Project Car Continues

And so we've made it to stage 1, tune up the engine and get the car primed- actually just the hood so far- mostly because I didn't really want to be up until the wee hours stripping the rest of the body. But this is awaiting a coat or two of high-gloss Rustoleum, and the engine is purring away. Turns out it was missing an air filter! Not needed a new one, didn't have one. How strange! Good thing I checked that out. I tweaked a couple loose belts, and everything seems hunky dory now. I am Man, I fix things!

Apart from that, last night found me wide awake and not able to sleep, so I decided to go down and check out the early morning TV scene. I came across a rather odd little animated number that was actually pretty amusing- The Haunted World of El Superbeasto. Dealing with the adventures of one superhero/celebrity/lucha libre wrestler named El Superbeasto, it takes place in the large metropolis of Monsterland. There were countless cliches, nods to films and inside B-movie jokes, and the whole thing was produced by Rob Zombie. Alternately funny, crude and gross, it had a pretty good plot, good animation, and was funny as hell.
The story centers on El Superbeasto, who has made the A list of celebrities, and now occasionally fights crime. His sister is named Suzie X, a secret agent/inventor/superhero who goes around and also seems to fight crime, accompanied by her large, heavily armed robot named Murray, who also has a bit of a crush on Suzie. Modeled after the frowning robot sideckick of Bela Lugosi in The Phantom Creeps, Murray often gets some of the better jokes in the movie.

Add to this Dr. Satan, not his real name, a nerdy but wealthy ex-veterinarian who wants to gain all the "sudsy powers of Hell" by marrying a woman with the right markings. At the time of the narrative, he just disposed of wife #23, who also failed to have the right markings. Ex wives are stored in a giant freezer- this gives me an idea...

And then it gets weird. In Monsterland is a strip club known as the Haunted Palace, wherein works one Velvet Von Black, who provides tremendously profitable entertainment to the monster clientele. She falls under the voyeuristic watchful eye of Dr. Satan, who notices that evidently she has the right marks. (Well, obviously, wouldn't be much of a story otherwise). So he captures her, takes her to his enormous underground mansion under the Filthy Plottes Cemetery (told you it gets weird), marries her, and gains all the aforementioned sudsy powers of Hell. Also notable is that El Superbeasto has the hots for Ms. Von Black, creating a reason for him to get up off his mask-wearing behind and go save her, and by extension, the rest of Monsterland. Throw in a couple voice cameos from two of my favorite actors (Sid Haig and Bill Moseley), as well as countless sex jokes, explicit cartoon footage and countless references to Rob Zombie movies and various old horror films, and only someone like me would stay up half the night hanging on every frame. So the usual disclaimer goes here- this film is in no way appropriate for anyone under the age of 18, caution contains explicit sexual content, gratuitious violence, Nazis, cussing till the cows come home, and the voice of Rosario Dawson. You have been warned. Sheri Moon Zombie lends her voice to Suzi, and as always sounds like Betty Boop with a bad meth habit. This movie is definitely worth a look.

In other news, I've been reading an interesting book called City Magick, dealing with how the urban worlds many of us live in are really a similar situation to what our ancestors faced in the wild. Written by one Christopher Penczak, it's worth a look. There are references to urban 'tribes', which makes a good degree of sense, and a fascinating parallel between the world of old where magic held sway, and the new world. I've noticed this, to some extent-each city I've been in, each town, for that matter, has a distinct feel to it, yet each one has a similar kind of collective spirit. New Yorkers are famous for this, and the boroughs are very much lands unto themselves, with customs and dialects distinct to each. This appears to be the same the world over. I haven't delved too deeply into this book yet, but it promises to be interesting. The author also makes reference to "animating spirits", which presents a curious puzzle. Do vehicles, mechanical and inanimate, have spirits? Cars do seem to have distinctive personalities, though this could be due to the process we humans have of anthropormorphizing everything. (lending human characteristics to non-human subjects). However, it seems to me that there is always a kind of collective spirit, for better or worse, wherever and whenever you have people living in close proximity. The Army refers to this as espirit de corps, though perhaps in a different sense. This is the common bonds members of a platoon or unit feel- us and them, to some extent, though not in a bad way. Perhaps any group of people living together, or in close proximity, develop some similar collectivism- this isn't necessarily a good thing, as people can be bound together out of mutual distrust, fear and hate just as easily as they can out of civic pride.

I notice this in a curious kind of mixture here in Lawton. People often complain about the town, often with good cause. There is a good deal of gang violence, mostly by people who fortunately haven't encountered me- if you want to pull a weapon on me, please be prepared to kill me with it- as I am quite prepared to kill you should I find myself in a position where I would need to be pointing a weapon at you. Luckily, the odds of that are next to nil. However, there are a great many civic improvements that could be done here in town, and the local churches seem to be the main driving force behind this. Couple this, however, with a lack of economic opportunity and general malaise coming from a poor economy (Flint, Michigan is another very similar example, if you're interested in doing the research), and you have a recipe for people who feel the bonds of community, but perhaps at the same time would like their community to do more for them. We may not all be civic leaders, but experience tells me if we all kind of carve out a niche for ourselves, extend creativity into the world around us, and share our inspiration with other people, those people respond in kind. Everyone likes to see someone creating something 'cool', for lack of a better term. The world is always a better place when we see something that makes us smile, inspires us, or makes the world just a few degrees brighter.
So stay away from the Tenafly Viper, as well as Thunderbird (got some engine cleaner on my hand, accidentally tasted it, it's remarkably similar) and stay well. Signing off for now.