When it comes to magazines, I’ve been in love with them all my life. My first love was Cracked, followed shortly thereafter by Famous Monsters of Filmland. Then, as my age hit the double digits, I started getting into MAD, National Lampoon and Fangoria. My mid-teens saw me getting into OMNI, Heavy Metal, Creepy and Eerie.
As I transitioned from high school to university, I discovered Michael J. Weldon's incredible Psychotronic Video (full archive) and added SPY to my regular reading mix. By the time I graduated, I was a regular reader of Harper's, and when I moved to Toronto I started reading the excellent multidisciplinary intellectual digest The Baffler, the formally innovative literary quarterly McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, and the funniest goddamn magazine in the world, the half-comics/half-satire/all-hilarious VIZ, home to Sid the Sexist, the Fat Slags, the Drunken Bakers, and countless other ongoing works of demented genius.
I bring this up because it’s become almost impossible to track down newsstand copies of VIZ in Toronto nowadays. They used to carry it at International News shops, but now, they only do so sporadically, and at fewer and fewer locations. That’s why, a couple months ago, I decided to bite the bullet and subscribe... just like David Bowie!
And so, this week, after the obligatory 8 to 10 week waiting period... I got my first issue of VIZ in the freaking mail! And folks, let me tell you... issue #285 is glorious. It's, like, the Platonic Ideal of what an issue of VIZ should be. Eventually, I'll probably get around to writing something more substantial about this magnificent rag. I may even try to convince some of you to subscribe along with me! Or I might just have something to say about my favorite strips ("Drunken Bakers" and anything written by Barney Farmer), the best fake letters and "Top Tips" ("Empty paracetamol blister packs make ideal cryogenic freezing chambers for ants"), or other comedy tours-de-force (like this edition's feature, "Sherlock, Eamonn or Big John... Who is the Best Holmes?"). For now, however, let's just move on...
To the rest of my non-reading media consumption diary for the day! So, what did I watch on these two days? Well, I finally got around to seeing this year's Pet Sematary remake. As a great admirer of Stephen King's darkest novel by far—and as a qualified fan of Mary Lambert's 1989 film version—I don't think the filmmakers did an adequate job of justifying this film's existence. The actors are all decent (with the lone standout performance being Jeté Laurence's), the cinematography is adequately spooky, the score is sufficiently goosebump-inducing. There's nothing in particular that's wrong with the movie. It's just that we've already seen it, presented in pretty much the exact same way, with the sole exception of a highly effective mid-film tweaking of the source material that comes surprisingly close to redeeming this effort... until the film ultimately reverts to type and squanders all that disturbing new potential. I won't go into detail, but you'll know what I mean, if and when you watch.
Speaking of horror, I also watched the first two episodes of HBO's 5-part miniseries Chernobyl, a prestige TV dramatization of the 1986 Soviet nuclear power plant disaster in Ukraine. Chernobyl, of course, was an insane moment in our species' history, probably ranking just a few notches beneath the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and (arguably) a few above the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK on the consequences scale. Furthermore, in terms of potential consequences, it leaves all those events in the metaphorical, radioactive dust. It's also one of the few historical events that actually unfolded like an apocalyptic horror narrative.
The first two episodes of this HBO series are, in a word, amazing. The attention to detail is spectacular, as are the performances from the vast, uniformly stellar cast of actors, known and unknown. Also, if you're at all interested in the history behind the show, HBO has a podcast that you can listen to after each episode, expanding upon details and divergences from reality on an episode-by-episode basis. It's a pretty good podcast in its own right.
Bottom line? By two episodes in, HBO's Chernobyl has the potential to become a crown jewel of this so-called Golden Age of Television that we're allegedly in the middle of these days. It's TV that educates, but also doesn't feel like homework. I have a feeling it's going to win all the awards, and I'm looking forward to the next three episodes.
First off, one of my favourite ‘use too many times a day’ sayings comes from the Esteemed Viz, it is ‘tight as a gnat’s chuff’. I utter it daily, for decades. Europeans just look at me askance.
ReplyDeleteAlso Chernobyl, I’m really looking forward to seeing this. I lived in Russia with the wife of someone who died at Chernobyl. I saw the physical ramifications as far as Scandinavia. I actually still have nightmares about it.
Prepare for more nightmares. The show is amazing. And if you subscribe to VIZ, tell'em I sent you and maybe they'll send me an extra issue or something! LOL
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