the wild rover.

Rover 6 - The Movie (2005)
Dir: Unknown (a Lookinghouse/MTRU Production).
Cast: The people of Westham and Pevensy.

Filmed on location in and around the beautiful countryside (and B roads) of Westham and Pevensy and featuring Dogma-esque performances from local residents, Rover 6 - The Movie is a piece of pure guerrilla film-making gold.

Purporting as it does to showcase the late, lamented Rover 6 community bus scheme this short infomercial manages to uncover the almost Lynchian depths of perversity and secrets hidden behind the net curtains of this small British Parish.

A local route for local people.

From the pearl necklaced grandmother mysteriously wanting to visit the local council offices on a Saturday (whilst trying to convince the transport booker that she's really going to Waitros) to the un-named 'limping fat man' via the almost Crippenesque 'Chairman of Local Transport Group' the unsettling footage of the local residents is intercut with scenes of the sinister dark blue Rover itself smoothly stalking the backroads to a country soundtrack.

Your grannies cum face.

Like a giant metal angel of death the Rover at one point narrowly misses a cycling child before stopping to allow a family to sacrifice a wheelchair bound elderly relative to the maw of the wheeled beast, it's cold, emotionless handler (or 'driver') always hidden in shadow save his dead cold eyes inadvertently turn the unwary passengers to stone.

The Pevensy death machine senses another victim.

The narration, by a faceless old lady in a curt, emotionless style reminiscent of Sheila Kieth in House of Whipcord takes on a sickeningly voyeuristic edge when married to footage of innocent school girls enjoying ice cream on the promenade or shots of the unsettlingly plain women reading a timetable as two badly behaved puppies fight inside her blouse. It's almost as if the unseen narrator has been following their every moment, knowing when their lives will be cruelly cut short and is preparing to relish the moment before devouring their souls.

Forever.

Dirty pillows.

As the twangy guitars build to a crescendo the movie takes an unexpected turn, leaving the multitude of shots from the drivers eye view of the road and unending footage of strange shaped families waiting at makeshift bus stops in deserted country lanes and council estates to showcasing the town centre and beach front even going as far as to show a man serving muffins and a lonely housewife aimlessly wandering around a deserted supermarket. Special mention is made of the monthly 'farmers market' where specialty meats can be found.

And if that's not an admission of cannibalism I don't know what is.

She looks like she enjoys
specialty meat inside her.

The voice also informs us that seeing as Rover runs till 11.30 PM on Saturdays that we have no excuse for not visiting the local theatre or for not enjoying a 'slap up' meal with friends. A special mention is made of those that enjoy 'a few drinks' when out, whilst the camera lingers on the oppressive exterior of the health centre.

The bearded woman and her friend may look
happy now but just wait till the fucking starts.

The story has a sad ending tho' as in early 2008 East Sussex County Council and the Westham & Pevensey Local Transport Partnership, working closely with the sinister 'Cuckmere Community Bus Group' decided (for reasons unknown) to replace the Rover with a volunteer run community bus link.

Lambert: Naked and piss stained.

The missing persons files on those poor souls who simply vanished after boarding the Rover disappeared and Marjorie Lambert (of the local transport group that created the Rover programme) was found dead six weeks later in a local brothel alongside her Filipino houseboy Ramon.

Both were naked.

The last day of the Rover 6 service was on Saturday 9 February 2008. The Rover may be no more but it's legacy of sorrow will continue for years to come.

don't try this at home...

...oh, go on then....

ME AND OBAMA'S MAMA

The other night I was talking with a friend about what we'd like to do if we weren't writers. There isn't much. I love what I do.

But I did mention that I used to know someone in Indonesia who had the greatest job that I ever heard of.

I met Ann Sutoro when I was working for Asian Business magazine and interviewing people for a cover story on what the private sector can do to help alleviate poverty. She was an economic anthropologist working for Bank Rakyat Indonesia, the rural development bank of the country. She was in charge of the bank's microfinance program.

