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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Demian Katz's LiveJournal:
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| Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 | | 7:15 pm |
Today's valuable life lesson
If you are going to force your way through a hedge of Rose of Sharon bushes, you should tuck your shirt into your pants. Otherwise, a bumblebee might fly up there, and that would inevitably end badly for all parties involved.
Owie. | | Sunday, July 13th, 2008 | | 7:53 am |
BlobFest Report BlobFest is always one of the highlights of my summer, so inevitably I was there yesterday. This being the 50th anniversary year for the film, I was expecting a little something extra. Unfortunately for me, the little something extra mostly consisted of a bigger crowd than ever before. I got there a little later than usual since I didn't feel like having to fill any more downtime between events than I was already expecting to deal with, and by then, the afternoon double feature (with Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3-D) was already sold out. Vendors seemed a little sparse this year (pretty much the same crew as always, except the usual DVD dealers were absent -- bootleg crackdown, maybe?), and I had nothing profound to say to Tom Savini or Ricou Browning (who both looked bored -- I always feel sorry for the BlobFest guests), so I ended up spending much of the afternoon wandering around Phoenixville with ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) midianlord. Eventually, more of the gang showed up, and we killed time at Steel City until the late double feature. This makes for a BlobFest downtime record of some sort. Pretty much six hours of nothing (not that I mind hanging out with my friends... but nothing in the Blob-related sense) before we got to the festivities. Fortunately, it was pretty much worth the wait -- Ghoul a-Go-Go seems to be getting ever more entertaining, The Blob is always a treat, and The Tingler was a perfect choice for a companion film... especially with Colonial volunteers buzzing seats randomly and lifelike (well... how do you describe an accurate replica of one the least convincing film monsters ever?) glow-in-the-dark Tinglers. My overall opinion of BlobFest hasn't been changed by this year -- it's good fun, but it still needs to work on making better use of its guests and filling the schedule so that staying for the whole day is worthwhile. Nonetheless, I'm glad I went, and I'll almost certainly return next year. Current Mood: blobby | | Thursday, April 24th, 2008 | | 9:13 pm |
The family has grown (and is expected to continue growing... rapidly). Yay! I have adopted a colony of Malaysian Trumpet Snails. Current Mood:  excited | | Sunday, March 30th, 2008 | | 8:38 pm |
| | Sunday, December 30th, 2007 | | 7:21 am |
2007: Year in Review
Well, the year's almost over, so I figured I should probably post something, since I haven't written very much this year. As it happens, that's largely because this has been an incredibly uneventful year... but uneventful in the best possible way. Nothing life-changing or earth-shattering has happened this year; just been business as usual, with quite a bit of fun along the way. I suppose the complete lack of anything unusual about this year is the unusual thing about this year -- I don't expect to have many years this pleasantly quiet. We'll see what 2008 has to say about the situation soon enough.
Current Mood: pleasantly uneventful | | Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 | | 8:07 pm |
As a general rule, I try to avoid collectible games, as they are a dangerous money vacuum. However, I'm not sure if I'll be able to resist this. | | Monday, October 29th, 2007 | | 8:01 pm |
Gah. Halloween is nearly here, and until today, I hadn't watched a single cheesy horror movie all month. Clearly I'm off my game. Just to make sure I didn't go into total withdrawal, I decided I'd better get in at least a short one... so I watched Mimic 3: Sentinel. It's not a classic by any means, but it's one of those direct-to-video sequels that you have to at least give credit to for trying to be a little different. The film basically takes the Rear Window formula and adds giant man-eating insects. Sometimes it tries to be too arty for its own good (lots of leisurely through-the-lens sequences), some of the cast is rather lacking, and there are many loose ends left unresolved when the credits roll, but it has enough effective moments to be enjoyable. Worth a watch if you're in the right mood, especially since it's quite short (under 80 minutes). | | Sunday, August 26th, 2007 | | 7:08 am |
Well, I'm still not doing a very good job of keeping current here, but I have discovered the joys of blogging at BoardGameGeek... so if you have some interest in the subject, you might want to check out my BGG blog. If you don't have any interest in the subject, I apologize.... Anyway, after one more day of work tomorrow, I'm off on a road trip to Florida on a special mission to see if it's true that it's hot there in August. A report when I return... or maybe just more board game reviews. We'll see what happens! | | Sunday, July 15th, 2007 | | 7:36 am |
