Homebrew Vampire Bullets

Have you ever done that thing where you’re jumping out of an exploding helicopter backwards while firing a gun in each hand and the fireball not only fails to injure you but also tousles your hair in such a way as to make you look amazing as you effortlessly land in the Australian desert and it also it lights your cigar for you?

Yeah, me neither. I feel like I have, though, because I’ve read Homebrew Vampire Bullets #0. It’s awesome. 

iPad screenshot elements not included

Here’s what it says on the tin:

“In the tradition of Alan Moore's Dodgem Logic, Tales from the Crypt, 2000AD, Oz Magazine and Metal Hurlant, Home Brew Vampire Bullets is an anthology of 75% R-rated (but not necessarily adult), uniquely Aussie myth spinning, prose, politics and pulp soundtracked by Rose Tatts, soaked in Melbourne Bitter and dyed defiantly navy blue.”

Homebrew Vampire Bullets (HBVB) is intended as a regular anthology of storytelling, both graphic and prose, featuring some epic level creators from around the traps in Melbourne. Issue Zero is an initial, digital taster of things to come. You can download it now for $1.99. ($1.99!)

This 60-page delight features a few self-contained comic strips alongside previews of things to come, such as interviews with creators as to their brainspace, concept art and, in one particularly enjoyable exchange, a lengthy back-and-forth between a words guy and an art guy on the best way to present a panel of female prison masturbation. That conversation is hilariously representative of the greater work – a crass distillation of Ozploitation that, beneath the back-of-the-porno-theatre smirk, displays two creators pouring their sweat and blood into making something incredible. Issue zero feels like an amazing set of special features on a DVD to a movie you watched in a half-remembered dream.

This thing is a mission statement and gives you everything you need to assess if you’re going to want to pick up November’s issue one (spoiler: you will). Garth Jones – full disclosure, we’ve haunted the odd beer garden together – is the man behind the enterprise in a ‘bringing the talent’ together way. He also provides art on the funny as hell initial chapter of Babalon Shokk, in which a dopey metal band turns up to a gig to find L Ron Hubbard and Jack Parsons performing a Satanic sacrifice dicks akimbo. Christian Read provides words shot-through with Aussie slang for the piece, with some epic panel layouts and nifty numbering allowing a lot of heavy lifting to occur in only a few pages. The concept is sound and well introduced.

(As an aside, you can only start to sense how Americanised our pop culture is when you read a character say, “wanna root?” It feels weird. Australia needs to make more things.)

Garth and I grew up in the same outback town – largely in parallel until an eventual meeting over red cask wine – and now that I’m past the adolescent, jealous rage I held against such good-looking men who were succeeding at art things – I can say whole-heartedly that he’s done something special here. As described in #0, it appears he just looked up one day, realised he was surrounded by hordes of talent and the rest is history, but that underplays the work on show here from all involved.

We both retreated from harsh realities and boredom of growing up in a dusty, small town by building a funner life in our brains, but while his was fuelled by rock’n’roll – a truth that seeps out of HBVB’s every pore – I lent on science fiction.

That’s probably why, for me, the stand out work here is The Many Harold Holts of Space and Time, written by Ryan K Lindsay and drawn by Louis Joyce.

It’s perhaps unfair to give it the nod given that its unfair advantage of being one of the only standalone strips on show, but Christ, it’s beautiful. The art is staggering and the writing makes me want to stand and applaud while punching myself in the head that I didn’t create this despite how firmly it lodges in my brain as being right, just and excellent. It’s about how Harold Holt’s disappearance broke space/time and shattered him into, well, you should really read it.

See? Total eye party.

HBVB is a love letter to Australia and how batshit it is. If you’ve ever been in the bush you immediately understand why artists trend towards themes of post-apocalysm, mysticism, unknowable goings on and – even if you’ve always lived in the city – insane dickheads doing ridiculous things.

