The Green Slime (1968)

Who's In It: Robert Horton (Wagon Train), Luciana Paluzzi (Thunderball), and Richard Jaeckel (the original 3:10 to Yuma)

What It's About: It's Armageddon meets Alien as a crew of astronauts blow up an asteroid headed toward Earth, but bring a horrible monster back with them to their space station base.

How It Is: Delightful! The screenplay is by Batman's co-creator Bill Finger and it's full of imagination and wild ideas. The effects are charmingly goofy, the models of the ships are wonderfully retro-futuristic, and the theme song by Richard Delvy would belong in a Bond film if it wasn't about, you know, Green Slime.

I still don't love the movie though, because the contentious, central relationship between the rival space station commanders (Horton and Jaeckel) doesn't really go anywhere. Horton's Jack Rankin is a no-nonsense tough guy who's willing to sacrifice people to succeed at a larger mission. Jaeckel's Vince Elliott is compassionate to the point of being seen as weak by his superiors and Rankin. They're basically Spock and McCoy with no Kirk to mediate between them. Paluzzi's Dr Lisa Benson tries to bring peace, but she doesn't have the authority to really keep them in line, so they just end up fighting over her.

It's a good set up; it just never resolves super well. Benson claims to love Elliott, but of course she's actually into Rankin because it's the '60s and he's the alpha male. And I kept expecting some kind of situation to occur where one or the other (or both) of the men's ideologies were tested, but that never happened. They come to a resolution about their relationship, but not because they actually have to work through anything.

Still, the rest of the movie is so fun that it's become a new, cheesy favorite.

Rating: 4 out of 5 electric swamp cyclopes.

7 Days in May | Arthur and Austen

King Arthur (2004)



This post is about stuff that we watched the week before our Britain trip. Didn't watch any movies while we were traveling.

One of the things I wanted to see in England was Hadrian's Wall, so what better way to celebrate and learn about it than the totally historically accurate King Arthur?

I kid because I love. Not many people like this version of the King Arthur story, but it's probably my favorite. It's a cool idea to set it during the Roman occupation of Britain with Arthur being a Roman officer and his knights are indentured soldiers from the conquered region of Sarmatia. They protect Roman interests in Britannia by manning Hadrian's Wall against the Celtic Woads. Merlin is a Woad and so is Guinevere.

Calling it "the untold true story" is ridiculous, but the movie is clever and fun and the cast is awesome. Clive Owen plays Arthur, Ioan Gruffudd is Lancelot, and two of my personal favorites - Keira Knightley and Mads Mikkelsen - play Guinevere and Tristan. Guinevere kicks so much ass and Tristan is basically every fantasy RPG character I've ever created. There are tons of other great actors in it, too; more than I want to list.

On top of all that are some great set pieces and a thoughtful, touching exploration of loyalty and duty.

Northanger Abbey (2007)



We didn't get as many Britain Trip movies watched as we wanted to, but since one of our stops was Bath, we wanted to sneak in at least a Jane Austen. Austen spent time in Bath (though she didn't actually like the town much) and used it as a location in a couple of her novels. Northanger Abbey is one of those and since it's a commentary on gothic romances - a genre our whole family enjoys - it felt like a good way to introduce David to Austen's stories.

There aren't many adaptations of it, but the 2007 BBC version is pretty great with or without competition. It stars Felicity Jones (Rogue One) as the main character and does a great job showing how her world view is affected by the books she reads. If you've read the novel, you know that Austen wasn't a huge fan of gothic romance (I forgive her) and that Northanger Abbey isn't so much a parody of them as it is simply making fun. But to get there, the movie lets us into the main character's imagination and uses cool, gothic imagery to do it. It's the closest Austen gets to genre work, so it's a great introduction to her (even though the movie wasn't actually filmed in Bath).

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)



Technically, I watched this out of order since it's the second of Ford's Cavalry Trilogy, but I accidentally watched it last ('cause I forgot that Rio Grande was one of them and not just one of the billion other John Wayne movies named after rivers). Really though, I think it fits best as the final in the series.

The other two are in black-and-white, but Yellow Ribbon is in color, so it looks more modern. And John Wayne isn't playing the same character he does in the other two, but an older officer who's getting ready to retire. Ben Johnson, on the other hand, does play the same character he does in Rio Grande, but in Rio Grande he's a raw recruit and he's obviously more seasoned here. So if we're trying to put together some sort of chronology to this weird, extremely loose trilogy, Yellow Ribbon ought to come last.

