Ed Shepp's Excellent Philadelphia Adventure

So I went to Philadelphia for the firsten time last weekend. I took the Bolt Bus down, which was less terrifying than I thought (I'm not crazy about buses; let's not get into that right now), and stayed with my former roommate, and Catner of course (who was not at her nicest). J lives in a great building--walking distance from bars, Burger King, the Liberty Bell, DeVry, the Comcast building, the "funky" part of town, Barnes & Noble, an Amish flea market where they sell dolls without faces, and a pr0n theater. And let it be said that the water pressure and volume in his building (which, by the way, has a 7-11 on the ground floor) is second-to-none. The climate control is also excellent. But let's get to da tingz I learned from my trip, numberliststyle:

1) Philly's not a shithole. Who knew?!!?! Well, Center City isn't.

2) Philadelphia's City Hall looks uncannily like City Hall at Main Street USA in The Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida. Shit, that took forever to say. Anyway, I think Philly copied it.

3) The Liberty Bell (and I can't even think that phrase without picturing a certain episode of Strangers with Candy) looks like it's made of chocolate. I think they coated it with something, perhaps chocolate, to prevent further corrosion or something, because it's BROWN. And WAXY. The whole thing, not just the bell part. The funniest thing about the Liberty Bell is that it's a national treasure (like yours truly) and is surrounded by 99-cent stores and a petit craptown.

3.5) The Comcast Center is amazing. Well, the lobby is. Behind the reception desk there's a huge LCD wall that plays different animations, sync'd to music, when it's not pretending to be the same wooden paneling as the rest of the lobby. It's really unbelievable. The animations go in li'l segments, and the music changes for each. Actually, "animations" isn't the best term, since there's some filmed stuff in there. Like some great nature scenes--I wish I could look at those all day--and some cool stuff where they used actors/dancers to interact with each other "inside" the wooden panels. Or they would be carrying things across the wooden panels. And speaking of people walking, there are also sculptures of people walking across beams going up a few stories in the Center.

4) Whenever someone speaks Swedish to me, I have this brain gap that feels like about 10 seconds, where my mind processes what has just happened. When I realize that I've heard Swedish, I then have another brain gap where I see if I know what the phrase means. I saw Carl, who is from Sweden, at J's birthday dinner, and ever and anon he would say something in Swedish to me, and I noticed this brain freeze thing. It's only worked so far with real Swedes, however, so I'm not worried about it being some kind of kryptonite that people can use against me. You know, like, "Quick, say something in Swedish to him and grab the apple fritter from his hand."

5) If someone from China claims that Puerto Rico isn't really part of the United States, just mention Taiwan.

And that's the Philly blop for now, gooplers.

Beep!
Prince EQ

Låt den rätte komma in

OK, so I saw that movie, Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In), the other day, quite by accident. (And if you want to know how to pronounce the title in Swedish, click this to hear from forvo.com) I happened to be at the Angelika the other day, and everything looked crappy or depressing, so when I saw the movie was in Sweden, and the ticket person (who thought that new Woody Allen movie was good--WHAAAAAAAAAAAAA?!??!?!?!? She MUST have been kidding when she said she thought it was "complex" and said it was like "Woody Allen grew up." The movie is ridiculous) confirmed that it is in Swedish, I thought "Hey, even if it's retarded, at least it won't seem TOO stupid since it's in another language." So I saw it.

And I'm totally going to spoil it for you here, since you're not going to see it. As I understand it, there's an American version being made, due out in 2010. Make no mistake: It. Will. Suck. And it will avoid everything controversial in this version.

OK, so what happened in the movie? Well, I came in a little late, but I think I got the whole thing. As much as I could, I suppose, since there was stuff that I missed. I will say one thing before I tell the plot: There was a point where the girl in the movie was talking to someone and I thought, "This would be really cool if she ate him." How bout it got really cool! Anyway, here we go...

So it takes place in Sweden somewhere, apparently Stockholm, though I wouldn't think that even Stockholm gets so cold as to be covered in snow and freeze the lakes over and all. It starts with 12-year old blond boy, and he's talking to some girl who looks a lil unkempt. I thought it was going to be a story about a guy befriending a homeless girl, because he gave her a Rubiks cube and I thought they were in a bus station (they were outside). But she's not homeless per se--they're neighbors. Fast forward fast forward--you see an attack happen under a bridge, and you're like, "Is that that girl?" Fast forward--she's over at his house and says, "You have to invite me in." That's when you really get the inkling that she's a vampire, because everyone knows that you have to invite vampires in. (However, not everyone knows this. My friend ---- in Atlanta used to have Mexican workers living with him. They were afraid to go into his basement because they thought there were vampires down there. Uhhh, duh. There can't be, because you have to INVITE them! How uneducated!) Anyway, and this is proving to be a really short synopsis, blond boy is being bullied at school, so he tells Eli (the vampire) about it and she says she can help. More on that later. In a REALLY good plotline, Eli bites this woman but doesn't kill her, so the woman starts becoming a vampire. She goes over to someone's house, where this guy has, like, 900 cats, and they all start hissing at her and then all these computer-generated cats jump on her and start biting. That was freaking hilarious. But it's not over yet! She goes to the hospital, says she wants to die, asks someone to open the blinds on a sunny day, and when he does, a dummy version of her bursts into flames (see the picture). That was awesome. In another plotline, the man Eli lives with turns out to be a pedophile, and he gets caught having kidnapped a boy and he pours acid on his face. Then he falls out of the window at this hospital and his head brakes off. OK, back to the blond and Eli: blond wants to go steady with Eli, and she says something like, "What if I'm not a girl?" OK, you think "she's not a girl, she's a vampire." But it turns out she's both a vampire and a castrated boy. So how does blond react? He reacts like he does to everything in the movie: he doesn't. He seems nonplussed by everything. When he sees her scar, he just shrugs. When he asks her, "är du vampyr?" he might as well be asking her if she got her haircut. And later when this guy says he's going to poke his eye out with a knife, blond seems to have no reaction. Hmmm. I don't know if it's underacting or if it's a Swedish thing. It comes off like the latter. Anyway, so now that we've gotten most of it out of the way, let's finish: Blond fights back against a bully; the bully's brother comes back with a knife and, well, you know. So he's holding him underwater, and you see the blond through the pool cam. he's underwater and losing his breath and all, and then you see a pair of shoes through the water. Then you see the forearm of the guy who's holding him underwater. Yep, Eli has come to save him. Then at the end they go away together on some train. Oh wait--I forgot one thing. There's a scene after he knows she's vampyr, and she's at his house and he's like, "Why can't you just come in? Why do I have to invite you?" so she just comes in. And then starts bleeding out her orifices and her pores. Then he says he invites her in and they hug. And yeah, it's weird when you think that you're watching two twelve-year old kids covered in blood going steady and one is a vampire but is also a boy.

So you can see how they're going to change everything in the American version. More love story, more "defeating the vampires." The girl will probably be caught, and if not, there will be crappy sequels. More good vs. bad. I can't even imagine. The color will probably be richer in the US version--in this version, it was this washed-out wintry palette. It works considering where it's set, but I always prefer bold, rich, splash-right-off-the-screen color.

And that's the movie. Quite strange. But entertaining.

Beep!
Ed Shepp