To celebrate, I re-read all my tweets in chronological order. Some were dumb, some were sad, but many were funny (I’m not shallow if I laugh at jokes I forgot I wrote four months ago). Here are my Fifty Funniest Tweets, enjoy!

• On larry king: cher was at a party with val kilmer and MJ wouldn’t stop talking about the socks kilmer was wearing
• Nothin left to say about Transformers 2 but it is terrible- it farted in my mouth
• Applying to jobs on a bus is a new low – or high!
• it’s hot enough to eat eggs
• i had a dream i Tweeted about seeing a commercial for Applebee’s honey flavored toilet paper
• i hope no one discovers my secret underwater base
• “Let’s send Bishop to get us more wings” – Kevin, LV-426
• The Little Couple is like watching short paint dry
• what? my swiss bank account is empty!!
• of all the days to get flashbanged
• @declensions flying over Kuat Drive Yards: so many unfinished Super Star Destroyers
• I need to go running before it starts to rain > i am made out of candy and earthworms
• need to go running before it starts to rain > i am made out of candy and earthworms
• they should make butter pecan gum
• It’s a tom sizemore kind of day in brooklyn, usa
• every commercial that features 3-4 idiot guys sitting around their place of work “riffing” on their lunch/breakfast is a failure
• I’ve seen lot of boring WW2 movies but Inglourious Basterds is really goddamn boring
• On any given day there’s thousands of lumpy dudes traveling across America on business
• Atlanta Hr. X: 2 hours at airport down, 2 to go. Urge to buy and read political thriller paperback rising…
• marvel x disney: where’s the crossover where I get a job
• Krull is so money
• pretty disappointed with the reuben from katz’s deli i had tonight. i barely even have indigestion
• ate a few too many spiders’ eggs last night *urp*
• US Open: Launchpad McQuack v Paul Simon
• I hate generic star wars references
• not enough helicopters solving crimes in this Fall’s TV lineup
• 3000 calories down and out at the international house of panfakes
• wearing my hulk hands to an interview this morning
• didn’t get job – said “it’s clobberin time!” when they asked about my skill with Excel – they said “that’s the Thing, not the Hulk”
• didn’t get job – said “it’s clobberin time!” when they asked about my skill with Excel – they said “that’s the Thing, not the Hulk”
• Store-bought bagels are the most disappointing things in the world
• I invite pumpkin spice lattes to decimate my checking account
• just ate a shit load of honey – thanks bees!
• I loved Legends of the Hidden Temple so why do I want to face punch anyone in a Purple Parrots, etc shirt
• trick me once Robot Jox… http://bit.ly/1EjVh5
• dreams of my Carpathian barbecue
• EVERYBODY’S WORKING FOR THE WEEKE- *trip bonk* SHIT
• looks like everyone in NYC is going as Annoying Jerk this Halloween
• Dear Sir-on-subway-with-toilet paper-for-bookmark: I’m coming for you.
• anyone who thinks the Christmas season shouldn’t start before Thanksgiving gets a punch in their fucking mouth
• shouldn’t have to sort clever jokes between the Twitter and Facebook bins #fuckyourface
• reading the wikipedia synopsis of AMC’s Prisoner remake makes me want to kick a TV off a bridge. Sooo glad I didn’t watch that shit
• Watchin Roseanne like YEAhhh
• “Afghanistan is a lost cause: always was and always will be.” – Santa Claus
• You know it’s going to be a good day when F-Troop makes the front page of the NYTimes.com
• omg my office smells like someone unsuccessfully tried to teleport a baboon and it turned inside out
• omg my office smells like someone unsuccessfully tried to teleport a baboon and it turned inside out
• A sudden “Subway tuna foot-long” urge has dropped on me like a pile of bricks
• the huffpost has the aesthetics of a Long Island Greek diner’s menu
• vending machine is out of General Tso’s chicken!?? 

Where will I be in 500 more tweets? Only Twitter himself knows.