From her office in Jakarta, Ann would pick out an impoverished village somewhere in the country. She'd travel there, spend several weeks getting to know the place, getting to know the movers and shakers in the village, who had the brightest entrepreneurial spirit, the best ideas. About 95% of the time the people she came up with were women. Then she'd go back to Jakarta and write up a report.

Loaning this woman US$70 would enable her to get a small refrigerator for her food stall, and among other things she could then stock medicine for curing river blindness in kids. Another woman could use 40 bucks to buy some equipment to better husk rice, so there'd be less waste and she could build up her business. For 65, yet another woman could get a second loom for weaving cloth and expand her business. It was all little loans, but it meant big improvements in the lives of whole villages. (And the default rates on the loans was much lower than it was on the big loans other banks made to corporations or wealthy individuals.)

Ann would write up her report, get the money from the bank, then return to the village to dispense the loans. She got to play fairy godmother to hundreds, maybe thousands of people. And best of all it wasn't charity. She was simply helping them to help themselves.

I liked her, a lot, the moment I met her. We became friendly and for several years, whenever I was in Jakarta I'd give her a call. We'd have a drink, a meal, hang out talking in her beautiful house in Jakarta. She had a great, quirky, sense of humor, was kind and decent to a fault and was just plain whip smart, one of the sharpest people I've ever known. I envied her her job, admired her tremendously and always looked forward to seeing her.

She died of cancer in 1995 and it was a tremendous loss. I've thought of her often over the years. Whenever the subject of great things to do with one's life comes up, I always trot out the story of Ann Sutoro. Because of her, if I ever went back to school, it would be to study economic anthropology. (Easy to say, though, not much real risk of that.)

Today, I was trying to think up a subject for this blog entry and I was thinking about my conversation of the other night. I thought I'd write about a few of the world's best jobs, so Ann immediately popped into my head. Just for the hell of it, I googled her, not really expecting to find much, if anything. What I found out is that she was Barack Obama's mother.

There's much that I like and admire about Obama. But, as with all politicians, there is also much about him that makes me suspicious and nervous. But I do know one thing for sure. He comes from a very good family. At least on his mother's side.

crucifixes, custard and sweet, sweet lady pie.

Jesus vs. The Messiah (2007)
Dir: Alan Ronald.
Cast: Simon Phillips, Gemma Deerfield, Alistair Rodger, Alan's dad, John Lavelle, Debbie Attwell and Danny Idollor Junior.

Beards, blondes and big black men in
hats: the future of British cinema?
Quite possibly.

In a nameless and nasty nicotine and piss stained pub in deepest, darkest Paisley (former murder capital of Europe and birthplace of David Tennant) an obese, potato headed mad bastard (Rodger- playing the role with relish and a bizarre line in American style dialogue) is getting his jollies by forcing scrawny Scotsmen to join him in rowdy drinking contests (the Karaoke machine is out of order no doubt).

After drinking what seems like the entire cast of River City under the table he decides to try his smooth (well, wobbly and sweaty moves really) on the short skirted and terrifyingly toothsome bit of 'lady pie' (Deerfield) waiting patiently on her drink at the bar.

His offer of a slap up meal, a great time and some fun afterwards is (quite sensibly) rebuffed by the young lady, making the man's comedy pumpkin sized head go red with anger (and frighteningly get even more sweaty), the situation isn't helped any when the frowning bearded fella (Phillips) sitting at the other end of the bar decides it'd be a grand idea to lecture the loopy lard arse on the etiquette and how-do's of talking to ladies.

A nice piece of ladypie
yesterday (sans custard).

Taking the advice badly (you're surprised?) the helpful stranger is rewarded by being forcibly sat down in the corner of the pub whilst Mr. creosote's ratty henchmen force tumblers of what looks like evil syrupy fat man sweat down his throat.

Frowning slightly more (and tutting loudly in a kinda annoyed supply teacher kinda way) beardy boy nevertheless manages to out drink Tubbs who unceremoniously deposits his lunch everywhere before collapsing like a punctured bouncy castle at a kids party with an ear deafening crash. It's only a matter of time tho' before Mr. Beard himself is also munching the rug (so to speak).

