I actually took another long weekend last month and went over to the Gilis. But that trip essentially entailed getting so baked I didn’t know if I could snorkel. I.e. “What if I see a shark?”…well he most likely won’t mess with you, it’s just another animal on the reef. “What if I have a heart attack?”…you’re in much better shape than you have been with the working out. “What if the shark has a heart attack?”…how high can you get? Though I did see turtles, lion fish and an eel who was larger than I’d like it to have been, but thankfully stayed in his hidey hole. I’m going back to Lombok the week after Christmas so maybe I’ll say more about the area then.

But this past extended weekend, I drove back to Amed. My usual place was full so I tried a cheaper spot. It was fine, not right by the great snorkeling, but I drove on to Tulamben after dropping my stuff at the room to snorkel around the wreck of the USAT Liberty. It was the first time I was envious of the divers and wanted to be “down there” closer.

The next day I rode on around the NE coast, stopping twice. Once at kookie Symon’s Art Zoo, though he was away in Ubud. And again near Singaraja to find the actual Pura Dalem with the naughty carvings I though I had seen before. Confusing as there is another Pura Dalem nearby, also with some carvings, but I think this is faulty linguistics on my part…again. The carvings aren’t in very good shape, but now I know for sure.

At a traffic light in Singaraja, a guy pulled next to me and urged me to see his place in nearby Lovina. I followed him, and declined to stay, stomached his lies (“Why go to the mountains? Only raining! You should stay here…”), though it was about lunch time so I ate there. A while down the road I turned left into the mountains and had soon climbed to Munduk, a town some other travelers told me about.

I am essentially more of a mountain person than a beach one and the cooler climate definitely agrees with me. I got a room at Guru Ratna and the guy dropped the price without my asking. I was worried about the budget for the trip, resigned I’d come home early when the money ran out, saving the majority for the after Xmas trip, but cheap rooms were there for me all three nights. I went to check out a waterfall. Then to try my first Kopi Luwak and have a lengthy conversation with Budi who runs the co-op. He’s a really swell guy. Unfortunately I thought you’d be able to order Civet coffee from the site but I’m not sure that’s the case…

The next morning, a guy at the hotel drew me a map and I went to check out the ancient Banyan tree, rice fields and another waterfall near Budi’s coffee plantation. The map was good, but at first I passed the tree and went way up into the hills, eventually realizing my mistake and returning. Even though you can see it from a distance, it’s easy to pass on the road.

The thing is thought to be 1,000 years old, the oldest on the island. Back when locals were fighting the Dutch, the story is 300 warriors once hid inside. I went in myself…sorry about the mouth breathing.

I’ll post some more pics and vids later. The only rain was very light Sunday morning as I headed back down to Denpasar, through familar Bedugal. Another great getaway! Had I a job up there, I’d be much more tempted to stay and do another year on Bali.

*spoilers herein*

So let me begin my admiting my bias and sharing a story that has amused parts of my family for decades. I am solidly Gen X, and in 1982, when I as 11 years old, with my Dad and little sister, then 6, on one of the weekends he had custody by the divorce decree, killing time as we often did in a movie cineplex, we slipped into a screening of the original Conan. It had already started, the scene where Conan’s mom is decapitated. And we only made it as far as when, as a grown barbarian he meets the woman who is to turn into a lycanthrope during their intercourse, when my sister piped up, audible throughout the mostly empty theater, “Dad, we aren’t allowed to see full frontal nudity!”. Classic hilarity. Soon after of course I saw the entire thing, and would say over the years I have done so at least a dozen times. Friends and I at various times have described it as pehaps the the ultimate fantasy film. For those too young to remember, let me point out there were many in that era, some, like Beast Master, blantantly trying to cash in on Conan’s success, others from Krull, Dragonslayer, Excalibur, and LadyHawke taking things in other directions. So one must ask why one would want to fuck with a classic… But alas, we live
in an era of remakes. And after James Bond, Batman, Star Trek etc. I guess Conan the Barabrian was about due. And it doesn’t completely fail, but there are a few points I must harp on.

Schwarzenegger vs Jason Mamoa

At first look at least, the new guy measures up. I’m no huge Arnold fan, despite seeing him time and again in classic roles of my adolescence. But I would argue he was BORN to play Conan. His Austrian accent adds to the plausibility of his barbarism, as does the stoicism that might be the reult of inferior acting ability. It’s not completely Mamoa’s fault: the writers gyped him trying to add romantic dimensions to the character. After some inital cliche chauvanism, he has a tender “make love” scene with the heroine. Barbarians don’t make love: they fuck. True, old Conan had real emotion going for his thief woman, but only because she was so outlaw, 3/4 masculine and still hot. A barbarian knows when he wants something, and will definitly open case after case of vengence when it is taken from him. But he lacks a certain emotional vocabulary. If he is tender it is almost accidental because has has unintentionally crushed fragile things in his past. Hell, Momoa is a better barbarian in Game of Thrones, where all he does is glower, kill, eat and butt fuck! (Ok so it was most likely only “doggie style”, but I’m taking license for the sake of a comedic line.)

