George A. Romero is Dead

I hate to write that but as far as the visionary independent film maker who made a couple of the most influential films in the zombie/post apocalyptic genre, I just don't see his hand at work in the films produced under the name Romero. I watched his latest one the other night and it was so bad that I actually got pissed off. The movie was bad in several areas and they are as follows:

• Plot
• Consistency / Continuity
• Acting
• Effects
• Writing / Dialog

PLOT:

Well, the plot doesn't seem to have a destination in mind in that the stated motivation of the characters in the beginning does not seem to bind their actions. They want to find a safe place but they do everything but try to find a safe place. You find the Sarge's rag tag band of deserters in the middle of nowhere doing nothing but surfing the internet that would not really be functioning unless they had a satellite up link. They do not make decisions through the whole movie that make any sense whatsoever. Not from a military training point of view nor from a "how would a normal logical person react" point of view.

Consistency/Continuity:

This kind of ties in with the decision making from the last statement. They (the characters) constantly do things that would not be consistent with their own personalities nor what would be a result of their stated plans. Survivors in a post apocalyptic zombie world don't just wander off by themselves in unfamiliar territory nor would the others in the group not be alarmed by this. The zombies in the movie do not follow the rules set forth for zombie behavior in Romero's other films. Some zombies in this film are slow and lumbering, while others who seem dead suddenly jump up and almost roar at the characters. Many of the zombies act docile as they are chained and performing routine tasks like delivering mail or mowing the lawn. It was like the movie Fido had somehow merged a little with the Romero zombieverse. Some points just don't make sense in that they just could not happen. The characters drive into the fishing docks and are informed that the road they just drove in on was mined with dynamite so they can't drive away. The road they just drove on to get there is impassable due to land mines made of dynamite...and if they drive on it they will blow up (and one zombie stumbles on a mine, blowing up to illustrate this point) even though they just drove on the road and nothing happened, they will surely die if they drive on the road that they just drove on. Must have been some of that one way dynamite that I hear about all the time.

Acting:

I am sure that some of the actors may have some talent but if this is the case they did a masterful job of masking it. Some may be attributed to the material. You are the Sarge and your gruff with a heart of scoundrel with a soft spot. You are the lesbian (only female in the military unit so you must be a lesbian right?). You are the swarthy Italian lover boy who chases the lesbian swearing you can change her life with five minutes of your love expertise. You are the kid, rebellious, smart, crafty, with a razor keen sense of what is cool. Your are the bad guy who speaks with an Irish accent and wears cowboy attire. You are the Irish anti-hero who apposes the bad guy but your are not clearly good so curse a lot and try to have a rye approach to any situation no matter how touching, comedic, tragic, or dangerous. Then you have the full assortment of mindless henchmen who populate movies like this. In this last paragraph you have seen the full spectrum or maybe more in regards to the range of acting this movie holds.

Effects:

Did you ever wonder what happened to the effects coordinator from the old 80s The A-Team? Well, wonder no more. The gun play and squibs were cut rate but the gore effects that should be somewhat true to the physics and anatomy of the real world fell very short. A zombie who has been in a state of decay and therefore getting weaker with every action does not have the strength to grab your hair and rip the all the skin off your head as if it were a lose fitting shower cap. Not to mention your hair tends to rip out long before this happens. The zombie effects were not as good as I have seen at local zombie walks put on here in St. Louis.

Writing and Dialog:

Simple, simple, simple is the course of the day in terms of writing the plot and the dialog for this movie. There is no development of character or complex situations. At some points it seems like the writer (Romero) could not come up with a plausible solution to a situation so he just had the characters do something illogical to drive them to the next point in the story. The character's words could have been taken from a very bad old detective comic strip. At no point do the characters try to give the feel of layers within their personalities.

I wish I could tell you their were some redeeming aspects or moments to this film but in truth the best thing about the DVD version was the advertisement for the live action adaption to Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead that will be appearing on AMC in October. I will spare you wondering about that by including the trailer for that below. In the end I was left a little pissed and disappointed over this movie. I had even been warned months ago at our monthly Zombie Squad meeting about how bad it was. My problem is I did not believe the movie could be as bad as they were telling me. I was wrong, so wrong.

Click Here to see the trailer for The Walking Dead.

Today and then again..

I got a lot accomplished today but in the end, I did not get some of the things I most wanted to do done. Did that even make sense? I had wanted to write more on the D.S.D. story and I have a running draft working for the next installment. I did however get my Zombie Squad tattoo done today as you can see to the left there. It was to commemorate my first year with the ZS. One of many I would hope. It is a great group of people who do crazy stuff but also do some great things for our community. The artist who dropped ink on me is Jamie Toon http://www.jamietoon.com/ and by all means click the link and check his stuff out.

I will work to get another installment up for D.S.D. by the end of the weekend but seeing as how I have an evaluation that I need to write up for my assistant by tomorrow (real pay the bill work stuff), I suppose I should shove off for now and take care of that.

On a final note though, I got the new MC Chris album today (I heard it at Cheap TRX while getting my tattoo http://www.cheaptrx.com/tattoo.html ) and it is awesome. I think it is hilarious and my wife rolls her eyes. It's OK, she does that all the time to me and stuff I think humorous for one reason or another.

http://www.mcchris.com/

Stay true or become the lie. It is always your choice whether to follow the designs set before you or not.

Starting something new

Just a quick note on this page to let you know I have started a new ongoing story of post zombie America and a group of survivors tasked with going back into the wild zones from their safe haven, the island. They go out and seek needed supplies to keep the colony afloat and things don't always go as expected with the rotting walkers moving across the landscape as well as rogues, anarchist, and thugs of the breathing sort to contend with. Check it out and let me know what you think.

http://dsdinthenewworld.blogspot.com/

Some sounds to think and shoot to....