Look, I’ve written a lot here but maybe it comes through that my praise tumbles out in waves. This thing just made me excited for the medium, for the city and for the people involved. It’s great work and I’m looking forward to more. If you look deep into your soul and decide this isn’t worth $1.99 then you deserve to spend eternity in an RSL haunted by a demonic Bruce Ruxton (this also happens in the book).

*Slow clap*

See more and buy it here.

I am doing stuff - promise

On the off chance that there are people checking this blog for updates, smashing their fists upon the keys at my lack of output, I wish to advise the following:

I am writing with some regularity over at the Republic of Moreland - a blog with some buddies about our patch of the world (Brunswick and Coburg in Melbourne's inner north). Read things there! You can also contribute if you like, that's be grand.

I am also one half of the brand-spanking-new Level 30 podcast, where my lifelong friend Justin and I rebel against our third decade by talking endlessly about our nerdy pursuits. Our first episode heard us eviscerating Man of Steel. I predict a more positive followup. It also has the nice byproduct of, when you search "Stefan Delatovic" in the iTunes store, something actually comes up. That, alongside me recently having a tweet broadcast on Q&A, means I can die a happy left wing digi-nerd.

I also create word things in my day job with Victoria SES - mainly flood warnings. Those are the most important things I do. Never enter floodwater you guys - if you don't drown you'll still have taken a bath in turds.

(Seriously, I know no-one comes here for emergency information, but did you know most people who die in Australian floods do so because they go in the floodwater voluntarily? With adults, it's 'cause they drive in. With kids, it's 'cause they play in the stuff. Just awful. Give it a miss. Also, have you ever smelled a flood? MegaGross. Imagine that every flood you see has travelled through animal-crap-laden paddocks and old sheds full of chemicals and you, my friend, will have imagined a little thing called reality.)

Why social media awfulness is a sign of better things to come

It's easy to see Facebook comments as a symbol of society's slide into entropy, but are they instead the growing pains of something better?

Facebook is supposed to be an endless party with your best friends and family where you all hang out and talk about what's going on. More often, though, it's like one of those parties where everyone's brought along an uninvited guest and you get stuck on the couch with an obnoxious stranger while your CDs are stolen.

The nature of the platform means it is not the curated shangri-la we imagine. Everyone's news feed includes opinions from friends of friends that don't jell with our own. That's fine in as much as it is like real life - it's impossible to tune out crazy people as you go about your business.
The difference is that Facebook is still a new forum and a lot of people seem to assume their own set of rules apply universally.

On Facebook, everyone assumes they're the one throwing the party, that the things they write are somehow sacrosanct and unchallengeable, the "this is my page so you can't tell me I'm wrong" point of view presents again and again.

More importantly though, with many of us living amongst friends selected over years, Facebook is the only place we encounter such violent dissent, and thus the issue of intention versus the way our message is received. (Facebook, then, is the equivalent of family gatherings.)

If you say, for example, "that's so gay" when you mean "that's so lame", someone might find that offensive. You're fundamentally not allowed to tell them they're wrong, but some people will. When you write something, the message is sent and you lose control of how it is read. Saying "that's not what I meant" doesn't cut it. That misunderstanding, to my mind, is the foundation of many Facebook disputes.

This came up for me in the last week when a story went up on the ABC website under the headline Broken Hill 'Perfect Place' for Asylum Seekers.
The article outlines a lawyer's view that regional Australia is a better destination for refugees than detention, offering them a better quality of life while injecting money and population into our shrinking regional centres. In the interest of disclosure: it's a viewpoint I share. It's certainly better than cramming ever more people into our straining cities, or locking people up indefinitely and expecting their mental health to do anything but disintegrate.

Broken Hill is my home town. I lived there most of my life and I'm still - via family, Facebook and my emotions - connected to the city's day-to-day existence. So when the story was shared on a number of Broken Hill-centric Facebook groups, I was privy to the comments they generated.

Some of the comments were spectacularly racist. Beyond that, they were racist in that casual, venomous way that's so hard to even interface with, let alone address, where commenters immediately jump to conclusions about the character of individuals based on an umbrella term like "boat people".

