Vampire romance... more like TRAMPIRE ROMANCE!

I just rekindled my two-year-old tradition of sitting out in Bryant Park during lunch and getting tan! I'm so dark right now I look like a... well still like a vampire, but maybe one who's slightly embarassed.

Anyway now I'm back at work and I'm soaking wet and smell like a slaughterhouse. I also think I'm all uneven because I was more interested in lying on my stomach and reading my book than lying on my back and getting color on that side.

Yeah, I'm totally obsessed with this book even though it's annoying and exasperating and I'm 10 years too old for it. I'm reading Twlight by Stephenie Heyer, who can't spell her own name so she decided to write a novel about a teenage girl with no distinguishing characteristics except vague bouts with depression--that is to say no distinguishing characteristics--and the vampire boy she loves, played by Cedric Diggory in the upcoming movie.

Anyway it's awful because the girl is essentially in lo--well let me just copy/paste the comment I left on my friend's blog because i know you all care SO MUCH what I think about this book you'll never read. I encourage you to skip it.

I find it really exasperating that Bella lets Edward treat her like he does. He gives her nothing but cryptic non-answers and then gets mad at her when she doesn't do exactly what he wants, and she just sits there taking it like some idiot girl who cares about a boy more than her own self-respect. Essentially she's staying with him for being "pretty" and "mysterious", and we have enough vapid teenage girls in the world who already ascribe to this sentiment that we don't need Stephenie Meyer encouraging them.

He also lashes out at her for his own faults. If he's really SO dangerous and cares about her SO much, he's being incredibly selfish by imposing himself on her all the time, yet when he gets tempted to eat her or whatever it is, somehow it's her fault for not leaving him alone? I don't THINK so, buddy.

I also have a problem with the fact that he is drawn to her unpredictability. Of COURSE he finds her unpredictable. She's the only person he can't read. He's never had to PREDICT anybody's actions. So it's not that she's especially unique (because she's not), it's just that he doesn't have the usual early warning system telling him what to expect.

BLAH so it annoys me. Maybe I'm too old for the book. BUT, considering I read over 300 pages in one sitting and have so many feelings about it, it's obviously doing something right.

My favorite part is that it's in the first person so I spend a lot of time pretending I'm gazing into Cedric Diggory's eyes and admiring Cedric Diggory's beautiful muscles and kissing Cedric Diggory's.... hm.... I'm definitely reading the rest of the series.

In conclusion, you should all read this book because it's ACTUALLY rather good even though I happen to hate everybody under the age of 21.

Not everyone in the book, I mean everyone in the world.

That is... unless that under-21er reads my illustious blog, in which case I don't hate you, but I seriously question your intelligence for enjoying a blog that a 4-year-old would scoff at. And possibly pee on. Do 4-year-olds still wet themselves?

Whoa, gotta go.... just overheard a bombshell...

Vampire Hunter Dieter

I got a new barcode scanner today, it's super neat. My boss told me to plug it in where the other one was plugged in, but when I opened it I was all "Yeah, as if, I can't plug a USB cable into a 9-pin port" but I was total tech-savvy young person and installed mine and the one for the other music cataloger with no problem.

Part of the stand to the thing looked like a cross between the head of one of those Star Wars droids (right) and a Lego antelope skull (not pictured) so I bent it funny, made mondo paper clip antlers, gave it eyeballs, and named it Dieter after the sound it makes when you turn the scanner on. Everyone in the office loved Dieter, but I had to dismantle him to assemble my fancy new scanner stand. I still don't use the scanner because I like to type on the keypad, but don't tell anyone. It's probably my favorite part of my job.

Also, I watched Vampire Hunter D. I did it to add some spice to my Vampire Moviefest, but it turns out I hate anime. While it was fun to learn the Japanese word for vampire (banpaia), this movie sucked. Everyone was one-dimensional and the fight scenes were so dumb. I didn't realize Pokemon was just doing genre shit because it turns out all anime battles are just like Pokemon. These guys would leap high into the air, which turns into psycho color time. Then they say something lame ("Let's see if you can handle this!") and then they vogue and glide towards each other and one of them ends up hurt, but you don't know who until they say "Ah! You hurt me!"

Then they tried to be all emo and shit, and you know how I feel about that. Luckily, everyone died in the end except the good guys, surprise, and Vampire Hunter D rode into the sunset or something, I don't really know I turned it off before the credits came on, that's how much I couldn't stand it.

So I hate anime except Hayao Miyazake, and I know that's such an ignorant American thing to say but if you had to sit through this shitty movie, you'd understand.

In my next blog entry I'm going to talk about the book I just finished and probably pay tribute to fogey Internet trolls stay tuned.

The Hunger

I just watched The Hunger as part of my vampire moviefest that's still going on because I am slow and lazy. Anyway it sucked.

David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve are like these vampire things that never get old, but they have to eat someone once a week. Then David Bowie gets this aging disease and starts to decompose all over the place and Catherine's all "Ugh, not in MY Park Ave. townhouse!" so she puts him in a box like she did when this happened to all her other vampire lovers. They're all stacked on the 3rd floor.

You get to see David Bowie's butt, that part was pretty cool. He was sexy when I was 1, but it sucked in this movie when it took him 45 minutes to die.

The imdb plot keywords are goth, psychic, atmospheric, nipple, and nightclub. They use nipple because one of the major themes is lesbians.

After David Bowie decomposes, Catherine falls in love with Susan Sarandon and makes her come over and then they have a sexy scene with Lakme and a luscious lesbian liplock and Susan becomes a vampire in the normal way. In the end, she decides she doesn't like it and stabs herself in the neck and then Catherine's decomposed old lovers come out of their boxes and push her over the banister and she decomposes too the end.