The soundtrack is complete shit, I assume Tyler Bates is a hack, though he did do Matt Dillion’s City of Ghosts which I think is underrated. One cliche “action movie” melody and musical attack after another. You can hear a sample from Basil Poledouris’ superior soundtrack here.

Stephen Lang is completey played out as a villian. The scenes of his scrawny frame fighting Conan without the use of magic or minons are absurd. That having been said – the mask of evil power as a device was superior to the James Earl Jones in a Betty Page mullet snake cult motif. And I liked the idea of the wanna be incestuous witch daughter character, and Rose McGowan seemed to be having fun, though by the end she came up short. The Freddy Cruger nails were just stupid.

What’s with Papa Smurf on the hookah lording over the Tai Chi madiens? He added nothing. Nor did Conan’s black pirate buddy. The character comes off as token pandering. And while I’m on that – there is nothing essentially wrong with Conan doing time on a pirate ship, but the way they did it just seemed like the writers going “Ok, we need a little Pirates of the Carribean vibe here”. As did the fight in the court yard feel “we need a little Prince of Persia/Scorpion King vibe here.”
Also, the only time magic is used. The theif buddy is also a throw away. A quasi-middle eastern guy with a ring of skeleton keys, nothing plausible about him as a theif.

AND WHERE IS CROM? You cannot have Elric without Arioch, and you cannot have Conan without his “God by default” Crom. Conan’s tribe is described as specifically atheistic. Perhaps he mutters “Crom” a few times in moments of surprise, but there is nothing of his shaky faith in the war god who mostly delivers for him.

The sets started out Ok, but eventually had to do the LOLR CG fest, the most absurd being the skull mountain, or I should say the crumbling of the skull mountain as they ride away, straight out of King Kong. Have some rocks fall maybe, not the entire thing crumble.

I don’t want to hate on Ron Pearlman, who does as best he can as Conan’s father, but since when does Conan have a father? I see him as the child of rape, or maybe an absent father off fighting with the horde and ghost writing half-assed lyrics for Robert Plant. Conan’s mother dying here, right at the beginning, and his ersatz cesarian birth are laughable. I’m not sure how Robert E. Howard laid out Conan’s father originally, but see now from IMDB, ’82 Conan did have a dad – but I didn’t find him memorable.

Evil Henchmen

And there are many here. “No nose” is fairly original, as is his demise. But none of the henchmen carry the heft of “Molly Hatchet” and the other dude from the original. The one guy, far too orchish for my tastes, with the face tattoos being sent back as a message on a giant boulder which lands perfectly in the middle of giant ship which is inexplicably being hauled everywhere is cartoonish. Thank Crom they didn’t get too “Burning Man” with the costuming which I could have seen happening. I didn’t appreciate the snarling snow Mohicans in the beginning either, though the concept of the race around the mountain with the eggs was a nice touch. I thought it would have been more bad ass if Conan had showed up with the three heads but had acted penitant because his egg had broken, truely feeling his father might think he didn’t measure up.

What else did this version get right? There was a respectible amount of breast footage (lots of eastern europeans if you look it up…), essential I feel for the genre, though somehow it could have been sexier. And despite my earlier complaints about the scene, I did appreciate seeing Rachel Nichols’, or her body double’s. It’s not that the film is a complete failure. They have to make everything so over the top for modern autistic audiences. But you should understand downtime when you’re trying to make something epic. The plot continues to move forward, but write in scenes where the characters have a chance to grow, or reveal themselves in subtle ways. Scenes for example of characters wandering around a foreign city unsure of the next step, until eventually a camel is punched in the mouth for comic relief. Or a crucifixion. In the new version, Conan rushes from “Slave Island” to “Theif City” to “Skull Mountain” and none of it is really cool, none of it has true ambience.

And more magic. When she started to turn into the dead wife they were trying to summmon, I thought “OK maybe now we’ll see something worth those absurd acrobatics on the wedged wheel we just had to endure”. But no, he falls into the lava and she’s back to normal with no ill effect. The word necromancy was absurdly overused here, with no serious extraction of essenses, animation or the canal violation of corpses I equate with a heavy term like necromany. Either only say it once, or go ahead and show, or at least infer, corpse fucking and fight it out with the censors.