I'm going to intersperse the rest of this post with some of the comments that fell under that article, not all of them overtly rage-motivated, to illustrate what I'm talking about.

It's easy to get despondent about the state of the world when this sort of thing occurs. Social media gives us unparalleled insight into the minds of the community. So when Twitter is awash with rape threats or, in a similar situation,  we see the epic level racism on this year's US Big Brother, it appears that the society we imagine we inhabit is just a thin veneer over a bubbling pot of dark ages awfulness.

"what? U would want broken hill over run by ppl from another country, who may not be even able to speak English ... we are not talking a few families; we are talking hundreds of ppl," Jan Hayman

And look, in some ways that's true. No-one in their right mind would argue that racism isn't an issue in Australia unless they were trying to win an election. We no longer hang "whites only" signs on the doors, but just quietly make non-whites feel bad about going in. We're improving, but we're not finished. That itself makes the issue harder to grapple with, as any discussion of race or racism now involves declarations of race cards, political correctness or something else along the spectrum of people frittering away their responsibility to be a non-jerk either through bigotry or terminal over-reactionness.

"They don’t care about fitting in they get their benefits from the government and cause problems," Ally Whitelaw

At this moment in history, however, many still view social media as a private space. Conventional wisdom holds that people say terrible things online due to the freedom of anonymity, but on Facebook, people say abhorrent things under their real name, next to a picture of their own face, on a profile that often tells the world where they work and who their mum is.

"I think they should be made live in the swers away from any human contact besides there own kind and leave this town alone ... We should start a riot," Peter PWalks Walkins

They do this because they feel safe there. They treat the platform as a private conversation and say things they're no doubt saying at home or in the shed with their mates, but may not say at work.
You see this often when people's Facebook posts are reproduced and they insist that is somehow inappropriate, that it's unfair. I may see it with what I'm doing here.

"Don’t send them 2 regional Australia send the Bastards back 2 where they came from," David Sibson

Eventually, everyone will figure out that this isn't true; that Facebook is public, or at best, one step from being public. For now though, we have an opportunity.

"F**k them off back in the boats they f**king came in on!!" Kat Reardon

Despite the awfulness of it all, this public conversation allows us to see what's really going on and to address it. We can to interrogate these views and start changing them before they head back underground. We can have hope that this is the mechanism to expunge this last, private reservoir of awfulness from our country.

The Roasting of Nicholas Delatovic

When my twin brother Nick turned 30 he invited everyone to come to a party and insult him as much as possible.

If you've seen any of the televised roasts that comedians participate in you'd be familiar with the concept - a group expresses their affection for someone by humorously ribbing on them, often as brutally as possible.

I couldn't attend unfortunately - our birthday celebrations were temporally identical but geographically distinct - so I wrote something and had excellent mutual friend Luke McGrath read it aloud on my behalf.

I reproduce the roast below, in the hope that these burns can endlessly sizzle through the halls of time.

(Incidentally, you should visit lick-nuke.com to keep abreast of Nick and Luke's various artistic endeavours - it's a good place for people who like things that rule.)

***

Good evening everybody,

I’m sorry I couldn’t be there tonight; I know you were all looking forward to seeing me. I just felt it was important that, on his thirtieth birthday, Nick enjoy an occasion where he is not overshadowed by the superior twin.

Happy birthday brother; Enjoy this rarity.

I don’t remember the time we shared in the womb, but the evidence speaks for itself. Nick enjoys 20/20 vision while I have been saddled with spectacles since the age of two. Stealing all the eye juice out of the womb was an act of selfishness that predates consciousness itself. Also, thanks for the scoliosis bro. No wonder I got out first.

From that moment it was all downhill. Nick stamped his way through childhood like an impatient octogenarian. Childhood flights of fancy would grind to a halt whenever he arrived. The neighbourhood kids would try to marry two cats and he would sweep in to tell us they were brother and sister and thus unable to wed. The universal solvent we’d invented was just water, he’d announce, before telling hijinks of any type to get off his lawn.

There was one exception, of course: Nick’s famous imaginary stories.