Let’s get this fat clown show on the road:

9:52 – Change channel to NBC which is finishing up “America’s Got Talent”. They should just rename NBC to UPN

9:53 – Change channel to “Family Guy” rerun on channel with screwed up image and sound because it’s  less annoying

10:00 – WOW THE TITLES! It’s like a barrage of 1995

10:01 – Jay Leno throws Cheez-Its on the ground, audience rushes stage

10:02 – It’s like watching a fat 1970′s Italian film actor do stand up. WISH THEY OVER-DUBBED A LESS ANNOYING VOICE

10:04 – Leno seems nervous. That sidekick-guitar-guy’s laughter has always sounded nervous and he can’t even sit in his chair like he’s not bored JEEZ

10:09 – ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

10:12 – Leno feeds a goose on stage for eight minutes

10:23 – I wish that Bill Cosby was Leno’s first guest, THEN I’d be impressed

10:26 – They just lowered a computer generated TV set down behind Leno and Seinfeld

10:30 – If you count Last Call with Carson Daly, there’s three more hours of the exact same thing on NBC tonight

10:37 – Leno feeds the goose for another five minutes. They keep dragging these 1-minute skits out for way too long

10:43 – Kanye tears up! That people took the VMAs so seriously is the real tragedy here. ITS NOT THE EMMYS SHEESH

10:52 – “Hey headlines next everybody loves headlines hey!”

I thought I could joke about the Leno show but it really, really sucks.

Chronological release order OHHHHHH:

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Award: The 2009 Love Guru Certificate for Memorable Awfulness
Yes: Parts of the film seemed like they were reaching for goodness, spinning cyclops-beam head destroying nuclear cooling tower, CGI Patrick Stewart
No: Worst CGI effects and action in a theatrically released film since 1995, felt as coherent as a Sega CD full-motion-video video game, CGI Patrick Stewart
2.5/10

Star Trek
Award: Most Anticipated (2007)
Yes: Great characterizations of Bones, Scotty, Spock, surprisingly exciting orbital jump scene, some great CG space battles
No: Too complicated and faithful for non-Star Trek fans, too retarded and pandering for Star Trek fans, Leonard Nimoy’s dentures, Kirk is a fuck
6.5/10

Terminator Salvation
Award: Most Disappointing
Yes: Sam Worthington proves his “worth” (LMAOMG), bad-ass repelling down stuff, CGI Schwarzenegger
No: Christian Bale black hole acting, under-use of Michael Ironside, ending felt like the end of a M*A*S*H episode, not enough Terminator theme song, all the best parts were in the trailers in entirety, CGI Schwarzenegger
6.5/10

Pixar’s UP
Yes: Kevin, Doug, Ed Asner, adorable
No: Can’t say it was worth paying $5 extra to see in 3D
9/10

The Hangover
Yes: Everything Zach Galifianakis says/does, baby whacking off
No: Overall not that memorable
7/10

Drag Me to Hell
Award: Overall Funniest
Yes: Hilarious and scary, lots of bodily fluids and goops, genuinely upsetting ending, goat demons
No: Still haven’t seen Spider-Man 3
9/10

Transformers 2
Award: Overall Worst
Yes: Action scenes more comprehensible than Transformers 1
No: Shia Le Beuf, Beuf’s mom getting high, Megan Fox, old-man Transformer, robot balls, rampant racism, stupid plot, Megan Fox’s pet Decepticon, 8 hours long, looped references from off-screen characters about recession and swine flu
2/10

Harry Potter and the Half Bloof PrinceERROR<Input:HarryPotter_Sucks>ERROR<Input:HarryPotter_Sucks>ERROR<Input:HarryPotter_Sucks>ERROR<Input:HarryPotter_Sucks>ERROR<Input:HarryPotter_Sucks>ERROR<Input:HarryPotter_Sucks>ERROR<Input:HarryPotter_Sucks>ERROR

