Seinfeld: Seasons 1 & 2

Prior to requesting and receiving all eight volumes of Seinfeld on DVD for Christmas, I had only seen ten or maybe fifteen episodes of the show. Crazy, right? I always liked the show, but was only ten when it was canceled and was never a big fan of trying to catch a show off of syndicated reruns. Thus, I've waited until now to finally see a classic and defining sitcom in its entirety. This first volume was an interesting one. When these episodes originally aired, they spanned the course of three years ('89-'91). The pilot was definitely the strangest episode; Elaine was absent entirely and a ton of focus was put on Jerry's stand-up act. Kramer was also an odd shut-in who always wore a bathrobe and hadn't left the apartment in ten years or something. The entire first season (only five episodes) kind of seemed like a work in progress. Even the second season was much better by its finale than it was when it premiered. Now, again, I have seen several episodes of Seinfeld, so I more or less knew what to expect. I wasn't turned off by its slow start because I knew - had already witnessed, even - that the show would hit a stride and get better. Here's a comparison I need to make. The other day, I finished The Critic and complained about the numerous mid-'90s references it made. On the other hand, because Seinfeld tackled such timeless and mundane issues (it's a show about nothing, after all), it held up extremely well even twenty years later. One notable reference that made me groan out loud was when Jerry made some kind of joke about the Berlin Wall having just come down. Wow, did that one make the show seem dated. Generally though, the only part of the show that seemed old were the bizarre fashion choices made by people in the show. I know I've said it before, but man, women by and large just did not seem to give a shit twenty years ago. Of course, the men didn't do so much better; Jerry sported red sweatpants as outerwear multiple times and some of his stand-up suits were just hideous. Oh well. Product of the time, I suppose. Seasons 1 and 2 weren't bad, but I still look for Seinfeld to have a stronger Season 3. And for that reason, I know I made a good decision in asking for the series for Christmas. Stay tuned.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

From what I have discovered, 1986 was really a great year for horror sequels. With one of my all time favorites, Evil Dead 2, being released this year, it was hard to believe it had an equally as bizarre twin lurking around. Late last night I decided to get an early start on my list and slapped on "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" to knock off the first item.... and, to say the least, it was nothing like what I had suspected.

Ok, so we all remember Tobe Hooper's original, right? Well, even if you're completely out of touch with the horror genre, here's a quick recap: A bunch of dumb-ass kids driving through hickville Texas for fun stumble onto this remote, archaic house that's home to most sadistic, inbred killers of all time. Hooper really helped define the modern slasher-horror genre with this film. Seeing it when I was only a kid terrified me - scarring me with a phobia of Texas I still carry to this day. Needless to say, the prequel is a classic, and it's horror and suspense is still hard to beat even by today's standards... but my guess is that Hooper understood this when he first made the film because his sequel shared none of its predecessor's stunning qualities. When Hooper returned behind the camera nearly a decade later to complete this add-on, he tried for something completely different.

It's a dark comedy. An over-the-top slasher romp that will either have you rolling your eyes or laughing uncontrollably throughout the whole picture. Want to know which one you'd be doing? Just check out the poster up at the top of the post.

A clear rip-off from "The Breakfast Club." If you can laugh at that, then there's a good chance this film's for you. It's meant to be a parody... crazy and insane, with a heaping dose of gore.

The premise of the sequel is simple: One night as a couple of douche-bags are driving across Texas to get some action, they play chicken with an unknown truck on the highway causing the truck to swerve off the road into a ditch. The kids take off, laughing at their jackass-ery, when all of a sudden the truck returns with Leatherface on the roof waving his chainsaw and wearing a corpse as a costume. Of course he hacks up the kids causing a big car accident. The next day Lt. "Lefty" Enright (Dennis Hopper) - a Texas Ranger - appears at the crime scene still trying to solve the disappearance of his niece and nephew who perished in the first movie. Let me just say this one thing: Lefty it insane! After buying three chainsaws to arm himself at the beginning of the film, Lefty spends the entire movie searching for the Sawyer family's home; thirsty for blood. By the end of the film Lefty and Leatherface have a full on sword battle with chainsaws. Absolutely epic.

