Just before the semester ended, I made this video with my friends Alan Schulte, Jennie Latson, and Alicia de Los Reyes, in honor of Lee Gutkind, the “Godfather of Creative Nonfiction.”

Returning to solve this not-so-taxing puzzle is Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), the Harvard professor who unraveled Catholicism’s secrets in “The Da Vinci Code.” This time around, the church calls on him—the Pope is dead, four of the church’s top cardinals are missing and a bomb (containing anti-matter harvested from the Large Hadron Collider) is set to destroy Vatican City. Claiming credit for this ecclesiastical calamity is the Illuminati, an ancient, underground conspiracy of scientists (Gallileo was a member) that has returned to destroy the church in its darkest hour.

Luckily for the church and Langdon (and for that matter, the audience), the Illuminati like to communicate in symbols and puzzles. With the blessing of the Camerlengo (Ewan McGregor), the departed Pope’s right-hand man with ambitions of his own, it’s off to the library for Langdon, who must find the cardinals, locate the bomb and save the church. Of course, it all must be done in utter secrecy—the College of Cardinals is trying to elect a new Pope, and St. Peter’s square is teeming with the faithful.

Like a lot of professors, Langdon is only likable when he’s in his academic element; otherwise, he’s either a pompous jerk or an ineffective action hero. When finally granted access to the Vatican archives, Langdon’s eyes light up and he gets all swoony. Glimmers of Hanks’ talent shine through and that arrogant edge drops away, replaced with a likable earnestness that, unfortunately, vanishes all too quickly.

Otherwise, there’s nothing about Langdon for Hanks to really latch on to, a problem that plagues the other professors, priests and policemen scampering across Vatican City. They’re ciphers, with less depth and complexity than the puzzles Langdon must decode. Apart from the Camerlengo, no one has even a hint of back story, and so Commander Richter (Stellan Skarsgard) is reduced to a grumbling heavy and Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), Langdon’s sidekick and occasional physicist, wanders about Rome without any real reason for being there.

Outside the library, Langdon delivers long-winded lectures, usually given while running with Vittoria to the next crime scene. Most heroes are known for showing up in the nick of time, but Langdon always gets there a few minutes too late, and instead of saving the intended victim, he inadvertently makes the death a little more painful. Let’s just say that if you’re chained up and suspended over a raging fire and a Harvard symbologist offers to save you, things might work out better if you politely decline.

The murders themselves are suitably gimmicky and gory, just lurid enough to prove the stakes really are high amidst all of Langdon’s spiels. There’s a bomb about to explode and a quartet of cardinals slated for execution, but “Angels & Demons” doesn’t maintain a sense of urgency. Director Ron Howard does what he can to balance the (rather sloppy) intellectual games and the action scenes, but neither is strong enough on its own to work together. Car chases are slowed down by congested city streets, and the bits about the Large Hadron Collider creating anti-matter are just as scientifically dubious as the “red matter” in this summer’s “Star Trek.”

Whether intended or not, one of the things “Angels & Demons” does well is make Catholicism sexy. Early on, the usual science versus religion conflict is set up, but Howard’s sweeping shots of Vatican City and the somber scenes of pomp-and-circumstance-filled Catholic ceremonies make it clear which side in the debate the movie falls on. Catholicism is so cool that even its enemy—an ancient cabal of scientists and philosophers—is awesome and intriguing. You don’t see any all-powerful conspiracies targeting the Southern Baptist Convention, do you?

Mostly, “Angels & Demons” is shockingly good at being average. Hanks, McGregor and the rest of the cast all give perfectly competent performances (it even seems as though McGregor is trying to dial his performance down at points, so as not to stand out too much), and the pacing is brisk enough that the ludicrous plot remains nothing but a blur. For all the theological posturing and weakly constructed debates about science and faith, “Angels & Demons” is about as empty-headed as the Bernini statutes that guide Langdon throughout Rome. The statues, at least, are worth some extended consideration; “Angels & Demons” doesn’t merit more than a passing viewing.

The task: solve a series of 18 puzzles, the solutions to which revealed the location of the murder, the suspect who committed the crime, and the weapon with which the dastardly deed was performed.

A sampling of some of the puzzles.

As if that wasn’t complicated enough, teams were also required to gather as many items from our insanely elaborate list as possible. Solving the puzzles earned every team an automatic 150 points; the items themselves carried varying point values, and the more items collected, the better a team’s score. And, oh yeah–one of the teams (all of which were named after characters in the game) was the “murderer,” a stigma that included an automatic 50-point deduction.

