Antediluvian Confidential

My Kerberos Club group:

Native American shaman, captured and given to Victoria as part of a Wild West 'show', subsequently manumitted.
half-Egyptian British army surgeon, who is a member of an Osiris cult.
Chinese manservant with the power to control flames and alter his appearance.
French scientist with an obsession with Strange lighter-than-air gases.
Prussian ubermensch who is at least 150 years old and a member of the Peerage.

They want to do intrigue and espionage. For the British Crown.

Walking in to work today, I see a Colorado Daily with a big picture and a headline about some basketball player, I assume from the... Nuggets? The local professional basketball team, going to the Utah Jazz. As with many basketball players, this gentlemen was a negro. I thought about the racism found in the Book of Mormon, and wondered about him going to Utah. Then I thought, what if Jesus was a racist? I know a lot of folks even question the existence of a historical Jesus, but given that there's no evidence that my ancestors from 2,000 years ago ever existed either, I was willing to give that one a mulligan. But the racism thing. All the old people I know are racist - usually a little, sometimes a lot. What if we could go back in time and find the little Nazarene man, and say, "Jesus, what about this black guy from Nubia. Should we love him, too?" and he said, "What, no! They're not even actually people! They don't feel pain like you and me!" or some other thing that made him sound like a Confederate landowner? That would be horrifying.

That's the sort of thing I worry about. Time traveling to meet Jesus and finding out he's not only racist, but a particularly American strain of virulence.

Around 4:30 this morning, I had a dream. I was in a minivan with my dad and oldest nephew driving on Route 7 back in Ohio. My dad pulled over, because his body was wracked with these miniature spasms. He asked me to drive, because my nephew wasn't ready to drive because of some unspoken recent trauma. I was worried about my dad, but agreed to drive. I smacked my nephew in the head, like I did way too often when I was younger and resentful, and got into the driver's seat. We started driving, and my nephew started whining about how we almost hit a tire on the road and had an accident. I closed my eyes like I often do when trying to center myself and not lose my temper, and then I couldn't open them. I started to panic because we were going 55 mph down the highway and I couldn't open my eyes and my nephew wouldn't stop talking.

I jerked myself awake in my panic, which woke my cat up, who started meowing and running back and forth across my head. I don't know what, exactly, she wanted. But I yelled at her. That made me feel pretty awful on top of the adrenaline sickness from the dream.

Then I had to come in to my stupid awful job.

I turned 13 in 1990. A lot of shit went down that decade. This 5x5 explains a lot about the old man today.

Five 90s Female TV characters that helped shape my burgeoning sexuality:

1) goth Darlene Conner of Roseanne
2) Clarissa Darling of Clarissa Explains It All
3) Six LeMeure of Blossom
4) Jadzia Dax of Deep Space Nine
5) Lisa Miller of Newsradio

Five 90s TV Shows Eternally Bound Up with my First Relationship:

1) Friends
2) Beavis and Butthead
3) Puzzle Place
4) Liquid Television
5) 120 Minutes

Five musical acts I Discovered in the 1990s that I still listen to today:

1) They Might Be Giants
2) Tori Amos
3) XTC
4) Nine Inch Nails
5) Dead Milkmen

Five important, to me, historical events:

1) Gulf War One
2) The Death of Kurt Cobain
3) Bill Clinton going on MTV to get votes from young people
4) Mars Pathfinder mission
5) OJ Simpson Trial

Five things that were new and strange in 1990 that kids today can't imagine a world without:

1) Cell Phones
2) The Simpsons
3) The World Wide Web
4) AIDS
5) Endless American Misadventures in Central Asia

Some point in the misty, forgotten time of 2010, I discovered a Wikipedia page 1977 in Film, and thought it would be a fun adventure to watch them all. There are some very good movies released that year, and some very bad ones. I'm ONLY watching US films - although there are a few British/US films that make things slightly confusing. In fact, I'm starting with one of those!

Jabberwocky was Terry Gilliam's first solo film after Monty Python, and it shows. The film is packed to the gills with a lot of set-ups that are very reminiscent of Monty Python bits that, unfortunately, lack the payoff/punchlines of Monty Python bits. It's always interesting to compare the solo work of members of an artistic collective to that collective work. Wearing my wild speculation hat, it seems like Gilliam (and perhaps Palin) were the gents on MP who set up the situations that Cleese and Idle took to absurd (and hilarious) conclusions. Lots and lots of set-ups, very little solid execution. When there is execution to the set-up, it's often literal execution, with someone dying in a gruesome and ironic fashion. Gilliam obviously carries a dark humor with him, and death is the ultimate punchline in his work. After making a film that would unfortunately always be compared (unfavorably) to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Gilliam found his stride. But here, he's still trying to find a voice that isn't waiting for a punchline.

However, Mr. Gilliam's eye to setting is often astonishing, and an ironic reason for his (largely) commercial failure as a director. His medieval settings are filthy, crumbling, filled with human excrement, and filled with human living. No matter how 'gritty' a Hollywood medieval film gets, only in a Terry Gilliam film will you find a lake-dweller hanging his arse out the window of his houseboat to defecate, with arse on camera. He's happy to frame a shot where the important action to the plot is background and pushed to the side in favor of focusing on a castle drudge robotically sweeping up ashes from the royal fireplace. All of his films show this same dedication to de-mythologizing fantastic settings; it's what I consider his greatest strength as a director of satire.

The effects are limited and Mr. Gilliam makes fantastic use of hinting at the monster and not showing us until the climax. The Jabberwocky is pure practical effects - a man in a suit, a puppeteer working the head from off-camera, and playing with angles (years before Peter Jackson got all the credit for forced perspective) and camera speed to create a cockatrician behemoth. To younger kids weaned on Avatar and Star Wars prequels, the beast may not impress, but to a generation that had their minds blown by the REAL Star Wars, this beastie feels almost as good as Lucas' aliens.

The movie maintains a brisk pace throughout, telling a rather simple fairy tale: "poor peasant rises to astonishing heights through luck and pluck" with a Gilliam-esque tweak. Dennis Cooper has a few modern ideas (efficiency, 'improving the business') that clash with his mostly medieval mindset and entirely medieval surroundings. Through a series of mishaps and British unwillingness to argue, the disgraced cooper's son becomes a squire to the King's Champion and then becomes the Hero of the Kingdom, married to Deborah Fallender's idealistic princess. This last is 'funny' because all Dennis wanted was to become just successful enough to marry the fishmonger's fat, brutish daughter. It's a typical "Everyone loses, no matter how successful they are" Gilliam ending.

Sign It's 1977: Full-on Princess nipples in a PG film
Conclusion: A journeyman effort on Gilliam's part, 2.5 stars out of five.

I'm fairly certain my job is killing me.

"The Invincible Hammer-Wheel. He has hammers for hands and wheels for feet. He was born that way. He was raised by farm implements. He lives in the woods."