Q&A REVIEW: YETI: GIANT OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Q: Okay, so...:

A: Well, since you asked, the yeti (aka the Abominable Snowman) is a Bigfootish-type monster-man that lives in the Himalayas. He is a popular legend, much like the Loch Ness Monster, the Jersey Devil, or singer/songwriter John (Legend, LOL). In the feature film Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century, a scientist working on behalf of some rich dude travels to a strange foreign land in hopes of finding the legendary creature, and traveling alongside him are the rich dude's grand kids. Obviously, things go very wrong, the creature gets loose, and the scientist must do his best to capture the creature while also protecting the rich dude's grand kids. (Yo, what the fuck, Michael Crichton - do some Yeti-watching whilst you were writing Jurassic Park?)

Q: What does the scientist do to capture the yeti?

A: Actually, nothing. Turns out the creature is already trapped in ice, so all he has to do is hire a bunch of guys to shoot the ice with flame throwers, thus freeing yeti from his icy bed. It's the easiest job a scientist ever had.

Q: What does the yeti look like?

A: Yeti is kinda like the Rorsach test of monsters. Sometimes he looks like Danny McBride, sometimes Benecio Del Toro. I think it all depends on what mood you're in, and what mood yeti is in. 

Q: Why does the rich dude want a yeti in the first place?

A: He has it in his mind that he can use the yeti to act as publicity to sell his various line of Honeycutt Industries products. 

Q: What could possibly go wrong?

A: It would be easier to ask, "What goes right?" That answer? Nothing.

Q: Is the yeti a Jaws-like monster that is a brutal force of nature, or do they pull a King Kong and try to make the yeti sympathetic and misunderstood?

A: Definitely that second one. Yeti, in fact, is pretty much King King from beginning to end: a monster is located in a foreign land, is taken to America and used in a sideshow-esque extravaganza, breaks free and tears shit up, falls in love with a human girl, and climbs a building. And if we're using the Peter Jackson Kong for this comparison, Yeti is about nine hours shorter and much better. ("Boo! He made Hobbit! Boo!") (Shut up.)

Q: This sounds all pretty straightforward, but, Yeti seems to be an Italian production. Because of that, would one feel uncomfortable while watching it?

A: Only temporarily, and this entirely has to do with the yeti's nipples, which inflate and deflate upon contact with an attractive girl's flailing hands. None of that is a lie, by the way. And if you think I'm being a sarcastic blogger guy, then it's clear you actually haven't seen Yeti and maybe you shouldn't act like a total know-it-all.

Q: What's with this musical score?

A: What, the five-notes-away-from-being-In-the-Hall-of-the-Mountain-King score? Who cares? Did you read the thing about the nipples?

Q: Since this movie contains debate about whether or not the yeti is a beast or a human being, does it contain the requisite non-yeti human being who IS evil so that Yeti can be "ironic" and "philosophical," etc.?
A: Oh yeah. That one dude in the yellow members-only jacket is a total a-hole.

Q: Does yeti hate windows?
A: You have no idea. 

Q: Is there a scene where yeti combs a girl's hair with a fish skeleton?

A: Come on, if you've already seen Yeti, stop wasting my time. 

Q: Are Americans losing their shit in exhilaration over the coming of the yeti?

A: YES. It's amazing how excited everyone is about a monstrous ape-man coming to their country. People flash-mob down the street and invade Honeycutt stores for the latest fashions, all of which have absolutely nothing to do with the yeti whatsoever.

Q: Listen, I'm getting tired of this. Is Yeti a good movie?

A: Heavens, no. But it is entertaining. Both Italy and India's film communities have a fascination with Western culture, especially when it extends to Hollywood, and they have offered up some truly bizarre rip-offs of famous American stories and characters for years. Italy, along with Yeti, has given us the ridiculous Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws, while India has done their own completely stupid version of Superman. Yeti even manages to rip off "Lassie," right down to a collie that barks at men, leading them to deduce, "I think he wants us to follow him!"

"He's not the first ape beast I've made erect, but, he is my favorite."

Q: I guess what I should have asked was, "Is it worth watching?"

A: A fondness for "Mystery Science Theater 3000" might be a good litmus test for you - not because of your ability/desire to surround yourself with like-minded friends and mercilessly tear movies new assholes, but because this is exactly a movie Joel/Mike and his team of robots would have watched on the Satellite of Love. And who knows, maybe they did. If only there some kind of Internet to answer that question for me.

Q: Do you have any final thoughts on Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century?