It's a good film, but my least favorite of the three. The plot meanders and circles back on itself and I'm never super invested in the romantic triangle of Joanne Dru, John Agar, and Harry Carey Jr. I probably would've been more interested if Dru's character had been played by Shirley Temple from Fort Apache, but that's just because I love Shirley Temple. Dru does a fine job; it's just that Carey's character never really has a chance, so there's not really any tension around that part of the story. Mostly it's just Dru and Agar pretending not to like each other and Carey suffering the fallout from their shenanigans. Not that I feel bad for Carey, because he's pretty unlikable.

I also didn't feel the weight of bad orders like I did in the other two films. Wayne's superior officer does direct Wayne into questionable activity, but it's not like anything that Henry Fonda or J Carrol Naish make him do in Fort Apache and Rio Grande. But that also makes it the most pleasant of the three films. That's not a compliment (the grittiness of the other two are what I like most about them), but it's a true statement and John Wayne is typically charming (and in an atypical way for him) and Ben Johnson even more so.

The Gunfighter (1950)



Every Gregory Peck Western I watch makes him more and more my favorite Western star. In this one, he plays a gunslinger who visits a town for reasons I won't spoil. He has enemies hot on his trail, so the town marshal - who also happens to be an old friend of Peck's - is trying to get him to leave, but Peck insists on staying until his business is concluded.

Peck is awesome in it and it's another great movie that tears down the fantasy of gunfighting as a glamorous life. Unforgiven got a lot of praise for doing that as if it was some sort of new innovation, but the more Westerns I watch - like the original Magnificent Seven and even Young Guns II, for crying out loud - the more I realize how ununique Unforgiven was in that regard.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)



A classic and a favorite that I wanted David to see. It's too pretentious to be my all-time favorite '50s space invader movie (I like more cheese in them), but it's really well done and I love the design of the ship and of course Gort. It's an essential part of the science fiction canon.

7 Days in May | Zorro vs Zorro

Streets of Fire (1984)



I've had this on the To Do list for a while now, because I wanted to watch it and then listen to the Cult Film Club episode about it. I loved Streets of Fire back in the day when I was working at the video store and could take it home as often as I wanted. I have no idea how many times I watched it. And I had no idea whether or not it would hold up.

Turns out, it does. There's a level of cheese to the dialogue that may be intentional, but that I didn't pick up in younger days. It works with the tone of the rest of the movie though, so if you lean into it, it's not a flaw. And the rest of the movie is all good stuff. The setting is a fun mix of 1950s and '80s. The songs are a great mixture of '80s rock anthems and rockabilly with a little Motown mixed in. And the characters are all memorable and cool, with Willem Dafoe being especially so. And I love how the plot - while simple - never goes exactly where you think it's going to.

They Came from Beyond Space (1967)



I almost like it. It's a decade late though and the goofy space invader plot would have been more charming in black-and-white and with '50s fashions. I had a hard time staying interested, but there's some fun stuff in it, to be sure.

The Mark of Zorro (1940)



I've seen it before, but never in such close proximity to the silent version or the Disney show and certainly not since reading the novel it's based on. And I'd kind of forgotten a lot about it, because I was shocked at how much it deviates from the book. It's not a faithful adaptation at all.

It's much more focused on Don Diego and I was also surprised at how little Zorro there is in it. When Diego does put on the costume it's exciting, but it kind of reminded me of superhero shows from the '70s where 90% of the show is the secret identity and then you'd get a couple of big scenes with the hero to make it worth watching.

Not that the Diego stuff is boring. There's a lot of drama and intrigue and some great character stuff. And the swords fights are extremely good, even when no one in them is wearing black.

Zorro (1957-61)



After wrapping up the Richard Anderson/Jolene Brand plot in a really lovely way, Season 2 abruptly and unceremoniously returns the main cast to Los Angeles in time for a few episodes with Cesar Romero as Don Diego's shifty, gold-digging uncle. There are still multi-episode storylines, but they don't flow from one to another the way earlier episodes did and there are a few that are just completely standalone.

I'm still digging the show; the cast makes sure of that and Zorro is as cool and swashbuckling a character as ever. I'm just not as blown away by it was I was in the first season.