A lucky player returns with a keyboard, an ironing board and a bag of assorted nonsense.

The hunt resulted in a truly impressive haul of items, including a number of plums, a tin of herring in tomato sauce (fulfilling the requirement of a red herring, har har), an omellette (which was promptly transformed into an omellette burger during the ensuing barbecue), a t-bone steak (which was promptly grilled), a bowling pin (for no reason), and a laundry list of items scrounged from Goodwill, the dollar store, people’s homes and other places around town.

The omellette burger, perfect at any time of day.

Teams also received extra points for the weirdest item they could bring back. One team returned with a cute-but-creepy kitten-adorned pot-holder (stolen from the kitchen in Stately Clow Manor), while another team brought back the “Big Trouble in Little China” soundtrack on cassette–and a tape recorder with which to play it. And then there was “Daddy’s New Roommate,” a children’s book explaining the sudden appearance of daddy’s “friend” Frank after daddy and mommy got divorced. A dramatic, enlightening reading ensued, and while it had nothing to do with the aforementioned board game, it was an awesomely random item.

The winning team and their exquisite trophy, the "Champion of Excellence" award.

This was the second Scavenger Hunt–the first one unfolded in September 2007 and was based in part on the infamous Smuttynose Murders. And while we’re resting calmly on our scavenging laurals for the moment, plans have already been made for Scavenger Hunt 3. Stay tuned.

This towering legacy made a film adaptation of “Watchmen” a sort of holy grail for comic fans and studio heads alike, and a cinematic treatment of Moore and Gibbons’ massive 300-page graphic novel has been in one form of development or another since the late 1980s. But the epic scope, length and intricacies of “Watchmen” made any sort of adaptation nigh impossible. In the intervening years, Hollywood fell in love with other superheroes, and the superhero film genre had its own version of “Watchmen” in 2008 with “The Dark Knight,” which injected the usual cinematic superhero shenanigans with some operatic levels of tragedy and a healthy dose of awesome action.

With “Watchmen” the graphic novel casting such a long shadow over superhero comics and “The Dark Knight” looming so grandly over superhero movies, what sort of new territory could director Zack Snyder’s hotly-anticipated film adaptation of “Watchmen” claim? Snyder certainly had his work cut out for him, tasked to please not only fans of “Watchmen” but Hollywood execs hungry for another “Dark Knight”-level success. High expectations like that usually lead to either epic failure or stunning success, but Snyder’s “Watchmen” lands somewhere in the middle, flirting with moments of greatness at some points but tripping clumsily over itself far too often.

As the title implies, clocks figure heavily into “Watchmen,” and the timepiece that towers over all others is the Doomsday Clock, the symbolic clock that tracks how close humanity is to nuclear annihilation. In the world of “Watchmen”, the year is 1985, Nixon is still in the White House, and tensions between Russia and America have escalated to such a level that a nuclear holocaust is all but imminent. There’s another apocalypse on the horizon, though, one targeting superheroes. When the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a former costumed adventurer turned government spook, is murdered, the masked heroes are on alert. A fixture in public life since the 1940s, colorfully-costumed heroes were forced into retirement by the government in 1977, and the intervening years were not kind. There’s Nite Owl, a.k.a. Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson), who traded his cape and cowl for a pudgy physique and depression. His former partner, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), refused to give up vigilantism and continued his psychotic war against criminals. Ozymandias, a.k.a. Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode), “the world’s smartest man”, parlayed his costumed career into a multi-million dollar business empire. And then there’s Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) and his lover, Laurie Jupiter, formerly known as the Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman). Dr. Manhattan is the only truly super-powered one of the bunch, possessing the powers and abilities of a god. Laurie worries Dr. Manhattan is losing his humanity, while Rorschach worries someone is killing off the only people who might conceivably prevent nuclear war.

And those are just the major plot points. “Watchmen” the graphic novel is a Swiss watch, with dozens of characters and hundreds of actions all working together in tight concert to produce a single running narrative. Fitting all those intricacies into a single film, even with a three-hour runtime, is impossible, and while Snyder gets the major points in there, there’s nothing holding them together. “Watchmen” is, for the most part, all bricks and no mortar.