Another Year, Another BlobFest... Once again, BlobFest has come and gone. This year's was better than last year's, but not the best one ever (I think that distinction goes to BlobFest 6, largely on the merits of Robot Monster). Some highlights: - Mary Jo Pehl from Mystery Science Theater 3000 was there. This alone should have brought the festivities up a notch or two, but (unless I missed something) she didn't really get to do much of anything other than judge the costume contest (which had very few entrants this year... though the Downingtown Diner costume was pretty funny). Seemed like a missed opportunity, though... still hoping that some year, BlobFest will feature Rifftrax Live! - The vendors were pretty much the same as last year, only with a worse selection. I once again had to resist buying pirated copies of really weird, obscure stuff, but I succeeded (perhaps someday I can get a legit copy of Centipede Horror or Caltiki, The Immortal Monster). Good to know that Turkish Star Wars 2 is out now, though! I did come home with a lovely "Carrots, Nature's Potato" shirt, though. - Angry Red Planet was a good choice for the afternoon film -- much more appropriate than last year's Forbidden Planet in terms of general silliness and blob-themed content. My only complaint here is that the film was presented as a projection of the DVD of the film that I own. I was hoping for a real film print. I realize that it's the same movie either way, but if I'm paying to see a movie in a theater, I'd like to be able to catch a few details that I missed on my small screen at home... Of course, with a film print, I would have missed out on the glorious French subtitles that were accidentally included for the first few minutes of the movie. - The pizza place down the street from the Colonial is pretty good (I think the name is Pizza Xpress). The Iron Hill Brewery is okay (their hummus plate was pretty good) but rather on the expensive side -- I doubt I'll be going back. - The short film competition was a good idea, and the winners were amusing, but I would have liked to have seen more of the entries (assuming there were any). - I still don't understand it, but somehow, Ghoul a Go-Go is growing on me. - I was pleased that the evening's presentation of Warning from Space brought back the audience participation from Robot Monster (when different colored lights come on, the audience has to scream or laugh or shout certain catch phrases). Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as funny as before, at least partially because this turned out to be a projection of a very low-quality DVD, which wasn't too nice to look at and was frequently impossible to hear. This didn't look to be a fast-paced, action-packed movie to begin with, and since I don't normally stay out past ten, I was fighting sleep (and generally losing) for the last hour or so. This was more than a little disappointing, but if nothing else, it was worth it for the starfish alien that wandered the audience throughout the film! - Oh, and The Blob was fun. The Blob is always fun. There's definitely room for improvement, but I had a good time and once again look forward to next year's event! | | Sunday, June 17th, 2007 | | 9:37 pm |
I haven't posted in more than two months... I guess by now that's about par for the course, but I'm due to prove once again that I am in fact not yet dead. Some recent events worthy of note: 1. Saw the original King Kong in an actual movie theater, which was definitely worth it. It's been a few years since I've watched the whole thing, and a big screen is a nice bonus. In terms of plot, attitude and acting, the movie shows its age; it's 74 years old now, so you have to expect some dating. However, on the whole, I still think it's one of the most amazing films ever made. Once it gets going, the action is non-stop, and the sheer quantity of effects work, not necessarily convincing but consistently effective, deserves admiration. There's just nothing else quite like it. See it if you haven't already. Really. 2. Saw Pan's Labyrinth at last thanks to Jode. Not perfect but pretty close to it -- a memorable film that leaves a mark and has an interesting vision. I really need to see more of Guillermo del Toro's work; he clearly knows what he's doing. 3. Acme keeps having good deals on Ben & Jerry's. I have eaten a great deal of it. Coffee Heath Bar Crunch is good. 4. I have realized that the problem with blogging is that people write about what they've been eating, which really can't possibly interest anyone else. In my defense, though, I'm really just trying to point out that you can get good deals on premium ice cream at Acme. 5. Another problem with blogging is that it tends to inspire random observations about blogging. 6. Heard recently from samtheq. It's very good to know that he's alive and well, in spite of not having updated his journal in much longer than even me. 7. Found little snails in the garden. For some reason, this greatly excites me, as I have never before seen local land snails in the wild. I guess I'm just easily thrilled. Well, enough. See you in August or September, if current trends continue. | | Sunday, April 8th, 2007 | | 7:31 am |
High and Low(brow): Demian's Week in Movies
I've been out to the movies an awful lot this week... not sure exactly how it happened, but I ended up seeing four. Rather surprisingly, I enjoyed them all. A quick run-down:
The Lives of Others -- Started the week with an Oscar winner, and this win was deserved. An interesting psychological drama about surveillance in East Germany, and definitely worth seeing.
The Namesake -- Adapted from a novel, this story of two generations of an Indian family living in America is a pleasant family drama that makes impressively efficient use of its running time, packing a lot of content in without feeling rushed or shallow. Worth a look if you like this sort of thing (which I do, when it's done right).
