preconceptions about China

No word yet on that nightly journal I'm supposed to be keeping. Be that as it may, I have some thoughts to share with you.

I'm researching China, particularly the eats, and I'm getting really jazzed about this little four-day jaunt. But some unsettling questions remain in my mind.

I have mixed feelings about China.

The government, not its citizens, mind you. So far I've found that people are people, no matter where you go. But China, and her communist leaders, have done some things that I find difficult to swallow. The country's history is more checkered than the flag at the NASCAR finish line. I'm trying real hard to be objective here, but I am and always was a subjective bugger, and that usually filters through to my perceptions about other places. Some of these issues that I have with China and its history are seeping in around the loose edges of my consciousness, and I have to get them off my chest before they're diluted by experience.

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of China, of course, is the color red. Communism. Mao Zedong. The Great Leap Forward. Josef Stalin, Kim Il-sung, Pol Pot, and other prominent communist dictators who've influenced or been influenced by China and its politics.

I have a problem with communism. What's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander. I get that. China has a different moral code, a different work ethic, a different societal paradigm and a much different history than America or any other Western state. But still: the idea of communism itself seems, to me, fundamentally flawed and diseased. In my mind, human beings were not meant to exist in classless, moneyless, stateless societies. I'm no social Darwinist; there's times when I've despaired of the ossification of class in Western society and its total dependence on currency. But there's no denying that capitalism and competition encourage hard work and innovation. That, to me, seems preferable to the alternative: a society focused on production (at the expense of intellectualism)—a breeding ground for conformity, mediocrity, and stagnation, in which the group is superior to the individual.

Whether or not that's what's happened in China is debatable, because of the second problem I have with the place:

They're not even doing communism right.

I remember penning a passionate article about this in my high school's literary magazine back in 2002 or thereabouts. One of the basic tenets of communist theory is that the people have control, and that's that. Society is stateless: there is little to no concentration of power, no overarching authority. This is what makes North Korea's proper name so laughable: the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is four lies in one. It's anything but democratic, inasmuch as the power is held by one family and one family only, with the mere pretense of choice on the part of the people. The citizens do not own the means of production, nor do they have any say in the government—the Great/Dear/Outstanding Leader does. The definition of the word "republic" is a state in which political affairs are public matters and not the private concern of the rulers; as I pointed out before, the people have about as much say in (or knowledge of) political affairs in North Korea as do chipmunks or cucumbers. And finally, "of Korea" implies that the DPRK considers itself the rightful government of the entire peninsula, which is about as horrifying as it is hilarious.

Not my photo. This is China, not North Korea.

Though China's human rights record is far from spotless (I'll get to that in a minute), they at least seem to have empowered their citizens to a greater degree than the Hermit Kingdom. Even so, power is centralized and concentrated in Beijing, which means that the "stateless" part of communism is being openly flouted. Moreover, even a superficial glance at China's economy and society reveals that it is neither moneyless nor classless. At best this makes the Chinese government hypocritical; at worst, it makes them dishonest. I have no use for dishonest people—let alone a dishonest political system.

Setting that aside, let's talk about the biggest bee in my bonnet about China: human rights.

Here's a little preamble from Amnesty International's website:

Amnesty International has documented widespread human rights violations in China. An estimated 500,000 people are currently enduring punitive detention without charge or trial, and millions are unable to access the legal system to seek redress for their grievances. Harassment, surveillance, house arrest, and imprisonment of human rights defenders are on the rise, and censorship of the Internet and other media has grown. Repression of minority groups, including Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongolians, and of Falun Gong practitioners and Christians who practice their religion outside state-sanctioned churches continues. While the recent reinstatement of Supreme People's Court review of death penalty cases may result in lower numbers of executions, China remains the leading executioner in the world.