The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs



David and I have been listening to the Tarzan series on aubiobook as sort of extracurricular activity for Greystoked. Return of Tarzan is still one of my favorite Tarzan novels. I love how it shifts settings and even genres in the same story, going from romantic thriller to spy story to jungle adventure and on to fantasy. It introduces Tarzan's arch-enemy Rokoff as well as the Waziri allies and the infamous La of Opar.

I asked David if he wanted to take a break and listen to the Star Wars radio dramas (since they came up on the last Dragonfly Ripple), but he wanted to go right into Beasts of Tarzan. It makes sense. He was literally jumping up and down in his seat and laughing in glee at the final confrontation between Tarzan and Rokoff in Return.

Jam of the Week: "Make You Crazy" by Brett Dennen

Smooth and summery with a hint of reggae.


Make You Crazy by Brett Dennen on VEVO.

The Abyss (1989)

Who's In It: Ed Harris (The Rock), Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves), and Michael Biehn (The Terminator, Aliens).

What It's About: Close Encounters of the Wet Kind.

How It Is: For two hours, it's a perfectly constructed thriller. It's the characters' actions that continually ramp up the tension and lead them from set piece to set piece, so the story feels very organic and holds together wonderfully for most of the movie. Ed Harris plays the foreman of an underwater drilling team that's tasked with helping some Navy SEALs find a missing submarine. The SEAL commander (Biehn) grows increasingly unhinged as the story unfolds, but the best drama is between Harris and his estranged wife (Mastrantonio), who's also recruited to assist in the mission since she designed the drilling platform.

Harris and Mastrantonio's relationship is what anchors the whole story amidst all the craziness. It's hard not to get the feeling that Cameron is working through his own relationship issues, but the two characters feel like a real couple who have disconnected from each other because they're both so stubborn and independent. If there's a negative aspect to the way they're presented, it's that Harris is clearly the good guy in their relationship at first, but that becomes less true as the movie progresses and Cameron lets us get to know Mastrantonio better. By the end, all I want is for these two to survive and have a second chance at working things out.

As strong as most of the movie is though, it doesn't quite stick its landing. I'm enough of a scifi nerd to appreciate that undersea aliens are somehow responsible for most of what's happening, but honestly, The Abyss would be a stronger film without that aspect. It works best when it's focused on the characters' trying to survive. And though the aliens' appearances are mysterious and exciting during the first two hours, the resolution of that plotline in the movie's last fifteen minutes feels tacked on and hokey. It's like the special edition of Close Encounters where you get to see inside the ship. It's unnecessary and works against what the rest of the film has been building towards.

But man, those first two hours...

Rating: Four out of five water tentacles.

John Dies at the End (2012)

Who's In It: Chase Williamson (Sparks), Rob Mayes (The Client List), Paul Giamatti (Planet of the Apes, The Amazing Spider-Man 2), Clancy Brown (Highlander, Carnivàle), Glynn Turman (Super 8), and Doug Jones (Hellboy).

What It's About: A young man named Dave (Williamson) tells a reporter (Giamatti) how he and his pal John (Mayes) developed supernatural powers and saved the world from extra-dimensional invaders.

How It Is: Freaky. Really weird. Not that that's a bad thing.

It's a kitchen sink movie with just tons of stuff thrown in. It reminds me a little of Buckaroo Banzai like that. There's time travel, alien invasion, a sentient dog, a meat demon, a sentient drug, teen romance, a one-handed girl, a flying moustache, a Cthulhu-like being with a cult of naked followers, a vengeful detective, a mysterious dude who keeps showing up in back seats of cars, the Tony Stark of mentalists, and lots of other crazy stuff more spoilery than I want to mention. Surprisingly, it all holds together in a convincing story. It has cult movie written all over it, and if you're a fan of Buckaroo Banzai or Big Trouble in Little China, you should check it out.

It's not perfect though and one of its biggest flaws is that all of the insanity revolves around a couple of pretty bland characters. Dave and John (not telling whether the title is actually a spoiler or not) are supposed to be just everyday slackers, but they succeed at that too well. They're not especially charismatic or interesting on their own and neither are their friends for that matter. There's a lot to like about John Dies at the End, but it needs some interesting heroes to make it great.

Rating: Three out of five awesome dogs.

The Last Days on Mars (2013)

Who's In It: Liev Schreiber (Scream, X-Men Origins: Wolverine), Elias Koteas (Some Kind of Wonderful, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Romola Garai (Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights), and Olivia Williams (The Sixth Sense).

