The Ruins

I always feel a little self-conscious and embarrassed whenever I buy mass-market paperbacks, especially at places like Powell's. As ridiculous as it sounds, I worry that the clerks are secretly judging me by my reading choices, and although there are days when my arms are piled high with Thomas Pynchon, various classics, and nonfiction ranging from historical examinations of Victorian England to the selected writings of artifical intelligence researchers, there are also days when all I sheepishly bring to the counter are fantasy novels and Stephen King paperbacks, maybe a Carl Hiassan book or two. All it takes is a twitch of the cashier's eyebrow and the faintest hint of a smirk to for me to flush and feel suddenly ashamed of my English major, like I should be reading something more intelligent instead of wasting my time on such (gloriously delightful!) trash literature.

Buying hardcore pornography would probably be less embarrassing. That's how big a deal this is.

Today wasn't too bad, though. I suspect buying a Jasper Fforde novel along with Scott Smith's The Ruins was a good idea, if only because it allowed me to preserve a little of my English major cred and save face in front of the clerk. I didn't bother telling her that the whole point of the Powell's expedition in the first place was to secure a copy of The Ruins. Certain things I won't admit to in public.

I wanted to read the book mostly because The Boy and I saw the movie over the weekend, and it was so delightfully silly that I had to see if the book was equally so. We went into the film with the lowest of low expectations -- there wasn't anything else out that we wanted to see and yet the idea of a movie in a movie theater was incredibly attractive -- and as a result, I was pleasantly surprised that there were a few decent thrills. It's not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a moderately entertaining little horror film, and I jumped more than a few times, much to The Boy's amusement.

The best part, though? Man-eating plants. That shit's awesome.

What cracks me up most is that The Boy is something of a carnivorous plant aficionado -- he's currently raising a bunch of different North American pitcher plants, and at various times he's also had sundews and miscellaneous fly-traps -- so now he's all gung-ho for me to read the book so I can (a) tell him how it is and (b) perhaps even let him borrow it, so that (c) he can determine whether the author did more research into carnivorous plants than the filmmakers did.

"My guess?" I told him. "Probably not."

"Still, though," he groused. "Green, leafy plants underground? What kind of shit is that? And there's no way vines like that could produce the kind of digestive enzymes you'd need to eat away human flesh so quickly!"

"You're cute when you get your geek on, you know that?"

"Pfft. Nah. Although that's another thing -- why vines? That makes no sense either." And with that, he was off again.

It probably says a lot about me as a person that instead of finding this annoying, I find it charming and adorable...to the point where I am excited about reading the ridiculous book solely so I can share the good bits with him and -- if I'm lucky -- listen to him rant some more about the digestive properties of the average pitcher plant as compared to those of the plants in the fly-trap family.

"Hungry?"

Doomsday? Is one of the most cracked-out movies I've ever seen. It's INSANE. It's a giant, giddy, sprawling mess of a movie that steals liberally from pretty much every other post-apocalyptic and/or dystopian film already made, but it's so much FUN that I didn't give a damn. It has everything you could ever want in a movie: gun fights, car chases, proper action and shit cannibals, deadly plagues, Mad Max villains, boobs, fist fights, tanks, knights, a dystopian government, bad-ass technology, anarchy and chaos, every British accent imaginable...

At one point -- I'm not sure which, but it might've been when the leader of the cannibalistic Road Warrior ripoffs was dancing spastically across a stage to the tune of the Fine Young Cannibals' "Good Thing" -- I leaned over to The Boy and gleefully whispered, "This is the best movie ever."

He grinned at me, wide-eyed and ecstatic, and said, "IT TOTALLY IS!"

And then the heroine got into a sword fight with a hot tattooed chick, and we both made this face for the rest of the movie: 8D!!!

It's funny -- most of the reviews I've seen have been negative, because critics generally hate giant, silly, cracked-out movies that make no fucking sense and rip off everything else in the genre. I, however, maintain that this is exactly why it's awesome. Doomsday is a movie that exists for the sheer love of the sci-fi dystopia, and I fully expect that it's going to end up as a cult movie once it's gone to DVD and people rediscover it lurking there in the shelves. No, the film doesn't make any sense -- afterward, I was trying to figure out where all the gasoline came from for the cars, and my head started to hurt a little -- but it's not the sort of movie that's supposed to make sense. You see it for the cannibals and the fifteen minute long car chase with a Bentley and motorcycles decked out with skeletons, for Malcolm McDowell as the insane leader of a neo-medieval society, for the dudes with mohawks dressed in fetish gear. You see it because it's gloriously over-the-top and doesn't take itself seriously at all, and there's something wonderful and refreshing about that.

I suspect it's one of those "love it or hate it" movies. I love things like Reign of Fire and Army of Darkness and Mad Max, so it would've taken an act of God for me to hate Doomsday. Hee.

P.S. Happy Easter, everyone!

Drama

Oh, I have such a crush.

It's been a while since I've felt this goofy over someone, and it's been even longer that I've felt this goofy over a boy. I have no idea how it's ultimately going to play out, but I'm enjoying the mystery, the knowledge that even if things don't work -- if he doesn't like me half as much as I like him -- the world isn't suddenly going to upend on its axis or something equally as dramatic.

I mean. It might.

But it probably won't.

Ultimate Ninja Battle!

So while I was out to dinner with A Boy this weekend, he and I got into a conversation about the oldest rivalry known to man: ninjas versus pirates. We agreed, sadly, that although pirates are WAY COOLER, they're also kind of drunk most of the time and may have scurvy, while the ninja are elite fighting machines with kickass weapons. Sure, the pirates have guns, but it's not like firearms are going to help much if you're too drunk to shoot properly. It makes me sad to admit it, but the ninja win.

The Boy paused to drink some more sake, which tasted like burning at first and then rapidly became quite delicious as it cooled. "But that's last year," he said. "For 2008, I propose that last year's winners -- the ninja -- go up against werewolves."

"Oooooooooh." Starry-eyed, I completely forgot about my curry. "What are the parameters?"

The parameters, as he outlined them, are thus: during the full moon night, the werewolves are mindless killing machines, basically giant balls of furry, vengeful rage. During the day, however, they're human, with all of the limitations that implies. When it's not the full moon, they can change at will, but only at night, and there's no mad, unstoppable rage.

I'm of the mind that the werewolves are the obvious victors here -- during a full moon, they'd shred the ninja into messy wet ribbons of flesh and probably wouldn't even notice if they were stabbed in the process, and it's nearly impossible to kill a werewolf without silver or wolfsbane. The only way the ninja could take the advantage would be if they tracked down the werewolves during the day, but even that's not guaranteed. They'd have to act damn fast, because once night falls? They're fucked.

Plus, werewolf bites are infectious, so even if the ninja managed to somehow kill all of them, they'd end up changing themselves during the next full moon.

"Ninja werewolves," I said. "Just think about it. They'd be unstoppable."

The Boy smirked at me from across the table. "Whoa, you're moving way too fast. Ninja werewolves are for 2009."

My curiosity piqued, I had to ask: "So...who will they be fighting?"

There was a long pause as he tried and failed not to look pleased with himself. Finally, he grinned. "Vampire. Pirates."

I'm smitten.