After later finding himself sprawled out in the back of the womans car, our furry chinned chum introduces himself as one Mr. Jesus but prefers to be addressed as Jay (as one would I suppose).

The girl (whom we now know to be called Sally) replies with the helpful line “You must have had some fucked-up parents”.

Riker and Troi: The Pikey years.

Realising that it's not everyday you have the son of God in the back of your motor (and the fact that she's bored with living in her car) Sally agrees to spend the night on Jays sofa (well, it is a very nice sofa) which is lucky because the next morning Jay finds his wallet has been stolen and our mini-skirted pal knows exactly who nicked it (her deduction skills are amazing, almost as if she's really an undercover journalist who's been posing as a prostitute, or is it the other way round?)

Yup bad Mr. bouncy belly in the pub has taken it and Sally is determined to retrieve it (maybe Jay's wallet holds the whereabouts of the Ark of The Covenant or at the very least a huge amount of Sainsburys Active Kids vouchers).

Returning to the by now deserted (yet still piss stained) pub our equestrian heroine literally bumps into a big scary black guy (he's so big he's probably mistaken for a wall or something), built like Ben Grimm and decked in a cowboy hat, leather overcoat plus a casual shirt and tie combo and comfortably worn trainers (the frankly fantastic - and fantastically monikered - Idollor Junior), this brutish behemoth of a bloke (who, by a matter of simple elimination must be 'The Messiah') has some unfinished business with Jay (and his beard) and will stop at nothing to find him.

"Where's mah washboard mutha fucka?"

Luckily for the big guy, Jay has decided he fancies a wee bit of this action hero lark too and turns up at the bar to help Sally (well it is his wallet) but on arrival is mildly surprised (well he stops frowning for a second or two) to see her being held hostage by Mr. Messiah.

Rushing in where Angels (but not sons of God obviously) fear to tread, Jay makes a complete arse of the rescue attempt and in turn has to be saved from certain something by Sally who, distracting The Messiah with her pearly whites beats him around the head and drags Jay out of the pub and to a local cafe (well it's hungry work this Saviour lark).

Big gun or faraway lady?

Chatting away over a mug of sugary tea and a full Scottish (£2.95 - available all day) Jay and Sally decide that, due to him being the son of God and her having a shady past) it's probably for the best if they leave Paisley (but to be honest you'd be as well leaving if you weren't being chased by a big nutter with a western fetish on account of it being utter shite) and run for the hills....

"I love you....could it be magic?"

But the mighty Messiah is hot on their tails and the big planks of 4 by 2 hardboard that he's carrying around with him aren't to build Jay a new shed.....


In a world where every low budget genre flick is hailed as the next big thing, released in a blaze of internet fury only to ultimately disappoint, Alan Ronald's JVM is like a reassuringly fresh Glade Breeze cutting thru' the stagnant stench of failure left behind by such British movies as Razor Blade Smile (Eileen Daly in a squeaky rubber cat suit shagging ladies...how did that go so hideously wrong?), Cradle of Fear (Eileen Daly having sex with a one legged man and an evil Brummie dwarf running a snuff website....why was it so shite?) to the more recent Outpost (Nazi zombies and Ray Stevenson's bandy legs and hovering accent anyone?) and, whilst no cinematic classic (tho' I'm pretty sure it's not meant to be) Ronald's film is a ball-busting, in yer face slice of no budget movie-making.

Behind it's controversy courting title and popcorn trappings is a simple tale of an incestuous love between two long separated brothers each craving the love of their father. The character of Sally is superfluous to this, ultimately unable to make a difference to events started 2ooo years ago. The relationship between the leads is best encapsulated early on in the film when Jay and Sally are chatting in the cafe. Both are seen to look longingly at the waitress (Attwell), Jay for a love he can never experience and Sally as a memory of some long forgotten tryst.

