For all you literature fans out there

Here's a rare treat for you folks who enjoy rare treats, or literature in general: James Joyce reading from Finnegan's Wake. Ever wondered, as I have, how it's supposed to sound? Wonder no longer!

James Joyce reading from Finnegan's Wake.

Since I love weird design

Threadless.com, the t-shirt company, does design competitions and the winner gets his or her design made into a shirt.

A friend of mine from Toronto submitted his design, so you should check it out and then go to threadless.com/submissions and vote for him. The other designs are ones I voted for that I thought were cool. My friend's design is the first one.

David Carradine

David Carradine started his acting career in 1963, and according to imdb.com has acted in 221 shows/movies/whatever. But after going through that entire list, I found out that there have only been three movies in which I've seen Carradine perform. It's a testament to his greatness that even though I've only seen him in three movies, I still know what a legend he was. (Yes that's right, I've never seen an episode of "Kung Fu", which is what he's most famous for.)

Having only seen three of his 221 various on screen performances makes writing this article about him a lot easier. The three movies I know David Carradine from are: Kill Bill (1 and 2), Circle of Iron and Death Race 2000 (1975). All of those movies are a lot of fun, especially if you're a geeky movie dork like myself. Death Race 2000 is a Roger Corman film from the height of the Corman era of film making, so it's campy and a riot. In Death Race 2000 Carradine co-stars with Sylvester Stallone (before Rocky), and the guy who plays the evil sensei from the Cobra Kai dojo in The Karate Kid. (Oh alright, his name is Martin Kove.)

In Death Race 2000, Carradine plays Frankenstein, the winningest racer on the circuit. The film takes place in the future where everyone in America loves to watch Death Race in which racers drive from point A to point B and try to run over everyone in their path as well as kill the other racers. The more infirm or young the victims along the way, the more points are earned. Frankenstein is the biggest baddest racer ever, but in a nice twist he has gotten tired of the race and what it stands for politically, so he plots to use his fame and success to kill the president of the united states. I'll only say that the movie has a happy ending, whatever that means. If you like a nice solid B movie with some T & A and violence thrown together with some dark comedic elements, you should rent Death Race 2000 right away.



Here's what Carradine had to say to The A.V. Club about Death Race 2000:
"I had just walked off Kung Fu. Kung Fu was never cancelled; I just left. I decided I had enough of it, and I thought I should do a movie right away, because I think when you leave a television series, it's important that you establish the fact that you're a movie actor really quickly, or you might never get that chance. So this Death Race 2000 thing came up, and the other thing I wanted to do was get rid of the image of the character I play on Kung Fu. And this character Frankenstein, who runs over people, would definitely do that. So I took the movie, and we shot it in three weeks. I had a lot of trouble with Paul Bartel, the director—I almost got fired off the picture at one point before we actually started shooting. We had a very difficult time choosing who was going to play my navigator, and we finally got Simone Griffeth, who was the most perfectly constructed human being I have ever had the opportunity to hang out with naked. That was kind of interesting. And we shot it in three weeks. The whole picture was shot in the hills of Los Angeles, even though it's supposed to be a cross-country race. And we shot the whole picture for $350,000. It was raining all the time, which you actually can't see, but it was always drizzling, which made some of the turns in our racecars a little scary with the wet roads. I had 9.3 percent of the producer's gross after break-even, which I didn't think would be worth anything on a little movie made in three weeks, but I made probably close to a million dollars. And I think I've got a lot more coming."

The next film from Carradine that I've seen is Circle of Iron. I really like the philosophy of this movie and the lessons its trying to teach. It goes parallel with "Kung Fu" because both the show "Kung Fu" and the movie Circle of Iron were products of Bruce Lee's imagination. (The original title of the movie as created by Bruce Lee was The Silent Flute.) Originally Bruce Lee was to star in "Kung Fu", as it was his show, but producers didn't think that American audiences would root for and endear to an Asian leading man, so they cast Carradine instead into Lee's vision. The same thing happened with Circle of Iron.