Blades of Glory -- Will Ferrell and Jon Heder are figure skaters -- that pretty much says it all. By far the least enjoyable film I saw this week, but still amusing enough to justify using free passes to see it. As Will Ferrell films go, not nearly as good as Elf or Stranger than Fiction... not even as good as Zoolander... but just stupidly goofy enough to be watchable (again, if you like this sort of thing... which I do, if only a little bit).
Grindhouse -- I've never seen a Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez movie before, but I have long been aware that they seem to enjoy some of the same crappy movies that I do. Now that they've tried to recapture a lost era of trash, I decided it was time to give them both a chance, and it was well worth it. Grindhouse reproduces the entire experience of a cheesy seventies exploitation double-feature, complete with fake trailers, poor film quality and missing reels. Although authenticity is marred by celebrity cameos and modern-day references that seem out of place on a scratchy print, the overall tone is just about right. Tarantino's entry could have been improved by less unnecessary dialogue, and both films could have been improved by less Tarantino, but it's a good time nonetheless -- I cringed, I laughed, I watched things explode. What more do you need from a drive-in movie? | | Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 | | 7:34 pm |
I want to be a pixel! Check this out! | | Sunday, February 4th, 2007 | | 8:08 am |
I've always enjoyed The Hitcher -- you can't go wrong with Rutger Hauer being insane and evil, and it just feels a little more intelligent than its slasher contemporaries. Thus I was intrigued when The Hitcher II was announced, and I was most pleased when randomwolfe gave me a copy for my birthday... two years ago. I figured he'd enjoy seeing it too, so I didn't watch it until we had a chance to see it at the same time. I guess we haven't had that much free time. But yesterday we finally caught up. It was both better and worse than I expected -- better in that the script is fairly well-written, with some genuinely unexpected twists and turns, and it appears to make good use of its budget, with several fairly elaborate and effectively-executed stunts. The disappointing thing about the movie is that it adds nothing to its predecessor -- it's practically a remake, but the fact that it's supposed to be a sequel makes it all harder to swallow. The idea of the events of the original film recurring for some comprehensible reason might have made this a bit more intriguing, but apart from a few vague hints that something supernatural is going on, the basic premise just feels like a ridiculous coincidence. The film is at its absolute worst when it goes out of its way to recreate famous setpieces from the original (a finger ends up in a deep-fryer, somebody gets tied to a truck) -- a wink to the audience is one thing, but this is the full "wink wink, nudge nudge" sketch. Bottom line is that if you enjoyed The Hitcher, you might well find this a passable way to spend ninety minutes... but it's not much different from watching the original, so you really needn't bother. And no, I haven't seen this year's remake... and no, I don't really plan to. | | Sunday, January 21st, 2007 | | 8:25 am |
It's been a very long time since I've had a chance to sit around and watch awful movies, but last week, I needed some mindless distraction, so I caught up on a few....
First up was the Blood Island Vacation boxed set, which I finally bought now that the price has dropped, as I've long hoped it would. This is a series of cheap horror movies made in the Phillipines in the late sixties/early seventies dealing with various monsters terrorizing the natives. Most famous of these monsters is the chlorophyll man, the unkillable result of an attempt at curing disease with the juices of a strange plant. These are all part of a long line of films that I saw stills from in countless horror movie books but had never actually gotten my hands on unil now... or so I thought.
I pride myself on having a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of worthless cinema, and it's been bothering me for years that I couldn't figure out the identity of a film I saw part of as a child. I know the title had the word "Island" in it, and that there was a scene involving a severed limb on a beach, and also a scene in which somebody gets attacked by a moth (strange the things that stick in your memory). Turns out that this is the first Blood Island movie, Brides of Blood, which on television is known as Island of Living Horror. I'm not sure I would even have realized this if the liner notes in the DVD hadn't mentioned the alternate title, but this is definitely the mystery film -- this resolution was worth the price of the set in itself.
Sadly, outside of that one bit of satisfaction, the set didn't particularly thrill me. The DVDs themselves are badly worn pan and scan prints, which is surprising for a supposedly deluxe presentation, and the movies themselves are really only noteworthy for their shock value -- for their time, they're surprisingly graphic, but there's not much more to them. Between bursts of gore, they consist mainly of people walking slowly through jungles and caves and talking in very thick accents. The fast forward button proved very useful. Of course, I really only watch these for the creature effects, and, as with the Blind Dead series, those look a lot better in still photos than in full rubbery motion. The chlorophyll monster in the third film, Beast of Blood, is a fairly effective creation, but other than that, it's a lot of tree limbs on strings, guys in goofy rubber suits, and people with bits of green goo stuck to their faces. I have yet to watch the final entry, Brain of Blood, but expectations are low.