Funny People
Award: Robert Zdar Award for Most Distracting Blemish on Actor (Jonah Hill’s fucked up arms)
Yes: Eminem/Ray Romano confrontation, great fake Adam Sandler movies
No: No likable characters except Jonah Hill (what?!), too many penis jokes (huh??!), so long that if it was ever on VHS it would have to be on two cassettes
5/10

GI Joe
Yes: exciting and well-paced action set pieces, Sienna Miller is really hot, surprisingly brutal action and acting from Dennis Quaid, two awesome ninjas, Channing Tatum on a motorcycle at a funeral in the rain
No: maybe too many submarine’s exploding during finale
8/10

District 9
Yes: hilarious and awesome deaths via alien weapons, alien poop and pee, great acting from not entirely sympathetic main character, potential for interesting sequel
No: “documentary” aspects unnecessary and redundant
9/10

Ponyo
Yes: entirely likable and pleasant, colorful hand-drawn animation, hot mom
No: no real sense of conflict or urgency despite the world ending, baffling “mother’s milk” scene, some plot and ideas lost in translation
8/10

Inglourious Basterds
Award: Most Boring
Yes: brutal action scenes and death, very attractive women, alternate universe ending..
No: only 5 minutes of action in 155 minute long movie, the rest comprised of 6 or 7 long conversations each one involving a Nazi tricking another character into thinking they are being genial but really they aren’t, incessant and annoying references to film culture and history,
4/10

I didn’t miss ANYTHING

Can’t wait for the rest of 2009′s high profile films! Goodnight!

When I went to college I burned all my CDs to my laptop. Because of its easy to useness and legitimateness, iTunes was partially responsible for me letting go of the need to physically buy and maintain a music library. I’d still rather buy DVDs and books, but I have not bought a CD in two years and that is a big deal for someone who had as many albums as I did in high school. I have since sold most of those CDs because I just don’t need them anymore.

Everything fit on my hard-drive in the fall of 2005. But thanks to dorm file-sharing applications and my position at the college radio station, I had more access to free music than ever before. I kept getting so much new music that a year later I had to buy an external hard-drive to house all of that music. Later, after buying a new laptop with more internal space, I was able to move it back to my internal hard-drive to make listening to music more fun. But I still had to cull back my collection, pruning 10 or so gigs of forgettable crap.

Over the course of a few years, I’ve been slowly deleting records to make space for new ones or just to satisfy my desire to get rid of records I did not like. Or, more importantly, to eliminate the problem that years of liking post-rock and drone/ambient/experimental instrumental electronic music effectively ruins any fun in letting music shuffle or play from the master collection.

Before starting this, I had 35 and 1/2 days, or almost 57 gigabytes of music. That’s almost 13,000 songs. I know people who have more, for sure, but I think I need to do a serious purging of my iTunes. Weed the bad albums and bands that I never listen to. I’m writing about it because I think it will be a fun way to look back on the evolution of my musical tastes as well as figure out why I like what I like and why I don’t like what I like.

There will be several Rounds of elimination, starting with albums I’ve never listened to, then going to artists and albums where I really like one song but never listen to the rest, and so on and so on… And here we go!

Round 1: Eliminating Outliers

Here are some of the albums on iTunes that I have never, ever listened to. I would have a long time ago, but there is a peril to eliminating records I have never listened to in that one day I might listen to them and discover at least one good song. So I’ve listened to all (or most) of these records to give them at least a fair shot toward being a KEEPAH or getting the AX.

Apples in Stereo Discovery of a World Inside the Moon AX
Opener “Go” is catchy stuff, a band I’ve known about a long time, but overall their albums are forgettable. This album starts off strong but I just get bored. That whole Elephant 6 sound got tiresome fast, I even admit to have sold my copy of Neutral Milk Hotel ages ago. Oh well. I still love the band Beulah though, they manage to keep up momentum throughout their albums. I think this also makes me appreciate The Shins for some reason.

