Pop Culture Petri Dish

Two Petri Dish Entries in a week? Jeez, you'd think it was Horrorpalooza season. Actually, it sort of feels that way. Crypticon , Seattle's first-ever honest-to-gore horror movie convention, storms the Sea-Tac Doubletree Inn this weekend. In an earthshakingly surprising development, yours truly will be there with bells (or maybe rattling dungeon chains) on. There's a pretty terrific line-up of celebrity guests scheduled, including cast members from the original Friday the 13th , Rob Zombie's well-received Halloween remake, The Devil's Rejects , and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (super-huzzah!). And the scheduled events sound like a kick and a half: If doing an acting workshop alongside Bill Johnson (Leatherface from TCM2 ) doesn't float your boat most mightily, you've stumbled into the wrong Blog by mistake, Biff. This is the very first horror convention in this area, friends and neighbors, so you best get out and support it if'n you want more. Cryptic...

I freely admit to wearing many Geek hats--Movie Geek, Horror Geek, Music Geek. But one label I'm not as worthy of is that of Comic Book Geek. That's why I love the Emerald City ComiCon: It's a great way to get caught up with an art form I've always enjoyed but don't always keep up with. The 2008 Emerald City ComiCon hit the Convention Center in Seattle on May 10 and 11, and yours truly was on hand to drink deeply from the Nerd Well on the 10th. Technically, I was on assignment to cover the Wil Wheaton panel and do some videotaping for ComicBookResources.com . But there was more than enough time to explore, play, and have fun. Like any Gen X'er worth his salt, I spent a lot of my boyhood with my nose in comic books, so a trip through many of the dealers' booths stoked some major memory nodes. Most of my knowledge of the medium is rooted solidly in the 1970's, so seeing back issues of Jack Kirby's post-apocalyptic Tarzan mutation Kamandi and obscure ...

I'm not in the mood to waste your precious time painting a pretty introductory picture here, so enclosed please find a Whitman's Sampler of the media I've been imbibing in of late. TV: America's Next Top Model --Masterpiece Theater? Ha! Some critically-ballyhooed HBO tele-series? Feh! ANTM serves up some of the most entertaining drama and silliness to be found on the boob tube. It ain't art, but it's taught the missus and me mucho about the fashion industry (ringleader Tyra Banks knows the modelling biz like nobody's business), and always serves up prime TV reality characters: looks-like-a-drag-queen Dominique is just begging to be smacked hard, but she does make for great TV. For the record, I'm rooting for soft-spoken nice girl Anya. Film: Robin B. Hood (on DVD from Dragon Dynasty)--Regular visitors to the Dish know that yours truly harbors much love for the great Jackie Chan, but even this hardcore fan has gotta cop to the man's spotty track ...

Hearing of the death of movie legend Charlton Heston at 84 , from this corner at least, is tantamount to seeing one of the tallest, most majestic trees in the cinema forest felled. The hell with his oft-paradoxical political views : Heston was loved and highly-regarded by co-workers, and he leaves behind a formidable legacy of film work. His unconventional but striking looks, his intensity and the rich cadence of that voice indelibly etched itself on the collective consciousness. I've literally known the man's work as long as I've known life, and his passing feels like the loss of a member of the family. Charlton Heston represented one of the last sustained links between the glamour of the traditional Hollywood Studio System and the modern dream factory we know today. Unlike many of his peers, Heston sustained his relevance through some of American Cinema's most radical upheavals. Yeah, he could gnaw scenery with the relentlessness of a swarm of locusts, but his longevi...

Work's been clubbing me upside the head so thoroughly that I haven't been imbibing in much pop culture anything lately. Put bluntly, I ain't had the time...With one exception. Unlike most sane working stiffs who actually use their lunch breaks to, you know, relax and eat lunch, I hit the pavement and walk my metaphoric arse off during that precious half-hour. Headphones rest on my noggin, connected to an ancient Discman as I get a lungful of fresh air and an earful of music, old and new. Here's what's been getting the blood pumping (and the feet moving) of late--old stuff division. The Easybeats' biggest claim to fame may have been their international hit, 'Friday on My Mind' (covered by David Bowie on his covers LP, Pin Ups ), but Varese Sarabande's compilation CD The Very Best of the Easybeats proves that classic tune was no fluke. With all due respect to the Bee Gees , the Easys really were Australia's closest equivalent to the Beatles, a Br...

My mom is the greatest. Just saying. Of course, everyone in their right mind should say such things about their mom. But all partisan bias aside, my mom really is the greatest. Anna Prizina grew up in a modest working-class home in Arkansas in the 1940s and '50s. She essentially raised her three siblings on her own in the wake of her father's untimely passing and her mother's mental illness, and was out working assembly-line jobs while still in her teens. She met a blustery-but-loveable serviceman named Gerald Kay, fell in love, and together they built a stable family despite the tumult of military life. She's a sensitive and very soulful woman with kind eyes that instantly make you feel comfortable and safe: That great warmth is probably her paramount gift as a parent and a human being. She taught me a lot about consideration, kindness, humility, and working hard for your place in the world. A devout Catholic, she's one of the few genuinely religious people I know...

On an elemental level, I'm pretty ill-equipped to comment on the life of Heath Ledger, the highly-regarded Australian actor found dead on January 22 at at the tragically-young age of 28. Up until a week before he died, I'd never even seen one of his movies. Being a good pop culture/media sponge, though, I'd followed the man's career from afar for quite a few years. I'd avoided his early breakout movies Ten Things I Hate About You and A Knight's Tale due to my utter lack of fondness for the genres they represented (synthetic nineties teen comedy and willfully anachronistic MTV-ized period piece respectively). Never got around to seeing any of his other movies, either (though five of 'em, ironically, have been on my Netflix cue for a long time, periodically supplanted by my spur-of-the-moment fetishes for blaxploitation flicks, old-school Japanese horror movies, etc). All along, though, I'd continue to read interviews with Ledger or see him on some froth...