Possibly I was biased by being born in a country where freedom of speech and freedom of the press actually mean something, are protected by a constitution (the supreme and inviolable law of the land), and are sacrosanct in the hearts and minds of the people. Thus it shocks me when I hear that the Internet is heavily censored in China, with social media sites like Facebook being routinely shut down or blocked. The Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is indefatigable at censoring news reports and filtering what information the people receive. The Chinese government is enormous, inefficient, bureaucratic, and callous. Petitioners cannot easily seek redress of grievances, and are often lost in the shuffle or crushed by the big wheels. The class system is not only extant but downright marginalizing, equal to anything seen in South Africa. In 2005, Jiang Wenran, acting director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta, stated that an apartheid-like segregation system was in effect in China. City-dwellers, he said, enjoy a wealth of social and economic perks while peasants, or "rural workers," are treated like second-class citizens. They require a portfolio of hard-to-obtain passes to work in provinces other than the ones in which they reside. Movement is restricted. Freedom of association is nonexistent, freedom of religion is a joke, and people are regularly stripped of their rights if they do something, anything, that causes the CPC to label them "subversive." And then of course there's the one-child policy. To me, a government that fines its citizens for having more than one kid is just plain tyrannical.

In addition to these documented transgressions, dark rumors abound of torture, brutality and degradation in China's arbitrary detention centers. Evidence has surfaced that Mao and his followers abused the science of psychiatry to their own political ends, declaring thousands of people mentally ill, thereby discrediting them. (Statistics hint that this practice continues to this day, especially in the persecution of practitioners of Falun Gong, which the CPC has branded undesirable.)

Besides all that, we have the official Chinese policy of refusing to acknowledge North Korean runaways as political refugees. Instead, China calls them "economic migrants," captures them and deports them back to North Korea, where, as we all know, they face separation, torture, "reeducation," forced labor and execution.

And speaking of North Korea, let's not forget that China has abetted the existence of that oppressive regime with food and electricity for nigh-on 60 years now. I have a bit of a problem with that as well. For all I know, Chinese soldiers might have killed some of my grandfather's best buddies back during the Korean War, too. So I'm a little ticked off at the country on my granddad's behalf, silly as that sounds.

And do I even need to mention Tibet?

Not my photo.

I don't like any of this. No way, no how.

What really sticks in my craw is that China does (or allegedly does) all of this stuff even after signing UN-sanctioned agreements saying that it won't do it. China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but never ratified it. So they just do whatever they please. Hell's donkeys.

In a nutshell, my preconceived notion of China is this: it's a country, a big country, with a huge population and a long and storied history, which in the 20th century had some tremendous political and societal upheavals, during which a rather unscrupulous man came to power, espousing communism and imposing his vision upon the country and its people with varying degrees of success. What we have now is a country used to be doing told what to do, which is really too big to regulate, whose citizens are finally starting to get fed up thanks to the unstoppable influx of Western technology (and with it, ideology), and whose ruling party has all but abandoned the proper pursuit of dogmatic communism in favor of a corrupt regime based on absolute power, suppression of dissent, a single-party state, and strict regulation of economics, society and human life, thereby blighting a nation and its sovereign dignity.

The Temple of Heaven, one of the things on my Beijing to-do list. From Wikimedia Commons.

So, yeah. I'll visit their country. I'll peruse their monuments. I'll stand in their square. I'll tour their palaces. I'll eat their nibbles. I'll breathe their air and sleep in their beds and watch them go about their lives. But that doesn't mean I have to like the way they run their business.

We'll see how much this trip changes my mind.

riding the Shinkansen

Congratulations! We're all done with Tokyo! Peace be to you, fellow traveler, and congrats on making it this far.

I made an error in my earlier posts. I wrote "shinkansen." That's erroneous. Why? Shinkansen is a proper noun. It should be capitalized.

What is it exactly?

Simply put, it's the Japanese bullet train. The word Shinkansen translates to "New Trunk Line," but it's pretty much synonymous with "big pointy white train that moves like the dickens." Today I'm going to teach you how to ride on one properly.

August 4 was a day of great excitement. I would depart the 35 million-strong metropolis of Tokyo and head south for warmer (and stickier) climes, unexplored cities and howling adventures. I had survived four days in Tokyo with nothing but a Lonely Planet travel guide and a T-shirt which I somehow failed to realize had an American WWII fighter plane on it. "Confident" was not the word to describe my state of mind. I was feeling godly. It was time to get off the grid. I had no guidebooks or maps of anything west of the Japanese capital. Everything from here on out would be totally new and unexpected.

