I'm Climbing Up Those Walls Again

Last night I finally saw This Is Spinal Tap, which is a great fake "rockumentary" in every way.

"So what's so special about this amp?"
"Well, normal ones go up to 10, but if you look here, you'll see that all the knobs on this one go up to 11!"
"What does that mean?"
"Well, normally, you get to 10, but then you've got nowhere to go. In our performances, we go up to 10, and then we can give it the extra ooomph we need!"
"Why not just increase the power of 10 and go up from 9?"
"....but these go to 11..."

I also watched Max starring John Cusack. The year is 1918-19. Cusack plays Max Rothman, a wealthy Jewish German who has just returned from WWI sans an arm. He used to be a painter, so now he sets up a popular modern art gallery. He meets a young painter who was also in the war. The young painter's name is Adolf Hitler. Max tries to get Adolf to channel his passion and anger into his painting, but an officer in Hitler's regiment is attempting to convince Hitler to embrace politics. It's a very well done film, while maybe not completely historically accurate, but it does a wonderful job at portraying a young (30) and confused Hitler, trying to decide whether to embrace art or politics.


On a final note, I'm reading Bram Stoker's Dracula for the first time. It's really good for 19th century horror, although sometimes you want to shake the clueless characters and yell "she's got holes in her fucking throat, I think maybe you've got a VAMPIRE on your hands mate!" Finally Van Helsing shows up, who has a little sense (Van Helsing is an old Dutch scientist, not a huge hat and jacket wearing walking stake machine like Jackman). If you enjoy horror in the vein of Frankenstein or Island of Dr. Moreau, then I recommend it.