The best thing about this whole film - aside from the bloody chainsaw battle - was the Sawyer family. Of course we all know Leatherface and L.G. McPeters (The crooked sheriff from the first film), but this time they also included Chop-Top. This guy's ridiculous.

Apparently he's a Vietnam vet (which explains his absence in the first movie) that suffered some sort of head injuring causing that delightful metal plate you see in the photo. During his introduction, he constantly picks at it with that rusty coat hanger (no, it's not just for abortions) then eats the scabs he pulls off. He and the lead girl Stretch (a radio D.J. that tragically became involved when she was witness to Leatherface killing those jackass kids) have an all out brawl during the climax where she cuts him down with a chainsaw. Chop-Top falls to his death after being hacked, then we pull out to Stretch standing on the roof of the Sawyer house waving around the chainsaw like a lunatic with the sun setting behind her. Beautiful... and fucking hilarious.

A worthy watch if I do say so myself. Shame it took me so long to pull it off the shelf. Now if there was only one way to top this bloody masterpiece? "Oh, wait," say Director Tobe Hooper, "Lets grab Stewart Copeland of The Police and have him sing over the credits with a really gay, upbeat song!"

Brilliant.

Enter Trevor

To say the least, I am a man who never finishes anything I start. (Just look at my video game list on my Xbox account. There are actually games I've bought, started up, then turned off after playing them for only five minutes.) It is my curse. However, I have finally sought out help to cure myself of these anti-addictions. The Back-Blogged.

After going through a handful of previous posts, I think I've got a hang on how things run here: We play/read/watch all our old shit, then compose a shitty review commenting on our old shit. Scouring through my entire collecting of movies, video games, and books, I have narrowed down a list containing all items of "supposed" entertainment that I will attempt to complete.

Nay, MUST COMPLETE!

Below are said items. And just for reference as to why I'm not listing everything on my shelf, games that crap out on me after 20+ hours of game play are not worth my time (yeah I'm looking at you Fable II). Also, there are some games out there so frustrating, so absolutely terrible I cannot fathom ever playing them again let alone beating them (Alone in the Dark is a catastrophe beyond repair). I throw myself onto the mercy of blog, don't make me finish these games. Please. Besides, the works below will still take a sizable amount of time to complete. Once that's done, then maybe... MAYBE we'll talk about working on the failures.

VIDEO GAMES

Condemned I & II (XBox360) There’s not much more to these games other than being trapped in dark corridors only to have a bunch of crazies sneak up behind you and maul your face . I found it both terrifying and tedious.

Dragon Age: Origins (XBox360) Ugh, I don't know why I bought this? The damn thing looks as though it will take eons to get through.

Mass Effect (XBox360) Saw Sweeney had accomplished this guy... you think you’re better than me? HUH!?

Final Fantasy 8, 10, & 12 (PS2) Started all three of these games way back when, then lost my memory card. So many hours wasted.

Silent Hill 2 (PS2) Frustrating game. Great atmosphere.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (Genesis) Knuckles! Need I say more?

BOOKS

The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell (Aldous Huxley) Nothing but a bunch voodoo mumbo-jumbo.

Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy) I hate most of McCarthy’s other stuff, but I heard this was suppose to be his magnum opus.

The Portrait of Dorian Grey (Oscar Wilde) I bought a book based on the fact that the author and I share the same birthday: October 16, 1854.

Naked Lunch (William Burroughs) The first few pages were nothing more than gibberish. I’m not looking forward to reading this.

From Hell (Alan Moore) For graphic novels this one looks absolutely amazing. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into it.

The Dark Tower Series (Stephen King) Four books down, three to go.

A People’s History of the United States (Howard Zinn) Matt Damon mentions it in “Good Will Hunting”... What? It was a good movie.