There were no classic lines here. “Conan! What is best in life?” Followed by his O SO METAL answer. Here we actually have the head villian saying, “Conan, I don’t think I like you any more.”

And sadly, not knowing what the box office has taken in so far or ultimately will, I sense this film might go on record as solid for this generation. They will mock the bad Snake metamorphasis of the original and consider the battle won. But just maybe, some teenager will read these words, watch both versions again in his mature years and think “gee, that crotchity old glory days fucker was right.” Maybe not…

My parting complaint: whomever came up with that “omnipus” monster of whatever the fuck that tentecled mess was supposed to be should never be allowed to work in film again.

I haven’t done one of these pervy posts for a while, but as this starlet was born in Indonesia, it’s fitting. I’ve been eyeing Cannibal Compilation #28 for a while now in a pile of films in the night market. The three of the seven that I hoped to see were Lugosi in ‘Bride of the Monster’, Fulci’s ‘Zombie’, and ‘Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals’. Unfortunately, the DVD had only the last, and only about three quarters of the film. But I still find it comment worthy, from the late 70′s when an Italian schlock-master might combine the themes of soft-core porn with extreme violence.

The film, or what I got of it, is thoroughly watchable, with great scenes of 70′s NYC, the absurd dialogue one hopes for in these sort of films and lots of T+A. Apparently there are many different versions of the film, some with hardcore moments of other actors spliced in to the footage, and varying degrees of gore, but this semi-copy I got (and for only $1.25 I can’t quite claim total disappointment…) doesn’t have anything too gory. Looking around online, there is plenty of choice footage I’m missing. At one point, Emanuelle and the Anthropologist watch a black and white film in his apartment of tribesmen decapitating and castrating an adulterous couple. The effects are absurd at best. But then there’s all of the footage of lovely Laura Gemser, still alive and living in retirement in Rome. And that’s definitely worth watching…

I’ve recently been working on a short story from ’08, the trip Mitchell and I took up the east coast. Then yesterday, my Flickr stats started going crazy. More hits than I’ve ever had before, mostly centered around my set from the roadtrip. I was thinking Flickr might have showcased the set somewhere, as they do from time to time, thus the increase. But see now from a link someone put here it’s because Mitchell died the other day in Athens, just shy of his 40th Bday. I’m in shock. I hadn’t heard from him since he dropped me off at the Portland, ME airport in Aug of ’08 – which in and of itself isn’t unusual. I hadn’t heard from him in years before the roadtrip.

My heart goes out to his brothers and kids, the women who loved him and all that knew him. As I’m on the other side of the globe, I’ll be having my own private wake. For all of the strange charisma, he was a strangely magical fucker. Flawed, adventurous, and Balls to the Wall.

Despite the overpriced alcohol and massage plus, one thing Indonesia has over China is an established history of rocking. Enter The Tielman Brothers. Yes, the did move (possibly were “forced”) to the Netherlands early in their career, but Indonesia can still claim them. Dude played guitar with his teeth before Hendrix… This clip is only the rockabilly-esque tune with a still image, but you can find others, many ballads.

Here’s another. Make’s ya wanna have have a swingin’ knife fight…

I saw a book on this guy a few years ago, didn’t pay attention to his name and had to do much research to rediscover Greg Irons. But how can I not help but feel affinity for a guy who worked in Underground comics and actually on one of my favorite films The Yellow Submarine, before reinventing himself in the world of tattoo? As for his death in BKK Thailand, soon after receiving “magic” protection tattoos: after seeing some cynicism expressed about this, may I offer an alternate view that perhaps the ink was only a final step before passing from this realm. Anyway, a great and interesting guy while he was here.

Two examples of great 70′s rock out of Africa. First of all, both of these “videos” are only a vehicle to hear the tune, there is no additional visual. I first heard Witch on Pri’s The World. Great tune, and where do I get one of those magic rafts? I think the guy is operating it with his boots…

And tell me the chorus of this Chrissy Zebby Tembo song doesn’t have Ozzy written all over it…

If you like it, get more here. Props to Aesop and his Cosmic Hearse blog.

I went to the High Museum yesterday to see some of the Dali exhibit. I shot some clandestine stills, didn’t have as much time as I’d like to – helping my niece check out Toddler Thursday, and catching up with other friends. But I did learn of the existence of this project, started in 1945 and completed in 2003: Destino.

*Also want to note two additions to the film link here: Love Train of the Tenebrous Empire,which I’ve been following for a while; and the amazing UbuWeb, which I’m still exploring and will certainly be reposting from in the near future*