Now I'm watching the commentary for some reason and Susan Sarandon is all "Yeah, the movie seemed pretty neat when I saw the script... but then they changed it all, so.... hmmm... at least it was unique, y'know, I'd rather be part of a unique movie that flops than something that's been done before... I guess... I dunno it was like 15 years ago why are you even watching this?"

Anyway the movie's totally obsessed with itself to the point where it doesn't even know when it's not making any sense. I hate movies that are like "ooooh, look at me, I'm total art" and meanwhile everyone watching is like "What the hell, you're not doing what you think you're doing, let's have more lesbian scenes."

In all it would be better with more lesbian scenes.

Chinese Vampire Primer

Nothing at all happened yesterday or today; all I did after work was play video games and watch TV, and all today I worked real hard, so I haven't even read the news or anything. So instead, I'm going to tell you about the Chinese vampire movie I saw this week (Tsui Hark's Vampire Hunters) about these vampire hunters that pretend to be caterers for some reason and then wait for this vampire to come. I am going to talk to you about it by teaching you what it taught me about Chinese vampire mythology:

Chinese vampires start out as zombies because they are unlucky. They rise from the grave or are resurrected by a necromancer and then hop around with their arms straight out in front of them like hopping mummies. Zombies are mindless hopping killing machines, and the only way to stop them is by putting a piece of paper on their face. Once they kill someone, they get promoted to vampire (with extra responsibilities, but a hefty raise to go with it.)

Chinese vampires are made out of still-wet paper maché. They are very powerful. Their superpowers are flying, evil halitosis, super-strength, and Go Go Gadget Arm with fingernail guns and kung-fu action grip. Do not get close to a Chinese vampire because the evil halitosis is deadly and will set you on fire. If it does not set you on fire, it will paralyze you and then you will start to jiggle and your blood will come out of your eyeballs and mouth in a fine, refreshing mist that will float into the vampire's face through his mouth and eyeballs. Then it will set you on fire. It's pretty cool to watch, but not to experience.

All Chinese vampires are pregnant, and if you cut off the head with your flying-zen samurai moves, the fetus will be very angry. He will come out of the vampire's stomach and become a new vampire with Super Scary Slime coating. It probably smells pretty bad too.

Oh, I forgot to say that Chinese vampires have Gopher Powers and can burrow underground very fast. Prepare to dodge the moving mound of dirt. Sometimes the vampire will put his special metal hands in your body and move them around real fast until you turn into a pile of skin. Try to avoid that too.

The only way to kill a vampire is to be a zen master. Teamwork is also a good strategy. Grenades and dynamite are the weapon of choice, but don't stand too close.

That is all there is to know about Chinese vampires. This movie also teaches you valuable lessons about snakes, consummating your marriage when you have the chance, the value of friendship, and why to avoid covering your dead relatives in wax and putting them in a room together to have dinner (because they can come to life and hop around and even kung-fu can't stop all 25 of them--that part was pretty funny... put them in bunny suits, and it would look like Revenge of the Mall Easter Bunnies!!!!!)

Anyway, the movie was awesome even if it was in Chinese and the subtitler sometimes made up English words that don't exist. Let's calculate the score:

Evil hopping zombies : +10
Plot like an episode of Three's Company : -5
Snakes (+1 ea.) : +1
Confusion factor because all the characters look the same (this is NOT a racist thing) : -20
Paper maché vampire : +50
Engrish subtitles : -2
No hot actors: -5
Tilt for awesomeness : +700

All in all this movie gets 729 stars. Rent it for your niece or the girl you babysit for. She'll love the bunnies.

Bleh!

So I have this new project. And by "project" I mean "excuse to sit on my ass in front of the TV." I needed it because I just finished the last season of Smallville. This project is called Vampire Moviefest 2007, and it is off to a good start.

In case you are stupid, I will explain it. The idea is that I watch a bunch of vampire movies. Whether or not I will follow up by putting you all to sleep with vampire blog entries is still up in the air, but I'm leaning heavily towards no, so don't worry.

The reasons for this project are three: 1) I already told you, it's so I have something to watch instead of starting Charmed over for the hundredth time, 2) Vampires are pretty awesome, and if you were a vampire, you'd have a much better chance in dating me, also 3) I don't know anything about anything, so I figure knowing a lot about vampire movies will help me out at a party some day.

So I joined Netflix and queued up a bunch of movies (chonologically, of course, because I'm a librarian). Tuesday I watched Nosferatu. It was funny. I liked the part when the shadow creeped up the stairs because it looked like a paper cut-out on a stick and reminded me of the "Grr, argh!" monster on the Mutant Enemy logo. It was also a pretty fantastic movie except for when it got really slow and pointless during the boat trip scene.

Wednesday, I watched Dracula, which redefined awesome. My dad was always a big Bela Lugosi fan, and I never understood why except that they kinda look alike. But there's a reason it's a classic, and that reason is Fierceness.

I usually reserve the word 'fierce' for women, but Bela Lugosi gets to wear it on his nametag too. Don't fuck with him. He'll knock down your house.

Anyway, now I'm waiting patiently for Vampyr and Mark of the Vampire, but I'm afraid that once I get out of the 20's and 30's, I'm going to stop liking the movies. This is, of course, with the exception of Blacula, which I expect to watch 15 times in a row.

Oh, also, there's room on my couch for one more (and only one more.) So if you want to watch a vampire movie with me, let me know! Bram Stoker's Dracula is already booked.

P.S. Really, I'm serious. I don't care if we've met before, that's how lame I am. But keep in mind that my Virgo-librarian OCD really likes the chronological order idea. So to get me out of that, you have to be either really persuasive or exceptionally attractive.