Their lives are meandering and meaningless, full of secrets and lies. The only character with true motivation and beliefs is the Messiah, less a supernatural force of nature but more a simple, honest and secret-less man.

Or maybe it's just about a couple of care in the community types wanting to kick the crap out of each other.

"I'd buy that for Idollor!"

With less to spend than a tiny school on its annual nativity play and a crew of just five people (two of which I've heard were eight year old boys kidnapped and sold into slavery by the director), it's surprising how good JVM looks. Ronald has a real eye (just the one tho...the other he plucked out to gain his unnatural power over women) for composition, giving the harsh, windswept scenery of Argyll a haunting beauty. His use of the widescreen image in general is second to none, each image perfectly framed, almost as if the characters are trapped within, unable to escape their fates.

The cast and crew celebrate
the fact that Alan
remembered to make the sandwiches.

On the acting side most of the (non) professional cast are competent, believable and entertaining to watch, with only a couple of the (professional) leads letting the side down somewhat. As Jay, Phillips appears to have decided that the best way to show the pressures and pain of being the son of God running from an inescapable destiny as frowning a lot (albeit sometimes open mouthed and sometimes with his lips shut tight), you can almost hear the muscles whirring and the cogs clicking as his brow gets more and more furrowed as the film progresses and Deerfield lacks the maturity to portray such a world wisely and damaged figure as Sally, coming across as more likely to have her dad buy her a holiday home in Antigua rather than someone forced to live in a car.

"Lipstick in (and around) mah mooth!"

But luckily the casting of Idollor more than makes up for his co-performers weaknesses, taking what could have been a cliched bogey man and imbuing the Messiah with a sense of humour, irony and most importantly a believability sadly lacking from his on screen nemesis.

Lighting up every scene he's in it's almost as if Ronald has found his equivalent to the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp double act and long may they work together.

A director this technically adept so early in his career is obviously one to watch and, if he can find a co-writer able to match his frankly bonkers idea pitches with a choice line in witty dialogue and character development (this one is available by the way) then I predict (in a slightly less campy Criswell way) that the oft-mooted Zombie and B. will be one to watch.

Let's just hope there's a part in it for the sweaty fat man.

strawberry blood sucker.

Le Frisson Des Vampires (1971 AKA Sex and the Vampire, Strange Things Happen at Night, The Shiver of the Vampires, The Terror of the Vampires, Thrill of the Vampires, Vampire Thrills)
Dir: Jean Rollin.
Cast: Sandra Julien, Jean-Marie Durand, Jacques Robiolles, Michel Delahaye, Marie-Pierre Tricot, Kuelan Herce, Nicole Nancel and 'Dominique'.

The issue of Starburst with this
on the back cover
got confiscated during my lunchbreak
by my form teacher.
Bastard.

Somewhere in a creepy French castle, two of the skankiest maids this side of West Bromwich town centre on a Saturday night (moonheaded blonde poppet Marie-Pierre Tricot and the toothsome, lank haired Kuelan Herce) gaze drunkenly as Isabelle (the less drunk yet even more skank like Nancel) pops a couple of caskets into a wall, as one does.

Beanz meanz yeast infectionz.

Bored with staring gormlessly at a wall the maids decide to go visit the tower to gaze at the couple of men that just happen to be chained to the wall, the stakes thru their chests making the two unfortunate fellas look like novelty coat hangers.

With his dying breath the one that can act (kinda) tells the maids to hurry to the graveyard and stake anybody who has dead within the last week in case they turn into vampires (I hope you're following this....it's way more complicated to type this shite than to watch it).

But on arriving at the cemetery the girls are shocked (well apathetic) to see that the sultry Isolde (the mysterious - and painfully skinny - 'Dominique') has already risen from her grave and been tucking in to jam sandwiches by the look of her lips.

Recognizing a good deal when they see it, the girls offer to serve their undead masters and help them entice unwary travelers to the house so that they may drink their blood.

Dominique: up the casino, Benidorm, 1964.

