New Show!

Good news, dudes! Hot Apollo are taking to the stage again on the 8th of January at The Cage! The Cage is a lovely little venue at 292 College. Near Spadina!

This will be the inaugural show of our new drummer, who currently goes by the name of Aldo Camarena because he hasn’t been able to think of a good pseudonym. I like “Aldo Camarena”, though. Do you? Maybe we’ll take a poll!

Everyone should totally come. It’ll probably be the greatest Wednesday in recent memory. It’s definitely going to be one of my favourites, though that could be helped by the fact that it’s also the date of the debut of Peter David’s new “X-Factor” series.

Anyway, it’s going to be a great day for a variety of reasons, and Hot Apollo is foremost among those. Love and luck!

Snatching Bodies From Cold, Dead Bodies

Remember the Body Snatchers? They were pretty big in 1956. And 1978. And 1993. And they might have popped up again in 2007. Their whole deal basically involved the implementation of a perfectly ordered universe through the removal of emotion. They caused problems for Earth by replacing its inhabitants with stoic substitutes that were beholden to a hive mind. The mechanism was usually a botanical pod of some sort. An admirable goal? Perhaps. But the same could be said about communism.

Anyway. I always wondered about what the Snatchers did with the people who were already emotionless. There are people who dedicate their entire lives to cold logic and exclude all else, and I’m sure that a lot of them would be able to get along with the pod people. What would happen if the pods landed in Gotham City? I’m not really thinking about the potential for their defeat at the hands of the Batman, though a case could admittedly be made for that. I’ll just assume that he’s out of town for the moment. Maybe he’s dealing with some galactic Justice League business or something. That sort of thing. I’d really just like to see the pod people meet Mr. Freeze. At his best, I think that he actually makes the whole emotionless thing work even better than they do. He’d intimidate the pods before they got a chance to turn him.

“Guys, I know that we’re here to spread implacable logic and order throughout the cosmos and all that, but this dude’s taken it to a whole other level. Dude said that he's beyond emotions. What am I even supposed to do with that? I’m not sure that I’m entirely comfortable with this Earth place. Can we just, like, leave it for now and maybe circle around back to it when we’re done with the rest of the universe? Who’s with me?”

 “Yeah, and not for nothing, but isn’t cold supposed to be bad for plants? Which is basically what we are? Like, I’m no botanist or whatever, but this Freeze guy seems to have us fucked from both sides here. Let’s, uh . . . Let’s skadoodle.”

“Yeah, on second thought, let’s not take the Earth. It is a silly place.”

Update on Sunday, December 22, 2013 at 07:53PM by Jaymes Buckman

Bonus Question!

Cyclops or Mr. Freeze. Who wears red sunglasses better?

Cyclops. Even Gambit started imitating his look.

A Gorgeous Abortion

For the past half decade, I’ve been getting this sort of hollow expectant feeling on the periphery at this time of year. For clarity’s sake, I’ll state right now that it’s none of that holiday depression nonsense. That stuff’s for the lonely and the poor, and while I might feel like both of those things sometimes, I know that I’m technically neither. The whole Christmas suicide thing is rather baffling. The whole world’s in celebration mode! I know that this spirit is rarely capable of removing your problems, but at the very least it should be enough to motivate you to postpone your death plans for a few weeks. If you’re going to kill yourself at any point in the winter, you should do it right after Christmas. The beginning of January’s perfect. If you do it then, you’ll be dead before all the feelings of camaraderie and charity fade. Your final memories will be ones of oecumenical joy. Also, you won’t have to worry about new year resolutions. Bonus!

None of that’s related to what I’ve been experiencing for the last five years, though. I believe that I mentioned that. On the contrary, the little empty corner of my soul is reserved for something far shallower.

At the end of the year 2007, I had the privilege of great boredom during the theatrical reign of an adaptation of one of my favourite childhood novels, “The Golden Compass”. It wasn’t actually much of a reign, though. It felt huge to me at the time, and the fact that my friends shared my fervour meant that I was drawn to several repeat viewings. Unfortunately, the rather mediocre business it did served to dash the promises of sequels.

This did not become clear to me for a while.

I just expected that “The Subtle Knife” would follow by the next Christmas. When that season strode in, I was bemused by the thorough absence of any sign or portent of the trilogy’s middle installment. Then I thought, “Bah! It’s probably just one of those two-year cycles. The director’s brilliant. Daniel Craig’s huge. They’ve obviously just been busy. Next year, baby.”

I think that I finally got around to the barest bit of research at some point during the following 12 months. That’s when I finally took notice of the wider public’s apparent apathy and the director’s subsequent feelings of resigned acceptance of the indefinite hiatus that was forced upon his stillborn franchise. I didn’t really focus on that part, though. There seemed to be a fatuous glimmer of hope in all of this, and I was glad to blow upon those embers.

Whenever the anniversary of the movie’s release sauntered along, the ashes of the story’s cinematic future glowed anew within my heart. Recently, I decided to take a slightly closer look at this unfulfilled desire. This finally allowed me to fully remember something that was clear when I first read those books.