Hallelujah Junction (John Adams) My cousin wrote this one about his life as a classical composer. I meet him one night after a performance and lied telling him I thought his memoirs were great. Now I’m afraid the next time we meet he’ll call my bluff and ask me questions about the book. Curse my hubris!

Dune (Frank Herbert) Eh, got a 100 pages in over Christmas... Too wordy. Needs pictures.

Fear (L. Ron Hubbard) I’m curious to see what ol’ Ronny was up to be before he started his cult.

Hyperspace (Michio Kaku) What Alton Brown does for the Food Network, Kaku does for the Science Channel. I love this guy.

Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad) A remaining overdue library book that I never opened up, yet still managed to quote it in my paper analyzing “Apocalypse Now”- film school is such a waste.

Make Love!* *The Bruce Campbell Way (Who do you think?) Although I though his first book was a smashing success, this one seems to be a very poor attempt at humor. I got about 30 pages in back in 2005, when it was released, but it was too painful to continue... at least I got the Big Guy to autograph the thing.

MOVIES

Alfred Hitchcock Anthology

A Fistful of Dollars

Freaks

Gone with the Wind

La Dolce Vita

Mulholland Drive.

Sunset Blvd.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre II

X-Files Series

...and as a followup, I would also like to get through the entire Criterion Collection. Yeah, they seem pretty pretentious, but I feel as though there are some important selections needed to be seen in that list.

OK, that's it for now. I'll try to stay more committed to this than the other online groups I've participated in the past. (I know I have a poor record, but screw it. You'll all be bowing to me come next March Madness.)

Trevor, out.

The Brothers

These plays really aren't too tough to read, and if I wanted to I'm sure I could marathon through 5 or 6 of them in a row. It might not be too tough for me, but my concern is that the Backblog would suffer- how boring would 6 very similar reviews in a row be? Probably very much so. I somehow doubt my fellow loggers have much interest in them. And thus, I've come up with a strategy- every completion of a video game or book will be followed by the reading of a play. The second play I've crossed off the list is The Brothers (Adelphoe), a short comedy by Terence based on an even more ancient version of the play by Menander. The story concerns a set of unmarried middle-aged brothers and their sons, and their argument over the best way to raise a child- hands-off or with an iron fist? While the story seemed to be biased to one side for the most part, there was an unexpected turnaround in the last act that showed that the other side certainly has its advantages as well. The introduction by Deena Berg claims that this is Terence's best work, which is disappointing as I found Plautus' Major Blowhard a much more enjoyable read. Luckily the Five Comedies compilation contains two more Plautus plays and only one more from Terence. I've got a feeling that I'll be reading Plautus again soon, but I have no qualms putting off the other Terence play for a while.

The Critic: The Complete Series

Sween's right - our lack of progress on our backlogs has been downright embarrassing. I've been working on this twenty-three episode set for over a week now, but today I decided to finish it once and for all, giving us just the fourth logging of the month. The Critic aired two seasons in 1994 and 1995, and it certainly felt dated. All kinds of references to early '90s films were made, and though I've seen most of the important ones, it still all felt too old for my taste. Combining The Silence of the Lambs and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids may have been humorous and topical at the time, but now it just seems like an awful joke. And that was my biggest problem with the series; when you make too many contemporary jokes, neglecting timeless subject matter for the sake of a topical laugh, you sacrifice your show's long term comedic value. Worst of all, the show's final episode was a clip show. Yuck. Apparently in 2000 the show was "renewed" for a brief ten-webisode run on the Internet. This too was included on the disc and I watched it in its entirety. I kind of liked it. This time around, references were made to late nineties films. It made all the difference in the world to me. Sure, ten years ago isn't much more recent than fifteen years ago, but the references worked so much better for me personally. Maybe it's because I was too young during the original run to appreciate or understand the films being released, whereas I can vividly recall the hype and lead-up to many late nineties and turn-of-the-century movies like Titanic, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Patriot, Shrek, and Pearl Harbor. I'll give The Critic the benefit of the doubt, then, and call myself just a bit too young to appreciate it. Still, it was nothing special. But hey, at least now I'm one step closer to backlog completion.

