New Plymouth baby, New Plymouth!

Here's something I wrote last week and didn't finish, but I have to post, so I can say I've blogged from New Plymouth. More on New Plymouth to follow later. For now you'll have to make do with these uncompleted ramblings. And ramblings they very much are.

Suffer.

It's 2005, and despite having a whole new year on my hands, it's amazing indeed that I can find time to write this really. With all the time-consuming activities vying for my attention lately, such as tripping about, slacking around, meeting and greeting various prodigal sons and daughters (not my own) and restarting the cricket season, it's been a busy old time. Not to mention the massive task of recreational reading I seem to be facing at the moment. I am working my way through a massive pile of books, some rather large, that I acquired around Christmas. Having got through the latest Discworld effort (Going Postal) and one of Robert Rankin's more recent books (The Witches of Chiswick) I am now about 320 pages into The System of the World, the concluding volume in the massive and meandering Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson which I have ranted on about before. The best example of the sly historical- and-yet-at-the-same-time-highly-anachronistic-wink to his modern geek readers so far in this one is as follows:

Father Edouard de Gex's nose was a magnificent piece of bone architecture surmounting nostrils big enough to swallow wine-corks. He put them to good use now, literally sniffing at the Jews. He threw back and cast off his long robe to reveal the black cassock of a Jesuit, complete with swinging crucifix, rosary and other regalia. The Jews - who he had supposed, until now, that the business with the pulley was part of routine Monument maintenance - now could not use between astonishment and fear; We came up to take in the view, they seemed to say, and never expected the Spanish Inquisition.

Snigger. Anyway, 600 more pages of that to go, and then it's into the 3rd Thursday Next book by Jasper Fforde, and then Johnathon Strange (another 900 page tome), then some Dan Brown (of The Da Vinci Code mega fame - time to see I suppose what all the fuss is about) books that brother Dan gifted to the whole family, and then I shall probably have to steal Antony Beevor's third history book Paris: The Liberation off Dad and likely Spike: An Intimate Memoir as well...(that's Spike Milligan, comic genius, not Spike the fictional television vampire. I make the distinction only because I know there may be one or two crazed Buffy fans that read this that had already started to write me e-mail to ask where they can get (another?) book with pictures of James Marsters in it).

Yes, he is a fictional television vampire, as opposed to those non-fictional other types of vampire. Nice one, Ben.

Anyway...no, not anyway actually, while we're on this unexpectedly vampire-related aside, I may as well say that we (being Tim, Dan and I) went to see Blade: Trinity the other night. As a spectacle from the 'things exploding' school of film-making, it was OK. Ryan Reynolds (of Two Guys and a Pizza Place and Van wilder: Party Liasion 'fame' delivered a number of quite funny lines in a deadpan style. But the plot was seriously lacking. I mean, you come to expect that from your average Hollywood action movie (or even your superior Hollywood action movie: just what exactly was going on in Face / Off, really?) But I'm prepared to say that Blade: Trinity has possibly the biggest excuse for a story I can think of, going back quite a few films; it makes Van Helsing look positively coherent by comparison, for example. It basically goes like this (trust me, knowing any of this in advance won't really spoil the film):

Parker Posey, weird vampire leader: Ahahahaaaa, we have awakened the terrifying original master vampire!Also, we've set the FBI onto Blade. Suck on that, Blade!

The FBI: We are FBI agents. Blade is a psycho and public enemy number one! Hut hut hut hut. Blade has been captured, at some expense in the lives of agents, as Kris Kristofferson blew many of them away with a shotgun, possibly mistaking them for vampires. Crikey, he's an important prisoner.

Blade: Screw this, I'm using my arse-kicking skills and my new buddies to beat my way out of this building through about 27 SWAT teams.

The FBI: Oh, fair enough. You've escaped us, so we just don't care anymore. We will now disappear from the film.

Meanwhile, at vampire HQ...

Triple H: The Heavyweight Belt is mine, Austin! Oh sorry, I'm in a movie now. Er, right, now that we've resurrected him for use in the evil vampire master plan, exactly what are the special powers of the master vampire, Parker?

Parker Posey: looking like people he wants to, a la Terminator 2, and walking around in the day time. Also he seems to be a bit tougher and faster. Ooooooh!

Triple H and other vampire cronies: Right, so he's going to put these skills to nefarious use to do all kinds of evil things we other vampires can't?

John Doe, Master Vampire: Nah, not really. Can't be arsed. Think I'll transform into other people, say, three times, fooling the goodies for all of 5 seconds the first time, for no apparent reason at all the second time, and to actually help them on the third.

Blade and the goodies: Oh no, the master vampire! He's unstoppable!

The audience: Er, why's that, then?

The writers: Shut up, he just is.

Blade and the goodies: The mere fact that they have awakened him clearly shows they are stepping up the vampire evil master plan.

Audience: Oh. It does?

Parker Posey and the vampires: We sure are!

The audience: What is the vampire evil master plan?

Parker Posey: Er, we're not really sure. But rest assured that we certainly have one and it's really really evil, and involves killing like everyone! Um, in some unspecified fashion. But look at this 7 minute bit of the film, for instance! We're farming humans for blood! How evil is that?

Blade and the goodies: Gasp! The vampires are farming humans for blood! How evil! The vampire Final Solution, if you will! And almost certainly something to do with the master vampire, and about to happen on a worldwide scale!

Master Vampire: Nope.

Audience: Eh?

Master Vampire: Nope, nothing to do with me. In fact, they seemed to be doing this before I even showed up. And I really don't know how we're just suddenly going to start doing it to everyone. As a matter of fact, I don't think anyone actually so much as mentions this human farming to me, at all. Or any other details of the vampire evil master plan, for that matter, although of course we all know what it is. And that we have one. Ahem.

Audience: Can you tell us what it is?

Master Vampire: Are you vampires?

Audience: Not as such.

Master Vampire: Then you shall hear nothing of the evil vampire master plan from the likes of me, the master vampire! Instead I shall spend most of my dialogue time at the vampire hideout insulting the other vampires as pathetic specimens.

Parker Posey: Heeeeeeey!

Master Vampire: Suck it up, Posey. You lot sicken me.

Parker Posey: Why did we resurrect you, anyway?

Master Vampire: Who's gonna have a swordfight with Wesley Snipes at the end of the film, you?

(Enter Blade and the other goodies carrying a vial of deus ex machina, really quite similar to the one used in the first film)

Master Vampire: Hellooooo? Unstoppable here. You poor fools!

(swordfight)

Audience: As a climactic duel, this isn't really up to much.

Stunt Co-Ordinator: Shut up! I used up my good stuff earlier in the film.

(Vial deployed)

Master Vampire: Oh no, they reversed the polarity! Arrrgggghhh!

(Dies. Victory to the goodies.)

The FBI: Everybody freeze! This is a token reappearance!

(End)

Perhaps I was failing to pay attention, but if anyone sees this film and works out exactly what it is the vampires are planning to do, and why they needed the original vampire to do it - answers on the back of a postcard to:

Ben Allan
Least Fleshed Out Plot Ever
Christchurch

Once you've tackled that, perhaps you can then attempt to explain a way in which the end of Tim Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes can possibly make any kind of sense, and from there you can enlighten me as to how 'Greedo shoots first' is a good idea...and if you've solved all that, I decree you the God of Movie Comprehension.

Like I said, there was more to come...ah, I've got nothing.
Except of course for New Plymouth baby, New Plymouth!
Rock on everyone. I'm doing it right now. In New Plymouth.
See you next week.