The first book was my favourite by a prodigious margin. In contrast to the fairy tale beginnings and epic escalation of “The Golden Compass”, “The Subtle Knife” opened with the death of a cynical child’s parent in a world without miracles, and “The Amber Spyglass” ended with the erasure of the hero’s childhood and most of its vestiges. The series was grand and beautiful, and I honestly enjoyed reading every piece of it, but I now realise that a fair bit of that had to do with the momentum of the initial book. The fantastical spirit that was still somehow intact after the tribulations of that first story was not maintained in its undiluted state through the sequels. This was obviously an adept execution of a metaphor for the onset of adulthood, but the fact that childlike wonder is one of my primary motivations means that such themes are never completely satisfying to me. There’s abundant space for ugliness in fantasy, but I always prefer to approach it with a touch of ecstasy. That’s partially why the most horrific aspects of Greek mythology are more attractive to me than the comparatively naturalistic way in which the Bible renders suffering.

Anyway, I think that I’m essentially at peace with the whole situation now. The film didn’t conclude neatly, but that makes perfect sense to my conception of life. The ending it has is just the horizon of the next adventure.

Update on Sunday, December 15, 2013 at 08:15PM by Jaymes Buckman

Bonus Question!

Best dark material? Velvet.

Red Flagon

After a succession of cancelled attempts that began just after the film’s release, I finally went with some friends to see “Thor 2” at Rainbow Cinema. It’s not my favourite theatre, but everyone else seems to love it, and there’s a fatuous kind of propriety in being taken to Asgard via a rainbow.

The film was worth the wait, though. That wasn’t surprising to me. To satisfy me, the movie basically just had to show up. Some spectacular mess would have needed to happen in order to disappoint me. This was basically like “Silence of the Lambs” with Loki in place of Anthony Hopkins and Anthony Hopkins in some other role. And Loki’s a petulant young godling instead of an urbane cannibal. And the bad guy’s an elf instead of a fairy. In a very real sense, the movie wasn’t actually like “Silence of the Lambs” at all, but in a truer, deeper, more meaningful, and far less coherent sense, it was almost exactly like “Silence of the Lambs”.

Update on Sunday, December 8, 2013 at 09:45PM by Jaymes Buckman

Bonus Question!

Best Scandinavian cannibal? Grendel.

A Soupcon of Sin

I have nothing against history or its study. For its devotees, it is a field full of intrigue and insight. Still, I sometimes feel a modicum of doubt at the pedestrian repetition of the claim that those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are destined to repeat them, and my skepticism grows when the parrots suggest that this maxim necessitates a universal awareness of historical minutiae.

First, one rarely needs to know the details to see the mistakes. For instance, a cursory knowledge of the Second World War is enough to show all but the most stubborn of cretins what went wrong. Some fool had an extraordinary bit of ambition and put its pursuit above the weal of everyone outside a fairly arbitrary group he selected to serve him. Strife ensued. It didn’t end well.

At the very least, that gives one enough information to understand that such actions are not to be imitated. One doesn’t need to know about the paintings. One doesn’t need to know about the boots. One doesn’t even need to know the dates. Hitler doesn’t really need to be the example either, but he works well because he was arguably the last in a long line of similar figures, and he certainly stands out because he was one of the first to prove that the schemes of such men are even less advisable in the modern world than they were in any other era. Basically, a brief recapitulation of any atrocity is enough to dissuade a sane audience from that kind of course. If you know Hitler, you don’t need to hear about Napoleon to realise that world domination probably isn’t going to work for you.

Admittedly, this is a rather extreme example, but most of history’s great mistakes fit into a fairly small number of categories. A mere taste of each is enough to learn the relevant lessons.

Furthermore, the merit of such lessons can generally be grasped by the simple exercise of reason. Perhaps this sounds odd from one to whom unreason comes so naturally, but I think that the point still stands. Any intelligent being who can’t see the folly in a thing like genocide for himself isn’t going to be convinced by hearing about examples. That’s why Hitler still has fans. In fairness, many of his modern supporters wilfully excise the bits that don’t fit with their personal ideals, but this is not commonly attributable to a lack of education on the man and his actions. The only salient effect of this self-imposed ignorance seems to be a kind of diversity among neo-Nazis that wouldn’t have appealed to their forbears. At least they can take solace in the fact that the Nazis of old did that stuff too.

If any Nazis happen to be listening to this from the Thirties through sheer chance or diligent application of your crazy Nazi science, I’d just like to say that Great Freddy detested your language, Bismarck wouldn’t have let you kiss his boots, and Nietzsche hated all of you.

Update on Sunday, December 1, 2013 at 08:11PM by Jaymes Buckman

Bonus Question!

Who would win in a fight between Hitler and Napoleon? Napoleon. The moustache makes Adolf vulnerable. As a dirty fighter, Napoleon goes for that immediately.