That’s not to say “Watchmen” the film doesn’t get some things right. Visually, Snyder absolutely nailed it. The look of the film, the production design, all of it perfectly captures Gibbons’ artwork in the source material. All the small details Gibbons worked into the comic, from the Gunga Diner restaurant to the ads for Nostalgia perfume, are in the film, and the background is filled with appearances of major and minor historical figures. There’s so much to look at that you may find yourself distracted from the characters.

Those characters are the first place “Watchmen” stumbles. The performances just aren’t that strong, characters that should be compelling and engaging just aren’t. Akerman and Goode in particular are weak, a major shortfall considering the narrative importance of both Silk Spectre and Ozymandias. As Nite Owl, Wilson isn’t much better, and there’s never a real sense of the fear and desperation that drive him back into costume.

For all those shortfalls, though, there are plenty of good performances, though, and Haley and Crudup especially capture the contradictions of their characters. Crudup’s cold detachment perfectly suits the increasingly alienated Dr. Manhattan, while Haley revels in the Rorschach’s violent moral absolutism. It’s no surprise then that the strongest moments in “Watchmen” concern these characters. The middle section of the film, detailing Dr. Manhattan’s origins and Rorschach’s stint in prison, give “Watchmen” the sort of sweeping scope and gritty, tragic humanism the rest of the film strives for but never quite achieves.

The problem lies partially in the clash between Snyder’s stylistic fetishes and the more subtle moral questions that come up as Rorschach, the Comedian and the rest caper about. Questions about impotence in the face of tragedy or whether murder in the name of a greater good is ever acceptable all seem sort of silly when people in rubber body suits are doing mixed martial arts in slow motion. That sort of glossy, graphic violence that Snyder employed so well in “300” just doesn’t work here. Nor does the pacing of the film, with long stretches of exposition punctuated with fight scenes straight out of “The Matrix”. Instead of a sustained jog, the movie feels like a manic sprint interspersed with some long naps.

There are plenty of other areas that falter, as well. The musical choices are clichéd and heavy-handed—did we really need another funeral scene set to “The Sounds of Silence”? The soundtrack either hits you over the head with its weightiness or just seems wholly inappropriate. And while Snyder can create brutally violent action sequences with aplomb, he can’t do sex scenes. When Nite Owl and Silk Spectre have sex for the first time (after some hardcore superheroics), it should be a moment of passion and release. But just like he does with the action, Snyder takes a more-is-more approach, and all the explicit thrusting ends up being ridiculous rather than titillating.

It’s clear that Snyder and screenwriter David Hayter respect and revere the graphic novel, but their slavish devotion to the minutiae of the “Watchmen” universe seems to have distracted them from getting some fundamental filmmaking choices right. Having all the right pieces in their correct places is a good start, but sloppy craftsmanship and generic parts result in a movie that, like the proverbial stopped clock, gets it right at least a couple times, but never really works like it should.

Being a pedestrian in Dover sucks. There’s no need to gussy up the language or wax too eloquently on the state of walking around through Dover – it is quite simply a hazardous experience that, in the four years I’ve lived here, has only gotten worse. It’s particularly bad in the winter, when city sidewalks are left unplowed for days on end and ice and snow and snowbanks pile up to dizzying heights. In most cases, it’s safer to walk in the street than to wade through knee-deep snow on sidewalks hemmed in on all sides by giant snowbanks. Snow removal budgets are tight, and the city’s Community Services department is probably as overworked and underpaid as everyone else, but the general state of Dover’s sidewalks in the winter is about as bad as it gets.

Sadly, that’s not even the worst part. If, like me, you live just outside of downtown and make it through the hazardous sidewalks and into downtown proper, your chances of getting hammered by one of the thousands of inattentive motorists speeding through Dover each day increases by about a 1,000 percent. Dover’s main drag–Central Avenue and Main Street–resembles a race track, a one-way loop that encourages motorists in both directions to careen through as fast as they can in order to avoid the all-too-frequent traffic jams caused by a seemingly random array of traffic lights and crosswalks that seem to make getting through Dover much less safe than necessary. It’s a NASCAR arena with the added attraction of parked cars and moving targets. Last Thursday’s pedestrian accident is no surprise–the crosswalk at the intersection of Second Street and Central Ave. is poorly marked and motorists never pay attention to it, anyway. On more than a few occasions, I’ve had angry drivers honk and curse (and nearly run me over) at me for interrupting their speedy escape out of a Central Ave. traffic jam. The situation a few blocks up, at the intersection of Broadway, Central Ave. and Third Street, is even worse, with motorists going on and off of Third Street ignoring crosswalks, walk signals and hapless pedestrians with equal aplomb. The traffic lights at this already dangerous intersection were out of order on Sunday afternoon and still weren’t working as of 9:45 a.m. this morning.

