leprechaun 4: in space (1996) this fourth movie in the leprechaun series is so outrageous you can’t help but laugh the whole way through it.  the hero travels through space to marry an alien queen so he can glom on to her title.  leprechaun gets pissed off and wants the princess as his own, so he follows our hero into space.  i repeat:  leprechaun follows our hero into space. the only leprechaun movie more out of control than this one is leprechaun: back 2 tha hood.

star wars holiday special (1978)  chewbacca’s family?  his goofy, totally annoying son?  han solo pushing a storm trooper to his death out of their tree house?  do.  not.  want.

i like the show pushing daisies. it’s so unbelievably cute, bizarre and twisted, and shot beautifully - creator/producer bryan fuller’s style sort of reminds me of a more colorful jean-pierre juenet (google him if necessary). plug: the new season starts wednesday, october 1st at 8pm on abc.

anyway!

the other thing i like is my pal jimmy aquino’s podcast comic news insider (or cni, to us nerds - it’s about all things comic, sci fi, and pop culture). how do these two things relate? well, jimmy also loves pushing daisies, and bryan fuller is on his show quite frequently. as a matter of fact, jimmy had the very cool opportunity to visit the set and interview much of the cast of the show at the san diego comic con - and the whole thing is done sort of in the style of pushing daisies. it’s funny. and informative! you should check it out:
comic news insider’s “pushing daisies episode”

or get it through itunes.  and listen to other cni episodes all day, every day - for the rest of your natural born life.

questions to ask:

1.  where would you take cover during a zombie apocalypse?

2.  would you rather be a zombie or one of the survivors?

3.  should zombies move fast or slow?

(author’s note:  i’d probably take cover at my parent’s house in florida, since it’s on a lake and close to the beach, and everyone knows zombies don’t swim, unless they’re those stupid land of the dead “smart zombies” which totally don’t exist.  the windows would be covered with galvanized steel, of course.  hardly anyone lives around there and all the graveyards are pretty far away, so i’m guessing the zombie population would be fairly low.  but just in case, i’d make sure to turn on the electric fence [yes, they have one to keep the cows out of the yard] for the zombies that are fast-moving.)

(p.s.  zombies are political commentary 76% of the time.)

he will freak out if you touch his stuff. do not rearrange games because you think you’re being sweet by alphabetizing them, do not even think of moving his computer because you want to dust around it, and for god’s sake, please do not pick something up and put it somewhere else. he has systems, and you’re messing them up.

Recently, I bought this Crest Renewal System™. The idea of it – at least according to the packaging – is that it’s a WHOLE SYSTEM to whiten and “renew” your teeth. My teeth could use some renewing, sure; whose couldn’t? So I bought the $11.99 Renewal System™ that turned out to be….a tube of Crest fluoride toothpaste and five pairs of whitening strips. You’re supposed to use the strips once a week.

Shame on me for believing the hype, right? But I’m a sucker for marketing. I’ll buy the Swiffer because it promises to do away with my mop and her sister the dirty water, only to then discover that all Swiffer does is just kind of move the dust around on my floor. I’ll buy anything “as seen on TV” – especially if it involves Billy Mays yelling at me (I’m particularly obsessed with Mighty Putty and the Hercules Hook right now.) Nail polish that dries in 30 seconds? Sure, count me in. Head On, apply directly to the forehead? Do want, if only to prove the commercials wrong.

But do you ever get the feeling that companies and their marketing departments are just playing a gigantic joke on everyone – including you and me? Or, as the delightful Johnny Rotten once said, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” He also said, “Malcolm and Vivienne were a pair of shysters; they’d sell anything to any trend they could grab onto.” That’s funny. I worked in marketing for a long time, and I loved to play jokes on people. A hat designed to look like a turban? A fake band with a half dozen magazine articles under their collective belt? Street teams? Acid wash? Sarcasm buried in cheap and cheerful slogans? You don’t get it? The joke truly is on you.

Why do you buy into what you buy, only to discover it doesn’t work – at all? Marketers – and not even good ones, just ones with a basic grasp of human nature – can take a mound of cat poop and turn it into gold that everyone is shelling out $11.99 for. Actually, they’ve done that already, with Ellen DeGeneres featuring kitty litter facemasks on her show. The resulting testimonials (“My face has never looked tighter and brighter!”) are either employees of Fresh Step or those who’ve been duped into wetting down and smearing the vile stuff across their cheeks – trying not to look like dupes.

So when I picked up a magazine the other day to read about the newest and greatest music I should be listening to, I snickered to find an “electronic duo” that is “poised for superstardom.” Knowing they were friends of a friend who worked at the magazine, and knowing they were part of a scene that does favors for one another, and also knowing that their “talent” consists of Fischer Price beats composed mostly by their computers…well.  But to the consumer who really IS, earnestly, trying to find the next “newest and greatest”, the electronic duo may be music to their ears, even if they secretly think they suck. And whose fault, really, is that?

So it goes, the marketing snake eating its own tail. Perhaps I’ve become too cynical in my old, old age, but I can’t even take reality TV at face value anymore. Wait, are you laughing at me? Stop it. I really DID think Tila Tequila was bi-sexual.

please to enjoy this image of my alter-ego at comic con.

so BEA (or book expo america, for all y’all literary n00bs like me) was last the other weekend. may 30th - june 2nd, to be exact. what i never realized was this: BEA is to book nerds as comic con is to, well, nerds. i was so overwhelmed by my looming signing for i love geeks at my publisher’s booth that I completely forgot to do the logical thing and see who was also signing. or what educational panels were taking place (not too many, as it turns out.) i totally missed my high school goth literary icon, anne rice, signing the same day as me. but i DID happen to accidentally catch ben templesmith, and got a custom vampire on my 30 days of night title page out of the deal. also saw the line for william shatner…galloping around the cosmos is a game for the young, indeed, so i kept on walking.

so. um. my signing? well, i was almost derailed when the shuttle taking me from the hotel to the l.a. convention center decided to take this strange, roundabout way (really, it wouldn’t have been proper for me to tell the driver that there’s olympic and then there’s pico, and never the twain shall meet), leaving me running to my booth with one minute to spare. imagine my shock when i discovered….a line? i am not often serious with my emotions, but by gosh, i just about teared up from gratitude that the booth was surrounded by actual PEOPLE instead of crickets (a.k.a, how i pictured it). big ups to the japanese gentlemen who had me pose for pictures. the one who referred to me as a “small child” will always have a special place in my heart.

there are pictures up at ijustfinished’s blog and ijustfinished’s interview with me on youtube, which i haven’t watched because i am quite sure i made some sort of an ass out of myself at some point. or was just boring. which is worse. anyway! thanks renee - my first press.

oh, and why is l.a. still horrible? tune in next time for the first installment of carrie’s soap box, which will include such topics as “$43.00 parking - legend, myth or fact?”, “the 7-11 on santa monica and las palmas sucks”, and my favorite NYC diatribe, “what do we want? affordable housing! when do we want it? NOW!”

good day.