The Bastard Wing Crystal Thicket AX
For a while I was really into this ‘dread folk’ music. This band features Christina Carter of Charalambides, which really is fantastic and Joy Shapes is life changing. But this is just too dready. I would like a little more swirling or action, the stand-out Tom Carter guitar work from Charalambides. A band like Espers can make dready folk that is lyrical and harmonic. This Bastard Wing record, however, is the kind of thing I got while at the radio station. Obscure doesn’t mean good. Boring, but I would have liked in high school I guess.

Clebanof Strings Exciting Sounds KEEPAH
My hidden passion is for exotica and lounge music, and I went through a phase of getting a lot of vinyl-ripped albums off of Exotica blogs. This is no exception, and is not any landmark album. A lot of exotica and 50s/60s instrumentals are all just different arrangements and covers of like, the same songs. One of the most known (and most cool) exotica songs is “Quiet Village”, and the recording here is one of the more epic ones I have heard. I am way into the “1000 string” echo sound, probably from the 60s movies and Christmas music I was raised on. This record is pretty rad. I still don’t know if its just the irony in me that likes it. Also very boring and melodramatic in parts, but I’m used to this easy kind of boring.

Colleen The Golden Morning Breaks AX
This is so hard for me to judge because this is pretty good soundtrack music, ambient stuff. But being on burnout from too much of this stuff, I can’t help but not be moved. It also fits into the sort of, disturbed childhood moment music category… which one of my favorite bands, Pram, does with much more aplomb. And because if I’m ever in the mood to listen to something like this, I always go to my favorite examples, of which this is not. Will I miss the gamelan and bell chimes with string samples? Maybe its time will come, so I’ll leave that decision for another day. No, I must be strong. Be gone Colleen (what a terrible name)

Current 93 Judas as Black Moth AX
This is a “Best of” Current 93, a prolific doom chamber folk dude who is actually pretty well known. And in many ways I should like this, but, ugh its just too much. And the question I must ask myself is, Will I ever be in the mood for this? There are no dynamics in the songs. Just sort of swells and lyrics with “haunting imagery”. I think a big problem is that I am not a lyric-based man, and that I can’t even pay attention or absorb the imagery that David Tibet sings about here.

Fugazi The Argument KEEPAH
This is a big band that I never really got into. I mean they’re THE post-hardcore band. I was going to listen to their debut, Repeater, and judge that, but it was far too lo-fi for me to deal with. So I went with The Argument, their last studio album. I was skeptical, but the third track was very exciting and it was easy coasting after that. Def all that is dynamic and interesting about post-hardcore all with a good chorus.

Guided By Voices Bee Thousand KEEPAH
Another popular indie band who’s most popular album I’ve had for like, ever, but never listened too. I’m really not into lo-fi indie rock (I don’t even like Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted), and I was skeptical that I’d be bored here, but by “Tractor Rape Chain” I’m really digging it. Great weird lyrics, which I like, regardless of if they’re meaningful or not (like “Hardcore UFOs”). Very surprised.

Hammock Raising Your Voice Trying to Stop a Whisper AX
I’ve got all these Hammock CDs and I know they’re droney, shoegazey, post-rocky. Every song sounds the same and has a ridiculous title, like “When the sky pours down like a fountain” or “Floating away in every direction”. Pretty but zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Herbie Hancock Headhunters KEEPAH
I think I downloaded some Herbie Hancock albums because I was going through a jazz fusion phase. Also we played “Chameleon”, this record’s opener, in my high school jazz band. Mm solid. I think I only like jazz fusion because it reminds me of 70s PBS, maybe also because its groovy. Great music to have on in the background.

Maximo Park A Certain Trigger KEEPAH
I like the Futureheads and I never listened to this band because they seemed to be a carbon copy. But listening to this, it’s pretty excellent. Sounds almost exactly like Futureheads, but that’s a good thing. It’s a great dancy punk listen. Good for doing homework WHICH I DON’T HAVE ANYMORE EH.

