Threat Quality Press

Spider-Man: The Musical; Actually Not Such A Bad Idea?

Posted in Braak, poetics with tags Braak, theater on July 6, 2009 by threatqualitypress

Maybe you’ve heard about Spider-Man: The Musical? The big-budget broadway musical being directed by Julie Taymor, with music by U2, and featuring Alan Cumming and Evan Rachel Wood? (I’m going to be honest: I don’t know who Evan Rachel Wood is.)

You probably thought what most people thought when you head this: “That’s…stupid.” If you’re like me, or Holland, or anyone who’s seen Batman Beyond, probably your first thought was of the hilarious Batman musical that Bruce Wayne stomped out of before intermission.

I am here to tell you: Spider-Man the Musical is not such a bad idea.

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Summer Movie A-Go-Go: “Up”

Posted in Jeff Holland, Threat Quality, reviews with tags Jeff Holland, Pixar, Up on July 3, 2009 by threatqualitypress

A couple weeks back, Chris suggested you go see Pixar’s Up.

Now, that probably should’ve been enough. It is a Pixar movie, and as should be pretty obvious by now, Pixar movies are both a) good family movies (not “kids” movies – by and large, Pixar’s films deal with themes that are at least as relevant to adults as children), and b) good movies to see on a big screen, because they’re just fricking beautiful to look at.

But if you still aren’t somehow sold, here are a few more reasons to go see Up:

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Summer Movie A-Go-Go: “The Hangover”

Posted in Jeff Holland, Threat Quality, reviews on July 2, 2009 by threatqualitypress

It’s surprising to say this about a comedy, but I think the success of The Hangover may be its plot. Plenty of comedies have an ambling, barely-held-together logic from scene to scene, more interested in setting up a joke than explaining it in the context of a larger story (this isn’t necessarily a criticism, just an observation – I find Anchorman’s news-team gangwar scene absolutely hilarious, but I defy you to tell me how it makes sense in a story context).

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Today in Idiots: EVERYONE

Posted in Braak with tags Braak on July 1, 2009 by threatqualitypress

Haha, not really. But I’m going to take a minute here and bitch about something. I hang out, periodically, in places like io9, where people talk about science fiction and movies &c., and I’ve noticed a recurring theme: everyone keeps pissing me the fuck off.

Not everyone. Just a handful of people, who write with a handful of sort of rote responses to any kind of argument or discussion. These are not trolling, per se, where the intention is to just make everyone angry (pathetically easy to achieve in my case), and they aren’t specifically counter-arguments. They’re more like anti-arguments–things that people say primarily for the purpose of curtailing discussion, usually because they’re embarrassed about liking something stupid. Worst offenders, after the jump.

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An Adult Male Watches ‘Twilight’

Posted in Threat Quality with tags Jeff Holland, Twilight on June 29, 2009 by threatqualitypress

Because it is vitally important to me to see what the “kids” are “down with,” I watched Twilight. This was, quite possibly, a huge mistake.

We’re gonna get into this, with three caveats: A) Being as I’m not a teenaged girl, I know I am not the target audience for this movie; 2) I am talking from here on out about the immensely popular movie, and not the big fat-ass book it was whittled down from; and III) I KNOW I AM NOT THE AUDIENCE FOR THIS MOVIE.

That said, I am speaking as an utter expert on this teen-culture phenomenon. So I can say this: Twilight is one fucked-up piece of teen-culture phenomenon.

Allow me to summarize the film’s plot, omitting remarkably few details:

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The Epistemology of Elephants

Posted in Braak with tags Braak, what the hell am I even saying anymore? on June 29, 2009 by threatqualitypress

Okay, so there’s five blind men, right? And they go into this room that has an elephant in it. I guess someone who isn’t blind told them there was an elephant in it, so that’s how they know. Anyway, they go into the room. The first guy touches the elephant’s tusk, and says to himself, “Hey, an elephant is like a spear.” The second guy touches the elephant’s side and says, “Hey, an elephant is like a wall.” Third guy touches the leg, says and elephant is like a tree. Fourth guy touches the tail, thinks an elephant is like a rope. Last guy touches the trunk, concludes that an elephant must be like a snake.

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Strange days indeed, huh?

Posted in Threat Quality with tags Celebrity Death, Farrah Fawcett, Jeff Holland, Michael Jackson on June 25, 2009 by threatqualitypress

Then again, it’s Michael Jackson – all his days were strange.

Like (I imagine) most people, I have some mildly conflicting feelings about Michael Jackson’s death. I do respect the impact he had on pop music and nobody with at least one good ear can tell me his 70’s-80’s output wasn’t awesome. But I’m not terribly broken up by the death of – come on, let’s face facts here – a child molester. Or, if you would like to ignore the many horrible accounts to come out of his civil trial and just focus on the documentaries of the 90’s, at the very least a deeply disturbed man no parent in their right mind would allow their child to spend unsupervised time with.

But mostly, I feel some sense of relief, both for the ultimate legacy of the man, and my own mental health for not having to sit through what would have been next sad phase of Jackson’s life – the one where he ends up penniless and friendless, pathetically attempting comeback after diminishing comeback.

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Live like a rhino, not like a cow (?!)

Posted in Jeff Holland, Threat Quality with tags Jeff Holland, rhino living on June 25, 2009 by threatqualitypress

Trivia night had been pushed back because of a leadership motivation seminar called “Rhino Living,” held in our usual spot. So when we were finally allowed to file in, we were privy to the instructional materials. Which were enough for me to come to this conclusion:

Successful people get to be that way because they don’t let nonsense buzz-words like “internal logic” or “situational reasoning” get in the way of their goals.

How else to explain the central question posed by the seminar: “Would you rather be a rhino, or a cow?” (Which has not yet been made into a special on Spike TV, but just wait a few seasons for the premiere of their sure-hit show, “Nature’s Most Unlikely Grudge-Matches.”)

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Zen and the Art of Being Chris Braak

Posted in Braak, poetics with tags Braak on June 24, 2009 by threatqualitypress

I am, and have often been, fascinated by the idea of self-improvement. I know what you’re thinking, obviously. You’re thinking, “Chris, that’s nonsense! How could you possibly need to improve yourself?”

And you’re right, of course. But that doesn’t stop me from thinking about the idea of self-improvement in a sort of abstract way, the way I might think about what it would be like to have my own spaceship, or to be a velociraptor (answers: more trouble than it’s worth; awesome).

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Reviews: Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern Vampires

Posted in Braak, reviews with tags Braak on June 23, 2009 by threatqualitypress

I have watched with joy and dismay as my friend Joe Laycock, with whom I attended Hampshire College, by dint of research and training, rapidly exceeded my own ad-hoc and eclectic folkloric knowledge. Joy because it’s good to know a guy that knows about this stuff; dismay because I hate the idea that people are better at things than me.

Joe’s book, Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern Vampires, is a piece that I could have never written. It is an ethnographic study of modern, self-identified “vampires,” and it is exhaustive, clear, intelligent, and wholly non-judgmental.

[UPDATE: Another review about the book, this time from a community insider, here.]

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