Ethan Vansciver: Your Time Is Now Mine #9: Zombies, UFOs...

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Oh hello, fellow fascinators! Pop off those shoes, relax and make yourself at home. I wasn't doing anything important, just writing the names of the angels that spoke to me last night in my Dream Diary before I forget them. And I have to make a note that they were German. It's really important to get these things down on paper before they fleet away, back into subconscious hidey-holes where they are only retrievable again through hypnotherapy with aid from an Aura Video Station Consultant. It's expensive, and you have to go to Tucson and be naked with women that look like me in a wig and lots of dangly turquoise jewelry. It's better to do it all yourself for the sake of privacy. So do like I do and whisper this little prayer to yourself:

"Bring Me Dreams

Give Me Wings

Help Me Change."

Now strain real hard and your aura should pop out. Oooo, it's aquamarine! You're an intuitive/creative, and also a transvestite! A good thing too, because everyone else that's reading this is too! You're at home. This is YOUR TIME IS NOW MINE #9, which is the column that I semi-regularly compose for Newsarama.com. It's getting tougher to do it, frankly, because I literally have no life to speak of. There's nothing going on. I peep in on Mark Millar's fabulous lifestyle through his internetty message board, which is located somewhere around Millarworld.tv.net.org, and read accounts of his celebrity meetings. And they're interesting. Once, he peed next to Will Farrell. I peed next to Mark Waid once, but a full account would bore you. It's embarrassing to even have a column. But I will trudge on. The German angels told me I must.

ITEM: A few years ago, I assembled some graphs and pie charts and came to an amazing realization: You can predict which political party will be in the White House by which is more popular, Zombies and Werewolves, or Vampires and UFOs. If zombies and werewolves are all over television and movies, and are unusually successful, you can expect a Republican administration. On the other hand, if the public has an appetite for bloodsucking vampires or alien abductions and conspiracy theories, you're either about to endure or are in the middle of a Democratic regime. It's true and it works. And I'm not sure why.

I first postulated this theory at various panel discussions, wrote about it on my original Comicbloc.com blog, (where I declared Obama victorious in January of 2008 based on 30 Days of Night and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which appeared to be about aliens) I lectured about it in a few other places, and started a thread about it in September of 2008 at Jinxworld.com. You can read it here. http://www.606studios.com/bendisboar...d.php?t=161799 Unfortunately, my Comicbloc blog, in which I wrote a song about John Byrne knowing a lot more about Hitler than I do, seems to be lost to history. Since then, this idea seems to have been picked up by at least one news source, which attests to the strength of spewing utter pablum on the internet.

But let's have a look at this idea, shall we? It all started sketchily with the very first modern Zombie movie, 1968's Night Of The Living Dead, which alone may be responsible for upsetting the lunacy of the Democratic 1960's with the election of Richard Nixon, which came to an end with Alien fever of 1977's Star Wars and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, ushering in the hope and change of Jimmy Carter. 1979's Dawn of the Dead indicated that Carter's reign wouldn't last long, and sure enough, 1981's Wolfen and The Howling put the nail in that coffin, bringing Ronald Reagan to power. And the 80's brought us a wonderful age of zombie and werewolf flicks, with American Werewolf In London and the entire Howling franchise, plus Day of the Dead, the Return Of The Living Dead series, Michael Jackson's Thriller (werewolves and zombies!!) The re-Animator, on and on until 1992's underrated gem Deadalive.

And then something awful happened. Coppola brought out Bram Stoker's Dracula, and the winds began to change. People suddenly thought vampires were "sexy", Anne Rice dyed her hair jet black and The Clinton Administration was born. Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt sucked throughout 1994's Interview with a Vampire. There was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Kindred: The Embraced, and tons of similar nonsense. Not to mention the alien abduction craze, with X-FILES and all of those very strange Alien Autopsy/Roswell documentaries.

Instead of a defining entertainment moment to mark the George W. Bush administration, we find instead of sort of sputtering-to-a-halt of the vampire/alien craze. X-Files lost its way with the turn of the century, Buffy and Angel kind of ended....and we saw an interesting vampire/werewolf brawl with the Underworld series, almost representing the bitter divide that existed between the two parties after the contentious 2000 election. It wasn't until the magnificent 28 Days Later in 2003 that the new zombie age came into full power. We saw Shaun Of The Dead, an amazing remake of Dawn Of The Dead, 28 Weeks Later, the Resident Evil franchise, and metric tons of independently made straight to dvd zombie flicks, all of which are on my shelf right now. Comics followed right along, with Marvel Zombies and Robert Kirkman's terrific Walking Dead. It was a great time to be a zombie fan.

In 2008, I became troubled when I saw what I expected to be a very successful vampire movie on the horizon, with 30 Days of Night. Titled to appear like one of the 28 Days/Weeks movies, and obviously aimed at the zombie audience, it appeared to combine vampire and zombie elements in a way that might re-energize interest in vampires again. My interest was further piqued by news that the new Indiana Jones movie was originally to be titled Indiana Jones And The Saucer Men From Mars, and that a new X-Files movie was planned for the Summer. At that point, I declared the election for Obama.

Since then, zombie movies have slowed to a halt, with rumors that HBO passed over a Walking Dead television series for True Blood, a marvelous and modern spin on vampires produced by Alan Ball. This is no coincidence. There is also no other explanation for the incredible popularity of Twilight. The bloodsucking bastards are back!

Be on the lookout for more UFO nonsense. It's coming!

ITEM: Want to punish your children without beating them? No? Okay. Well, if you change your mind, try our method. It's called Metaphysical Abuse, and it works waaaay better than Time Out. Instruct your disobedient menace of a kid to sit in the corner of a room, where he or she can be observed, in the Lotus position. Or "Indian-style", palms facing up with middle fingers touching thumbs. Is that "Lotus position?" Whatever, it's the position you see in racist cartoons that mock Hinduism. Anyhow, they must close their eyes and say "Om" until they reach nirvana, or at least calm the hell down. It's funny for parents, humiliating for kids, and no visible bruises for the authorities to find! No bruises!

At least, on the outside.

ITEM: The more time I spend with people, the more I realize that most of us have an empty hole where another sequel to Joe Don Baker's Walking Tall should be. I did too, until I found out that Legend Films was releasing Framed, a terrific Joe Don vehicle along the same lines as Walking Tall, but with more bird crap falling in the hair of beautiful women. For a long time, I wanted to trademark and copyright a pseudonym for myself. Art Powers. Turns out, someone beat me to it. A guy called Art Powers wrote the magnificent novel, which was apparently quickly optioned so that another movie about a gullible fat yokel who is beaten up and thrown in jail for no good reason only to escape to get revenge could be made starring Mystery Science Theater 3000 sweetie-pie Joe Don Baker. And then rushed to a cinema near you.

Anyhow, the dvd is available now, and it does indeed feature bird-filth splattering all over a beautiful woman. And it's thick and green, the color of the Frankenstein monster's face. It gets in her hair and between the folds of her knuckles, in the webbing between her fingers, and every place you'd rather not have seagull diarrhea land. And the camera gets real tight on Joe Don's huge, orange and puddly face, as he mocks the woman he loves. Good stuff.

A quick re-read reveals this to be the most substantive column yet. An awful lot of important information got put across, and everyone's aura is still aqua-marine. A success.

As usual, I'd love to hear from you! Leave comments below and hit the recommend thingy at the top of the page! I will now piss back off to work!

For real,
Ethan Van Sciver

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