In Circle of Iron there was always supposed to be one man who played four roles, and it was originally intended to be made in 1969. Bruce Lee was supposed to play The Blind Man, The Monkeyman, Death and Changsha, and the protagonist, Cord, was to be played by Steve McQueen. McQueen didn't want to make Lee a star so he offered the four roles to James Colburn. The movie never made it to the light of day. later on, after Bruce Lee's tragic death in 1975, David Carradine acquired the rights to Circle of Iron, cast a friend of his in the lead of Cord and himself played the Blind Man, Monkeyman, Changsha and Death roles. Eli Wallach also co-starred as did Christopher Lee.

Here is the synopsis from imdb.com:
"A young martial artist, Cord the Seeker, competes for and loses the right to go on a quest for the Book of All Knowlege held by a wizard named Zetan, but he goes along the path to seek Zetan anyway. Along the way, he meets strange tests and challenges by enemies and allies - often having difficulty determining which is which."

This could easily become an article about Bruce Lee, but you can't talk about Carradine and not talk a little about Bruce Lee because they had such similar philosophical interests in addition to their martial arts backgrounds. A lot of Lee's ideas are still present in Circle of Iron and although on the surface it looks like a throw-away movie about a guy who fights a lot of people and talks to an almost cliche character of the wandering prescient blind man, there are many great idea to be found at the movie's core. Plus the hair on the guy who plays Cord is a must-see...

Here's what Carradine had to say about playing the different roles in Circle of Iron:
"It helped when they were changing my looks and everything, but really, what's the difference between Changsha, the guy in the desert who never wears a shirt, and The Blind Master? They're both just me. I'm doing a funny little accent as the guy in the desert, and my blowfish routine, where I'm able to expand my chest and look like I've got muscles. And then The Blind Master, you look at this guy and he's just skin and bones, right? He's just as soft as he can be, while the guy in the desert is rippling with muscles. And sometimes I'd play those two characters in a single day. It 's a question of posture, really."

Which brings me to my, as yet, final viewing experience with David Carradine, Kill Bill. Carradine plays Bill, a role originally intended for Warren Beatty. Kill Bill was intended to be one complete movie, but with it's length, the Weinstein's decided to cut it up into two films instead. Carradine isn't even shown in the first segment, he only appears as Bill in the second part. And he's amazing in Vol. 2. What's great about Quentin Tarantino and a film like Kill Bill with a character like Bill played by a guy like Carradine, is that the role of Bill feels almost like a culmination of all the major cult roles Carradine had played beforehand. Bill is a fighter, a philosopher and an all-around awesome badass guy. You want to pound shots of tequila with him or spar or go for a walk and talk about random meaningless shit. And yet he's the main villain at the same time that he's being so magnetic.

Bill could be Caine from "Kung Fu", he could be a reincarnation of the Blind Man from Circle of Iron, (plus he plays theflute he uses if Circle of Iron too), but he's as hard and tough as both of them put together along with Cole Younger from The Long Riders. It's a brilliant role. There's not much more to say about it. As a bit of trivia however, the yellow jumpsuit that Uma Thurman wears in Vol. 1 is the same as the one Bruce Lee wore in Game of Death, the film he died shooting. I told you Lee and Carradine go together.



Here are Carradine's thoughts on Kill Bill:
"Kill Bill was, what can I say, just an incredible experience. Quentin [Tarantino] is more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Actually, he is a barrel of monkeys. And he's just a great filmmaker, there's no doubt about that. He's a huge party guy, but making the movie, it's strictly business. Very serious about what he does. And he knows more about movies than anybody I've ever met. It was just an incredible joy working with him, and with Uma Thurman. Most of my stuff, I worked with Uma and Michael Madsen and that was about it, but I hung out with everybody, and we trained together for three months. Five days a week, eight hours a day for three months. I think that's more than you'd do for the Olympics. Can you imagine? We're talking about Uma Thurman, Daryl Hannah, Lucy Liu, I think a couple other ladies, and they're all in sweats or trunks or something, working out, and I get to do that with them. Eight hours a day, five days a week, for three months. That was almost better than making the movie."

How to waste time when you're forced to sit in front of a computer

I learn a lot of stuff during a day at work. I have a select core of websites that I visit every day to get the "important" stuff, and then if I really honestly have no work to do, I dick around on the internet. Speaking of dicking around on the internet, here's a great site:

superdickery.com

Go there and click on GALLERIES and start perusing all the myriad comic book covers that have Superman or Batman being a complete dick to someone else for no good reason. You will be laughing out loud shortly.

