Tidbits.

Hi ho, Saturday afternoon on the Labour Day long weekend, and time for some quick updates and comments.

A recent New York Times article discusses the issues I expressed in my posting on gaming in regards to real-world overlap.  It would seem that people are up in arms (sorry, bad pun) over the most recent addition to the first-person shooter lineup.  Medal of Honor is set in Afghanistan, and in the online multi-player version, players have the option of playing as American soldiers or as the Taliban. It would seem that various political figures find the inclusion of terrorists as playable characters to be "tasteless", in the words of British defense secretary Liam Fox.And, further to my opening comments in that gaming post regarding Starcraft II, I was surprised to discover that the voice actors for the game include such science fiction big guns as Armin Shimmerman (Quark from Deep Space Nine), Michael Dorn (Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation) and the part of Sarah Kerrigan is voiced by none other than Tricia Helfer from Battlestar Galactica.  Are things perhaps a bit quiet in the TV marketplace?My friend Chris informs me that a 3-D movie version of the Smurfs is in development.  Gosh, there's a clever idea...let's make a 3-D movie featuring blue people.  Boy, I wish James Cameron had thought of that.

I've just finished re-reading Peter Hamilton's Judas Unchained, the epic conclusion to the Commonwealth Saga.  The first book, Pandora's Star, is one and three-eights inches thick.  The second book is two inches thick and features visibly smaller type than its predecessor.

DAMN IT, PETER, THIS SHOULD BE A TRILOGY!!  IF IT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR TOLKIEN, IT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!!Local comic book store The Comic Shop has relocated to an address further along 4th Avenue.  In the process of moving, they culled some of their "previously owned" stock and left it in front of the store with a crooked cardboard sign saying FREE.  As a result, when I was coming back from the gym on Tuesday, there were stacks of 70's and 80's Analog and Galaxy SF magazines and a variety of fantasy and science fiction novels just sitting there, looking for a good home.  Sigh...as I scooped up handfuls of books and jammed them into my gym bag, I probably looked like a member of the legion of back-alley scavengers who are constantly trolling for recyclable containers.  ("Oh look, poor fellow, he's probably going to sell those books to get money for booze or crack.")  I was terribly self-conscious about it - thank god it was late enough that the streets were almost empty.

Not so self-conscious that I didn't make two trips, though.  Hope you all have a pleasant weekend!

- Sid

Two thumbs up from Lorena Bobbit, I assume.

"Wet...t-shirt...wet...t-shirt..."

Jerry O'Connell's last words as porn producer Derrick Jones, Piranha 3D

Let me start with a bit of background, setting the scene as it were.  As previously mentioned, I have a very good friend named Laurie: she has a BSc and an MA, speaks four languages, is a knowledgeable fitness professional, an afficionado of Shakespearean theatre, an expert ballroom dancer, and a member of Mensa.  Regardless, she cheerfully decided that Piranha 3D was the must-see movie to start the Labour Day weekend.

For the most part I don't agree with the concept that something can be so bad that it's good, but to my astonishment Piranha 3D manages to go through some kind of black hole/looking glass/time warp and come out the other side as a horrific, disgusting, but entertaining film.  I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it "good", but it more than delivers on everything that it promises.

And what does it promise?

Blood and boobs in 3D.

P3D is only marginally acceptable as a topic for this blog, although there is a vast precedent of 50's and 60's semi-science fiction films based on the same basic premise.  A seismic disturbance opens a chasm between a lake in Arizona and a hidden subterranean lake located immediately below it.  This pocket of water has apparently been sealed since the Pleistocene Epoch, creating an Darwinian pressure cooker for the development of unspeakably savage prehistoric piranha - old school piranha, if you will - that are now free to seek fresh meat.

Nice boat shoes!

Meanwhile, up on the surface, Spring Break has started, and the lake is filling with hordes of drunken bikini-clad babes as a porn producer arrives to shoot his latest magnum opus...do I really need to explain any further?

I really have to give full credit to all the creative parties involved in this production. Piranha 3D is utterly without presumption or ego - they set out to make an over-the-top horror film with less fabric holding the plot together than in most of the bikinis used, a film whose only reason for existence is to show half-naked bodies and hungry aquatic horrors gnawing away at them, and they succeeded beyond any possible dream of success. 

No opportunity for three-dimensional excess is ignored in this film.  3D breasts, full monty 3D softcore lesbian underwater nudity*, 3D vomit - and then the killing starts.  Detached 3D eyeballs drift through the water, flesh is graphically stripped from 3D bones, faces are chewed off (and in one exceptional instance pulled off when a young woman's hair gets caught in a propellor) and endless gallons of blood cloud the waters of the lake**. 

And of course the capper, the top, the capo di tutti capi - the severed penis scene, wherein Jerry O'Connell's character is savaged by the fish and then dragged out of the water, horribly maimed, nothing but bones and sinew from the waist down.

"My penis..." he gasps.  "They took...my penis."

Cut to an underwater view as a severed - I hesitate to say dismembered - 3D penis drifts by on the current, only to be snapped up by a hungry piranha.

And then...burped out again.  What more could you ask of a movie-going experience?

- Sid

* A phrase I never thought I'd be able to use in my entire life, let alone in this blog.

** Let's hear it for the Internet - apparently it's actually about 400 gallons of blood.

Collected.

This week I was introduced to a serious science fiction and fantasy collector by a well-meaning mutual acquaintance.  Like me, he was initially introduced to the genre by his mother, but in his case he inherited a substantial library of classic material from the 30's and 40's in magazine and book form.  And like me, he has several thousand in his collection, but he peaks out at about twice the size of my library.

And how does he store his beloved collection, you ask?  Big plastic tubs.  He fills them up, "squirts in a little bug spray", and there they are.

Sigh...

In many ways, I love my little library.  It's been a source of entertainment and even education over the decades and it's expanded both my imagination and my horizons.  As books have worn out I've done my best to replace them with the same vintage, but in some cases I've ended up with reprints or different editions.

And that's never bothered me.  Books last pretty well, but they're still ephemera in a lot of ways.  Pages tear and yellow, covers fray at the edges, bindings fail, and I accept that as an unfortunate fact of life.  But at least my little collection has been read and enjoyed, rather than hidden away in some sort of miserly fashion.  It's the content which has always been important to me - the fantastic ideas, the startling concepts, the amazing fantasies - rather than the bits of paper that held the ink.

If through some fluke of fate I somehow ended up with the same collection as the one owned by the gentleman I met on Thursday, I think that my first impulse would be to start opening bins and reading - carefully, yes, but still turning pages and touching covers.  Why would anyone want a library that looked like this?

- Sid