If all goes according to plan when this is published, old Diamond Joe is currently doddering towards the Oval Office with what’s left of his brain leaking out of his ears, leaving all us still tacitly under house arrest as the novel coronavirus continues to rip through our population centers completely unabated to wipe a single tear from our eyes and whisper, “now the healing can begin” as we strap in for another four years of the Democrats shitting themselves and crying nonstop as they fail to pass even the most basic quality of life increases while all the big brain think tank pundits and those drips at Crooked Media talk through their giant teeth about how that’s actually a good thing while petting their identical hypoallergenic dogs.
If it doesn’t, however, we’re probably watching in horror as the MyPillow flag flies over the White House as we cry out for President Xi to occupy us like we’ve always secretly wanted. At least then we’d probably be able to go outside sometime in late 2021.
But enough of that. Here at the creep zone, I’m dedicated to talking about all the dumb bullshit I’ve been filling my head with since quarantine started, starting with a little TV Talk.
The TV Zone: Lexx, Season 1
I’ve been watching Lexx season 1 during this last month of quarantine because I’m finally reaching a point where I need to beam the weirdest things I can possibly find into my brain in order to make sense of what’s going on in the real world. And Lexx provides, since it’s a low budget Canadian science fiction show from the 90s which means 1.) its premise is absolutely insane and 2.) the fact that it’s dedicated to showing you the most goofy shit in the world is tempered by its shoestring budget and awful special effects.
The premise of Lexx is this: four idiot freaks of the highest caliber accidentally come into possession of The Lexx, a big living ship that looks like a phallus and is allegedly the most powerful weapon in the known universe. They steal it from His Divine Shadow, a guy wearing a big hood who’s part of a long line of people who have been possessed by an ancient bug intelligence, during a prison break on the Cluster, a planet that forms the capital state of The League of 20,000 Planets. If at any point you’re tempted to say, “actually that sounds kind of awesome,” I beg you to reconsider because the people who steal the Lexx look like this:
Not to generalize about the 90s but this is the most 90s-ass cast photo I’ve ever seen in my entire life
From left to right our heroes are Kai, an undead assassin with a really stellar bouffant who’s “the last of the Brunnen-G” and didn’t have any memories of his previous life until he touched a brain that belonged to the guy who killed him and got his memories back, Zev Bellringer, a woman who was subject to a botched bimbofication procedure that made her mega horny but also part lizard (is this real? remind me to look up later) and Stanley Tweedle, a pathetic worm of a man who is awful to look at. There’s also 790, the robot head, who got the brain part of Zev’s aforementioned bimbofication procedure which basically means every time he and Zev are onscreen together he’s just shrieking and howling about how bad he wants to have sex with her. He also looks fucking disgusting because he has like, human lips that keep moving around as he talks about “the Zev Zev.” Really repulsive.
The basic arc of a Lexx episode is generally: the crew of the Lexx finds a planet after having an issue with the ship or they’re bored, they go down to the planet and then are just sort of menaced by some kind of pervert for 95 minutes before contriving a way to get back onto the ship and blow up whatever planet they were on before going like “wow, that sure was weird, huh!”
The exact nature of the pervert always varies, however. Sometimes it’s Tim Curry attempting to impregnate Stanley with 2,000-year-old cum because the gender machine on the planet the Lexx landed on mistook him for a woman (classic mix-up!). Sometimes it’s Rutger Hauer, who’s been infected with a literal brain worm he contracted from a German model that he needs to keep from devouring his brain by grinding up people into a phosphorescent green liquid he then ingests in order to immediately achieve violent climax.
Usually there’s also cutaways to what’s going on in the rest of the galaxy with His Divine Shadow so as to give the sense that something is “happening” outside of the Lexx’s little foibles, and to its credit does produce one genuinely incredible piece of television, which is: at one point in the fourth and final episode, His Divine Shadow institutes “The Cleansing,” where he demands every person living in the League of 20,000 Planets offer up their flesh in sacrifice to him so he can become “The Gigashadow.” Pretty bad ass, right?
Perhaps, but the way this is depicted is one guy running across a sparsely decorated soundstage going “no…! No…!” while a Zamboni with a clown face on the front of it rolls really slowly towards him, and when it finally catches up with him a bunch of loose bones just get spit out of a slot in the back?
This is awful…clowns are normally associated with mirth and good cheer…I hate to see their good name sullied like this
What the fuck! I wish someone would do that to me. I would love to be loose bones. If Joe Biden doesn’t draft legislation to put me in the Clown Zamboni and make me bones within his first 100 days in office I am never voting for a Democrat ever again!
Outside of the Lexx’s crew being menaced by a weird guy wearing knockoff fetishwear and whatever’s going on with the Clown Zamboni, there’s a lot of talk about time being circular and how the end of time is just the beginning of the same things happening again, but newer! This usually involves a shot of the Time Prophet delivering exposition, who for reference looks like this:
Sorry but this has to be some form of elder abuse
Aside from looking like someone’s grandmother who wandered onto set one day and then didn’t leave, the Time Prophet’s job is to say shit like “I have seen the beginning of the end of all things, and when the last of the Brunnen-G has died, it will only be the beginning of the end for the Bug Civilization” which should be familiar to anyone who’s seen Aqua Teen Hunger Force. But every time she announces a proclamation about what comes to pass, she then goes “unless that doesn’t happen. I’m not sure; I don’t really know.”
Yeah Time Prophet, I don’t really know either.
The Sweetie Of The Week: Thomas Jane in Face/Off (1997)
I watched John Woo’s Face/Off (1997) for the first time this weekend. When Sean Archer (Nicholas Cage, pretending to be John Travolta) infiltrates the supermax blacksite oil rig prison the FBI apparently puts people in after he adopts the identity of Castor Troy (also Nicholas Cage, but eventually John Travolta pretending to be Nicholas Cage), I admit I was delighted to find the first 45 minutes of this movie are just “a federal cop has the worst idea of all time and it leads to his arch-nemesis stealing his face and nailing his wife for like a week while he’s stuck in jail.”
However, I was also fixated on the character of Burke Hicks, a fancy little Southern guy who Archer-as-Troy has to interact with in prison despite not knowing how the Real Castor Troy is associated with him. And when he comes onscreen I thought, “man, this special little man looks a lot like Thomas Jane, who is widely beloved (by me) for his performance as Frank Castle in 2004’s The Punisher.” And guess what! It was! No hiding that smile, mister!
I JUST think he’s NEAT
LOOK at your little GLASSES! Great work, a perfect little fella; no notes. Congrats Thomas, you earned it. Anyway Face/Off whips ass and there’s a scene near the end where a whole loft full of hardened criminals just go “you’re gonna take his face…off…” like 30 times when Archer-as-Troy says he’s going to cut his face off of Sean Archer (who’s currently being played by John Travolta pretending to be Nic Cage). Incredbile movie, worst premise of all time, my only notes are that Archer should have had to stay Nic Cage forever and we never find out whether or not Castor Troy was better about satisfying Sean Archer’s wife’s needs than Archer was. Big plot hole.
The Digestif: “I Hate Myself,” Moonhearts
That’s all for this week folks. I’ll be back next week talking about something else. So see you little creeps later.
xoxo,
The Giant Creep Who Makes All The Rules