And, because I know you care about my habits, here are the sites I visit daily upon sitting down in front of my computer:

Yahoo mail
Gmail
bloody-disgusting.com
horror-movies.ca
aintitcool.com
slashfilm.com
twitchfilm.net
boingboing.net
avclub.com
seriouswheels.com
gamespot.com
mobygames.com
comics.com
menagea3.net (really fantastic web comic...hilarious but sometimes NSFW)
licd.com

Then I can begin my day. (Facebook is also in there somewhere...as well as this blog.)

When I hit up all those sites and there's still nothing else to do, I try to find things to watch. Here are some great places to watch cool stuff:

boreme.com
hulu.com
fearnet.com
youtube.com (obviously)

Free movies are great, and free movies that aren't censored are even better.

I recommend going to fearnet.com to watch one of their free horror movies! I highly recommend making your choice, 976-Evil 2...the sequel to the movie that really didn't need a sequel, 976-Evil. (I'm pretty sure you don't need to see the original in order to follow the uber-twisty plot of the sequel.) Here's the fantastic plot summary used to draw you in to watching this shit-fest:

"A hot co-ed learns that her dean is a rotting ghost who uses astral projection to kill people."

Happy time-wasting!

Oh, if you want to watch an actual good horror movie, check out Night of the Creeps, also on fearnet.com.

Robbie the Rabbit

One of my favorite horror video games of all time is Silent Hill 2. I like Silent Hill 2 because it is the only one I've actually played. Thankfully, I've read a lot of articles online saying that #2 is the best game of the series anyway, so I feel pretty good about that. (I own a copy of Silent Hill 5 but I've not had the chance to play it yet.)

The enemies/villains in the Silent Hill series are creepy and grotesque and really creative and fucked up. My favorite, many people's favorite, is Pyramid Head, or The Red Pyramid. Here is his picture:

He is really cool, and in the movie they make him awesome. This picture is him from the movie. in the games, as far as I know, he never carries around a dead body. He does represent a sexual id of the protagonist though, so he is often doing some really strange, apparently sexual things when you see him. But I digress.

In Silent Hill 3 you go to the abandoned amusement park and you see Robbie the Rabbit, the mascot, sitting slumped on a park bench. He has blood all over his mouth and he's probably dead. From what we know about amusement park mascots we can infer that there is a guy in the costume. Why the blood on the mouth? No idea!

In Silent Hill 4 you are in a room in an apartment building for most of the game. There is a hole in the wall that allows you to see into the room next to you and you can often look in there and check on the woman who lives there. She has a Robbie the Rabbit stuffed animal on her bed. Seems fine, but after you look in her room more than 10-12 times, you see Robbie the Rabbit staring and pointing at you!

But to add some humor as well as increase the creepiness of Robbie, here's a mash-up video of his many appearances in Silent Hill. (Most of the appearances are in Silent Hill: Arcade which is only available in Japan.)

UPDATE: The video I've posted above of Robbie the Rabbit is apparently part of a bunch of clips called The Art of Silent Hill that are on the DVD of Silent Hill the movie...I pakced my DVD so I can't prove this yet, but that's the story.

Interview Project

David Lynch has completed a project of interviews of random every-day folks. He is posting these interviews on the website, interviewproject.davidlynch.com. You may know David Lynch from some of his movies, Wild at Heart, Mulholland Drive, Dune, Blue Velvet; or you may know him from his television show, Twin Peaks. He's a weird guy, but he's got very interesting ideas and can implement them well.

Yesterday marked the first day of the project, and I intend to watch it through to its completion. I usggest you check it out too because it's interesting and you might enjoy it.

interviewproject.davidlynch.com

Druggachusettes

By far the most fun I had this morning was perusing this article, from The A.V. Club, about children's shows that seem to have spawned from the minds of drug-addicted creators. Sid and Marty Krofft are here, as well as several other well-remembered Canadian shows.

It was fun looking through the list and remembering shows I had watched back in the '80's, as well as seeing some new stuff I hadn't heard of before.

Have fun!

Welcome to the altered state of Druggachusettes

Too bad this one wasn't included...it's thought of as the scariest children's cartoon of all time and was banned from schools for a while since it caused lots of nightmares. It's obvious to see why, although now it's just impressive and creepy animation.