Posted by vegetable at 12:26 PM | Permalink

Amusing enough for me to go through the effort of posting the link:

http://www.shoutwire.com/viewstory/67737/How_Superman_Should_Have_Ended

Posted by vegetable at 12:33 PM | Permalink

I don't know how most of you out there feel about Chuck Palahniuk. I rather enjoy him. His twisted. his style is often frantic, but fun. And yet, 3 of his last 4 books have stunk. Fortunately, his new one, Rant, doesn't stink nearly as much as Haunted, the steaming pile of shit bound up and sold as a collection of short stories from a couple years ago. But neither did my last bowel movement. Haunted was just that bad.

Some spoilers lie ahead....

In the works by Palahniuk that fail, particularly Lullaby and Rant, the failure seems to stem from the fact that there are a couple of good ideas that just don't mesh with one another. Lullaby starts with promise and turns into a road novel with annoying characters. With Rant, there's a rabies plague, an unknown near-future where people only live during the day or during the night, a title-character billed as the most efficient serial killer ever, and some time travel.

What's worse, in Rant, nothing's unexpected. Even the time-traveling -- potentially the twist Palahniuk thought would give the book it's punch -- is mentioned in the dust jacket. Still, the opening few pages (as someone pointed out in another review) essentially reveal what's going on. Anyone reading carefully enough would know what's about to happen. Usually Palahniuk's style and shock tactics would be enough to get one through this, but not this time. And even if the time traveling was a surprise it would be just one more bizarre element in a book of bizarre elements that really don't tie together. And some of the elements are recycled from previous efforts. The party-crashing, for instance, is just something that he touched on in Fight Club (the thrill of the car crash leading to a religious feeling). If he didn't spend so much prose on what crashing "means" to these characters (since it's essentially the same for all of them) then the book might not sag in the middle, right when Rant's escape from his small town begins. Recycling the car crash thing isn't a big deal -- it's his idea, he can reuse it and expand it if he likes. But the oral biography device he uses leads to repetition and the novel ends up more a pile of sticks than any coherent structure, veering off into ideas when the characters are begging to do something.

Ultimately, I'm really disappointed in the fact that Rant doesn't really get developed in the novel. It's more a novel about the world Palahniuk has created than Rant. And yet that world isn't very deep or interesting. The 'city life' Rant escapes to is nothing more than a series of car crashes. The great effect he has on his fellow party crashers must be taken on faith -- it's really not shown in the prose. Rant is just someone who was around, a weird someone. there's mention that he applied for status as a citizen of the night, but there's no sense of why or what that means for him. The segregation, the plague, the world itself is flat.

I'm glad that his style has evolved a bit. The energy of Choke's repetitions has given way in Diary and Rant to a less frantic approach, which allows for deeper characterization and less reliance on dialog. Except that Rant is, essentially, all dialog that, especially in the second half, all sounds the same. There are very few characters that actually sound different. I wonder what the novel would be like as a traditional narrative? I'm not asking for a different version -- clearly Palahniuk was challenging himself here. But I struggled through the last hundred pages and after the unreadable Haunted, this makes 2 disappointments in a row (and 3 out of the last 4) for an author whom I had previously bought without question. I will keep reading, and maybe my lowered expectations will be rewarded.

Posted by vegetable at 1:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, NBC's fall lineup looks smelly. How can something LOOK smelly? Well, only the jerks at NBC can pull that off.

Granted, I only watch 3 shows at this point in my life: 30 Rock, The Office, and My Name is Earl. (I should also point out that South Park and The Venture Brothers are shows that I watch, but only when they are on DVD.) But still, look at some of these exciting "new" programs they've got:

To stretch the normal 22-episode season of "Heroes," which faltered after its long hiatus this year, NBC will add "Heroes: Origins." The spinoff will introduce a new character each week, and viewers will select which one stays for the following season. The two series will have 30 new episodes combined.

nothing says "good idea" like letting your viewers decide what to do with your show. $50 says Sanjay is the next Hero.

Since it found an audience this season with superpowered stars, NBC will remake "Bionic Woman" with Michelle Ryan in the title role.

New series "Journeyman" is about a San Francisco newspaper reporter who travels through time to alter people's lives, and "Chuck" is a thriller about a computer geek who becomes a government agent after spy secrets are embedded in his brain.

So, Quantum Leap and a TV version of that Tony Scott movie that Will Smith was in.

Brooke Shields headlines an hour-long series about three high-powered women friends, a script from "Sex and the City" author Candace Bushnell.

A rip off of Sex and the City from the author of Sex and the City starring a woman who is not sexy, even if she does hate Tom Cruise.

NBC's other new series, "Life," is a drama about a detective given a second chance after spending years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.

I give this show one month before getting canceled.

Posted by vegetable at 12:43 AM | Permalink

So I've finally finished school, and vacation is a week away. Do I celebrate by sitting down and writing a nice long post? No, but I will offer this YouTube piece for the comic book geeks among us. And that would be...everyone.

Posted by Victoria at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)