What It's About: As an international team of scientists wrap up their stay on Mars, they discover an indigenous bacteria that turns humans into space zombies.

How It Is: Almost entirely rubbish, but I do have to say that it's a good-looking movie. It was shot in the deserts of Jordan, so the landscape is stunning, and the designs of the shelters and vehicles are cool. That's all the good I have to say about it though.

The Hollywood pitch is Alien with zombies set on Mars and that is exactly what the movie has to offer. I mean, it's nowhere near as good as Alien, but it's obviously trying to evoke that feel. Replace one of the greatest monster designs of all time with the most generic, overused monster of all time and voila, you've got The Last Days on Mars. All that's left to do is make a list of every sad horror trope ever and tick them off one by one. The movie writes itself. Or at least it feels like it did.

Rating: 2 out of 5 space rovers.

Under the Skin (2014)

Who's In It: Scarlett Johansson (The Avengers, The Prestige)

What It's About: An alien disguises itself as a woman in order to travel Scotland and lure men to their dooms. Until...

How It Is: Not as much a horror film as the premise suggests, but that's okay. I may stretch the definition of the genre this month. Johansson plays a murderous alien, but the film isn't about exploring the horror of that from her victims' point of view. It's interested in her story and that's cool, even though I wasn't as wrapped up in it as I wanted to be.

Director Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) believes that if a shot is worth taking, it's worth spending at least thirty seconds looking at. And sometimes that's true. Under the Skin is largely a gorgeous film and makes great use of its Scot landscapes and cities. But the languid editing reaaaally makes the movie drag. To its credit, my mind never wandered away from the movie and some of my time was well spent pondering Johansson's character and her motivations. But some of my time was also spent waiting impatiently for the next shot. That means that I was always interested in what was coming next, so the film is riveting in that way, but it can also be frustrating.

Something Glazer did that was cool though was shoot some of the film Borat-style with hidden cameras recording Johansson as she seduces and has conversations with non-actors who don't know they're being filmed. I knew that going in, but I didn't know how much was shot that way or which scenes. That meant that for a while every shot had the illusion of authenticity, so that when some really horrible things started to happen they were that much more impactful as I tried to figure out what was staged and what was just Glazer letting the camera record life. As the film went on though, I got better at figuring out what was what and that impact wasn't as powerful.

I don't want to reveal too much about the development of Johansson's character, but she does have an arc and it's at least an interesting one, if not especially powerful for me. She's a blank slate, a cipher that you can either read a lot into or not much at all. Britt Hayes wrote an awesome piece for Screen Crush that's an example of the depth to be mined from what's going on with Johansson's character. I watched it from a different perspective and didn't get as much out of it. It's a good film and possibly a great one, but where it falls on that scale depends on how much you're willing to give back to it. Maybe I was just feeling lazy, but while I was intellectually curious about how the alien was changing and behaving, I was never emotionally invested in it.

Rating: Two out of five man-eating extraterrestrials.

Martians hate cephalopods

By John McCrea.

13 Movies I Hated in 2012

Since I'm basically counting down to my Top 10 at the end of the month, here's the bottom of the list, in order from most hated to least.

43. Wrath of the Titans



I wasn't going to see this after learning my lesson with the Clash of the Titans remake, but my son loves Greek mythology and enjoyed Clash, so he was looking forward to it and we went. He's ten and enjoyed it, but it taught me that when Sam Worthington says he's only going to do a sequel because they fixed all the problems with the first one: Do Not Believe Him.

42. Safe House



No surprises in this movie and I so did not care what happened to anyone in it.

41. Dark Shadows



Should've been called Wasted Talent. I love pretty much everyone in this movie, but it was a boring, nonsensical mess.

40. Taken 2



There was one point in Taken 2 where I thought they might have found something interesting to do with these characters. After the events of Taken, I can understand why Liam Neeson and Maggie Grace's characters may have turned a little dysfunctional with Neeson's being overprotective and Grace not really sure whether she appreciates that or not. That would've been a cool dynamic to explore, especially if Grace then had to turn around and save Neeson somehow, but it was dropped in favor of simply remaking the first one.

39. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter



Great premise, but it was a mistake to try to fold in Lincoln's entire life. The adventures of Young Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter would have been enough. Skipping ahead and telling a whole, second story of Old Lincoln was too much. Plus, these vampires really aren't that interesting.