MF Doom Mm…Food AX
My freshman year of college MF Doom was THE indie rapper every dorm kid liked. His King Ghidorah album, using Gozilla movie samples, is the only actual rap CD I’ve ever bought. I like popular rap, and I love sick beats, but never cared enough to be a rap aficionado (i.e. into non-radio rap, like Wu-Tang). I think freshman year, MF Doom felt like an easy in to underground rap, but I ripped this CD and never listened to it because I lost interest in trying to be hip hop cool. Overall, his stuttered beats and his raspy voice grate on my nerves, even though he has cool samples and geek culture references.

Led Zeppelin Houses of the Holy KEEPAH
Led Zeppelin is probably the biggest band I never got into. Ok, maybe the Rolling Stones. But I’ve TRIED to get into the Stones, they just don’t do it for me. I liked some of the songs on Zeppelin IV back in the day. I don’t remember when I got this but I never listened to it – I know its the most “Fantastical” of the group’s albums, with Tolkien references or some jazz. But the first three songs really grabbed me, “The Rain Song” in particular sounds great. Really cool, though I still don’t know if I’m into Robert Plant’s voice that much.

Margo Guryan Take a Picture AX
I used to see this record featured at Kim’s Music on St. Marks and I came THIS close to buying it like half a dozen times. The cover features the titular singer, a cute brunette, smiling out a window on a rainy day. It’s too cute – that exact kind of 60s/70s French inspired rock/pop with a cute singer that gets the guys every time. Anyways, that’s what I remember when I pass this while scrolling down my iTunes library, but I never listened to it when I got it on some blog. Listening to it, I think that its a “forgotten gem” for a reason – its certainly poppy and catchy, but just not enough to leave much of an impression amongst all the other catchy hushed-girl pop/rock from the period. WHATS A GUY LIKE ME DOING WITH CATCHY HUSHED GIRL POP/ROCK ANYWAYS?

New Pornographers Twin Cinema AX
The only New Pornographers album in my iTunes. Umm I know a lot of people used to like this band. Do people still? Ugh I just think its too late for me – it’s nothing I haven’t heard else where. And I don’t know what irks me about this music – it’s like its catchy but is incompatible with my catch receptors. Like, imagine a sine wave on a plane, that’s my catchy reception. Well the New Pornographers are another wave that is just an inch to the right of my wave – they don’t line up.

Pink Floyd The Piper At the Gates of Dawn AX
Background: While I never got into the “popular” Pink Floyd albums out of pure snobbery, a fellow DJ at the radio station told me that if I liked post-rock and space rock and shiz then I had to check out their first album, the last one with that guy who died… Anyways, so I got it, never listened to it. I’ve never liked The Doors, and I hear a lot of similarities here. This is the kind of 60′s psychadelic that I don’t like. Moody Blues? Great. The United States of America? Stellar. Pink Floyd? Beh.

Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground & Nico KEEPAH
Yeah I even forgot that I hadn’t listened to this. It’s such a big deal of a record. It like INVENTED punk or something. Right? I forget – I noticed it mentioned everywhere when I was getting into music so I avoided it. And, I think, I like the Nico songs but don’t like the Lou Reed songs. So that means I like the mellower tracks, but the more up-tempo ones sound generically gritty. Maybe because they INVENTED that kind of generic grittiness.

The White Birch Come Up For Air KEEPAH
I first heard about the Rune Grammofon label when I was getting more into post-rock and experimental music. It’s a super stylish Norwegian label for mostly Norwegian artists – and I mean real artists – which made it all the more awesome (I’m Norwegian). I could never find any of their records at stores I went to in high school – but at my college radio station we got alllll their stuff, so I was swimming in well-packaged experimental Norwegian electronica. This White Birch band is probably the most traditional band on the label, with guitars and drums and a singer, but I think I got it just before music fatigue set in. Well, I was expecting to be bored, but the first track is really quite somber and beautiful. The same can be said for the rest of the album, which is dripping in Nordic melancholy.

The Wrens Meadowlands KEEPAH
Here’s the last one for today – a relic from the days that held music review site Pitchfork’s opinion above all others. This album got a great review, I never bought the CD, though I downloaded it a few years later when it was too late to care enough to actually listen to it. I was under the impression that it would be a more poppy, jangly affair, but am surprised to find it quite somber (though jangly somber). Quite good – perfect for driving alone through your hometown at night.

