Surprisingly strong to most people!

From what I’ve seen of the average person’s attitude towards sickness, they could be gushing blood out of every orifice, but if it’s spring or fall, they’ll write it off as “allergies.”

I live my live similar to the little guy from Frogger, but in addition to avoiding cars as I race across the freeway to get to the swamp, I’m also avoiding germs and viruses.

I was a fan of social distancing before it was cool and then before it became a hackneyed punch line. I believe it’s part of the standard issue CF package, though technically it’s only encouraged to stay 6 feet away from other people with CF, I don’t want to be discriminatory, so I apply the rule to everyone. They actually made a movie about this rule called Five Feet Apart (there’s a plot reason it’s only 5 feet). Back when Twitter was a place where people would see the things you post, I talked enough pre-release shit on the premise of that movie that the pr team gave me free tickets to see it early. It was fine, though no challenger to the throne of the best cystic fibrosis movie, Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist.

Still, I wished it was a bigger hit so I would have an easy touchstone for people when they got too close to the goods. Of course, when Covid hit everyone learned about social distancing and—spoiler if you’re reading this after whatever our dinosaur asteroid moment ends up being—most people still didn’t understand it.

Throughout it all, even back when I used to drive to work and go to an actual office instead of running reports by myself in a room with a roughly 67:1 ratio of action figures to people, there was one get out of jail free card that everyone would pull in order to travel unrestricted amongst the population as snots flew at every angle from their face: “allergies.”

I have seen some shockingly sick people claim they had “allergies” though they never had them before. I’m convinced I know at least two people who could have a limb drop off and still blame it on “allergies.” Towards the end of the pre-vaccine era days of lockdown, I started wearing masks in my own damn house because of the amount of “allergies” I kept hearing about.

Assuming my life could actually be viewed like a game of Frogger, I imagine it would be very funny to watch the various ways I move and slide to stay 6 feet away from people and their “allergies”. Sometimes I’ll head to another room to look at a thing for a view minutes. Sometimes I’ll try to place objects between us, as if I were taming a lion or something. But never will I ever trust someone when they say they have “allergies.”

Hot Competition for the Worst Monster Thing

Nineteen years ago, I woke up early for my third shift job and dragged my ass into a theater to see my beloved Universal Monsters officially come crashing into the 21st century in the form of the film Van Helsing.

I fucking hated it.

It had the aesthetic of a PS2 game and the soul of a JNCO jeans fashion show. It probably would have been a great film had it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of hundreds of millions, but it was doomed to mediocrity by the ability of its makers to throw money at the problem. For a number of years, I referred to it as my least favorite movie, until I saw the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, which felt like two hours of Platinum Dunes gloating about the $10 they swindled from me.

For the record, that film is only 95 minutes long.

Still, I’ve long thought of Van Helsing as the worst Universal Monsters thing, though Crazy Dracula for the Game Boy Color is probably worse, the game gets a pass because I didn’t know it existed until a couple of weeks ago. And I know Van Helsing is worse than the 90s Monster Force cartoon, because the Wolf Man in Monster Force kind of sounds like Hulk Hogan and that’s funny.

I’m not sure if Van Helsing is worse that Renfield.

The first 30 minutes of Renfield were so rough that my wife said it caused her physical pain and asked me to shut it off. I ended up watching the rest of it and I’m not entirely sure why. It feels like a movie assembled by committee, designed to hit every demographic but swinging so wild it doesn’t come into contact with anything. The jokes don’t land, the violence is bloody but toothless and though it gets points for it’s Suspiria-like dedication to color, it’s rarely interesting to look at. I’ve seen reviews that say Nic Cage is good as Dracula, but I think I may have watched a different movie.

Again, it probably would have been great at a tenth of the budget.

There’s something to be said for limitations, though it’s hard to articulate it without it coming out as gatekeeping. I love the fact that I can make all sorts of things using my phone and my laptop, but sometimes the easy solution is not the best solution. Like it’s easy to use digital blood, but I’m not sure it’s ever been good to use digital blood. Or maybe it’s not easy, I’ve never tried it and I never will. But it’s the current accepted solution and it mostly sucks. This is the old man in me coming out, but the accepted solution does not mean it’s the best solution.

Which brings us to Artificial Intelligence.

Being known as a guy who likes computers, means I’m often asked about my opinion on AI. The truth is, I’m not all that interested in it yet. I’ve dabbled a bit and it’s probably going to take my job at some point—which is different from it actually being able to do my job—but I won’t be fully on board until some maniac uses it to make a truly stunning piece of work. Unfortunately, I feel like we’ve set up AI for success by beating the life out of everything until it’s so bland that it’s not a huge step to believe a couple of prompts into a computer could make a reasonable facsimile.

I’m not sure AI could make a Dracula or even a Nosferatu in Venice, but I’m pretty sure if you fed Chat GPT 3 episodes of What We Do in the Shadows, a random NCIS: New Orleans, and a Stuart Smalley sketch, you could get a Renfield.

Things I Like

Had some big whiffs with movies this week. In addition to Renfield, I watched The Last Seduction on Criterion Channel, which played like a too hot for tv episode of Silk Stalkings that  soured itself by coming out of nowhere with a real Ace Ventura ending.

However, we finished the first season of AMC’s Interview with a Vampire last week, a thing I walked into with much trepidation and walked out of ready to read the book for the first time. Maybe watch that if you haven’t yet.