The Dover Police Department has stepped up crosswalk patrols in the last year, and while the DPD does a fine job, it’s not enough. The layout of Dover’s downtown encourages this sort of behavior from drivers – and, for that matter, pedestrians. Dover’s pedestrians are by no means blameless, but getting around by crosswalk is no piece of cake. While there are four crosswalks in a four-block stretch on Central Ave. (from the intersection of Broadway/Third Street down to the intersection of Washington Street), there are only two crosswalks on Main Street and relatively few as you head north on Central Ave. There aren’t enough crosswalks, and the crosswalks we do have are just poorly placed. And those walk signals synced up with the traffic lights? Also fairly useless. They last all of 15 seconds–that is, when they’re actually working; if you want to (legally) cross the street at Broadway and Central when a big ‘ol freight train is coming through town, you might as well find a seat and wait it out.

There are improvements to be made–in fact, the city paid for a detailed traffic study a few years ago, but few changes have been made. Our fearless City Council instead devotes much of its time to shenanigans like this: “educational resolutions” that are little more than thinly-veiled personal conflicts between counselors. Local politics are always full of such nonsense, but Dover’s council is more egregious than most, with council business overwhelmingly taken up with discussions of Byzantine email policies and minute details about procedural questions that the average citizen doesn’t give a damn about. Some members of the council recognize this, at least (dubbing the whole motley group “collectively dysfunctional”), but that does little to change the fact the council does little of consequence. It’s not glamorous, but local politics is near about the only area where one can make decisions that have a discernible impact on citizens’ daily lives – an opportunity the majority of council members sees fit to squander in favor of petty political games.

Some progress might be made if City Council members were forced to be downtown pedestrians for a day. Climbing over snowbanks only to get mowed down by some angry driver might put counselors more in touch with the city’s actual problems. More likely, though, they’ll get hung up arguing about who crosses the street first and never make it off the sidewalk.

When Sean S. Cunningham began work on the original “Friday the 13th” almost 30 years ago, he had nothing more than a title and a vague idea about making a horror film in the vein of John Carpenter’s ultra-successful “Halloween”. In the intervening three decades, “Friday” became one of the most profitable horror franchises ever, and Jason Voorhees, the machete-wielding killer who loves hockey masks and hates campers, became a movie icon, spawning 10 sequels, dozens of comic books and novels, and even a video game. Jason’s been everywhere from Camp Crystal Lake—his home turf and the site of his many crimes against morally-bankrupt summer visitors—and Manhattan to the reaches of outer space and, appropriately enough, hell itself.

With all that history, director Marcus Nispel and writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift certainly had more to work than Cunningham did for their reboot of “Friday the 13th”. But remakes and reboots of beloved series are always a gamble, particularly for horror flicks like “Friday”, which come with a built-in legion of hardcore fans eager to howl about even the tiniest misstep. The thing about the “Friday” franchise, though, is the movies, though iconic, were never all that great to begin with. The original “Friday the 13^th” still pales in comparison to “Halloween” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and a reboot, even one helmed by a merely competent directory like Nispel, couldn’t be any worse than, say, “Friday the 13^th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan”.

And thankfully, it’s not. Nispel’s “Friday the 13^th” is about what you’d expect from a “Friday” movie. Good-looking twenty-somethings get maimed and murdered in the New Jersey wilderness by a giant dude in a hockey mask. There’s a fair amount of boob shots, drug use and bad jokes, and all the crimes against morality (and humor) are balanced out by Jason’s machete of vengeance. It’s neither scary nor suspenseful, but it is entertaining and fun—exactly the sort of mindless entertainment the “Friday” films have always been about.

The last two “Friday” films saw Jason in space (2001’s “Jason X”) and facing off against Freddy Krueger (the razor-fingered wise-cracking antagonist from “A Nightmare on Elm Street”, also scheduled for an upcoming remake) in “Freddy vs. Jason”. For the reboot, Nispel and company take a back-to-basics approach to the deadly summertime proceedings at Crystal Lake. “Friday” starts with a quick recap—in a pre-credit sequence set in 1980, we see Jason’s mother, Pamela, ready to kill the last surviving counselor at Camp Crystal Lake. Little Jason drowned in the lake, it seems, and the camp’s counselors were too busy drinking, smoking and screwing to pay attention. But Miss Voorhees’ vengeance is (ahem) cut short when her head gets lopped off by a machete.