I got up at some outrageous hour—6:30 if I recall—unlimbered my suitcases, and marched on Tokyo Station. It was another warm, humid, cloudy Japanese morning, and I was already sweating by the time I walked through the station's Central Entrance and into the nearest Japan Rail office. Thank goodness they had the A/C running full blast, fit to give a polar bear frostbite. It was time to activate my Japan Rail Pass.

Picture taken ex post facto, but what the heck.

See that? It's the fabled slip of paper I've been mentioning all this time. Two or three weeks before I left California, I bought a one-week pass from this website for $283, and a few days later FedEx brought it to my door. Fast-forward to August 4. Upon arriving at Tokyo Station, I handed that blue, orange, and white slip in the upper part of the above picture to a JR representative. After having me fill in my name, my nationality, the date, and some other info, the rep stamped a date onto that bit of paper in the lower left of the picture and handed it to me. Boom—pass activated. I had August 4-10 to use the Japanese rail system as much as I pleased.

This was convenient, for I had no less than three rail journeys planned for my Japan junket. Today's jaunt would take me from Tokyo to Kyoto. With the excitement only the promise of a new train trip can bestow, I took my newly activated pass over to the ticket window and booked a window seat on the 7:33 Hikari (which runs on the Tokaido and Sanyo lines). After 40 minutes in the air-conditioned waiting room, I moseyed up to the platform to meet my intended steed. I wanted to get a look at the shovel-nosed engine when it glided smoothly into the station. And I got it:

Isn't she a beaut?

Cock up your lugs, because I have something to explain to you: there are eight different Shinkansen lines and sixteen kinds of bullet trains that run on them. They differ in how fast they go and how many stops they make. For obvious reasons, I won't go into their various names and destinations here, but just know that "Hikari" is the type of train in the above picture, and they're one of the types that does the Tokyo-Hakata run.

The interior of a Hikari car (reserved seating) looks like this:

And this was my seat, 7E. Envy me.

 
Pretty cushy. The wicked thing is that the seats automatically rotate to face the new direction of travel after the train pulls into the station and the previous passengers disembark. I saw this happen on the blue Skyliner train from Narita Airport to Ueno on July 30, and could hardly believe my eyes. Oh, those Japanese. What will they think of next, rear doors on taxicabs that open and shut by themselves? Oh, wait, they had those too.

Anyway, I stowed my luggage in the overhead rack, plunked myself down, and readied my camera for some shots of the countryside. I kept a notebook and pen on my tray table and made careful note of the stations where the train stopped and the time we arrived (just for future reference). Seven thirty-three rolled around and before I knew it, the Tokyo skyline was zipping by.

I've yet to encounter a city (particularly an Asian one) that looks inviting under grey skies.

Six minutes later we stopped in Shinagawa.

Twelve minutes after that, we hit Yokohama.

After a further sixteen minutes, we arrived in Odawara.

Take note of the weather. There are shadows. The sun is out.

It was between Odawara and Nagoya that I received the first real disappointment of my trip. The day, as you can see from that final photo of Tokyo above, was overcast and sullen. The ceilings were pretty low. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to see Mount Fuji in that soup. Then we hit Odawara, the last stop before Fuji-san, and the sun was out. All seemed well. But when the foothills hove into view outside the porthole and the summit was swathed in a grey mantle, I couldn't help but feel blue. What a bummer. It's only the most iconic freakin' mountain in all Japan. And I was missing it because of some cheeky atmospheric water particles.

This, I believe, is Mount Fuji, or what I could glimpse of it:

 
The train sped on. And, wouldn't you know it, but the sun came out again after that. We hit Nagoya and it was shinin' bright. Lazy bastard.

I may or may not have caught a glimpse of the second thing I wanted to see on the Tokyo-Kyoto run, though: Lake Biwa. I think this is it. I could be wrong:

After a few more stops, we hit Kyoto. I stowed my camera and didn't get it back out again until I'd checked into my room at the Karasuma Kyoto Hotel. Check it out:

Can you believe I nabbed this room for fifty bucks?

Dude, this is friggin' suite (see what I did there?).

Plush accommodations secured, it was time to sally forth and hit the items on my Day-One-of-Kyoto to-do list...but that's a story for another time. Tomorrow: NISHIKI MARKET.

a tale of three cities

I have returned from Japan.