Within hours of this happening (or so it seems) the beautiful (and not to mention germ free) Ise (Julien) and her greasy mulleted husband Antoine (the rat-like Durand) arrive at the castle straight from their wedding ceremony.

It appears that Ise reckoned it'd be a good idea to combine her honeymoon with a visit to her overtly camp cousins castle and a chance to grieve for another dead relative at the same time.

No doubt her new hubby is really happy with this plan but it's hard to tell seeing as he just stands there grinning and shuffling about uncomfortably in what looks like his dads suit.

Dwarf or far awayism?

Her unnamed cousins (Delahaye: tall, silver haired, lip wristed and fish lipped and Robiolles: lank haired, limper wristed and poppy eyed) seem far too happy to see little Ise and after much hugging, hair stroking, lip licking and knowing looks settle down for a slap up meal.

Davison and McGann are upset to hear that
David Tennant has all the best lines in the
75th Anniversary special 'The Nth Doctor'.

With a full tummy and a head full of grief at her (other) cousins' recent death, Ise goes all stroppy and makes Antoine sleep on the sofa. Annoyed at not getting the chance to consummate their marriage but not wanting to come across as an unfeeling brute (or even come across one....he's not that frustrated...yet) her hubby huffs and settles down for the night with a good book and the dog blanket whilst Ise drapes herself across the bed before adopting the patented horror film saucy virgin pose.

Wiggling and moaning in that sexily sweaty way that only girls in 1970's Eurohorror shlockers can, Ise is rudely awoken at midnight by Isolde noisily stepping out of a grandfather clock.

Ise is immediately entranced by her druggy (sorry, dusky) beauty.

The official Penelope Keith Cuckoo
clock was a huge hit in Bavaria.

Isolde takes Ise up the cemetery (ooeer), where she uncomfortably fondles her breasts before biting her neck.

Ise's descent into darkness (and lipstick lesbianism) has begun....

"Tongue in mah mooth!"

Poor Antoine, the more he tries to get into his blushing brides pants the more distant and cold she becomes and, adding insult to injury whilst he's getting a crick neck from spending every night on the sofa she's getting bitten and fondled by her new vampiric lover.

Antoine's frustrations are at bursting point (and that's not all that's bursting from the way he's walking) as he wanders the castle grounds shooting indiscriminately at pigeons to satisfy his urges, this at least brings the couple together as every time he shoots one of the poor little buggers Ise darts out of the shadows and drinks its blood.

A classy date and no mistaking.

"Go on....I'll promise I'll pull your
nightie down when I've finished".

Ise is becoming more and more the creature of the night with every passing, um, night until she is finally given a choice. Skulking about the castle she stumbles across Isolde's coffin sitting dangerously close to an open sunlit window.

Will Ise come to her senses, open the casket and killing Isolde before losing herself to the pleasures of the cock or will she embrace (quite literally) her feminine side and complete her transformation into a saucy vampire vixen?

With a seductive smile, Ise forsakes her humanity......forever!

Doodle Do: the porn years.

After years of serving their undead masters however, the two maids have been secretly planning a way to escape from their nightmarish existence of serving drinks, fondling each other on a nightly basis and having their breasts exposed by the cousins after dinner for the amusement of guests. Their plan involves sabotaging Antoine's car so that he can't grab his missis and drive away (tho' why he didn't think of that earlier I've no idea) forcing him to confront the vampire family whilst they sneak out the back.

And this plan took years to come up with?

Marie-Pierre farted and it's an eggy one.

As if the plot wasn't confusing enough, Isabelle finds out that her ex-lovers are now evil vampires and arrives at the castle to administer a severe telling off.

The cousins stoically taking the verbal abuse until she starts slagging off their purple loon pants and girly blouses, accusing them of the terrible crime of being 'unmanly and pathetic'.

Obviously being the one that chose their outfits, Isolde goes mental and butchers Isabelle which in turn enrages the cousin so much that they pin her down and rape her whilst Isolde screams about how much she hates men.

"Can you smell petrol?"