Amon Tobin, Sordid

I heard this artist at some time and made a note to myself on Evernote to check it out. I pulled up a few videos and it is pretty cool. I have not been hitting on a techno vibe in a long time but this was a nice change. See if you like it and check out some more of his stuff if you like it.

A New Channel Most Likely Never to Be Seen.

Just a short little note to say that I have developed a new channel on www.ustream.com to post some of the weird things that I find in the world. If you have ideas please let me know and I may try to include them. The channel will be...... http://www.ustream.tv/channel/one-inch-punch so check it out in the near future. I will post on my facebook and twitter when I will be doing live broadcast so stay tun

http://twitter.com/huboboo

http://www.facebook.com/brian.d.davis

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

Venting (no not a fart joke)

So I find myself increasingly aggravated with my staff. They are generally a great group of people but on days like today when I can't go into my office for thirty minutes to do some paperwork without chaos over nothing but the ordinary happenings of a restaurant, then I get more than a little angry. Some of the people that work for me are considerably younger than I as they are in their early twenties but more of them are within ten years so I have a very low tolerance for childish crap. Now don't get me wrong, being "goofy" is fine as long as you can shift gears and take care of business and that means doing it the right way, my way. For those who have worked for me in the past let me add that I am one thousand times calmer than I ever have been in my life. I rarely anger and hardly ever raise my voice. The business of service is simple in the restaurant industry, you just have to remember who is important and that should be the basis for all of your decisions and professional behavior patterns. The client, the guest, the customer are the ones that come in to enjoy the service/food and then they are the same ones that will pay you for providing it. Why oh why do some of my servers not get this? They want to tell me how they feel about a certain situation and then I have to remind them that when it comes to anything other than what provides a quality experience for the people paying, I am simply not wearing my "give a shit" tee shirt. Alright, I have that out of my system for a little bit. Now for something completely different........

to be continued....

Yeah, I really need to post something.....

Alright it has been a little past forever since I actually sat down and made a post. Here it is and I am shooting this one from the hip so forgive me if I ramble. I have been tied up in work to much lately with getting a new assistant manager and some transitions involved with that. I have also just shifted my schedule to reflect the fact that my wife is done with school. For the last year we have not had a day off together and now we are able to once again as well as my days off not being fixed to her school schedule. So this being the first day off that we have had all day off together, I feel like we are chilling. I am fine with this, but I feel she wants more from the day and is aggravated. We also have to hook up the first family camping trip as my daughters have been bugging me for the last year to take them on a camping trip but not one of "Daddy's" camping trips, they want a fun one. This means they don't want to backpack into a site but rather park a car get out and camp where there are bathrooms nearby. This is funny but understandable as my girls are very much girls.

My new health routines and eating habits are still going well. As I write this I am extremely sore from a late night workout and then sleeping in just enough to make me a bit stiff. I have been stretching as the day goes but need more. I have my weight back down and am focusing on muscle mass and over all strength and endurance. I am working on reconditioning the way I run so that I minimize impact on my knees, ankle, and back with the heel first style that had been my go to since youth. I have found a great website that has tons of good information on stuff of this nature http://www.scoobysworkshop.com/ . I stumbled across his stuff on Youtube and actually started watching one video after another. What he lacked in production value, he seemed to find in an honest approach to what he was telling you. He wasn't trying to sell you anything, in fact the resources on his page are free. He just wants to help people get healthy. I really think a lot of the guys work.

Just had my first anniversary with the Zombie Squad 001 of St. Louis and it has been a great year of events and making friends. I have an appointment on August 19th to get my ZS logo inked on my Skin. Jamie Toon is doing a custom design and I can't wait to see the art that will be my left arm and shoulder. I will post pictures later.

I posted a while back that I would explain how to play the Phil Collins Game. As I started to write it down, it started to seem that it may not seem as fun to others as they weren't there for the first episodes that led up the game's existence. Alright let me try to put this together for you. The Phil Collins game actually has roots in the death of Heath Ledger. Now bare with me as I am not trying to make any joke of his death. One of my employees came into work one day swearing up and down that she had heard the night before that Phil Collins was the first person that one of the Olsen twins called when they discovered the Heath was dead in their apartment. This was not the case and we figured out that Teri (my employee) had dozed off while watching TMZ and merged many of the stories they were playing together. As I thought about it, it made sense in a way. Phil Collins is evil in the purest form and only puts forth this jolly rube front to fool the masses. From that point I would take something in the news and tweak it and bring the story to focus on a mystery person of responsibility and when the person hearing my story would say, "Who was it?", the answer would be Phil Collins and they knew I had gotten them. It was kind of a bullshitters battle royale if you will. In the stories we have shared since the games invention we have discovered that Mr. Collins is responsible for things such as but not limited to; The Kool-Aid recipe used in Jonestown, Introducing Jessie James to the white power tattoo model (Phil lead the white supremacy group she belonged to), Played a benefit concert for epilepsy and used a strobe light on every number, is the father of at least two of John and Kate's eight, constantly tells Mel Gibson he should stop holding back and tell people what he really feels, and has created a genetic life form that scares even himself in the form of Justin Bieber. Feel free to try it on your friends.

I have toyed with the idea of doing a web comic and start posting some of the offerings here on this blog and have a range of topics from the shower gnomes to crazy crap that has actually happened in the restaurants I have run. As I know very few people will see it, it will just be a measure of doing it for the sake of doing it and practice. If you have worked for me or with me over the years you will recognize some of the characters.

I am going to go for now as I need to oversee the cleaning of my children's playroom as they seem to think I have sent them to the salt mines for torturous labor and seem to need a high level of motivation to complete this task.

Until next time, Keep it real or keep it quiet.