I concluded the lovely month of July at home with my family, packed up, said my goodbyes, and hopped on a jet plane for Tokyo on July 31, there to spend eight days touring the country. As of August 8, I'm back in Seoul, wallowing in the heat and humidity and cat hair, reunited with Miss H and loving it. (And the best part is, my vacation's only half over.)

But I need to tell you about the jaunt through Japan, don't I? This is a travel blog, after all. So here goes. First, a few short words to set the scene:

I planned the whole affair out in advance, which is unusual for me. Usually I just go and pants it. When I went to the British Isles in 2010, I had only the vaguest idea of what I'd be doing and seeing, and where I'd be staying. I knew I wanted to hit Newcastle, Edinburgh and Dublin, but that was as specific as it got. My train tickets, flight tickets and hostels were all booked after I got there. It was somewhat slapdash, but it worked out.

Knowing, as I did, that I had only a limited amount of time to see Japan, and not wanting to spend a fortune there, I did some advance planning this time around. I chose to focus my vacation on three cities. Tokyo was an obvious choice, and Kyoto was acknowledged by many to be a must-see; but the third one was a curve ball. I picked Kumamoto. I won't go into details here about why I chose it; I'll let you know that when I get to those specific days. For now, I'm simply going to give you my route and the timing.

This was the plan, and a damn good one: July 31 through August 3, I'd be in Tokyo. Miss H and Miss J (from Bucheon) would meet me there late on the 31st and stay until the 2nd. Then they'd go home and I'd be on my own again for two days. August 4-5, I'd be in Kyoto, and August 6-7 I'd be in Kumamoto.

I've provided a map for your consideration. You can clearly see all three cities on this map (Kumamoto is down on Kyushu, the southernmost of the three big Home Islands):

Now, one of the things on my バケット list ("バケット" is Japanese for "bucket") was to ride the Shinkansen. Literally, that word means "new trunk line." It's synonymous with "Japanese bullet train." What better way to see the country (and get from Point A to Points B and C quickly) than by high-speed rail? With that in mind, I booked a seven-day Japan Rail Pass for $283 before I left the U.S. (Due to some regulation or other, you can't get the pass in Japan; you have to buy it and have it shipped to you outside the country.) This was a costly purchase, yes, but it was worth it. With the route I had imagined, I'd be making three separate rail journeys: Tokyo to Kyoto on August 4; Kyoto to Kumamoto on August 6; and Kumamoto to Fukuoka on August 8. A seven-day pass seemed like a wise decision, and it was, as I'd discover later.

Why was I taking the train to Fukuoka? Well, that's because the international ferry port was there. And not just any ferry port, either: Fukuoka is the jumping-off point for the high-speed ferries, the Boeing 929 Jetfoils. This, I determined, would be my conveyance from Kyushu back to Korea. I didn't want to fly (too expensive), so a ship was the only avenue left to me. Moreover I'd never traveled on an international ferry before, nor a hydrofoil. It seemed too good to pass up for the old baketto list.

I had a lot of difficulties threading my way through the Japanese webpages and phone numbers, but I finally managed to make a reservation with the Miraejet company. That turned out to be unnecessary...but you'll find that out later.

So there you go. From my old bedroom in my parents' house in the California desert, thanks to Google, Hotels.com, and Korea's English tourism website, I was able to book my entire Japan trip: the plane to Narita Airport, the capsule hotel in Tokyo, my standard hotels in Kyoto and Kumamoto, my bullet train pass and my Jetfoil ferry ticket. Too regimented a plan? Some might say so, but this was good for me: it meant I would have a schedule to keep and a goal to shoot for, and I wouldn't get waylaid in some city or other and spend all my hard-earned cash. And it would induce me to get off my duff and go out and see stuff despite the inevitable heat and humidity. So there you go: this plan was as much incentive as insurance.

Everything was set. Tokyo to Kyoto to Kumamoto by way of the bullet train, and then home on the international ferry. Eight days. The capital and the entire western half of Japan. A pilgrimage.

And...there was something else I intended to do in Japan. Something that could only take place once Miss H and our friend Miss J from Bucheon had met me in Tokyo. But you'll find out about that in due time.

It all began on July 31. And this is how it all fell out...

(Hey kids! Check back on Saturday for the first installment of the Vaunter's stay in Tokyo: THE SUMIDA RIVER CRUISE. He brought photos!)