Under The Dome

After a little break from logging (seriously, where are you guys?) I have finally finished Stephen King's new epic novel, Under the Dome. Seriously, this is definitely the longest book I've ever read, clocking in at just under 1100 pages. Fellow backlogger Trev is also reading this at the moment, so I'll try to avoid spoilers. The concept is simple: a small town in Maine, maybe one or two years in the future, is suddenly and inexplicably cut off from the rest of the world by an impermeable dome. It's a gimmick, sure, and the first thing a gimmick like this did to me was make me play devil's advocate. "Yeah, I bet the people are going to turn into animals under the dome, but I'm sure they could logic their way out if they thought hard enough. Why not shoot the thing? Launch a missile at it? Try to dig under it? Plus, it makes no sense! How can it be a dome if it follows the borders of a non-circular town? Why would it follow man-made borders in the first place?" Of course, all of these questions are addressed in a sensible way, so you have to at least give Steve some credit there. You also have to give him credit for being able to juggle such a huge cast and keep it all interesting, something I haven't seen since the first few episodes of Lost. The majority of these characters eventually fall into one of two factions- a small group of "good guys" who allied with the soldier-turned-drifter Dale Barbara; and the rest of the town, most of whom are scared out of their minds and just looking for some kind of leadership. They find this in town selectman "Big" Jim Rennie. In most Stephen King books I've read, the antagonist has been serviceable but not all that memorable. Under The Dome, however, is the exception. Jim Rennie is a fictional character, and yet I still hate him. He often hides behind the guise of a religious man, can easily manipulate almost anyone to do his dirty work, and really just reminds me of Boss Hogg from Dukes of Hazard. When the Dome is first discovered, he's the first one to blame terrorism. He's just so undeniably smug about everything he does, it makes you hate his actions even more. There's plenty of other memorable characters here and each get their turn in the spotlight- Rusty Everett, the physician's assistant forced into the role of doctor; Julia Shumway, editor of the town paper; "The Chef," a crystal meth dealer who causes one of the most important events in the book; as well as a heap of others. A number of different dogs even take on important roles. The book moves along with an excellent pace for the first 900 or so pages, but I have to say that the foreshadowed supernatural ending didn't sit well with me. I was perfectly happy with the story remaining a thriller about good and evil when a small group is cut off from society, but this is Stephen King, so I guess it had to turn surreal. There's a few more small things Steve does that got on my nerves- most of the kids' "hip" talk was just awful, and brief moments where he broke the fourth wall really killed off my immersion pretty fast. The good news is, these things happened maybe once or twice each, so there's plenty of good reading to be had in between the minor annoyances. It definitely didn't make me want to stop. I guess that's exactly what Stephen King goes for though- it's not advanced literature, but definitely a pleasure to read. It's nice to have one of my three 800+ pagers out of the way, but while this was the longest, it's probably going to be the easiest. I'll get to the rest soon enough, but I could definitely use a few quick loggings over the next few days as opposed to another marathon.

Major Blowhard

Yeah, that was the biggest picture I could find. My return to the comedies of the ancients couldn't have gotten off to a better start. I took on one of the longest plays I had, Miles Gloriosus (Major Blowhard) by Plautus, and it was a terrific and fast read. Blowhard tells the tale of a conceited war hero who steals both a teenager's girlfriend and slave, and then the slave's intricate plan to set everything right again. Deena Berg did a great job in translating the work- all of the character's personalities really shine through and the jokes worked well. Insults flew fast and furious, and in the end the good guys prevailed. You could argue that the slave's plan was completely overwrought and unnecessary, but that's what makes this a comedy. So does the line "I've known pork chops more quick on the up take." Good times. This gives me high hopes for the rest of the Plautus and Terence collection, which I'm sure I'll get back to soon enough.