He would spend hours a day in a rock garden at the back of our yard, stepping gingerly from rock to rock, his face set in a grim expression of concentration. If asked what the fuck he was doing, which he was often, he would reply ‘imaginary stories’. X-man action figure in hand, he would rattle off the 12 part epic run he had concocted that would serve as a fitting bookend to the Dark Phoenix Saga. His imagination was unbridled, but came at the expense of developing the skills necessary for social interaction. This main side effect of this hobby, however, was feet as leathery and unwelcoming as a crocodile.

I was happy to see Nick enter the field of personal training. Less welcome were his repeated sermons outlining that, given our genetic similarity, I too was capable of achieving a high level of fitness. These speeches were mostly delivered as he walked around on his hands. Quite the salesman.

Equally unwelcome were Nick’s student days, where he embraced a philosophy of anti-capitalism with the fervour of a Frenchman who’s invitation to the opera has been lost in the mail.

I, with a house full of things and a life full of job, was an easy mark. I accepted Nick’s teaching that he could live off the grid with nothing but a fully equipped recording studio with a pleasant smile.

Visiting his home years later to find the floor obscured by heaving piles of comics and musical instruments, I learned that to be anti-capitalist you just had to stop short of buying any fucking bookshelves.

I could go on and on, but have lost interest.

So I will stop short of mentioning Nick’s childhood fear of being enclosed in a beanbag – to this day he insists this was fakery on his behalf, but that makes it no less funny.

Neither will I mention that, when our father moved in with his third wife, he gave Nick all of his pornography, telling him to ‘share it with his brother’. Our father’s questionable ideas of paternal bonding aside, I never saw any of it. For a boy of about 16, this sin was unforgivable.

A few years ago, I sent Nick a message on our birthday to extend my best wishes. I wrote “Happy birthday!” He wrote back “thanks”.

Regardless of this, a mountain of evidence that could stretch to the stars themselves, I love you Nick. Happy birthday; sorry I couldn’t be there. See you soon.

Why politicians shouldn't promise

Rather than pouring hatred on politicians' broken promises, we should admit they're impossible to keep and give it all a miss

As a former journalist I can empathise with politicians, given that both professions occupy a regular place on 'least trusted profession' lists.

Both are held to understandably high standards. Both would need to be robots to avoid ever giving the appearance of bias, welded as they are to an unrealistic expectation that they are in no way humans of opinion. Both operate in the public domain, working for a public good, and thus the community feels ownership over their roles and work - often expressed as a license to complain bitterly.

Of course, the public should be holding both parties to account, just as each casts a critical eye over the other. Personally though, such accountability shouldn't extend to shouting at journalists at dinner parties.

But a big difference between journos and pollies is that the average newspaper reporter isn't required to make promises that they can't conceivably keep.

To make the obvious point; political promises are often broken, or, to adopt the Howard model, relegated to 'non-core' status.

Julia Gillard's entire career as Prime Minister has been coloured - and arguably hamstrung irrevocably - by her promise of 'no carbon tax'.

Tony Abbott elicited howls as he attempted to educate the public that measured press statements were fact, whereas heat of the moment promises veered 'gospel truth'.

Wayne Swan has been ridiculed for failing to produce a surplus that was only expected because he promised it would be so. Travelling back in time to become his own father would be no less torturous.

So, really, why bother?

Julia Gillard's promise of no carbon tax creates such anger because of its particular phrasing. Had she spoken honestly of not desiring a tax, but wanting to fix the issue, there would be no such lightning rod of a sound-byte  In fact, hanging politicians with their promises contributes to the broader problem of statements being cloaked in doublespeak, lest evidence be recorded.

Throughout Wayne Swan's surplus opus, did anyone really believe him? More accurately, did anyone honestly not foresee the possibility that delivery of such a thing may be outside his control? I don't think so. Instead, voters lampooned him for promising such a thing, then redoubled their hilarity when he failed to deliver.

There are a range of reasons why we now have a carbon tax and a deficit - some of them are out of the government's hands and some occurred after promises were made based on then-current evidence, rosily interpreted or not.