33 things I'm no longer allowed to do on Fridays

1. Sing along to The Planets suite by Gustav Holst.

2. Give my characters names like "Rita Book" and "Justin Thyme" on The Oregon Trail.

3. Argue that the main characters of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann are the pinnacle of manliness.

4. Croon "O Tannin Bomb" as I'm opening a bottle of red wine.

5. Watch Monty Python sketches on YouTube for hours on end.

6. Or Bugs Bunny cartoons.

7. Or episodes of Cheers.

8. Liking the Black Keys does not make me an "honorary hipster."

9. Consume a can of mixed nuts and a bottle of beer and call it an appetizer.

10. Demand that my students use the phrase "sock puppets" in every essay they write.

11. Watch the climactic scene in The Road Warrior while listening to "Yakety Sax."

12. Not listening to K-pop does not make me Nietzsche's Übermensch.

13. Finish all my sentences with the word "TOASTY!"

14. When cooking bacon, I am to actually chop the bacon into bite-size pieces rather than thwack at it with a blunt knife until it's in barely-digestible chunks.

15. Walking down five flights of stairs does not count as exercise.

16. Advance the theory that Jim Morrison is actually kind of a poet.

17. Refer to Kim Jong-un as "Jackie Flan."

18. Hang a sign on my cubicle wall that reads 'THE DOCTOR IS IN' during office hours.

19. Pretend I know jack squat about British, Irish, Australian or New Zealand politics.

20. Complain about the mysterious brown and green stains in my copy of The Bartender's Bible.

21. "To Serve Man" is not the best Twilight Zone episode.

22. Refuse to shave and claim that I'm saving money on razor blades.

23. Before spraying the bathroom walls down with bleach, I must remember to remove towels and toothbrushes from the area.

24. At the Mountains of Madness is not H.P. Lovecraft's annual family camping trip.

25. Intimidate my pupils with French if they complain that English is too hard.

26. Clean my glasses with my necktie.

27. Cooking with vodka is not an excuse to do frequent taste tests.

28. Name every chapter of my novel after a classic rock song.

29. I am not permitted to sell the extra pistol ammo I pick up during side missions in RAGE. This is called war profiteering.

30. Play air piano along with David Bowie's "Life on Mars?"

31. The fire alarm does not signify that North Korea is invading.

32. "Motorcycling through South America" is not a valid reason for a sabbatical.

33. Use hashtags on Facebook in the name of satire.

if I had $300,000,000

I don't like television. As a general rule, I find it flabby, unwholesome, dissatisfying, crude, and pointless.

So when I tell you that my favorite television show is Firefly, you should understand that the show itself is none of those things. It is, in fact, pure awesomeness incarnate.

Tragically, it was canceled after a measly 14 episodes had been filmed, due to Executive Meddling. More's the pity.

In an interview, Firefly's male lead Nathan Fillion stated that, if he had $300 million on hand, he would buy the rights to the show, and probably continue it, free of interference from the powers-that-be.

That got me thinking. What would I do if I had $300 million?

I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd start up my own movie studio.

On-Target Productions, I'd call it. Or maybe Faithful Studios. Something to convey my sententious but entirely truthful belief that Hollywood is incapable of producing a piece of cinema which is in any way faithful to the source material, and that my studio, by virtue of its firm grounding in literary value (and complete disregard for monetary gain), is.

Anyway, the name isn't important. What's important is that I'd outfit this studio with the best equipment my limited budget could buy, hire the most hardworking personnel I could find, write a bunch of screenplays (the way I like 'em), and make some movies that are entirely accurate and complete interpretations of the media upon which they're based.

I mean that quite literally. Entirely accurate and complete. No chopping or dissecting or mulching being done here; if I mean to make a movie out of a book, I'm using the whole goddamn book: every scene, every line of dialogue, every sentence if needs be. There'll be no "lost characters" like Tom Bombadil from The Lord of the Rings or Peeves the Poltergeist from Harry Potter. And there'll be none of this cutting-out-minor-scenes-because-they-don't-advance-the-action-fast-enough-and-we-can-totally-skip-those-scenes-anyway-because-all-they-do-is-reveal-minor-nuances-of-character-that-we-can-gloss-over-in-the-third-act malarkey. These are going to be faithful interpretations, like I said. That means every little scene, no matter how insignificant a two-bit brain-dead Hollywood screenwriter might consider it, will be reproduced in exact facsimile. No exceptions.