Sweeney's Lists

Good point Stan- I've been updating this Blog without any indication as to when I'll be done. I'll keep this post to the point- I've compiled a list of all of the video games and books I need to finish (I don't have a DVD collection). Without further ado, here are the video games:

Halo 3 (360)
Halo 3: ODST (360)
Left 4 Dead 2 (360)
Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2 (GBA)
The Legend Of Zelda: Wind Waker (GC)
Resident Evil 2 (GC)
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (NDS)
Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (NDS)
Pokemon Diamond (NDS)
Scribblenauts (NDS)
Rayman: TV Party (Wii)
Resident Evil Archives: Resident Evil (Wii)
Halo (XBox)

That's not so bad- many games seem pretty short, with the only notable exceptions being Wind Waker, Pokemon Diamond and Partners in Time. The only problem here is that I've been buying games as consistently as I've been beating them- I need to cease purchases and end this. I'll set myself a limit right now- until these 13 are done, I'll allow myself to purchase two more games. One of these will be Miles Edgeworth: Perfect Prosecutor in mid-February, and the other one can be whatever impulse buy I feel I need to make. Now onto the books. Plenty of these were purchased years ago and I'm not really interested in, but the point of this blog is to finish everything you own, no matter how little you want it. While Stan has a large pile of children's literature, I've also got a certain gimmick you'll notice about halfway down the list. And here it is:

Vonnegut- Cat's Cradle
McCarthy- The Road
Beckett- The Unnameable
King- Under the Dome
Laird- The Boomer Bible
Burroughs- Naked Lunch
Steinbeck- Cannery Row
Joyce- Ulysses
Leonard- 52 Pickup
Marrs- Rule By Secrecy
Shay- Achilles in Vietnam
Aristophanes- The Acharnians
Aristophanes- The Congresswomen
Aristophanes- The Frogs
Euripides- Alcestis
Euripides- The Heracleidae
Euripides- Hippolytus
Euripides- Electra
Euripides- The Phoenician Women
Euripides- The Bacchae
Aeschylus- The Eumenides
Aeschylus- The Suppliant Maidens
Aeschylus- The Persians
Aeschylus- Seven Against Thebes
Aeschylus- Prometheus Bound
Plautus and Terrence- Miles Gloriosus
Plautus and Terrence- Menaechmi
Plautus and Terrence- Bacchides
Plautus and Terrence- Hecyra
Plautus and Terrence- Adelphoe

That's right. In addition to a bunch of random contemporary novels, more than half of the reading I need to do is unread ancient tragedies and comedies. I took a few ancient lit classes back in college, and of course I ended up having to buy all sorts of books and read one story from each of them. Typical. Now I'm left with all of these extra books. Anyway, the ones I read were usually pretty good, so hopefully the ones I haven't aren't terrible either. At least they're for the most part short. Well, I guess I should go get started, now that I have a concrete goal.