A:

WHERE BAD KIDS GO

I must have been six or seven when I lived in Lebanon. The country was ravaged by war at the time, and murders were common and frequent. I remember during a particularly vicious era, when the bombings rarely stopped, I would stay at home sitting in front of my television watching a very, very strange show.

It was a kids’ show that lasted about 30 minutes and contained strange and sinister images. To this day I believe it was a thinly veiled attempt on the part of the media to use scare tactics to keep kids in place, because the moral of every episode revolved around very uptight ideologies: stuff like, “bad kids stay up late,” “bad kids have their hands under the covers when they sleep,” and “bad kids steal food from the fridge at night.”

It was very weird, and in Arabic to top it off. I didn’t understand much of it, but for the most part the images were very graphic and comprehensive. The thing that stuck with me the most, however, was the closing scene. It remained much the same in every episode. The camera would zoom in on an old, rusted, closed door. As it got closer to the door, strange and sometimes even agonizing screams would become more audible. It was extremely frightening, especially for children’s programming. Then a text would appear on the screen in Arabic reading: “That’s where bad kids go.” Eventually both the image and the sound would fade out, and that would be the end of the episode.

About 15 or 16 years later I became a journalistic photographer. That show had been in my mind all my life, popping up in my thoughts sporadically. Eventually I’d had enough, and decided to do some research. I finally managed to uncover the location of the studio where much of that channel’s programming had been recorded. Upon further research and eventually traveling on site, I found out it was now desolate and had been abandoned after the big war ended.

I entered the building with my camera. It was burnt out from the inside. Either a fire had broken out or someone had wanted to incinerate all of the wooden furniture. After few hours of cautiously making my way into the studio and snapping pictures, I found an isolated out-of-the-way room. After having to break through a few old locks and managing to break the heavy door open, I remained frozen in the doorway for several long minutes. Traces of blood, feces, and tiny bone fragments lay scattered across the floor. It was a small room, and an extremely morbid scene.

What truly frightened me, though, what made me turn away and never want to come back, was the bolted, caged microphone hanging from the roof in the middle of the room…

Story source.

TAPPING

It's been happening for the past couple of months. The tapping, I mean. Every night, just as I'm about to drift off to sleep, there's the tapping. At the front door of my house, there's a small glass window. You know, the kinds that don't serve any purpose because you can't actually see through them? It's one of those. Every night, there's three or four taps at that window.

The first night it happened, I played it off as nothing. The second night, I checked. Nothing was behind the window. The third night, I opened the door and no one was there...only two bare footprints which disappeared the next day. The fourth night, I called the police and they found nothing but the pair of footprints right outside my door.

The first week turned into the second and I started getting scared. I bought a gun. I bought locks. I bought a guard dog. I started on a fence in my front yard. The tapping continued, despite my security.

Eventually, I stopped responding. Nothing was there but a pair of footprints, right? All it does is tap right? Nothing more, right? I got used to it. It became a routine thing. Go to my room, lay on the bed, "tap tap tap," go to sleep. Things began to get worrying after that. I would wake up and the locks lining the side of the front door would all be opened. My pistol mysteriously disappeared without a trace. The dog ran away. The fence was just gone.

It was mocking me, telling me that I'm never safe, no matter what I do. I got tired of it. So many sleepless nights were experienced during this whole ordeal. I wanted to at least trick this thing into thinking I wasn't scared of it. When the tapping came one night, I simply got up, opened the door, and wiped away the footprints as a mocking gesture.

You could say I was challenging it. I felt good about it. I felt like I'd finally defeated the thing. I felt safe from it. It was over, right? Right? The next night came and the tapping came with it. I was seething with anger. I was more irritated by its persistence than I was afraid of the possible threat. Then my blood turned cold when I heard it.

The sound of the front door opening.   

MASKED BALL

Floating stage on Lake Constance in Bregenz, Austria. The Bregenzer Festspiele (Bregenz Festival) has become renowned for its unconventional staging of shows. 

Verdi’s opera, “A Masked Ball” in 1999, featured a giant book being read by a skeleton.

REVIEW: THE DREADFUL DEATH OF EDGAR SWITCHBLADE

Edgar Switchblade is back with his third storied adventure and his second in book form. With his ever-faithful equine companion, Old Red, by his side, it would seem Edgar has been tasked with taking on and eradicating a zombie threat in the town of Cathedral Hill. The bounty seems easily satisfied, and what's left of the obliterated zombie remains are eaten entirely by the ravenous Red, but as usual in the life of Edgar Switchblade, things have only really just begun.

