I was really shocked to see the obit for former Creature Features producer Bob Shaw on SFGate.com today. This is so soon after Creature Features host Bob Wilkins passed away – way too soon. Shaw was only 56. Bob Shaw was a monster nerd who broke into television by assisting Bob Wilkins on Creature Features. Shaw helped Wilkins (along with future CF host John Stanley and ISW co-founder August Ragone) with the research into classic (and not so classic) horror and sci-fi movies. He also pieced together the crackerjack title montage of movie clips that played under the beloved Creature Features theme song during the show’s opening. “Stylishly done,” were George Takei’s remarks about Shaw’s work when the Trek star was a guest on the show. After Creature Features, Shaw became KTVU’s resident Roger Ebert, but I always liked him better. He went out of his way to give a glowing review to Godzilla 1985 when other lazy critics were content to just let it head up their year’s worst lists. He pointed out that Pearl Harbor contained no Pacific Islanders in it but had lots of scenes of truckloads of white actors yelling “Go! Go! Go!.” He understood the artistic value of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. I just watched Bob in the Creature Features documentary, Watch Horror Films Keep America Strong. He’s really funny in it. It’s hard to believe he’s gone.

Shaw passed away last Friday from liver failure and complications from Crohn’s disease.

He was one of us, one of us (and he’d know the reason for the repeat better than anyone).

The hard times for monster men continue.

Here’s some of Shaw’s handiwork…

I wonder when the overlords of Amazon.com (or maybe mere hackers) will realize that my punk wrestling memoir, Beer, Blood and Cornmeal, deals with GLBT themes? I mean it has gay characters and parodies of gay characters. It also has a pic of a man’s wiener reproduced in full color (IE: He Who Cannot Be Named of the Dwarves in all of his public and pubic glory). As of right now my bestselling book is still ranked. It even cracked the wrestling book top 20 for the first time in a month or so. Of course Amazon would never think that a book on pro wrestling could possibly be gay.

Over the weekend, Amazon.com deranked a wide range of books by gay or lesbian authors and books with GLBT themes. Amazon basically classified the offending materials (many of them sci fi books with gay themes) as pornography, making them harder to find with regular Amazon searches. They deranked David Gerrold’s Martian Child for some strange reason even though the film adaptation of the book (with John Cusak) shows up on HBO Family(!) all the time, but they left his 1970s time travel opus The Man Who Folded Himself alone. In The Man Who Folded Himself, the main character creates alternate versions of himself though time displacement and ends up having gay orgies with them. He later bends the time continuum so much, that he creates a female version of himself and knocks her up. I guess that must be what made everything okay with this book and whoever did this at Amazon–he eventually procreates.

This shows the stupidity of censorship: the censors don’t bother to read or understand what it is they are censoring. I would chuckle over this when I’m through being scared. Amazon already has a disproportionate effect on what does and doesn’t get published. If we allow them to monopolize books, both through moving old fashioned hardcopy and electronic books with their kindle, they will end up monopolizing ideas. Scary stuff for any of us, readers and writers alike, but even more so for someone with a guy with a book that prominently features El Homo Loco prancing around in a pink tutu and dry humping his opponents into submission.

Here’s Salon.com’s Broadsheet’s take on this and a link to an interview with David Gerrold. A hacker is now claiming responsibility for this. Still, let’s keep an eye on this megacorp.

Ironically, this blog is going to be reposted on Amazon.com via RSS.

Why do Hollywood A- listers hate the women who work at makeup counters in mall stores so much?

In a bid to become Hollywood’s undisputed King of Ruphenol, Seth Rogen has a scene where he date rapes Anna Faris in his new mall cop epic Observe and Report. Rogen, as bipolar security guard mounts Faris’ character Brandi and starts pumping away when she is practically passed out (with vomit residue on her face) from handfuls of pills and gallons of tequila. (If only Paul Blart were there to save her.) Halfway through the act, Brandi stirs to give retroactive approval by blurting, “Why are you stopping motherfucker?” But, according to Faris at least, this is all okay because Brandi works at a makeup counter and is even proud of this (from an interview in the Onion AV Club):

No, really, Brandy is the worst. I’ve played a few bad characters in my day, but I think she’s the worst. She works at the makeup counter, and she’s very proud of that fact.

In the minds of Rogen and Faris (and writer/director Jody Hill), women who work at mall makeup counters are like genocidal maniacs or child killers, figures so lowly and cruel that any violence done to them is justifiable. Now the question becomes: what did makeup counter workers ever do the Seth Rogen and Anna Faris? Did women working in the Walgreen’s makeup section kill Rogen’s brother? Did some Macy’s clerks wipe out Faris’ entire family, forcing her to flee from her native homeland?

In comedy, the claim of being an “equal opportunity offender” is often used to cover up multitudes of misogyny, racism and other petty hatreds on the part of the comics who invoke this. That still doesn’t stop it from being true every now and again. Try juxtaposing the funny episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm or South Park with the shows’ occasional duds and see how you feel about them. The biggest crime when walking out on this ledge is not being funny and when you ain’t funny, you land with a thud.

The scene in Observe and Report seems like something out of a Paul Schrader movie. However in Taxi Driver or Hardcore, the protagonist who commits such an act ends up harboring suicidal (or homicidal) guilt over it. In today’s twisted America, it’s all part the new Spring Break comedy sensation.

You can see the scene at the end of this trailer and judge for yourself:

POST SCRIPT: Will I see Observe and Report? Probably not, but it does have Ray Liotta in it. I even saw In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale because Liotta was in it. I am at cross purposes here.

According to Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann and other rabid right wingers, the Obama Administration is in the midst of planning Maoist style reeducation camps plucked right out of Joe McCarthy and Jack Webb’s cold war fevered imaginations. Now what about these reeducation camps? Will financial aid be available for them? Can you pay for their tuition with Pell Grants? What about scholarships? For adult reeducation camps, will you need a GED to attend? How will your SAT scores affect your chances of attending the reeducation camp of your choice? For K-12 reeducation camps, will Obama institute a reeducation camp voucher program for any parents who live in a district with lousy public reeducation camps and want to send their kids to private reeducation camps? Will these reeducation camps leave any children behind? Will they hold teachers accountable? Will reeducation camp commandants receive pay based on merit or will the teachers’ unions stand in the way? Will there be prayer in re-education camps or at least a moment of quiet contemplation where camp attendees are encouraged to contemplate the dominant protestant faith of the United States of America? What about physical education in reeducation camps? Will reeducation camps have music programs or will they only focus on the three R’s (two of which ironically don’t even begin with the letter R): reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic? Will attendees of reeducation camps pledge allegiance to the flag or will the Obama logo do?

With the rising cost of college tuition in this country (up 6% in 2006 and another 6.3% in 2007) and with only 75% of US high school students earning their high school diplomas according to The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, I applaud President Obama’s bold new reeducation policy. With so many jobs being lost in our economic downturn, if there’s one thing this country needs, it’s a reeducation.