With the above in mind, wouldn't a more mature approach be to give promises the flick altogether? To have politicians stand up and say "this is my intention, and I will endeavour to see it through."

Such a system, of course, requires parties to have clearly outlined beliefs and ideologies, as well as a record of upholding those values we can trust. That way, rather than promises that are leaden with cynicism the moment they're spoken, we can vote for the party that is shooting for the Australia we most want to live in.

But that's a fight for another day.

  

Ultimate Chicken Victory

So the KFC in my hometown was just the worst.

Their lifeline, I think, was that in an isolated country centre of 20,000 people, they were serving a captive audience. It's kind of like when you buy a sausage roll on a country train and it costs $9.50 - what are you going to do about it? Grab a cheaper one as you rocket through the next town? 

So despite its awfulness, my friends and I would go to this KFC about once a week. What can I say? We were unhealthy nerds that needed a saturated fat fix on game night.

Each week, almost without fail, we'd meet at my house and catalogue how KFC and its dead-eyed denizens had mangled our order. One night they were out of buns. One night they were out of chicken. Most nights they'd just forget your fries or seemingly pile food into a bag at random and send you on your way.

This was such a long-running situation that, eventually, we had devolved into passive aggressive wolverines, rifling through the bag at the counter and checking for problems before leaving the store. I wrote an excessively long letter to head office and experienced a blissful two weeks where they paid attention to service before inevitably slumping back down into Hades.

See, I should point out that my standards for KFC are not super high. I'm not going to complain if the chicken is too dry, the burgers are too oily or if they give me massive heart disease - it's part of the deal. All I want is to point at something on the menu and then eat it.

After a kaleidoscope of complaints, I'd eventually figured out that asking for a refund was a no go, whereas asking for free food in compensation was a winner. I assume that monetary return could be tracked by head office whereas free food could be concealed, but I don't know. All I know is that if I ever asked for my money back they'd throw chicken at my mouth until I left.

So, one night, I order food for my fiance and I, and when I get it, I find her burger is not what I ordered. I gain the attention of the serving child.

"Hi dude. I ordered a Zinger burger and I didn't get it," I said.

"Yeah, we're out of Zinger burgers."

I explained that this could've been pointed out when I ordered a Zinger burger, been charged for a Zinger burger and been handed a bag under the pretence of it containing a Zinger burger, rather than what was, in reality, a bun with two crispy strips on it.

He was unmoved, unable to understand the source of my frustration.

In my mind, expected incompetence had now been reinforced by lies and false advertising, and my soul was seized by a white hot rage that could've incinerated any surrounding chickens into the rock-like, wafer-thin burger patties routinely pumped out by this particular establishment.

I asked for my money back. I was denied. 

"I ordered something. You took my money. I didn't get it. You lied and now you're arguing with me about it. Just give me my money back. That's totally fair."

The boy continued to act in all ways like his head was a fax machine that could only spit out the same faded message - "I can't give you your money back, EXPLANATION NOT FOUND" - over and over again. His instruction to deny refunds was clearly not reinforced by any subsequent knowledge.

So I attempted to force his hand by asking for the most ridiculous thing I could think of.

"Look, I'm not leaving until I get my money back. So either give me my money back, or give me all of your chicken," I said.

"What?"

"If you won't give me money, just give me all of the chicken you've got ready back there.," I said, gesturing at the bulging pile of cooked chicken pieces behind him.

"Sure," he said, and started piling the chicken into boxes.

I stood there dumbstruck. I was sure he was going to opt for a refund in the face of my ridiculousness. Nevertheless, I soon walked out with over 30 pieces of chicken. I beat a hasty retreat before the people in line behind me realised what my impotent point-making had cost them.

I called my buddies on the way home, telling them dinner was on me. 

I strode in the front door hoisting swelled, oily boxes of fried chicken above my head, bellowing in victory like a viking. I recounted the story with animated glee as I waved my justly-reserved drumstick like a broadsword.

