This week’s drink is a shooter.
You can't see it, but the Koruna absinthe has a really thick layer of wormwood at the bottom of it
Lately I’ve been feeling less inclined to drink for flavour, and more to simply get smashed. However, one must keep up appearances, like waiting until the alarm for 4:00pm to begin drinking in haste. (more…)
Are you as sick of Twilight as I am?
Good. Then maybe we can get back to some real vampire stories, like the sort Poppy Z Br–
*kaTHUNK* … *TWANG!*
Sorry, that’s me hurting myself over beginning that suggestion. Let’s start over.
Are you as sick of vampires sparkling in the daylight as I am? Thanks to a half ok written set of books, and a really shitty movie (soon to have a sequel), Vampirism has basically been turned from the dark and brooding mystery it was when I was a lame teenage wannabe vampire goth thanks to Anne Rice, to basically being the next misunderstood minority now that it’s ok to be gay… And like movies about gay guys, they’re thin, pouty, and you really really want to sodomize them.
Notice the lack of sparkles?
Well, all is not lost. Thank the powers that be that the Europeans still now how to make good movies based of decently well written books, instead of turning them into steaming piles of crap.
Let The Right One In is one such book, and it’s been made into a remarkably good film.
The gist is that Oskar, a 12 year old ideal of Aryan perfection notices a new girl, Eli, move into his apartment building… And that he only ever sees her at night… and that she doesn’t need to wear heavy padded clothing in the middle of the night in the middle of winter in the middle of Sweden. Being the outcast at school that he is, he quickly befriends her
And then people in the town start to die mysteriously and they fall in love.
Where this deviates from most vampire films that don’t sparkle is that it is: a) a romantic drama; b) not about the vampire; and c) you’ll go to jail if you happen to have topless shots of the main characters on your computer, regardless of the fact that the film actually does do a couple nude scenes.
Now, I’m going to be honest and say I know dick about the Scandinavian film industry, but this really is a masterpiece.
The sets & costumes made it almost impossible to believe that this movie was not shot at some point in the 80s and simply digitally remastered. Terribly out of date clothes, tiny CRG TV sets, little government built apartments, awful haircuts all round. Simply impeccable set and costume design.
The score was very well rendered by one Johan Söderqvist (who I am now trying to find in the torrents). At all times it was appropriate to the scene and well blended instead of attempting to force the emotion of the moment on to you. So much so that you can’t even distinctly remember a catch. It’s just… pleasant.
The acting was rather impressive. In the film industry, you’re never meant to work with animals or children. Especially first timers. Yet Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson pull off some amazingly realistic performances. The awkwardness of a young child, and the even more awkwardness of a child that is now dead and cant’ even remember when it happened. The build the characters in a most believable way.
Honestly, my accolades shouldn’t be that surprising. The book and film have won over 50 awards combined, and not just crappy European ones. If you’re the sort of person that doesn’t really mind reading subtitles, this movie is well worth it.
Go see it before it finishes its runs at the art house cinemas.
So if you haven’t figured it out by now, I have a penchant for bizarre liqueur that happens to be ludicrously difficult for the average person to find. If you happen to be one of these average people, that’s too bad. You could always, y’know, ask me where I get mine or something. Anyway, I got the idea for this one while I was at Gulag the other night.
The oddly shaped bottle is rose liqueur. Found it at a Turkish deli.
This weeks drink is no less bizarre, being based on an Elder Flower liqueur: St Germains. (more…)
But baby, I love you so much
As we’re all entirely aware from anecdotal evidence, teenagers become a lot more easily obsessed with stuff than regular, normal human beings. They begin to behave oddly. They collect things about the object of their obsession. Like photos, news clippings, memorabilia, bits of my hair, faked items on eBay in the hopes that they’re real.
Those kinds of things.
What you may not have been aware of was that these teenagers, usually girls that like my hair, are also substantially more likely to turn violent than their adult counterparts.
Frankly, I can see where this becomes totally awesome though.
As we all know, teenagers are impressionable, naive and easily manipulated. They also tend to hallucinate their own versions of reality which may or may not involve being raped in front of a live TV Studio audience*. So the upside comes in when you start directing their violent tendencies towards you into a more constructive pursuit, such as violent tendencies towards others.
Back, and to the left... Baaack, and to the left.
Go into business with a bevvy of martial artist, gun crazed, blood lusting, sexy teenagers for hire. You’ll have clients lining up. Just make sure you’re discreet about selling the girls out, because while the world loves sexy violence perpetrated by 15 year olds in skirts shorter than my briefs, apparently it’s not cool for those girls to actually be doing what 15 year olds have been doing naturally since time began.
If you’ve only got one stalker, this may not really be all that possible, unless they’re insanely good at the violence. But surely it can’t be all that hard to get multiple stalkers and slowly warp their minds. I have friends that seem to do it on nearly every interstate trip we take to one of the many and varied conventions we attend each year… And he wasn’t even goth until last year!
Admittedly, one of those stalkers did turn out to be a guy.
But this is the 21st century, so that kind of thing is ok now.
*Least tasteful product plug EVER! 
