney. They like music. This time, they opted to have a real rockNroller into the Magic Kingdom, Sir Elton Fucking John. *bows* No one can write a ballad like that ball-licker. (And I mean that with the utmost respect, Sir Reggie.)

~Disney's Liberace~

Then there is the long-lost love thing, the monkey-whacking thing, the "oh fuck, i'm my father!" thing, the back from the grave thing, the kill your uncle thing. But you know, with whimsical talking animals and shit.