My other recent acquisition is Chilling Classics, one of those nearly irresistable 50-movie packs. I grabbed this one mainly because it has The Alpha Incident in it, a classic about a disease which causes your head to explode if you fall asleep. It's sort of like Coffee and Cigarettes, only with more purpose behind it. The film list on the box also included Metamorphosis, which I hoped meant it contained Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor, a fun little stop-motion-filled independent sci-fi movie. Alas, that was not the case, though it turns out to be a fairly entertaining film in its own right.
Despite being unrelentingly stupid and inept, Metamorphosis occasionally comes just close enough to working as a movie that you can actually sit through it without too much pain -- it's the sort of film that would have been perfect on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The premise is the standard "scientist messes with DNA and turns into a monster" formula, but it's written with slightly more intelligence than you usually find in this kind of film (though it's undermined by the cast's inability to pronounce such words as "genome"). You see, our hero/monster has figured out why we die. A species that didn't eventually die of natural causes would overpopulate and starve, so in the long term, death is a favorable genetic adaptation encouraged by natural selection. If death is a genetic adaptation, it can be eliminated by adjusting the DNA to favor ancient patterns when reproducing cells. Note that I did say "slightly more intelligence." Anyway, the end result is not surprising: vitality followed by murder followed by aging followed by transformation into a hilariously semi-animate rubber dinosaur. That's really all I ask from a movie. | | Sunday, December 24th, 2006 | | 9:57 am |
It's about time! I can't say that it necessarily looks all that promising, but still... woohoo!Cleaning the house? I'm supposed to be cleaning the house? Oh yeah... Current Mood:  giddy | | Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 | | 11:28 pm |
Demian's amazing Thanksgiving adventure
Well, here I am, back from another much-needed and all-too-short vacation. I bring a mystery challenge to you all. One of the following things did not happen to me while I was away. Be the first to guess which it is, and you will win a marvelous prize: my admiration.
a) I was beaten at Risk by a 4-year-old
b) I fell off a hay bale while playing freeze tag
c) I ate Tofurkey on Thanksgiving on a beef farm in Iowa
d) I caught the winning touchdown in a football game
e) I played ping-pong and ended up bleeding
f) I heard Julie singing the Jean-Luc Picard song
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction... or is it? | | Sunday, October 1st, 2006 | | 8:59 am |
Last night's dream... For some reason, midianlord was selling engraved nameplates, and I thought I'd be nice and buy one. However, I felt kind of bad that Julie changed her name when we got married and I didn't... so I did the only fair thing: I changed my name to Demian Noodlehead. | | Sunday, September 24th, 2006 | | 5:18 pm |
Recipes for the Lazy and Eccentric #1 Welcome to the first, and quite possibly only, entry in my "recipes for the lazy and eccentric" series. Chick Peas a la Pizza Joint
1 can chick peas (drained)
1 tub Papa John's Garlic Butter dipping sauce
Combine ingredients in microwave safe container. Microwave for 1 minute. Eat. Possibly suffer complications later in life. All I know is it was good, it used up junk that was wasting space in the house, and it took less than two minutes to prepare. Current Mood: full | | Thursday, September 14th, 2006 | | 6:56 pm |
Well, I've picked up a meme from Julie, so now I need to come up with ten songs starting with the letter J. If you want a letter from me, just post and I will be forced to challenge you in some fashion or other.
Okay... J... Let's see now...
1.) Jump - Van Halen (Why did I think of it? I hate it!)
2.) Jennifer - Goblin
3.) Jet City Woman - Queensryche
4.) Just a Girl - No Doubt (Oh my god!)
5.) Jet Jaguar Song - You know... from Godzilla vs. Megalon (I'm desperate, but it counts, right?)
6.) Jane Says - Jane's Addiction (at least I think it's Jane's Addiction... but it's definitely a song, right? By some people's definition, at least)
7.) Jingle Bells (it's a hard letter, okay?)
8.) Joan Crawford - Blue Oyster Cult
9.) Jupiter Crash - The Cure
10.) Jacob's Ladder - RUSH
Not easy. Yeesh. I think I'm getting old.
Current Mood: burned out
Current Music: NO! MAKE IT STOP! | | Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006 | | 10:05 pm |
Proof that I'm spending my evening in a productive manner... Check this out! |
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