Antoine by this point has had enough of all these skinny lesbians, the crack whore maids jumping into his bed to steal his jammie bottoms and the piss and gin soaked camp cousins so decides to change into his best action slacks and confront the twee twosome with a crucifix. But after a frankly pathetic struggle that would shame even two seven year old schoolgirls they slap him about for a bit and tie him up.

As he wriggles limply on the hall carpet sniffling like a girl and begging Ise for help the cousins camply giggle at him as they lead his beloved wife away for her final 'initiation'.

Deciding to push their escape plan ahead the maids untie Antoine, wiping his nose before pointing him in the direction of the graveyard.

He manages to follow the directions and make it to the graveyard without tripping over or bumping into something and surprisingly succeeds in abducting Ise before the ritual is complete, much to the annoyance of the cousins who mince after him waving their arms like big gay seagulls.

Whilst all this is going on a frankly bored Isolde decides to retire to the relative comfort of her coffin (for crack and buns obviously) only to find that the maids have set fire to it and surrounded the vampiric junkie with big crucifixes.

Gah!

The fire must go on for weeks as she finally dies of hunger (?) after trying to bite her own neck and with this the maids skip away hand in hand for a joyous, vampire free life of soap free lesbian sex.

Which we never see.

Forget the ample arse, check the tide
mark round her waist. Dirty cow.

Back to our hero and Antoine is running across a beach carrying Ise (he looks very out of breath so either the beach is miles away or he's even weedier than he looks) but it's not long before the cousins have caught up with him, kicked sand in his face and dead legged him.

Crying even more now he begs Ise to come with him and to let him at least put it in her once but she choses to go with her cousins, leaving Antoine sobbing like a wee boy who's had his football stolen by the big boys blubbing and shaking in the sand.

Turning her back on her man (well her ex man....can't he take a hint?) she slinks toward her cousins who then nibble her neck, strip her naked and fondle her senseless till the sun rises and fries all three of them in an orgy of blood, sweat, egg and semen.

I would so hate to be their local laundrette.

Distraught and confused, Antoine runs around the beach, firing off his pistol stumbles about like a loon.

Remember kids, all women are evil.

There are those who will tell you that Jean Rollin is a purveyor of fine motion pictures and that if you look beyond the crass sex scenes and stilted performances that a hidden gem of art house cinema will appear.

This is, of course utter shite, I mean come on, this is the man responsible for Zombie(s) Lake!
and we love him for what he truly is....a dirty old man with an arse (and shoe) fetish.

And you'll all agree I'm sure that there's nowt wrong with that.

Appearing in the mid ground of his 'female vampire' obsession (following on from Le Viol du vampire in 1968 and La Vampire nue in '69) Le Frisson Des Vampires is the most accomplished of Rollin's vampire epics. At once both cheap and cheerful and as pretentious as a first year art student it's moments of surreal genius (Dominique sleeping in a grandfather clock) are cruelly juxtaposed with arse numbing scenes of plotless ramblings and random snatches of female nudity.

Exploitative rubbish or an artistically erotic masterpiece? Well I know what I think and, if you've never experienced this little gem for yourself you really should rush out and buy it now so you can make up your own mind.

Just don't forget the tissues.

the dogs bollocks.

For the pet who has everything....we present the official Dark Knight dress up suits.

mother fist....

...and her five daughters for the 21st century.

"DESIRE TO LAUGH*" - ALBERT HOFFMANN 1906-2008 - AND THE LATEST ON TACO TRUCKS BELOW

Albert Hoffmann, the scientist who discovered / invented / synthesized LSD, died recently at the age of 102. That has given me the occasion to pause and reflect, fondly, upon my own history with LSD.

And that's right, I wrote "fondly." LSD was good for me. It made my life better. I have not taken it since 1970, but I took an awful lot of it before I stopped and I'm glad I did.

Now there are those of you out there reading this who are probably thinking: "I hope he doesn't have children." Well, not to worry, I don't. If I did, I wouldn't suggest to them that they ought to drop acid. But I'd have a tough time discouraging them.