We ended up throwing about half of the chicken away as we couldn't get through it before it spoiled. My victory, however, is immortal.

Religious people come to the door sometimes

"You're home! You know, I could've robbed this place a dozen times!"

That's what the greying, portly gentleman said when I opened the door. As an opening statement, I didn't think it was the strongest.

It was about 11am on a Wednesday and I was working nights, so until the knock at the door I had spent an energetic morning watching Star Trek Voyager in my bedraggled pyjamas.

Past experience suggested this man was here to sell me either pay TV or a new-fangled God. Given the awkward opener, I guessed God.

"Excuse me?" I replied as I blinked the sun out of my eyes, truly at a loss as to how to respond.

"Oh, I just mean I've visited your home three times in the last few weeks and there's never anyone here!"

"OK, cool. Don't rob my house," I said with a snark that only exists in Gen X cult movies and people who are being bothered the morning after night shift.

I clarified that I didn't really belong to any major religion but that I comfortably had my own thing going on and was not currently shopping around.

He assured me he would not attempt any sales and said "Hey look, can I ask you a question?"

I've never developed the ability to just flat out tell uninvited visitors to get lost. I always engage on some level, and regrettably my approach is usually to let all of my sarcastic, caustic, immature bullshit off the leash in the hopes of being too unpleasant to interact with. No matter the result, it always takes time.

I said he could, bid him to wait and went inside to grab a cigarette before re-emerging to light it and sit on the ground in a spot where I could still see Voyager playing in the background. I must have looked like the worst person in the whole world.

"Go for it".

"Do you see that house over there?" I did. "Do you know who built it?" I did not. "Well even though you don't know who built it, it is there. for all you know, God may have built it, and even though you didn't see him do it, you can see evidence of his work. Do you think maybe the world could be like that?"

I thought it was a pretty good approach, really - a made-up story to illustrate a broader point; you know, like the Bible.

I exhaled and considered.

"Dude, I work at the local newspaper. I think that if God built the house down the road, I would have heard about it by now."

He laughed. I laughed. He reiterated that the absence of evidence does not disprove the existence of a supreme being and that a rational mind would be open to such a thing. 

I replied that, to my mind, it was more likely that humanity was the result of tachyon particles reacting with a neutrino field in an asynchronies orbit with a distant star which inverted their polarity and fired warp plasma into the primordial soup. I had been watching Star Trek a lot.

The man put out in his hand as a way of saying goodbye.

As I shook his right hand and apologised, his left produced a bundle of pamphlet-sized magazines. He asked if I'd like to take them and I said I would,  hoping to expedite the whole process.

I reached for them and he recoiled sharply as if shocked. I stood there, once again befuddled, my hand outstretched like a cat's claw.

"Um, I … uh … you only usually get one," he said.

"Oh …. um …. sure, whatever."

"Oh no, I, uh, I suppose you could have, um, two?"

"That's fine."

"Oh look, I'm sure it's OK, I could probably stretch to giving you three?"

"It's really fine. Whatever you prefer." I had no idea how we'd become locked in this awkward battle of wills, but it was clearly too late to admit I would prefer to give the magazines a miss entirely.

He gave me two and left.

As I went inside, Captain Janeway was on the television, teaching Seven of Nine what it really meant to be human. I was immediately enthralled.

Six Word Obituaries

Office worker sang continuously; Body undiscovered.

Landmines hard to discover. Soccer cancelled.

"Live life", they said. Went skydiving.

Russian roulette suggested by fifth wheel.

"Brakes fixed?" He asked, in motion.

Second amendment prized above all others.

I ate the whole thing every time.

Office Life

One of my favourite things to do in an office, even though it makes people burn with hatred, is this:

If someone walks by in a hurry and asks, "have you seen Steve?" I'll fire back "Yep, he was over at the photocopier room" or some other place in the opposite direction. 

Once they steam off in that direction, and just before they're out of earshot, I'll yell, "but that was like three days ago!"

Every time I do this I break out into a huge smile while their fists clench up and go all red.