The main story picks up 30 years later, when a group of teens, including Whitney Miller (Amanda Righetti), go poking around the abandoned ruins of Camp Crystal Lake in search of a mythical crop of pot. They’re all quickly dispatched by Jason himself (hulking stuntman Derek Mears), who, it turns out, didn’t actually drown all those years ago. He’s carrying a grudge about his dead mom—and packing the machete that killed her. Six months later, Whitney’s brother, Clay (Jared Padalecki), turns up in Crystal Lake, searching for his missing sister. The locals tell him to buzz off, but Clay’s certain Whitney can be found in the area. During his search, he runs into Jenna (Danielle Panabaker) and her friends, a collection of stereotypes out of an Abercrombie catalogue on their way to a friend’s summer house on the lake, ready to engage in the sort of behavior Jason thoroughly dislikes.

And so it goes. A hot chick gets impaled on a coat hook, a dumb jock gets an arrow through his eye, and, well, you can imagine the rest. The focus in “Friday” has always been on creating inventive kills for Jason, and while writers Shannon and Swift (who also worked on “Freddy vs. Jason”) come up short with the murder set-pieces in the second half, the first half of the film is wonderfully tense. A well-placed bear trap, a sleeping bag and a roaring campfire are all used to create one of the film’s truly suspenseful moments. Nispel, a veteran music video director who helmed the 2003 remake of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, still doesn’t have a handle on creating mood or atmosphere, and all too often relies on dirty, run-down buildings and decaying antiques and children’s toys as visual shorthand for spookiness. Nispel could probably make a kick-ass movie about a haunted antique shop, but here, it just doesn’t work.

Another thing that doesn’t work in “Friday” is the music. Harry Manfredini’s memorable score from the original “Friday”, featuring the trademark “ki ki ki, ma ma ma” sound, was instrumental in setting up all of the scares. Steve Jablonsky’s new score pales in comparison, and the occasional incidental electronic music really kill the mood. Shannon and Swift make some curious choices in the script, too, particularly Jason’s seeming mastery of building elaborate underground tunnels and setting up electrical systems. With an unstoppable killing machine like Jason, fewer explanations (and painstakingly crafted feats of engineering) are generally better.

For all the things don’t work in “Friday”, there are plenty that do work, and it all adds up to big, dumb, disposable fun. It’s not the greatest of the “Friday” films, but it’s by no means the worst. Twelve films and hundreds of millions in box office profits have proven the “Friday” formula works. Nispel and producer Michael Bay finally seem to have figured out that, if a remake must be done, sticking to the tried and true recipe, however bloody it is, is a safe bet.

“I think it’s going to be a long process,” says Matt Farley, the Manchester-based co-writer, producer and star of “Freaky Farley.” “We’re only just now discovering great movies made in 1982. In a way, maybe we’ve made this movie for kids in the 2020s to watch during slumber parties.”

In comparison to other homemade horror projects and no-budget productions, “Farley” holds up pretty well. Drawing inspiration from the low-budget horror flicks that flooded video store shelves in the 1980s, Farley and his collaborator Charles Roxburgh have created a movie that not only succeeds at being bad, but actually turns out to be pretty funny and wonderfully strange, to boot. In true cult movie fashion, “Freaky Farley” was screened on Halloween night with “The Other Side of Hell,” another New Hampshire-produced horror flick, at the Ioka Theater in Exeter.

“A lot of horror movie fans are big on the blood and guts and gore, but we kind of like the strange, awkward moments … that happen between characters,” Farley says. “Half the time, you’ve got a bad script performed by bad actors, and those things together make for wonderful viewing.”

“Farley” fully delivers on that promise. Released in 2007, the film presents viewers with a stable of weird, unhinged characters, misfits and freaks who proceed to interact with each other in surprising ways. At the head of the pack is Farley Wilder (played by Matt Farley himself), a loveable loser in his late 20s. Farley is well known throughout his small New England town. He never left for college, can’t get a job and spends his days wandering around town, spying on pretty girls and acting generally creepy. When he meets an attractive, adventurous young woman named Scarlett, Farley falls in love—much to the annoyance of his father, an over-bearing Dr. Phil-esque talk radio host who treats Farley like a child. But Farley’s strange ways are nothing compared to the other odd folk in town, from the ninja who hangs out in the local park to the surly hobo who tries to warn everyone about the monsters that live in the woods around town.