WOW A tie between keepers and losers. I was not expecting to enjoy as many of these albums as I did.

Be on the lookout for Phase 2: Deleting those albums that have only one good track!

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Yesterday, July 7, the Sci Fi Channel abandoned its 17 year old moniker to take on the new identity of SyFy. According to executives, this new brand is intended to open up the network to less genre-specific content and clarify longstanding spelling issues (Sci-Fi, SciFi, Sci Fi) that have haunted the network.

Cartoon Network still exists, but in many ways it is dead. Earlier this summer they debuted a new reality programming package, dubbed “CN Real”, which not only breaks the name of the network but also the unspoken rule against making reality TV aimed at children.

In many ways, the death of these two networks has long been a long one coming.

Sci Fi Channel started its descent a long time ago when it began to increasingly rely on its “Sci Fi Original” movies to constitute the bulk of its programming. Instead of filling the weekend with science fiction and fantasy movies from its extensive library, they filled the weekend with terrible, Romanian-filmed, straight-to-video rejects. The effect was like watering down lemonade with sea water. Of course it was around the same time that the network began to air WWE and reality shows like “Ghost Hunters”, neither of which are SeaQuest reruns or Jurassic Park movie marathons.

Cartoon Network has had a more vague decline. Granted I have been beyond the target audience for many years, and even as I grew out of the network, the launched Adult Swim to cater to the tastes of a growing demographic. But what lay beyond the 11:00 PM curtain? For years, rancid anime-lite programming and nary a cartoon done without Flash. Granted, I enjoyed shows like The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, and today The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack is as good or better than the best cartoons of the 1990s. But, crucially, the tradition of two new 15-minute segments comprising a new half hour episode has been broken. This tradition goes back to the days of Ren and Stimpy – but for the past half year Cartoon Network has only been showing one new 15 minute segment followed by a rerun. So while there used to be 30 minutes of new Flapjack per week (one new episode) there is now only 15 new minutes per week. This is the worst of all.

As I write this I am cringing at my own blatant “it was better when I was a kid!” nostalgia, because every person thinks the same way. I hate Gen-Xers who think the 80′s were the best, and they hate those who think the 70s were the best. Subjectivity weakens any argument, but that’s what the internet is all about it seems, so here is the personal background on the importance of these networks. BLOG ACTIVATE:

Cartoon Network and The Sci Fi Channel formed dual stepping stones in a period of transition for my television viewing. The hey day of Nickelodeon came to an end in 1997, and my cable did not carry Comedy Central until 2000 or so. So Cartoon Network and Sci Fi filled that crucial 3 year gap that existed between watching Doug and watching the Upright Citizens Brigade.

The most crucial show of this period was Mystery Science Theater 3000. As I said, I did not have Comedy Central when that channel was airing Mystery Science Theater, but I seen enough of it elsewhere to know that it was a funny premise. But when the show came to Sci Fi it hit at the right time that I was getting older and understanding more cultural jokes and references, thus I really thrived being able to watch new episodes every week. I think that many of the best Mystery Science episodes came from the Sci Fi channel era, and in my opinion the show took on a much sharper, cynical edge than it had in previous seasons. Mystery Science Theater was a huge influence on my sense of humor, and was also instrumental in fostering an “appreciation” for terrible films and other media. I don’t think I could laugh at a Sci Fi Original movie without Mystery Science Theater.

Sci Fi also aired a great deal of anime (which I like sorta) during this period, as did Cartoon Network with its Toonami programming block. I will hate Thundercats and Voltron til the day I die, but I do believe I first saw Cowboy Bebop and Gundam on Toonami – so you could say that I discovered the difference between good and bad anime during this time. Cartoon Network’s Space Ghost Coast to Coast was light years ahead of its time, and is still perhaps even more advanced than the programs on Adult Swim that are directly inspired by it.

Predictions for the future?

