Hypnagogic State

Syfy’s “Tin Man“ was fairly awful and “Alice“ comes from the same creator. I’m probably not the target audience for either theme since I find the world of Oz to be overrated and the world of the White Rabbit to have been beaten into dead horse mode. But this cast includes Kathy Bates, Tim Curry, and Matt Frewer. I am therefore obligated to watch.

I am a hardcore cookie addict. I can easily devour a dozen in one sitting. Buying slightly more expensive cookies (’sup, Cheryl & Co.) makes me express some moderation.

But I would withhold eating the tasty treats from Geeky Cookies because they’re too damn cute to turn into an instant crumb pile. The cookies are available in Zelda Heart, Yoshi Eggs, Codex’s Staff*, Starfleet Badge, U.S.S. Enterprise Away Team (uniform shirts), 360 Power Buttons w/RRoD, Super Mario Assortment (shown above), Super Mario Mushrooms, Super Mario Starmen, Pokemon Pokeballs, and Pacman and Ghosts Set.

$20.00 for one dozen or $30.00 for two dozen at Geeky Cookies.

(h/t Trek Today)

*Codex from The Guild. Go search Youtube if you don’t know what that means. And deduct 10 geek points.

Oh No They Didn’t posted this image of a promotional toy for the reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s the closest look horror fans have gotten at what Jackie Earle Haley will look like as Freddy Krueger.

There’s only one reason I’m not protesting in the streets over this reboot: Haley made all of my Rorschach dreams come true in Watchmen. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt not the movie.

But there is and always will be only one true Freddy. Robert Englund’s performance is what got me into horror movies (after I recovered from the years of trauma that resulted from seeing The Dream Warriors when I was six). And the first film in the Nightmare franchise was so perfect there’s no possible way the reboot can improve upon it.  If they were proposing a reboot from The Dream Master on, it would make more sense. The latter part of the series had buckets of wasted potential.

I’m not a purist who’s against all remakes. Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead is one of my favorite movies of all time. The recent remake of My Bloody Valentine was, save the rushed ending, a solid film. The Friday the 13th remake was enjoyable up until the halfway mark, where the writers seemed to have called it a day.

The trouble is in rebooting a classic without either a) staying very true to the original material or b) adding a completely unique spin to it. Rob Zombie tried to combine the two methods in Halloween and it felt awkward. The Black Christmas remake was an abomination of epic proportions. It stripped away everything compelling about the original and substituted in cliches and squick. Someone should publicly apologize for that film.

My schedule soul suck last week kept me from posting on the Harlequin Horizons debacle as it was happening. A brief recap: Harlequin opened up a vanity press called Harlequin Horizons. Through the HH site, they made it seem as though aspiring writers that (over)paid for a package would get the strength of the Harlequin brand behind them. At the same time, Harlequin was telling its contracted writers not to worry because those other books wouldn’t be on the shelves next to theirs.

I’m going to refrain from doing a long post on the subject because others have already done so and done so well*. Some links to get you started:

Falconesse is a great first stop because she explains why Harlequin Horizons is a vanity press- not a self publisher- and brings the math to show why it is an even worse deal for aspiring writers than it seems on the surface.

Jackie Kessler gets snarky in a faux author-HH conversation, answers questions in two parts, and shows a bookseller’s perspective.

And you can read the statements made by the Romance Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, and Science Fiction Writers of America. (h/t: Ecstatic Days)

*And now I have mid-90s LL Cool J stuck in my head.

These polystone Star Wars bookends beautifully depict the trash compactor scene. Yours for only $200!

The industrial design documentary Objectified premieres tonight on PBS. A part of the excellent Independent Lens series, Objectified is a project of filmmaker Gary Hustwit- who also created Helvetica, one of my favorite documentaries of all time.

Check here for local listings and rerun dates.

Helvetica is available for instant streaming through Netflix.

This has been a quicksand week. The more productive I’ve been, the further behind I’ve fallen. At least there are no R.O.U.S. around. Yet.

The biggest time suck this week has been academia. I’m in the final stretch of a Journalism degree (got there from Biochemistry- my transcript looks like a Choose Your Own Adventure book) and am doing it via independent study. Independent study is lovely and accommodating but it also requires a great deal of tactical strategy, which I lack outside of FPS games. I’m currently finishing up a draft of my degree plan that is so rough I may need to provide an apology to my adviser.

On the writing front, I banged out most of another short story the other night and did quite a bit of research for it yesterday. It is set in a culture that I’m borderline familiar with and I want to be as accurate as possible both for the story and to quiet the heckler in my brain.

I have one story currently sitting with an editor at one of my favorite genre magazines. The editor emailed me this week asking to keep the story for a couple more weeks to give it a second read. I, of course, gave permission and I’m thrilled my story was considered worth a second read, especially at a time of the year that has to be absolute chaos for editors and slush readers.

And now back to work for my “day” job…

I’ve been up to my elbows in research all day so posting shall come later.

Mass: We Pray- a Wii style video game that promises the Mass experience at home- has been popping up on gaming blogs for the past day. The general consensus is that it is fake. I was on the fence about real vs. prank until I watched the video:

There are rare occasions when it is hard to tell whether someone is being genuinely (and overly) enthusiastic or deeply sarcastic. This isn’t one of those occasions. It’s a joke.

The gothic dragon attached to that guy’s shoulder is actually part of a backpack made by leather artist Bob Basset. The Ukrainian artist doesn’t sell his designs retail (they’re obviously very time consuming to make), but you can see his other works here. I love the dystopian street gang looks of the pig and dog masks.