a happy birthday for sharon

For Sharon's birthday I learned that parents shouldn't play paintball against their kids. I'd played paintball with Ethan and Sharon before, but we were always on the same team, so I was never in a position of having to shoot either of them for the game. But this time it was different.

For her birthday, Sharon wanted to play paintball. The nearest proper outdoor paintball course is 65 miles away, at the East end of Long Island. So, instead of going there, we agreed on an indoor course in Long Island City. And off we went -- Sharon, her friend Nolan, Asher and me. But this being a schoolday, the place wasn't exactly packed. There was, as I saw, one other family. Orthodox Jews, which makes sense, since this was Chol Hamo'ed Sukkot. But they were there for laser tag instead of paintball. So it was literally the four of us. Asher and me against Sharon and Nolan made sense.

The way this place does things there are three rounds of five contests each. The closed course was kind of nebbishy, but it fit the bill. I found myself facing a few challenges. For starters, Asher isn;t really up for things like spreading out. When a game would start I'd run off to the right and take cover, figuring he was off to the left. Then I'd look over and see him right next to me. Frustration. But, hey, I told myself, he's still looking to me to protect him, and he wants to be with me. So I'm getting a present, even though it's Sharon's birthday. And, you know, it's just us having fun. Who cares if he doesn't get strategy, as long as he understands (and follows) the safety rules. Chief among those is: keep your helmet/mask on. And he was great at that. So no problem.

The bigger frustration came with the guns. They kept not firing. I'd have a perfect opportunity for a shot, pull the trigger and...nothing. Or, sometimes a bullet (this place uses rubber bullets instead of paint pellets. Presumably it saves cleanup costs, and they're reusable) would kind of dribble out. It was almost comical, but this was serious. In all fairness, it's not as if the guns never fired; they were just unreliable. And this was a problem that afflicted all four of us. But the problem I had that was uniquely mine was that it was difficult pointing a gun at Sharon and firing. Even though it was a toy gun and a game. I managed, but it was difficult.

Of course, the proudest moments were when Sharon shot me. One particular moment was beautiful. There's a rule that you can't shoot an opponent at a range of closer than ten feet. Safety and all.  But within ten feet you can run up to your opponent and yell "SURRENDER!" in order to get him or her out of the game. So at one point Nolan and I were on opposite sides of an obstacle. Maybe eight feet away from each other. So I ran around the corner screaming "SURRENDER!" So he was out. But then, out of the corner of my eye I spotted Sharon. I turned and raised my gun to fire, but before I got a shot off she nailed me right in the chest. At the base of my throat. Great shot! And I was really glad I had paid for the padded vest.

I don't remember exactly how many games were won by which side, but I do know that Sharon and Nolan won the majority. Probably ten or more of the 15 games.

Then, off to dinner. We were planning to go to Sharon's favorite restaurant -- a Thai place in Mineola. She loves the massaman curry. But despite the fact that the listings on the internet indicated that they were open, they were closed. We had come full circle. A week and a half earlier, we were going out for Asher's birthday. We tried his favorite, which is Kyochon, a Korean fried chicken place in Flushing. But they were closed, despite the listing saying they were open. Instead, we ended up at the Thai place. Now the Thai place was closed, so we ended up with a pan-Asian Curry restaurant in Hicksville. Blair had heard good things about it. And the good things were generally true, though I have to thank Ethan for advising me that the Indian dishes would be better than the Thai.

And finally, the important part: cake. We had a black and white mousse cake and a seven layer cake. I'm partial to the seven layer. It's comfort food. And that's as positive a note as any to close this on.

my thoughts about the warriors

For me, the highlight of the Fort Hamilton Comic Con was a screening of the 1979 cult classic, The Warriors. Maybe it's my experience taking Keith's cinema history class (and blogging about each session), but I feel I must comment.

Before you go on, as with any of my discussions of movies, there is a risk of spoilers. For those unfamiliar, here's the premise: A gang leader, Cyrus, has invited representatives of 100 gangs to a huge meeting in the Bronx. There, he gets shot and the shooter manages to implicate The Warriors. Now they have to make their way back to their home turf in Coney Island while the police and every gang in the city are gunning for them. I'd seen most of this movie in pieces over the years, but I'd never seen the whole thing.

