Under anesthetic, subdivided and synthetic

Billy Butcher, Wee Hughie, Mother's Milk, The Frenchman and The Female are The Boys: a CIA-backed team of very dangerous people, each one dedicated to the struggle against the most lethal force on Earth -- superpower. Some superheroes have to be watched. Some have to be controlled. And some of them -- sometimes -- need to be taken out of the picture. That's when you call in The Boys.

To get this right out of the way, let me contrast The Boys with Y: The Last Man in a very important regard -- I wholeheartedly recommend Y to anyone who enjoys a strong sci-fi story with engaging characters and intriguing concepts. The fact that Y just happens to be a comic book is incidental; even those not fans of illustrated narrative may well find themselves convinced of its virtues. But not only is The Boys inexorably tied to its medium, it's all about its medium, specifically superheroic comics. But it's not the sharp scalpel-like dissection and deconstruction that Alan Moore gave us with Watchmen -- it's a brutal, unforgiving dismemberment via chainsaw. You need to not only be acquainted with comic book history to get most of the references in The Boys, you also need to be willing to watch them get dragged through the mud until they can take no more. If you're still inordinately sentimental about comics (or, really, anything), this is not for you. Writer Garth Ennis said that this book would out-Preacher Preacher, and if that makes sense to you, maybe you'd enjoy it, but otherwise...mmm, keep on moving.

So why do I like it? ( A few big pics and truly disturbing ideas below.... )

Hrm, so that was interesting. More on that later. Right now it's only 93 degrees and I can actually function, so just to break up the predictable sea of Cyrillic spam, here's actual content. Brace yourselves.

I've been digging through Rifftrax lately (short definition: commentary tracks of pure mockery), and I have to say, it's made (some) unwatchable movies watchable (I really can't recommend seeing the Twilight movies any other way) and introduced me to some particularly hideous cinematic misadventures -- two so bad that they appear on Wikipedia's list of films considered the worst. And rightly so.

First there's The Room, an incompetently-implemented vanity vehicle for its (sigh) writer, director and star of indeterminate accent and negligible talent. Allegedly cost $6 million to make, absolutely none of which shows on-screen, and everyone emotes and enunciates as if they'd just taken gulps from a punchbowl of quaaludes. It's a romantic drama without drama or romance or...redeeming qualities, really.

For the love of God, keep annotations enabled while you watch this.



And yet there's still Birdemic: Shock and Horror. Ever wonder if there's a quality of film that even SyFy won't show, or a level of special effect too embarrassing for basic cable? Here's a film with much loftier ambitions than The Room and even less watchability -- awful editing, acting, narrative and, without a doubt, the worst special effects I've ever seen. Period. If your four-year-old shot this on a Handycam you'd sit them down and gently encourage them to try again or, perhaps, take up piano instead.

I'm sure the director is quite enthusiastic, but enthusiasm does not necessarily translate to coherence or quality. Referred to by its director as a "romantic thriller," the veracity of which I will leave to you.





There, now Green Lantern doesn't look so bad, does it?

The Chefs, long long ago, were faced with a dilemma of which quarterback to keep: occasionally flaky starter Elvis Grbac or promising powerful understudy Rich Gannon. Kansas City let Gannon go and put all their money on Grbac...probably (right up there with going after Herm Edwards) one of the franchise's biggest blunders in recent memory. Grbac fizzled, and Gannon managed to take the Raiders to the Super Bowl -- not a small feat when you're the Raiders.

But eleven years ago, People magazine made the same damn mistake as it sought its sexiest athlete. Even the colorblind heterosexual can tell you that Elvis, in the words of Mike T. Nelson, is as sexy as a garage.

Go to the ESPN Member Services page. Enter the Contra code: up up down down left right left right b a b a enter.

Via the ever-awesome paraxeni here, but let me encourage you to try it first before visiting the link.

It's like the different part of my world are suddenly making sense....

Chronic pain has its own devastating side effects, even in the absence of medication. Sufferers of migraine headaches sometimes report a phenomenon that amounts to color-blindness. Jeff of the Omegaword blog explains that chronic pain has a peculiar way of removing color from the world. He poetically describes his experience of a reality in which all color has been erased by bursts of red:

“Red has never been my favorite color. Bolts of hot pain sear the world, leaving me colorblind but for the shards that stay behind — jagged red reminders of pain past, and pain yet to come. Through the window, beyond the mute interplay of light and shadow on a white kitchen wall, bare branches against a pale sky remind me that it’s all in my head. What color are light waves, anyway?”

Okay, I know I'm color-blind, but this current LJ layout's pounding my optic nerve somethin' fierce. It's hurtful somehow. Eh, onward and upward, and you'll never guess what today's prevalent theme is. ( 45 sugary-sweet pics below. )

Lore: I just learned something totally amusing and insane! The "Mahna Mahna" song made famous by the Muppets started out in the soundtrack to Svezia, inferno e paradiso (1968), a softcore pornography film! It was apparently used as the backing music for a scene involving lesbian BDSM! I completely need to see this movie! And yet, it doesn't seem to be on sale anywhere. I've said this before, but something has clearly gone wrong with capitalism.

Update: My friend Sean has alerted me to the existence of the trailer on YouTube. Warning: contains boobs and butss [sic]. Also warning: Does not contain the Mahna-Mahna song.

...Really, what else can I add to that?

Via BoingBoing: Unfortunately, this is not a joke...and this is not an old video. Appalachian State University put out this video last year and it instantly became a viral hit amongst the educational community. It's probably THE worst educational recruitment video ever and possibly one of the worst songs ever recorded. From the production values to the obsessive use of the same transition to the incredibly lame imagery used in the video, this one takes the cake on almost every level. It's so bad that it's destined to become a classic.

I'm not feeling well at the moment, so I don't think I'll brave it yet. But I'll add it to my favorites and soak in the glory later.

Doctors in Shanghai on Tuesday were considering surgery options for a 2-month-old boy born with an unusually well-formed third arm. Picture included.