Review: Star Trek Into Darkness

Star Trek Into Darkness is an enormously fun movie that captures your attention and zips by at warp speed. It's a true successor to 2009's Star Trek, if not the franchise's history as a whole. This is not a big deal, because it rules

Much like JJ Abrams' first Star Trek film that rebooted the franchise, Star Trek Into Darkness is great example of a summer blockbuster movie. 

Of course, a summer blockbuster film doesn't have all that much in common with the Star Trek tradition, which seems to be the source of a bit of hate being directed its way online.

On the other hand, who cares? I walked out of this film on a cloud of happiness. I'm a huge Trek fan who can admit that the franchise had been largely strangled to death by the time of its demise. There's no point rebooting the franchise only to see it killed by reverence. (Although this film has a surprisingly large dose of that.)

Star Trek Into Darkness continues Kirk's attempt to live up to the whole Captain thing and again revolves around the Kirk/Spock relationship. The Enterprise crew go up against the excellently-named Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays a Starfleet Officer driven to terrorism by his anger at the Federation.

Cumberbatch is an excellent addition and does a cracking job as a madman with gravitas. He even seems to elevate the performances of the main cast when he's around. 

The acting is great in general and the cast continue their successful walk of the tightrope between inhabiting existing characters and bringing their own performances.

The visuals are excellent. Abrams really knows how to present a beautiful universe and it really feels established.

This movie moves quickly on a current of humour and action that keeps a smile on your face, doling out exciting scenes at a steady clip.

If traditional Trek fans were unhappy with this film's discordant relationship to the franchise, I wouldn't be inclined to dissuade them. Traditionally speaking, Trek's value has been in commenting on the present world (you know, like science fiction does). While there's some 9/11 terrorism military warmongering  lessons learned here, it's really a bangsplode piece.

There are also some bum story notes; there's a lot of moving parts that may put off some and I wanted more out of a particular alien race, as well as some mention of the sheer number of people who die. Of course, if you enjoy the game that I do of pretending actors are every character they've ever played, then this is a movie that involves both Sherlock Holmes and Robocop, and thar has to count for something.

Judged on its own merits, rather than measured against the rose-coloured achievements of the storied franchise, Star Trek Into Darkness is an enjoyable movie.

Celebrity Splash

Celebrity Splash is a thing that exists.

It's a show on Channel 7 where celebrities jump off of diving boards into a pool and are marked on their technique and their courage. That's it. Ratings have been alright but not great.

It's been eviscerated by critics for being a terrible idea for a show. It is shallow (hi-oh!) and pointless. I don't know who many of the contestants are and it's hard to see why I should care about any of this. It's ridiculous. I spent weeks seeing the advertisements pop up and laughing deridingly.

But the show is perhaps the most honest thing I have ever witnessed. It's people who you've seen on the telly before climbing up a ladder and jumping off. They get shit-scared and then they get wet and then they have a laugh about it. There aren't any booming voiceovers promising a dramatic twist that will crack the Internet in half.

Celebrity Splash is clearly a signpost indicating that we're near the end of the road for this society - that we've all opted in to a group narcotic that will lull our souls into the great beyond. But the show is so comfortable in this that it's somehow immune to criticism. It's not any fun to pay out that dumb kid swinging a cardboard lightsaber; neither is it satisfying to rail against Celebrity Splash. But mustn't we? Does it not deserve scorn and endless jokes about taking the water out of the pool next time?

This is a recursive loop from which I cannot escape.

Review: Iron Man 3

One of the most impressive feats of engineering within Joss Whedon's Avengers film is the climactic action scene in which a handful of weird heroes flex the full extent of their strength against an alien army.

The sequence is backed up by character work, obviously, but there's a certain fist-pump inherent in seeing, say, Iron Man streak across the sky blasting everything that moves.

If you're worried about the implication of starting a movie review by saying I really loved a different movie, well, yep. I was disappointed by Iron Man 3. It contains a lot of wonderful material that doesn't quite coalesce into a strong story.