38. Resident Evil: Retribution



I'm a big, big fan of the Resident Evil movies, but this was a horrible entry. It does very little to advance the series' overarching plot, but it's also weak even as a standalone movie. It sets up a mission, explains what the heroes have to do to complete that mission, then shows them doing it. Yawn.

Also, it introduces some smart, badass, new characters, then has them do extremely dumb and weak things just to prolong the drama.

37. American Reunion



This was my first American Pie movie, so I had no nostalgic attachment to it. Mostly I just wanted to see what everyone's been talking about all these years and watch Alyson Hannigan and Seann William Scott in these roles that they became famous for. Unfortunately, it was more gross and creepy than funny.

36. Wanderlust



This was actually funny, but I have a problem with adultery's being introduced to push a plot along without dealing with the emotional fallout from it. I know it's my own hang-up, but I've seen cheating seriously screw up too many of my friends' marriages. There are always repercussions and it feels cheap to me when cheaters are let off the hook too easily. By all means, have some adultery in your movie. Just deal with it honestly when you do.

35. Seven Psychopaths



I wanted a fun, Guy Ritchie-esque crime movie, not a deconstruction of that genre with nothing new or interesting to say about it. There are some fun - even great - performances (Walken!), but even then I felt ripped off by how little Olga Kurylenko is in it.

34. Battleship



I was seriously surprised that this isn't my most hated movie of the year, but there was some genuinely fun, pulpy adventure in between all the cynical, stupid predictability.

33. This Means War



More fun that it deserved to be, mostly because all three stars are so likable. But it's an implausible story, both in how Chris Pine and Tom Hardy use government resources, and in the decision Reese Witherspoon makes at the end.

32. Snow White and the Huntsman



I might would have liked this more except that it was supposed to be the good Snow White movie this year and it sucked in comparison to the utterly lovable Mirror Mirror. Singing dwarves work for The Hobbit, but they're laughable here. Kristen Stewart looks as sleepy and bored as ever and there is NO WORLD in which she's fairer than Charlize Theron.

Still, Theron does a fantastic job and I love the motivations the film gives her character. And Chris Hemsworth is always cool.

31. Total Recall



I'm not a huge fan of the original, so I wasn't opposed to the idea of remaking it, but this version commits a multitude of sins. It tries to update the plot, but leaves gaping holes in the process and doesn't present some key scenes as effectively as the original.

You know what covers a multitude of sins though? Kate Beckinsale kicking ass. Which she totally does all over this movie.

Human Heads Hate Cephalopods

By Guillaume Poux.

Too Much Information, Part One

Jaquandor answered these questions at Byzantium's Shores last week and it's been a while since I've done one of these too. They're good questions, though I've edited them for length and...well, timeliness, I guess. The original questions included the inspiration for asking them and - as Jaquandor points out - that dated the thing in a way it didn't need to.

So here's more than you wanted to know about me.

1. Have you ever been bothered by a TV show or movie series changing actors who play a character you love?



Not recently. When I was a kid, I remember losing whatever interest I had in Days of Our Lives when they swapped out Bo Bradys. Bo was pretty cool and I couldn’t buy the new actor. I guess they changed him back eventually, but my Days curiosity was always shaky at best, so I never came back.

The one that still bothers me is another old one: all the Felix Leiters in the James Bond movies. Some people think that replacing Felix actors every movie is funny or somehow endearing, but it’s not. Felix is a cool character in the novels and it bugs me that none of the movie fans know who I’m talking about because they can’t put a face to him. I was thrilled when Jeffrey Wright showed up again for Quantum of Solace, but it's too bad the character apparently isn’t in Skyfall at all.

2. What are some things people should know before spending time with you?



My eyes will begin to glaze over the moment you start talking about sports and I’ll have completely checked out by the time that conversation reaches the 30-second mark.

3. What is something you often do without realizing that you're doing it?



According to my wife, I have a Look. It’s the one that says you’re making absolutely no sense and I’m going to stop listening to you in 3…2…1…

This is related to Question No. 2. I’m an introvert and interacting with people one-on-one is hard work for me. Sometimes - though I try hard to hide it - I just don’t have the energy. I do a much better job at hiding it when I’m with people I don’t know that well though. Which leads me to…

4. Who has the capacity to make you angrier than anyone else in your life, and what in particular does he or she do to make you so angry?