In a few ways, The Warriors was the perfect film for this menu. It is a comic book of a movie. Many of the gangs have themes -- some quite ridiculous. For example, The Baseball Furies dress in baseball uniforms (and face paint) and use baseball bats as weapons. Unless I misunderstood, there was a gang of mimes. The Grammercy Riffs seemed almost paramilitary in their approach. This comic book feel was accentuated by transitions using comic book-like panels and written narration. Of course, I don't know if the film was chosen for these reasons or if it was simply that they were able to get one of the stars to come for a Q&A.

The story itself isn't really all that great, or even compelling. For the most part it's pretty straightforward. They fight. They run. They get separated. They fight. They run. They reconnect. Yadda yadda yadda. And yet I enjoyed watching it. I guess I really wanted to know how they managed to get back to Coney Island. Of course, I also enjoyed the fact that the subway system is a constant companion. Around the time of this film I was a huge New York subway system buff, and it was fun to see the vintage subway cars. And -- special treat -- they kept referring to the Miassimo Vignelli schematic subway maps. Those were phased out in 1978, and by the time the movie came out they had been replaced with the John Tauranac design (a variation of which is still used today). Of course, the filming was done in 1978, and it was a few years before the maps had been replaced on all the trains.

The movie presents what seems like a depressing view of New York by today's standards. But I remember the New York of the late 1970s -- when Union Square Park was a cesspit of druggies, drunks and used condoms. So the New York portrayed in the movie wasn't really that far off. If you discount the wacky gangs. But the opening scene indicates that the movie takes place "sometime in the future," which I guess makes it a dystopia of sorts. I kept thinking of Escape from New York, but honestly I don't know how similar this was to that, since I never saw Escape.

The OCD side of me did get hung up on a couple things. Notably the geography was all off. Also, the narration at the beginning started with "Over two milleniums ago" which had me screaming in my head "That's 'millenia'!" But a reasonable person can put aside such iobjections and just watch the damn movie.

I actually loved the ending. At least, I did after I had time to think about it. I spent most of the movie trying to figure out why Luther shot Cyrus. Was he working for the police (who understandably didn't want a 100,000-strong supergang)? Did he think he could do better running things? Revenge? I figured we'd find out at the end. But I was initially disappointed by Luther's explanation: "No reason. I just like doing things like that." And it's totally believable because of David Patrick Kelly's psychotic demeanor. His was the best performance in the movie, and it's only a shame that his role was so small. At any rate, while I was initially disappointed, I came around to really appreciating that revelation. In a city overrun with violent gangs, where so much of the infrastructure appeared dismal and bleak, the nihilistic explanation made perfect sense. And it was better than any rational explanation would have been.

Now, having said that the city is overrun by violent gangs, I should note that that's somewhat misleading. In some ways a lot of the violence is sanitized. Deadly force is less common than I would expect, and gang members are often shown as being satisfied to merely beat up their opponents and walk away. This is a departure from the book which is much more violent. In a sense that's necessary. It's enough of a challenge to get an audience to sympathize with a violent street gang. If the Warriors had been portrayed in the movie the way the Dominators (their analog in the book) are, it would be pretty much impossible. So they don't actually kill. And they don't commit gang rape. These Warriors are the cuddly version of the Dominators.

The screening was followed by a Q&A with David Harris, who had played Cochise. I stayed for a little bit of it, but soon found that I wasn't really interested in hearing what he had to say. Not that I think he cared. There was enough of a crowd to make him feel appreciated. Ironically, more people than the six or so of us who had watched the movie.

my first comic con

This past Sunday was a first for me: My first trip to a comic book convention. It shouldn't really surprise, since I've never been much of a comic book guy. I liked Archie and Richie Rich comics when I was a kid, but I was never much for superheroes.