Having my own studio (and not giving a fig whether my productions are marketable, or even if they will be marketed) will give me room to breathe. I don't have to worry about length, or mass appeal, or tone, or censorship, or any of that other crap that the Gilded Mulcher has to worry about in order to sell movie tickets. I can reproduce these great source works as I see fit, with complete creative control, and revel in the realness and truthfulness of the results. I can bring my imagination to life for myself and a few other acolytes to enjoy. Everyone else can go spit.

I'm not saying these films will be unwatchably violent, sexy, or disgusting. There's practically no sex in any of the works I have in mind to adapt. And the violence won't be worse than anything you'd see in a typical action flick. As for the darker, scarier stories...well, it all depends on what you think might blast your soul from your body with cosmic horror.

                                                                                         by Pete Amachree

And mind you, I won't object if a few independent-minded cinemas agree to pick up my works and release them at a few small drive-ins and dollar theaters. Those are the kind of folks I'd want watching my films anyway, not the bigwigs from Hollywood and Cannes.

But that's beside the point! Aren't you curious to know which books and stories I will be adapting for the screen? 

I thought you'd be. I have some very specific ideas on that score. They include, but are not limited to...

• Several tales from Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian mythos. If you haven't read any of Howard's original Conan tales, it's time you started. Howard's barbarian makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look like a pantywaist choirboy. The stories are gritty, bloody, sweaty, and hard-boiled, bursting with darkness, danger, hideous evil, swashbuckling adventure and testosterone. Some of the stories I have in mind are Beyond the Black River, The Tower of the Elephant, Iron Shadows on the Moon, and Red Nails...as well as a weird Western tale, unrelated to Conan, The Horror from the Mound.
• Selected works of H.P. Lovecraft, including At the Mountains of Madness, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Shunned House, The Haunter of the Dark, The Shadow Out of Time, The Whisperer in Darkness, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and The Dunwich Horror. It'll be interesting to see if Lovecraft's works translate well onto the screen. A lot of the horror and suspense in his stories is conveyed through description and inarticulate mentality, not through dialogue or action. Many of the horrific implications and disgusting monsters are best left to the realms of the imagination, too, rather than put up on a screen in CG and pixels. Still, I'd be willing to give it a shot.
• Most of H.G. Wells's full-length works, including The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and The Island of Dr. Moreau. Most have been made into films already, but none of them have been done correctly. That's not my opinion, that's fact. I'll treat 'em right if no one else will.
• Many of Jules Verne's classic tales, like Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days. Can you imagine what giant squids, raft-rides through lava tubes, and thrilling heroics on speeding steam trains would look like on a humongous theater screen? It gives me the chills!
• Dozens of science fiction novels and short stories by writers such as Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt, Arthur C. Clarke, C.M. Kornbluth, L. Sprague de Camp, Lester del Rey, and Fritz Leiber. Here are a few I've got in mind.
• The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood
• The Novel of the Black Seal by Arthur Machen
• The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
• Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein (a respectful interpretation); also The Roads Must Roll and Universe
• The Empire of the Atom, The Wizard of Linn, The Weapon Shops of Isher, and Black Destroyer by A.E. van Vogt
• The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke
• The Big Front Yard by Clifford D. Simak
• Baby Is Three by Theodore Sturgeon

• A live-action film adaptation of the superb and underrated Hanna-Barbera cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian. A fur-clad warrior with a magic sword wanders the post-apocalyptic Earth in the year 3999, after a rogue planet cast human civilization in ruin. In his ongoing quest to save the scrawny, ragged survivors from evil wizards, mutants and strange monsters (many of which are holdovers from the 20th century), Thundarr is aided by the beautiful Princess Ariel, a sorceress, and a huge, furry Mok named Ookla. I'm thinking some big-budget disaster scenes and a lot of Scenery Gorn. 
• Some of the video and computer games I've played have definite potential, such as Crimson Skies. Maybe if I'm in a really fun-loving and goofy mood I'll do Serious Sam.
• Yes, I know I've railed against remakes on this here blog. But I can't help it. I'd redo a few of the old stop-motion monster flicks, not because I think CG would make them better (certainly not; Ray Harryhausen has no equal and never will), but simply because I'm curious to see what they'd look like with a technological makeover. Just curious, is all. I can't help but wonder what a reboot of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The Valley of Gwangi, Them!, Jason and the Argonauts, and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad would be like. Specifically, the monsters. You know how much I like monsters.  