There are others of you out there reading this who are probably thinking: "That stuff must have scrambled his brains." And I suppose you're right. It did. But I like the way my brains have been scrambled and I'm doing just fine with them mixed-up that way.

The first time I took LSD was in September 1966 (I was fourteen), about two weeks before it became illegal in California. I had traded a UCLA professor a bag of mediocre Mexican pot for a dosed sugar cube. Over the next three and a half or so years, I probably took acid between two and three hundred times. It was easy to lose track.

Now I'm not about to say that LSD will work wonders for everybody, or anybody. There is every chance that I was simply lucky not to have wound up a screaming, drooling, non-functional maniac. Some of my friends did, at least temporarily. A couple of them, near as I can tell, have never fully recovered.

When I dropped acid with friends I was always assigned the job of "maintenance foreman." That meant I took care of us. If there were tickets to be bought for something, activities to be organized, shopping to get done, talking to "the man" if "the man" showed up, driving; that's what I did. I even learned to drive a stick shift when I was stoned on acid and a friend needed to go somewhere and had forgot how to drive.

So, here's what LSD did for me.

It made me, mentally, stronger. I guess in the Nietzschean sense of "what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger." I don't fully believe that. Some of the things that don't kill you, can maim you. But still, in some of my most formative years I dealt with a lot of really strange and challenging stuff in a wide variety of circumstances. No matter how bizarre the world around me got, or at least the world as I was seeing it, I learned to cope with it. To this day I am very difficult to freak out. I tend to stay calm under stress. Sure, I have little explosions every now and then when things aren't going my way. But I tend to settle back into equilibrium pretty quick.

It helped give me a great deal of tolerance for things that might otherwise strike me as weird, strange, abnormal. I hardly think of anything as abnormal or normal anymore. When something seems weird or strange, I find it more interesting than threatening. That helps my powers of observation.

It taught me to see colors better than I might have otherwise. One of the things that LSD does is to enhance your sensitivity to color, kind of like boosting the saturation setting in Photoshop. I do take pretty good pictures, if I do say so myself, and I think LSD is partly responsible for that.

Same with patterns. Under the influence of acid I never hallucinated anything that wasn't actually there. I tried, and it never worked. (I've had to depend on the occasional high fever attending a recurrent episode of malaria for that.) But I did perceive complex patterns where none, probably, really existed. Part of my approach to photography, and much of my writing for that matter, is to find some kind of order, structure, pattern in the chaos that makes up the real world.

Who knows if I killed off a bunch of brain cells or not? Maybe I could have been smarter or saner. I don't know and I don't care. I'm smart and sane enough as I've ever needed to be. Either that or deluded enough to think that I am. And so far at least, I've escaped the attention of the nice men in the white coats.

So in my case, I want to celebrate the memory of Albert Hoffmann. And give a nod of thanks to Augustus Owsley Stanley III who certainly did more than his fair share to help psychedelicize my adolescence.

* According to the recent obituary in The Economist, "desire to laugh," were the last words Hoffmann was able to write in his lab journal after he first, deliberately, took a dose of LSD.

TACO TRUCK UPDATE
At midnight last night, the new, onerous LA County Taco Truck ordinance came into being. A brave group of taqueros has banded together to resist. Once more I ventured into East L.A. with pals - the toothsome Christa Faust and Bill Krauss, a fine fellow taco lover. Here's the poster for the event we attended, followed by some photographic evidence:


Tacos El Galuzo


Channel 34 was there

Cabeza - YUM!

Taco truck fine diners

another five pounds?

Nezulla The Rat Monster (2002)
Dir: Kanta Tagawa.
Cast: Daisuke Ryu, Yoshiyuki Kubota, Mika (the original Japanese Pink Ranger and ex of the Minisuka Police) Katsumura and Ayumi Tokitou.

Laugh now!

Three hip 'n' groovy teens are investigating a deserted warehouse looking for booze, fags and a good time (you could try the off-license or a disco but there you go) when they're viciously attacked by an unseen terror.....

