Tron: Legacy

I saw the Tron: Legacy trailer a few weeks back in Imax and was so geeked I could hardly contain myself. Now it's making it's rounds around the web with the general mix of reviews.

I adored Tron.

That movie was so cool and I spent countless quarters playing the Tron game at the arcade. I'm excited to see this. Even if it's crappy plot wise it will be pretty cool graphics wise. I want to see how that world evolved as our technology evolved. The release date has been pushed up from 2011 to 2010. I'm counting the days.

Duran Duran Did It First

So I've been listening to a number of horror podcast lately and everyone of them talks about the total awesomeness of Michael Jackson's Thriller video and yes indeed, it was awesome. For many of the podcaster my age this video was the moment they got into zombies and horror in general. I remember being at my aunt's house with my parents and watching the premiere. I got about as far as Michael looking up with his yellow eyes and then mine shut. I spent the rest of the video with eyes closed as tight as I could get them. However, for me, my fascination with zombies started with a little known video called "Night Boat" by Duran Duran.

My sister and I are 6 years apart and grew up sharing a room. She was IN LOVE WITH DURAN DURAN. I can't stress this enough. Every inch of the walls on her side were covered with pictures from magazines like 16, Tiger Beat and Star Hits which later became Smash Hits. She also had a grainy video tape that was a dub of a dub of a dub for some one's satellite of some Duran Duran videos. One of these was Night Boat. It's the first song on the second side of their first self titled album.

The video starts as standard Duran Duran fare with the band walking around Antigua but there is foreshadowing of a hanging walkie-talkie mic and an empty store. There is a weird little dialogue between Nick Rhodes and Simon Le Bon with Simon telling Nick "She'll be here soon." Nick asks "Who is she?" Simon replies "Nobody knows what she looks like." Nick asks again "Who is she anyway?" to which Simon replies "She's the fairies' mid-wife." and breaks into a few couplets from I believe A Midsummer Night's Dream. Then we see a flash of a "zombie" face (it looks like cracking plaster) and then John Taylor throws off his trade mark Fedora and screams.

The rest of the video is the band, with the exception of Simon, being chased by torn linen clad zombies around the island while Simon hitches a ride of the zombie yacht and sails away with torn sails. This video was filmed and released in 1982 while the Thriller video was released in 1983. Yes, Michael may have done it better, but Duran Duran did it first.

Welcome

Hi, I'm coffeemug and this is my blog "Any Idiot Can Do It" where I will review books, movies, music and what not and hopefully soon be able to turn this into a podcast. For my first review I would like to write about Breathers by S.G. Browne a novel about two things near and dear to my heart - zombies and Santa Cruz, Ca. I really enjoyed this novel. I found the world Browne created where, do to some genetic anomaly, one in every few hundred people become part of the undead is believable. The way the society handles it's second class un-citizens is also realistic. In Browne's world people have been re-animating on record since the Civil War.


The setting is mainly in Soquel, Ca, a town just a few miles from Santa Cruz along Highway 1. Here we meet our main character and narrator Andy, a mid-thirties undead who lost his wife and himself to a car accident. Andy is unable to talk but likes to form haiku's, drink the wine in his parents cellar where he lives and watch television. He also attends Undead Anonymous meeting where the reader is introduced to characters like Jerry, Rita and Helen. Rita is a beautiful suicide who Andy takes a liking too.

The novel opens with Andy waking in his parent's kitchen one December day in a pool of melted ice cream and expensive wine. As he tries to recall why he's out of the wine cellar and covered in ice cream and wine he discovers the bodies of both his parents in the freezer and from there the story begins. Andy is pretty much an average zombie, shunned by society, his father always threatening to turn him over to a zombie zoo or worse and his mother trying to be supportive but just being cold and distant.

Things begin to change with Andy, Rita, Jerry and the rest of Santa Cruz County Chapter of Undead Anonymous with the introduction of Ray, an independent living zombie. Ray inspires the group to take control of their un-lives by interesting means and Andy and the group find themselves thrust before the national media as the faces of the Undead Rights movement. But the new found celebrity doesn't do anything to protect the group from drunken frat boys bringing a showdown that is both comical and horrific.

All in all I enjoyed this book immensely and give it 4 out of 5 stars. I would have given it 5 but I can't help but feeling Browne watched ZA: Zombie Anonymous a few too many times before writing this. Still it is a great, easy, enjoyable summer read.