And that's it. I think it'd be a lot of fun. I've always wanted to try my hand at screenwriting. And I'll bet I could hire an assistant until I got good at it. Then I'd just go to town. My studio would crank out these films, and they'd go for limited theatrical release or direct-to-DVD, and whoever was interested in real, faithful, true adaptations of good books and cartoons and movies could buy 'em and watch 'em. That's all I want. That's what I'd do with $300,000,000. Maybe a few bucks to charity here and there, but for the most part I'd launch my vendetta against  Hollywood and revel in unmitigated artistic license.

What would you do with $300,000,000? Buy a monkey?

 

Pirate Radio

You know, I never intended to be a movie critic. But every once in a while there comes a movie that I just have to opine about. If I wind up illuminating anyone else's existence in the process, then it's all worth it. Hell, it'd be worth it even if I didn't illuminate anyone else's existence, just because I get to vent about stuff I like. I want to talk to you about a little movie called Pirate Radio, also known as The Boat That Rocked. Now this is a good film. The year is 1966. England has outlawed rock 'n' roll on the radio. So, a motley band of selfless wackos (played to the hilt by such priceless talents as Nick Frost, Bill Nighy, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as "The Count") rig up a ship with broadcasting equipment, sail into international waters off the coast of Great Britain, and start pounding out rock 'n' roll classics to half the British population on pirate radio. The movie follows a pompous prig of a government minister (Kenneth Branagh) as he attempts to shut Radio Rock down, and the many hilarious doings and happenings aboard the ship itself. These antics include:

• Sexation Saturday: there ain't any women on the boat except for the lesbian cook, so every second Saturday a literal boatload of women comes aboard from the mainland for a little dalliance with the crew.
• Chicken: when a veteran DJ named Gavin comes aboard and challenges the Count's supremacy, a duel ensues. The Count challenges Gavin to a good old-fashioned American game of chicken. The challenge? Be the one to climb the highest up one of the ship's radio masts. Watching a not-exactly-svelte Hoffman perform this feat is one of the film's many funny moments.
• Cherry popping: the film's straight-man protagonist, Carl, sent onto the boat by his mother after getting expelled from school, is discovered to be a virgin. The well-meaning sinners among the crew conspire to remedy his predicament, resulting in some entertaining bedroom shenanigans.

Needless to say, any movie concerned with rock 'n' roll is going to have a great soundtrack. But this movie has a superb collection of the best of 1960s rock 'n' roll: the Who, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, the Turtles, the Beach Boys, the Troggs, the Hollies, Cream, Otis Redding, the Moody Blues, the Isley Brothers, Smokey Robinson, Jimi Hendrix, even Ennio Morricone's theme from Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More. The film is the best I've seen in a long while. The casting is excellent; the boat is populated with a host of unique, lovable and hilarious characters. The plot, though inchoate, is nonetheless engaging. After two hours of bedroom farces, crude jokes, high-wire stunts and classic rock (all from a pack of long-haired, hard-drinking chain smokers dressed in full 60s attire), I still wanted more. The music, as I've mentioned before, will blow your mind. But the film has its heartwarming moments, too. When the government finally manages to outlaw pirate radio entirely, there's a really powerful scene in the mess when everyone volunteers to soldier on regardless. The Count, in the final scenes of the film, makes a simply heroic speech about the undying spirit of rock 'n' roll and its place in the hearts and minds of the people. Though the enterprise was short-lived, one felt that Radio Rock earned no less glory than the defenders of Troy or the minutemen on Lexington Green. Because what the movie, pirate radio, and rock 'n' roll are all truly about, is...freedom. If you love rock and the rebel/underdog archetype, you'll love Pirate Radio. I hate to sound like a movie trailer there, but I mean it. Watch it and see if you can keep from smiling (or even getting up and dancing in the aisles). I dare you...chicken.