My wife. I’m not going to get into particulars, because they aren’t important. Everyone has buttons that – when pushed – will get them going and I’m no different. Diane and I have a fantastic relationship and work hard not to push each other’s buttons, but when you’ve been married for a while (fifteen years for us, so far), you’re inevitably going to slip up every once in a while. I’d much rather focus on and celebrate how much we’ve been able to become a smoothly functioning team, but the question is about who has the capacity to tick you off and that’s always going to be the person you’re closest to.

5. If a fairy waved a magic wand and gave you the house of your dreams, where would it be and what features would it have?



A castle on the Scottish coast, but with central heat and air conditioning, and a modern kitchen and bathrooms. Also, a fireplace large enough to walk into.

6. What’s a belief that you hold with which many people disagree?



I’ve never had a conversation with anyone with whom I’ve seen totally eye-to-eye about God. I believe that the universe didn’t just happen – that it had to come from somewhere – but I don’t believe that the Genesis account should be read literally as an answer to that question. I also believe that the central message of Christianity is that people are supposed to love and take care of each other, but when I look at Christianity at large, I feel very alone in that interpretation.

7. If you were talking in your sleep tonight, what do you think you would say?



“I’ll nail yer suckers to the mast, ye scurvy squid!” (Totally stole that image from Stephen Keane. I'm sorry.)

8. Have you ever attended a midnight premiere showing of a movie?



I used to do this all the time, but as it became standard practice for theaters to run midnight showings, it became less of an event and I lost interest. By “event,” I mean an event for me personally. Obviously it’s still an event for a lot of people, but it became less fun for me and I’m rarely so excited about a new movie that I’ve got to see it the second it comes out. The last one may have been Pirates of the Caribbean 3, but I don’t rightly recall.

I could see myself doing it for The Hunger Games, though. I’m pretty stoked about that one.

9. How would you react if you saw, “Caution exotic animals; stay in your vehicle,” displayed on a road sign?



I’d roll up those windows and keep an eye out, but I’m not a panicky person. If I actually saw a tiger or something, I’d probably stop to gawk, depending on the animal’s mood.

10. If a company opened a theme park aimed at adults, what would you name one of the rides?



Alien vs. Predator: The Hunt. You would, of course, be the prey.

11. Imagine you just moved onto Sesame Street. Which puppet would you want as your new roommate?



I have a low tolerance for drama and shenanigans, so I’ll go with Kermit. He’s funny, but grounded.

12. Have you ever had a weird crush on a famous person that didn't make sense to you?



Matt Damon, because I’m straight. I understand all my crushes on famous women.

13. If you get ten minutes to interview any celebrity of your choice, who would you like it to be?



Bono. I’m currently reading his Conversation with Michka Assayas, so that may answer most of the actual questions I’ve got, but he was a hugely influential force on my life in my twenties, so I’d also just like to meet him.

14. You've just won the complete DVD collection of all the movies starring one actor or actress. Which actor/actress would you pick?



I used to try to collect all the movies by actors I liked. I accumulated a ton of stuff by Harrison Ford, Kenneth Branagh, and Sandra Bullock, but eventually learned that – like with all artists – I didn’t care for every single thing they did. But since I’m winning this and not buying it, the Johnny Depp collection probably has the most movies in it that I’d re-watch again and again.

15. What is something you've said through social media and then regretted it?



Most of this post.

16. What musician would you be most interested in learning behind-the-scenes facts about?



Someone new that I don’t know much about. Like Brite Futures. I’m curious about their influences and their name change from Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head.

17. If you stumbled across someone's personal written journal that was accidentally left in a public place, would you read any of the content?



Just enough to see if I could tell who it was in order to return it to them. I’m not naturally curious about other people’s personal stuff.

18. What is the title of a self-help book that you'd never want to see on a store bookshelf?



Develop Jedi Self-Confidence: Unleash the Force within You. Oh, crap.

19. Which Halloween costume do you think will be overdone this year?



Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

20. Should a marriage license have a renewal date or expiration date, like a driver’s license?



I understand the reason for the question, but no. Actually, I’m not convinced we should have marriage licenses at all. I’m not a Libertarian, but marriage is a relationship that I’m not convinced that government (or a church, for that matter) should have any say about. Like most of life, we’ve overcomplicated something that’s very simple in concept (though extremely tough to execute in practice).