Iron Man 3 is as much a continuation of The Avengers as it is the next Iron Man chapter. Tony Stark struggles with PTSD after nuking aliens right in the wormhole while he struggles to cope with the monsters created by his asshole past self. Traditional comics nemesis The Mandarin appears as an Osama analogue with Guy Pearce as a sleazy business science suit dude with literally the best hair in the Marvel universe. Gwyneth Paltrow and Don Cheadle both reprise their supporting roles and get some good material.

Shane Black directs the film with a strong authorial voice. It's unapologetically his film and that's to be admired. It's no surprise the man behind Lethal Weapon injects great energy into characters' banter but the level of humour and confidence in some great reveals was a pleasant surprise.

What I felt myself wanting when I left the theater though, was that fist pump of seeing Iron Man unleash at full force. Iron Man 3 tests Tony Stark mostly by taking away his toys. It's a usual 'part three' problem - just having a hero win things with their abilities is no longer enough - but dammit, 12-year-old inner Stefan wants to see Iron Man in action (and that dude runs my whole life). 

I feel bad making that complaint, as the scenes where Tony needs to succeed without his armour are some of the film's best. His infiltration of a complex using hacked together explosives and such is particularly strong, as is having to fight with one boot and one glove.

So what worked? 

Mandarin is amazing. The character has loomed over this series - they were never going to be able to import him straight from the books, given that he's a Yellow Peril stereotype that uses martial arts and magic rings. The approach here is a masterstroke of awesomeness over fan service and worthy of applause.

This is an enormously funny film: many laughs to be had. 

Robert Downey Jr remains excellent as Tony Stark. Much of the second act rests solely on his shoulders and he carries it well. 

That bit with the plane was pretty damn impressive.

There's a moment where Tony runs out of a bar and gets in his suit which shows it's just parked there on the street like a car. I love that. It's a great touch of world-building which reinforces something I really enjoy about the Iron Man franchise, which is there is no secret identity or even a hero identity. This is a story of Tony Stark, a man with amazing suits.

What didn't work?

Guy Pearce and his Extremis team were not very exciting in ability or motivation, especially when they're sharing screen time with Mandarin.

The movie gives the impression that the Iron Man suits are made of tinfoil always seconds from breaking.

A few things - such as Tony's emotional problems - weren't really resolved, and the ending was a bit rushed, conceivably to adopt a finality to the end of the trilogy.

In adopting the conventions of a shared storytelling universe, the Marvel movies have benefited from a momentum that transcends each individually. Interestingly, they've also encountered some of the issues comics have struggled with for decades. Once you start stacking stories on top of each other, how can you make sure everything makes sense? Once Iron Man tag teams an alien death ship with the Hulk, how do you make helicopters seem like a threat? By turning off his boots? 

Verdict: Iron Man 3 is a good movie that suffers mostly from me being a huge nerd who stamps his feet and says things like 'Jarvis controlling all those suits devalues the essence of the Stark character' when I should really be able to admit that it is a great, funny time and leave it at that.

Words out of nowhere!

I haven't posted here in over three years.

There's a grandiose post a little down the page that says I stopped posting to concentrate on bigger projects. I did not do this. I did, however, change city, job and profession. So that's something.

Top Three Things a person learns upon revisiting their blog after three years:

1. People love lists (and Arrested Development). My only post with a title approaching anything like good SEO practice, "Top 5 TV Villains: Lucille Bluth", still gets visitors every day. Also, my post Sporting Memorabilia gets a lot of visits, which I feel quite guilty about. Surely that's not what they're after.

2. I am not the best at spellcheck.

3. I am not an entrepreneur. It's interesting to me to see posts here that are attempting to do the things that twitter and instagram would do so well - but didn't work very well on blogger with a pre-smartphone phone. Sadly, I had the desire to present things in a new way, but missed the part of my brain that realised a tool to do such a thing would be popular and lucrative. Once I signed up to twitter though, my blog evaporated swiftly, as my itch to deliver zingers to a digital audience had been scratched in a more efficient fashion.