Panda ish "Kawaii"

I would be severely hard-pressed to find any sort of practical use for "Panda" by Takashi Murakami - at almost seven feet tall, five feet wide and freakishly adorable in all it's fiberglassical glory, it hardly serves any sort of function, other than perhaps a very oddly-shaped, nightmare-inducing coatrack. Luckily, my job isn't to find a practical use for it, so it's all good. On to the assignment.

Oddly enough, Murakami's "Panda" does stand to represent as many as three different cultures - Japanese, North American, and, of course, Artistic.

First and foremost, "Panda" serves as a great cultural icon for Japanese art culture and cartoon/fashion style - not only because it was created by a Japanese artist, but because it also embodies an increasingly popular artistic style favored by Japanese teenagers (commonly referred to as 'Harajuku' in the fashion world) with it's lively colors, warped patterns, creepy smile, and face that's positively kawaii, give or take the enormously face-eating tongue. No, really, stare at it long enough and I swear it moves.

"Panda" also works as a cultural icon for North American style. Ever increasing numbers of 'wapanese' teens prove that Japanese art styles are becoming increasingly popular in Western countries, sometimes creating odd mixes and clashes with our own cultural icons, which up until recently tended to be more stiff, reserved and 'classy'. In this case, the giant fiberglass "Panda" is shown standing on an antique Louis Vitton trunk, which is most definitely not a Japanese brand. Putting the two together is like fitting two puzzle pieces together to create one unique work of art.

All in all, and given the points I've already stated, I think I can safely say "Panda" serves as an artisitic form of entertainment for both Japanese and Western cultures - an enormous, loveable piece of art that combines the changing styles of two entirely different cultures, from opposite sides of the planet, into a single product that serves to seamlessly unite both cultures involved.

Now... bow to the cuteness before it licks you to death with that gigantic tongue of his... hers... whatever. And try not to stare. It's slightly weight-concious.

Scream Park of the Year

Having only been to three different haunted houses (two of them designated 'Scream Parks'), I'm not horribly qualified to deem any one park 'Best of the Year', so I suppose it's going to have to be 'Scream Park of the Year According to Me Unless I Find a Better One Still Open After Halloween'. SPotYAtMUIFaBOSOAH or LOLWTF for short.

After working at the 'Carnival of Fear' over in the State Fair Park for the last month, me and most of my coworkers decided it might be fun to drive out to Omaha to see how well Scary Acres had set up and also to steal some of their ideas for next year.

The 'Scary Acres' park is split into four sections - 'The Stalks of Terror', 'The Dark Forest', 'The House on the Hill', and 'The Master's Castle'.

'Stalks of Terror', which actually turned out to be more of a 'Semi-Tall Grasses of Apathy' was unfortunately only frightening for the approximately five minutes that we were with the belief that people were hiding in the grass to jump out and chase us with chainsaws. Obviously, there was no such luck, and after almost walking back out to the parking lot through a path someone had forgotten to close, we all turned back and found the exit to the maze...three feet from the entrance.

Our next stop was 'The Dark Forest', which fortunately started living up to the reputation of Scream Park Attraction, though not horribly well. We were split into two groups and sent off down a completely devoid of light, semi-dry riverbed inset with the occasional Giant Rock Your Ass is Going to Trip On. After a few minutes of walking, we were confronted with what appeared to be a Ninja with a giant axe who ordered us to follow him through a cold, surprisingly even darker than before path through a large patch of dead trees, which partially wound through a deserted shed and into a small 'meat-packing plant' where the tell-tale smell of gas alerted us to the next Ninja with a giant chainsaw.

Starting to feel like the trip had been a waste of $25 and and two hours of our lives, we headed to the 'House on the Hill', which looked rather imposing on it's perch well above the rest of the attractions until viewed from the side, where onlookers realized the front of the house was a cardboard front maybe 2 inches thick (though extremely detailed, so we were willing to forgive them). Once we reached the entrance, we were given a completely new set of instructions from the last two attractions - stay in a single line, and make sure you were in good physical health before entering, due to long stretches of darkness, claustrophia-inducing areas and sudden scares.

Cool.

Once inside, several of us immediately dropped our jaws at the amount of detail that had been put into the interior - it was as if we had actually stepped into a long-abandoned house, complete with caving ceiling, broken and torn surfaces and a violently obstructed staircase. We were led into the next room by a ghastly-painted woman who opened an entire wall that not even the technician from our haunted house had been able to spot. As we snaked through the deceptively large house, we squeezed through foot-wide openings in complete darkness, crawled through realistic 'caves', interrupted an attempt at waking the dead in a gothic church room and nearly lost limbs to several overly-enthusiastic monsters with an array of knives, chainsaws, axes, and meatcleavers.

'The Master's Castle' was reputed to be the most terrifying of the attractions, though I'd be hard-pressed to say if it or 'House on the Hill' was better - thinking back, I really can't remember which rooms belonged to which house.

The best aspect of the Park was the live actors who occasionally wandered through the yard at the center of all four attractions that excelled at picking out the most squeemish and freaked-out visitors. At one point, a terrified girl around 16 years old was trapped on a bridge between an advancing chainsaw-weilder and a slow-moving My Chemical Romance Gone Wrong with a five-foot-long fire axe. With both less than three feet from either side of her, she finally streaked past the axe-weilder while screaming bloody murder and didn't stop until she'd reached the other side of the park, where she immediately crouched down behind a golf-cart and had to be retrieved by her cackling friends.

Definitely recommended for next year. :D

Gag Me With a Silk Stocking...

First off...

HA. I did the right assignment.

Anyway.


Growing up with a father who is a die-hard fan of anything having to do with the Victorian Era (including every Sherlock Holmes story, original and fan-based), it's not horribly surprising that I ended up loving the Sherlock Holmes stories, too. Unfortunately, liking them so much makes watching bad rip-offs of Sherlock Holmes stories especially painful.

I think the worst Sherlock Holmes-based movie I've ever watched was one in what I understand is a new series of Holmes shows produced by BBC.

'The Case of the Silk Stocking' is a good movie in itself, but as a movie based on the characters of 'Sherlock Holmes', it's horrible. Not only is it set in the wrong time period (which I suppose is slightly excusable - one of my favorite Holmes-based movies is also set in the wrong period), but it also shows Holmes doing every drug known to man every five minutes, he is increasingly egotistical and rude to every other character as the movie progresses, and he insults Dr. Watson, his 'best' and most trusted friend in the original stories, whenever the two are within shouting distance.

(Ironically, Watson is played by actor Ian Hart, who also played the part of 'Sherlock Holmes' creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle alongside Johnny Depp's portrayal of Sir James Matthew Barrie, creator of 'Peter Pan' in 'Finding Neverland'.)

In many cases, the breaking of a movie can be put down to lack-luster acting skills, but in this case, I think the character flaws are due more to fault on the part of the writers and possibly even the director, though I don't think directors necessrily have that much of an influence on how the characters are written. Watching Rupert Everett in both this movie as Sherlock Holmes and as the evil 'Doctor Claw' in 'Inspector Gadget', I'm even less willing to put blame on his acting skills for the awkward portayal of Holmes, as he appears to be very talented.

Hopefully he'll choose to take his acting skills elsewhere if offered a part as this awful version of Sherlock Holmes again.