But this was a Stack-Up event. The first ever Fort Hamilton ComicCon seemed like a perfect event to attend for Stack-Up. Stack-Up is based around video games instead of comic books, but there is lots of crossover from one aspect of geek culture to another. And this one, located in historic Fort Hamilton, was catering largely to a military crowd. Anyway, we (mostly Ethan and Blair) spread the word, handing out Stack-Up stickers and info cards, and tweeting pictures of vendors, staff and attendees holding up the cards,

Asher and the kids' friend, Nolan, took a class in light saber fighting, and Blair and the kids sat in on a solve-the-mystery game.

For me, the highlight was a screening of the 1979 cult classic, The Warriors, which was followed by a Q&A with David Harris, who played Cochise. Earlier, they had a screening of The Toxic Avenger and a Q&A with Dan Snow who played Cigar Face. I skipped that -- I saw TA years ago in grad school and couldn't stand it then.

We had fun at this comic con, though there was definitely room for improvement. The screening tent was too bright, so the screen was washed out. And, for what seemed like the longest time, we sat and watched the DVD's splash screen since no one thought to start the show. The various panel discussions were poorly attended and not well run.

Oh well, there's always next year...

black sabbath kicks off a new cinema history class session

In cinema history class this past week, we started the new session with Mario Bava's Black Sabbath. This was a 1963 API French/Italian anthology of three short stories. Though this is an iconic film, it was in some ways a letdown after the deeply disturbing Andy Warhol's Dracula that we saw in the prior week.

The film starts off strong with a revenge/ghost story called "A Drop of Water." This was, by far, the best of the three films. Unfortunately, it went down from there. "The Telephone," which was more of a giallo was longer and less good. The final installment, "The Wurdalak," is a vampire story, and the only one to include Boris Karloff (though Karloff also served as an MC of sorts). "Wurdalak" was interesting, but it just went on too long.

In some ways I think this movie would have worked better if the order were different. "A Drop of Water" was short and snappy, and would have served better as the final installment. Joe disagreed with that assessment; since Karloff is in "Wurdalak," he feels that had to come last. I find that interesting given that the European release had "Drop" in the final slot.

And, yes, the heavy metal band took their name from this movie. I just wish I knew what the name has to do with the movie.

a few more thoughts about andy warhol's dracula

This is a rape scene -- Morrissey obliterated the line
between sex and violence

Earlier this week a wrote a post about Andy Warhol's Dracula, the film we saw in Keith's cinema history class last Thursday.

There are a few points I should have made about the movie and its sensuality.

Part of what made the movie so entrancing and so exhausting was the way the sensuality built into the Dracula character. When he's drinking blood it's portrayed as almost a sexual act. In one scene he is on top of one of the Di Fiore daughters, his fangs in her neck, and he's thrusting his body up and down as if he were having sex with her. When he comes up for air after drinking a victim's blood, there are crimson streams pouring from his mouth, and he looks as if he had just had an orgasm. Both of these -- and other -- images that combine violence with sexuality are deeply disturbing, and were part of the reason I felt exhausted.

In one scene where Dracula, having drunk the blood of a woman who was not a virgin (she lied to him), he retches into a bathtub. And a bidet. And the floor. It's horrifying and yet so sensual. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but it's true.

And then there are the scenes, so beautifully shot and yet so vulgar -- where Dracula is sucking blood out of a loaf of bread (don't ask), and when he's on the floor, desperately trying to get to the blood spilled by the youngest di Fiore sister as she lost her virginity. He looks like a drug addict desperate for a fix. And this is a perfect example of Paul Morrissey (who disdained hippie culture) glamorizing the vulgar subculture. Of course, the duality is even stronger when one considers that the sister lost her virginity in a rape which is portrayed more as seduction, in which she says "No" repeatedly, only to slowly relax and eventually give in and relax. If you've seen Rocky Horror and recall Frank's seduction of Janet, imagine a more stylized and sensualized variation of that.

Over and over, this movie presented visual oxymorons. The boundaries between sex and violence are erased, and I found that draining. And yet, that made this stand out as one of the most interesting classes we have had.