Movies like “Silent Night, Deadly Night 2,” “The Pit” and “Memorial Valley Massacre” all influenced the feel of “Freaky Farley.” The scare factor is low, but that’s beside the point. There are moments of surreal humor that really make the film, like the scene where Farley, the Witch and the Ninja team up to fight some monsters.
“For me, the best thing (about bad movies) is the moment in the movie when you sit back and say, ‘I can’t believe this movie exists,’” Farley says.

Farley and Roxburgh focus on the freaks and weirdoes that typically populate the edges of slasher flicks and monster movies. “The characters in low-budget movies and the actors aren’t very good, so you might as well make the characters strange, so that it’s going to be interesting for the audience,” Farley said.

Thankfully, Farley and Roxburgh do strange really well. The two have been friends since college and in that time have self-published three books that review obscure 1970s and ’80s horror flicks and produced five feature-length movies (most of which were about druids, Farley said, with titles like “Druid Gladiator Clone” and “Druids, Druids Everywhere”). “Farley” was their first feature shot on film (rather than digital) and is a tribute to the kinds of movies they love.

“A lot of those (filmmakers) wanted to make a movie and got just barely enough money and got friends and family together and made it. We decided, ‘Let’s create the same exact circumstances for ourselves.’ We only spent money on film—80 percent of the budget was just paying for the film and developing.”

Farley lives and works in Manchester, and much of “Freaky Farley” was shot in New Hampshire. Farley and Roxburgh recently wrapped up work on “Monsters, Marriage and Murder in Manch-Vegas,” their latest movie. It’s a “little more ambitious” than “Farley,” according to Farley, mostly because there are more characters in the film. The cast of “Farley” mostly consists of friends and family of the filmmakers, which presents its own challenges.

“The one thing you need to think about when you’re not paying actors is, are they going to show up? We’ve been making movies since college, so we know all the little tricks you can do to get around a lack of budget,” Farley says.

“Freaky Farley” is available at www.filmbaby.com and sales have been modest, according to Farley. But, it’s still building buzz. Since its release last year, “Farley” has been screened at a number of venues throughout the state (including a showing at West End Studio Theater earlier this month) along with “The Other Side of Hell.” Farley said “Other Side” creator Jim McCrackin has been instrumental in getting “Farley” out in front of audiences.

Already, though, “Farley” seems to be building the kind of audience Farley and Roxburgh had in mind when making the film. Farley works at a group home for troubled teens and has showed them “Farley” and a rough cut of “Monsters, Marriage and Murder,” and they loved it.

“They get a kick out of it,” he says. “They all want roles in the next movie.”

Originally published in The Wire, Oct. 29, 2008.

The summer movie landscape isn’t all that barren, though–at least not my personal landscape. One of the last few independent video stores in town is ditching their movies and becoming a full-time tanning salon/Asian-influenced cafe. On the way home from work tonight, I picked up some VHS goodies: Horror Express (starring both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing), Satan’s Blade (which just had some neat box art), and Zombie Lake, which improbably features one of my favorite plot devices–Nazi zombies rising up from the bottom of a lake to munch on people. Nazi zombies are worse than regular zombies, no doubt, and they’ve always been a favorite since that bit in the sort-of-climax of the Illuminatus! Trilogy when the AMA’s concert resurrects some Nazi zombies during a music festival. Reviews will follow, of course, most likely up on cinema-suicide.com, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, buy some art. That’s right, you heard me. VeggieArtGirl.com, the official online store of artist extraordinaire Stacey Lucas is up and running, though it’s still very much in beta. Stacey is providing all the awesome art, of course, and I’m providing what little internets-skills I have. And on a related note, Stacey’s real-life gallery, The Art Barn, is kicking off its second season with a grand opening on Saturday, June 7. There’s going to be some cool local art along with live music by Jim Tyrrell and others.

My mouse (of the computer variety, not the cheese-eating kind) is having some sort of robot freak-out, and so this Thursday evening edition of The Shameless Plug Hour is going to have to come to an end.