I predict that in a year SyFy will be premiering a suburban housewife (a la Desperate Housewives) vampire show to complement its other vampire, Stargate based shows, and X-Files rip-offs.

For Cartoon Network, I predict it will follow KFC’s example, dropping “artoon etwork” and whatever meaning its name had entirely to just become CN.

THATS ME!

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Everywhere I go, both online and in the real world, I hear Michael Jackson’s songs playing. “Don’t Stop Til’ You Get Enough”, “Beat It”, and of course “Thriller” have all been thrust back into the public’s consciousness. I’ve never danced at a farm before until yesterday when “Don’t Stop” started playing. I couldn’t resist the jam, even though I was holding a pie.

With the return of Michael Jackson’s songs into the spotlight, millions are bound to be searching for song lyrics and verses. The Thriller album and its titular hit are arguably Jackson’s biggest achievements, and so it is not surprise that people  are searching for the lyrics to “Thriller verses”. As such I have noticed that searching for “thrillerverse” on Google, my website has dropped several spaces from #1 to below search results for “Thriller verse” ringtones.

My twitter.com/Thrillerverse is actually the #1 search result for “thrillerverse” now, which is interesting on its own. While I think that the Iran elections galvanized Twitter in a legitimate sense, Michael Jackson’s death was the first cultural event where every tweet on my Twitter home page made a reference to Michael Jackson – both directly and indirectly. There were Jokes and there were RIP’s, but everyone from comedians to activists to RLPs (real-life persons, IE people I know) had something to say about Jacko, which is not something that could be said about Iran.

So where was I going with this?

The Thrillerverse is a soupy dimension, a smelly horror, and a peculiar state of mind. It has nothing to do with any verse from the song or album Thriller, though “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” is a rad song.

Flash forward a year or so and Moon opened in New York and Los Angeles last Friday. I initially wasn’t hopping out of my seat to see it, but yesterday I awoke with a strong desire to go see it.

The film is alright – certainly it had a very small budget, and Matt Berry’s part is literally too small – but it is clearly a labor of love. The sets and effects are all small scale but work to create a realistic and claustrophobic atmosphere. Sam Rockwell is in top form, showcasing his ability to stand on the line of funny and violent, and, without giving too much away, proves he can carry an entire movie acting with only himself.

The story was more functional than I thought (no metaphysical stabs at love and god), and even though I easily guessed what the twist was going to be, I really enjoyed how the film lingered on well after the reveal. All the hallmarks of post-2001-and-Solaris films are there. From the unsettling How-did-another-person-just-appear-in-this-room-oops-they’re-gone to the slower pace and unsettling score (from Clint Mansell, also of The Fountain). And I guess that was my biggest issue with the film – it felt too much like a movie content with being a tribute to the likes of 2001 than trying to be anything of its own.

The same could be said for 2007’s Sunshine, which played out as 2001-meets-Jason X, albeit much better than that sounds. Outside of the realm of the big sci-fi blockbuster franchises (Aliens, Star Wars, Terminators) all of the space-based science fiction films seem to be unable to walk away from 2001. It is funny that as I write this, there is a 2001 poster on my wall, and it is the only film that I own on Blu-Ray. It is an immense and spectacular film that in many ways has created an obstacle for any filmmaker who wants to make serious science fiction.

I will say that while watching this movie my mind did keep traveling back to 2006’s The Fountain. Though I was initially very excited about it, I hated Darren Aronofsky’s film when I saw it, and continue to think that in many ways a failure. Chief among the film’s flaws is Rachel Weisz’s acting – like a generic movie pixie, she blithers about while her glum husband, Hugh Jackman, seeks the key to immortality. But despite my negative reaction, it stuck with me – its visceral imagery and emotion (though ham-fisted) lodged in my mind.

The Fountain is about finding the ability to move on, and as much as I hate to say it, I think we have to move on from 2001. If not, science fiction as a genre will become less about looking forward at what could be than an exercise in looking backward – nodding and winking to styles and ideas that once were.