By now, the character of Edgar Switchblade has been duly established. He is a mankind-hating vegetarian cannibal (figure that one out) blessed by God (or he just thinks he is) who travels the land smiting any number of supernatural threats. He is a mostly irredeemable character that no one in their right mind should root for, but yet, author L. Wyatt knows his audience well enough at this point to be confident that, yeah, of course we're going to root for him. Though Edgar stabs and decapitates innocent people simply for getting in his way, oddly it's exactly this kind of anti-heroically behavior, as well as his undying loyalty for Old Red, that has us rooting for him anyway. In a way, Edgar represents the readers' desires to break free of the everyday and act out the most animalistic and vile things that simmer beneath our brain. The part of us that's "human" should be repulsed by Edgar's wanton disregard for anything the least bit civilized, but yet we find ourselves living vicariously through this rather rogue and rootless life that sees him and Old Red traveling the countryside, drinking to excess some Old Crow, whoring when the desire should so arise, and having the occasional bout with the supernatural. Compare all that to quality control procedures and itemized billing and TPS reports, and yeah, suddenly Edgar Switchblade's unscrupulous and murderous life suddenly seems all the more alluring.

The Dreadful Death of Edgar Switchblade is an improvement over the previous and introductory book of the Edgar Switchblade series, which didn't need all that much improving. While The Terrible Tale of Edgar Switchblade was tasked with telling a cohesive and current story while also dipping back in time to provide some necessary back-story on our titular character, with Book # 2, all that's gone to crow. What we have now is a rather straightforward adventure (or as close as we can get in the world of Edgar Switchblade) that sees Edgar teaming up with Old Red and Reverend Jebediah Hitchcock to take on the demon wizard Solomon Gorath. Along the way our trio meets Mary, who are comprised of both a shapely, fire-headed woman as well as her Persian cat, and together they become perhaps the most randomly compiled group of avengers ever seen.

By now the tone of the series has been handily established and relishes in unrelenting violence, vile disgust, and morbid humor. But really, even though there are moments of obvious humor, if you're not laughing along with the violent and absolutely disgusting acts that pepper this story, you're not doing it right. (For example, a rather sharp object ends up inside an unfortunate person's "anus" more than once - take that, James Patterson - and it's done to make you squirm in your seat and laugh out of sheer disbelief and discomfort.)

The painstaking detail to the physical design of the book - the undersized dime-store pulp novel with pink-stained edges that could be found on the lowest shelf of every drug-store book display in the 1940s/50s - is so-far consistent with the Edgar Switchblade series. It's such a fucking wonderful design that you wonder why more authors aren't doing it. 

As I'm sure I mentioned before in other Switchblade-related reviews, but which bears repeating here, the Edgar Switchblade series is an acquired taste. Very acquired. You have to be a little sick and deranged to enjoy it. Its mere presence on your bookshelf would horrify your mother and have the nearest insane asylum reserving a room for you in the cellar.

You can buy it here, by the way.

BUY ME THIS: DEATH

Death: A Picture Album

Disturbing, Macabre and Moving

80 pages, linen hardcover, full color, bookmark ribbon

About This Book

Disturbing, macabre and moving: the images in this book examine our enduring desire to make peace with death. Chosen from the spectacular collection of a death-obsessed print dealer from Chicago, Richard Harris, they include art from an array of time periods, places and traditions. Works by Linda Connor, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, Otto Dix and Francisco Goya are shown alongside Renaissance vanitas paintings, Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcuts, photographs of Mexico’s Day of the Dead and eerie snapshots from the 1900s of anonymous sitters posing with skulls and skeletons.

The book is divided into five sections (Contemplating Death, The Dance of Death, Violent Death, Eros & Thanatos, and Commemoration), each accompanied by a short introductory text. In these pages we are presented with some of the many faces of death: violent and cruel, benign and playful; death the friend and death the enemy. The epitome of terrible beauty, this book is a reminder of the end awaiting us all.

I will accept this gift from you.

PIGGYBACK

There was once a couple who did nothing but bicker with each other. One night, after a particularly big fight, the father accidentally killed his wife. In order to hide the crime he buried her in the backyard and pretended that nothing happened.

The next day their 5-year-old son asked if they could go to a nearby park. The father obliged and played with the child. However, the son kept asking the father why the mother didn’t join them. The father just told him that she was tired.

As they were going home, the father asked his son if he had a great time. The child replied that he had fun, but it would have been better if his mother played with them too. The father repeated that she was too tired.

The son asked, “Oh, is that why you’ve been carrying her on your back all day?”

Story source.