Fast Food Nation

When I saw Super Size Me, a documentary about the terrible things McDonald's food does to your body, it only made me crave some McDonald's fries. When I got this book for Christmas, I was hoping for a different result. Mind you, I don't actively want to be turned off from fast food or anything, but more knowledge about "the dark side of the All-American meal" (the book's subtitle) could never be a bad thing. But instead of giving me anecdote after anecdote about why fast food was unhealthy for me, the book primarily focused on anecdote after anecdote about why fast food corporations were ruining America. I can't say it left me disappointed - I learned a lot of things, many disturbing, that will surely affect the way I perceive fast food companies in the future. But all in all, it lacked the decisive stomach punch I wanted. Instead, it hit my heart. Page after page talked about the tragic and preventable deaths of slaughterhouse workers. One particular man was severely injured as many as a dozen times. This guy was hit by a train on the job, chemically burned on the job, physically beaten and bruised by flying cattle parts several times, and stabbed a time or two on the job. And after sixteen years of working for the same slaughterhouse where all of this happened, he was ultimately fired and given no pension or severance pay. Heartstrings were also pulled when I read about various E. coli outbreaks that took the lives of young children while corporate fat cats adamantly refused that their unsanitary meats were doing any harm to anyone. The thing is, the vast brunt of my anger fell on the slaughterhouses themselves - independently owned companies not directly affiliated with fast food restaurants - responsible for sending the tainted meat not just to fast food restaurants but also to elementary school cafeterias. After all, there's always an underlying feeling of "well, what did you expect?" toward someone who gets food poisoning from a McDonalds, but taxpayer-purchased hamburgers served in public schools are another story entirely. The book felt in many ways like an updated and revised version of Upton Sinclair's 1906 classic, The Jungle. Unfortunately, it too almost already feels a bit dated. Since the book was first published in 2001, it has an obligatory mad cow disease chapter. Also, the book focuses primarily on the fast food landscape of the 1990s. I'm not naive enough to think fast food has gotten any healthier since then or optimistic enough to think the lives of slaughterhouse workers has improved at all, but the 2000s were certainly not kind to fast food at all. A real health craze took root and by now Americans in general seem much more skeptical and cautious around fast food and red meat in general. Perhaps this book itself was part of the recent shift in the public's attitude about fast food, but reading it now I just didn't feel like it was nearly as eye-opening or astounding as I'm sure it was in 2001. Another beef I had with Schlosser was his inability to remain politically neutral or unbiased. I understand the need to point out that congress has blocked or allowed various legislation to more strictly police slaughterhouses and restaurants, but several times he attacked the Republican party in general, instead of pinpointing specific congressmen, for backing the cattle tycoons of the country. It's his book, and he can say what he wants to say, but as the anti-Republican sentiment piled up, I found myself unable to consider the book "leftist" rather than scientific in nature. After all, attack ads never work. Finally, I appreciated that Schlosser cited certain fast food restaurants for their "good" behaviors and practices - chief among these were Jack in the Box (post-E. coli scare) and In-N-Out Burger. Sadly, an East Coast guy like me is incapable of eating at either one. Something I would have liked to see, or still would like to, is a rundown of every major fast food company rated in various categories such as food quality, kitchen sterility, etc. I think that would drive fast food restaurants to take pride in their cleanliness and general humane practices. For example, if Burger King suddenly surged ahead of McDonald's at such ratings, it could easily advertise accordingly, and McDonald's would have no choice but to clean up their ways. Ultimately, I suppose Fast Food Nation was an insightful and meaningful book, but it didn't make for the super-interesting tell-all I had hoped for. And I still want french fries.

January 2010 Recap

Congratulations to us for breaking August's record with 50 posts. I was going to use this recap post to break the record, but it felt like a cheap and lame way to do it, even though August's 49 posts only contained 41 actual logging posts while January had 47 even before Sween came through in the final few hours with the 50th post. Yes, our taskforce doubled in size, but I still think our achievement was a huge one. Let's recap our glorious month.

Webber and I read 3 books each while Marissa and Sween contributed 2 apiece. That's 10. I led the assault on DVDs with 17 and Webber added 4 of his own for a total of 21. And Sweeney was brutally efficient in his video game charge, knocking 10 titles off his list. My additional 7 gave us 17.

My own totals now stand at 28 books, 22 DVDs, and 60 games. As per my own regulations, I must finish February with maximum totals of 27, 21, and 59 respectively. I'll let my teammates divulge their numerical statistics if they so choose. Rumor has it, some of them haven't even calculated their own backlogs yet. But that's hardly relevant at this point in the game, and it's totally on them to decide when the time is right to size up their opponents.

As I said, I'll likely be slowing down a bit as schoolwork begins to pile up. Hopefully though, the others will continue with their resiliency and keep Back-Blogged interesting. Maybe we'll even finally see a post from our long silent fifth man, Keith. Until then, keep on loggin' everybody.