Meanwhile in downtown Tokyo a mysterious, face paint and Quorn based virus has begun to infect the quite frankly terminally unlucky cities populace.

Those unfortunate to contract the disease are rounded up by soldiers and either locked in a big cupboard sans their shoes or shot in front of their kids whilst a stoic Japanese doctor looks on manfully.

At his side stands a frail looking soft skinned nurse doing her best 'it's a shame for them isn't it?' eyebrow acting whilst gazing at our heroic (if heroism included just standing by whilst folk get shot) young doc.

Thru' a series of flashbacks told using the ancient art of Origami (I wish) a fairly attractive female scientist tells us how, a few years earlier the evil US military (boo! hiss!) teamed up with a naive Japanese research firm in the hope of finding a way to genetically engineer soldiers with an immunity to every biological and bacterial agent known to man (Don't you just love an easy and simple work outline?).

Nice smooth hands, face of fuck.

Unfortunately (as is always the way in these situations) the genetically altered bubonic plague virus that the scientists have been feeding the lab rats on causes one of the pesky rodents to grow to man size, shed its fur and fuck off into the sewers squeaking loudly.

And like a girl.

But not before it's eaten most of the research team obviously.

Rather than fill in loads of pesky insurance forms and the like the folk involved reckon the best option is to just abandon the lab and hope no-one notices the big pink rat skulking about the town.

Everything's fine and dandy until the plague ridden rat gets a bout of violent wind that causes its internal gases to mutate into the aforementioned virus and spread to the nearby populace.

Do they mean us? They surely do.

Luckily for all those involved, Ratty's blood carries the antibodies that could cure the virus (probably) so a crack team of commandos (and bespectacled J-Pop cutie Ayumi Tokitou) are ordered to infiltrate the deserted labs and capture the killer rat before it's too late (too late for what? the virus is already out and that things been in the sewers for years....nothing like being laid back I guess).

Cue huge amounts of anti-American dialogue (including the classic "Damn those no-good white people") and the introduction of a strict and sexy Japanese woman in league with the evil Americans but, unfortunately very little monster mayhem.

Nezulla the arse pirate more like.

As if it couldn't get any worse Ms. Evil decides to tell everyone that she reckoned it would be a good laugh if her cohorts set a time bomb inside the complex (well, in Ratty's nest chamber to be precise) timed to go off in an hour or so.

The reasoning behind this?

Her American Employers would rather blow the shite out of everything than have to apologise to 'the dirty japs'.

See? told you.

It's a race against time, stilted dialogue, smoking and male bonding issues for our team as they set out to complete their mission before anything else comes to light that could make their day any worse.....Add to all this rat based tension a the cloying subplot regarding the manly doctors love for his nurse and you know you're onto a winner.

Kanta Tagawa's (alleged) inspiration for Bong Joon-Ho's modern classic The Host, Nezulla The Rat Monster has been languishing on the shelves (or more likely behind the bins) since 2002 only now have western audiences been deemed culturally aware enough to fully appreciate this modern classic of monster cinema.

Either that or it's been released to cynically cash in on the latter films success.

But who would believe that film companies would be so money hungry?

How I felt at this point in the movie.

Nezulla is a triumph of idea's over budget, from the fantastically false two piece monster suit (with buttons NOT zips) to the fact that all the killings appear oh so slightly off screen. But fear not monster fans, Nezulla does get to take part in the movies action at some points! It's just unfortunate that he spends his entire screen time either:

Skulking about in a corner.

Hissing in a corner whilst the human cast ignore/can't see him.

or

Indulging in drunken fisticuffs/attempting to sodomize the soldiers.

Which gives it the edge over AVP 2: Requiem I reckon.

"Shite in mah big toothy mooth!"

normal service...

....will be resumed as soon as.

Sorry for the lack of nonsense and tat around here recently, I've not been well.....

that'd go well with custard.

How to market a dud part one.

Well......would you?