2017/05/14

Deathiversary Week 2017: Day 5

Dear Deathiversary Diary,

    In 2014 Godzilla vs. Biollante, in truth the real reason I even did Deathiversary in the first place, and easily the most important day of the whole week, fell on day 5, May 13th, but not because of any special planning, in fact I barely planned that year at all. When it happened to fall on the same day in 2015, I figured I should keep May 13th as the traditional Biollante day for every year I managed to lazily cling to life thereafter. And so I followed suit in 2016, both with Deaithversary and with keeping Biollante on day 5 of "Rebirthiversary," and I made sure Biollante fell on the same date once again this year, even though the resulting day 4 was meager... but, then again, I was barely "there" on day 4.
    It's also part of the tradition that I eat lasagna on day 5. It's a little embarrassing, but I learned about lasagna from reading Garfield comics handed down from my big sister as a kid. I just thought Garfield was cool at the time (I was a dumb kid, w/e) so I was just like "lasagna's my favorite!," but, it ended up being actually the case. Italian is objectively the best "genre" of food anwyas, lasagna is basically pasta in cake form, and... idunno, maybe it's just a psychosomatic thing but lasagna just tastes better to me than any other pasta. So on day 5 I usually put a lasagna in the oven while watching Return of Godzilla if I haven't got to it already while enjoying some spiked Mss. Dr. Pepper, and then it's ready by the time Biollante starts. Combining three of my biggest sense memories, the littlest things that make me the happiest for various reasons, has a really... hmm... calming? effect on me. It's probably not in the books but for me at least it's pretty effective therapy. It used to be all I had, too. Not like there were any people around who gave a shit.
    Now, I've also got this alien thing going in the background. It's going slowly, I've decided I want to try doing videos but it's day three now and even though I've scripted out both days 1 & 2 so far, I've only recorded 1 and haven't edited it yet. But I bring that up because the "baking" video we watched wasn't Return of Godzilla or any Godzilla movie, but that shitty James Cameron movie ALIENS. Normally that piece of crap is at least good for a laugh and the power loader fight, but this time around it was Kira's first time, and, well, ALIENS is a children's movie for little boys, and Kira has a pretty juvenile demeanor, but it's strictly that of a little girl, and she had little patience for it. It wouldn't have been so bad if they showed the monster more... they show it more than ALIEN but good fucking night why don't they ever show the god damned ALIEN in this fucking ALIEN movie? That would be like calling a movie "Godzilla" and then having "Godzilla only appear for 8 minutes in a two hour movie and even then have him completely obscured in every shot. Oh wait... so, I lost my patience for it. I was just not in the mood for one of the worst alien films that day, I was trying to show Kira that alien movies are cool, and I've actually gone backwards in that process by showing her that awful, awful movie. It was not funny bad, we just... we were just annoyed.
    Now imagine coming off of seeing a James Cameron movie while you are in no mood for any of James Cameron's bullshit... and into the sensory overload of watching mankind's greatest work while eating mankind's greatest food. It's quite a shock. You know we started late because we had some shopping we needed to get done, so this is all coming at dinner time too, after a long day of running around... er, well I was being pulled around on a leash most of the day, actually, but you get it. The net effect here is that I've essentially been brought back to "normal," or at least close to it. I don't feel so angry or stressed out today, erm... yesterday, I'm writing this the next morning since there just wasn't time last night, and although it's still the same situation - I don't really trust Kira, not really - I at least managed to get my mind off of it for a while. Only time will tell if I can manage to keep this attitude throughout day 6... but, of course, today is also day 3 of my alien thing, which means not only are we getting into the GOOD alien movies finally, but we're starting it off with the best one of all, ALIEN 3.
    Other than Biollante, most of the day was a wash. Kira fell asleep in the middle of King Ghidorah, and I wasn't really paying attention because I had too much writing to do. I don't think today will be too different... erm, "tomorrow," I'm going to try and push through to GxM, but I want Kira to see both the theatrical and assembly cuts of ALIEN 3, because the story is different in each and neither is really telling the whole story, and you miss out on some of the monsters if you only see one version. So we'll see how that goes. I'm less excited than I was for 8LIEN after reading some of the spoilers and seeing how the reviews are shaping up, and so I've kinda got two initial reactions: 1.) the consensus seems to be that it has all the same problems the first movie does, that it's a shitty horror movie that looks really pretty and has aliens in it, and 2.) that allowing someone who knows absolutely nothing about any alien anything he didn't personally make to take a stab at the "origin" of the xenomorph was a pretty big mistake. If the alien wiki is to be believed, the "protomorphs" are a simply black goo mutation, this time applying the black goo to a kind of wasp native to Paradise, but the problem with that is I can't find any corroborating sources, and what most people are saying is simply "David did it by fucking around and they don't really explain the process." The life-cycle is such an important part of why people love alien movies that you really really can't do something that important "off-screen" as it were. I get that you could get in there with future scientists and just move some genes around and you'd never have to mess with any black goo or huggers or bursters of any kind, but this is a movie and that's exactly the kind of stuff the audience is expecting. Making the protomorphs black goo-d wasps is actually a pretty good idea since parasitic wasps are what inspired O'Bannon's story in the first place, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they at least explain how David made those things. Other than that? I can handle a bad alien movie. I've seen AvPR all the way through more than once, hell, I even actually used to like ALIENS. Half-assed script used as a lame excuse to get people killed by aliens? Love it. LOVE IT. I'm not going to see these shit-fests for the acting, obviously, I go to see monster movies for the fucking monsters and it would not be the first time I'm weathered a storm just to see Godzilla... or hell, listen to the King Kong videos from March, practically all I do is make excuses for the 5 not that great entries.
    Then again, Skull Island was fucking fantastic, Underworld 5 was a little flat but still really fun, the new Mummy is the first time I've ever actually wanted to see a mummy movie, Power Rangers was surprisingly well handled for something so dumb and we got our first gay ranger - who just so happened to be yellow, don't forget - and of course Godzilla's 30th is shaping up to be really awesome. So, if Covenant falls flat it'll be the only major monster movie that does so this year. I shouldn't be worried... it's just that AvPR was just like... very very bad? And PROMETHEUS was even fucking worse. It's hard to cling on to hope for me, but it's usually easier when it's applied to monster movies.

93/93

Malyssa, May 13th 2017

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