Dead Birds
Introduction
Introduction
I’m on a liquid diet. It’s nothing exciting, compared to people I know who have gone on liquid diets. One of my best friends in undergrad was a dude we called Crazy M____. (as opposed to Devil M____, who, you know, looked like Satan) M____ got this long-coming nickname one day when he wandered our college cafeteria with his acoustic guitar in one hand and a bunch of rocks from the walkway in the other hand, asking people to help out and buy a rock for a dollar because all his friends (us) were tripping tonight and he needed $5 for a hit of acid.
So… he got the name Crazy M___. He backed it up, though, too. He was one of those eccentric Radiohead fans. You either know the type or you don’t. I believe they are something akin to an elder’s generation of die-hard Rush fans, quibbling over live show recordings and the whatnot.
Crazy M___ is now in a wheelchair. I was having some anxiety over how I was going to approach that fact, so I decided to blurt it out like a 5th grader with a secret crush on her French teacher. Or, maybe that’s a really wrong analogy. I’m not going to erase it, but I will say that the minute I wrote “French Teacher” I pictured Sting running around knocking over elegantly tall candles.
But anyway, I lost touch with Crazy M___ when I stayed in college when it wasn’t fashionable, and although we’ve reconnected slightly, I can’t reach the people I used to know when I drank. There’s one exception, and it’s ‘cause he and I are forever united. I was getting arrested and he harassed the police until they arrested him as well.
Look, there’s something that most people don’t fucking understand unless they’ve ran this race, it’s that the fucking drugs wear off and then you’re still where you were, yet now in a different space and time than you were when you initially ingested whatever the night brought us, and although none of us can remember, you’re still responsible for what the drugs did while they were driving.
Crazy M___ was driving. Crazy M___ was driven. Crazy M___ jumped a curb, landed in the backseat of the car as it pinballed across a yard, and then the engine block punched through the dashboard and ended up sitting in the driver’s seat. Crazy M___’s seat. He dodged death that night. Aside from an ass-kicking’s worth of scrapes and bruises, all he broke was his jaw. I think in two different places? He had to have it wired shut.
It was a great diet for him, it was great fun for the rest of us to watch him try to smoke weed and cigarettes. Crazy M___ had to go on a liquid diet. Which is much different than my reason. I got a temporary crown put in yesterday at 8 in the morning, and by 6:30 in the evening it was out and mangled, thank you very much Casa De Burritos.
I called the dental office, got the answering service, explained what happened… got a call at 6:45 this morning to be in at 8:45 in order to get the new crown in. Now, here’s the liquid diet part. I don’t want to go through the fucking temporary crown thing again, primarily because it seems to have to occur at God-awful early morning time, and because I see this as a fun way to take an arbitrary thing such as an upcoming dental appointment and see if I can actually hold myself accountable- hold myself firm- well, this is getting strangely close to eroticism, if I may fondle myself. So I says to Mable, I says; If I’m in danger of shattering this stupid temp crown if I eat at all, then it’s liquid diet time!
This way I’ll use up all the frozen spinach in the freezer that our neighbor gave us in “The Big Greenery Swap of ‘22”. So now I’m on a liquid diet. I’m tripping moderately hard. I didn’t really mean… blah blah blah… I’d reject all the excuses if it were alcohol, but… This is a fun line to flirt with and dance over, knowing that it’s fucking impossible to get addicted to hallucinogenic mushrooms.
I think the worst thing that could happen is I’d start wearing a hat like Paul Stamets. I feel like I need more coffee. Let me preach this little bit though- I do feel a mushroom difference. I am able to let little things go without needing to articulate them, it’s like shaking the algae off my soul. I think that I need to work on guarding my time better. Which is funny, since I’ve wasted all the time I’ve gotten so far, but I think the think that matters is who is wasting it and why.
Point in example: Currently carrying on a bit of a conversation with a friend of mine who is drunk and just quit her job today. I would like to continue on writing, but this person is dear to me- part of my pack, as it were. This person re-introduced color into my black and white world and will forever be protected and provided for, if needed.
But at the moment- I need to lean into being me. I need these moments to be about what I think, feel… think. I know that’s redundant. At least, I think it is. But I feel as if I could write the words that would save the world, but I wouldn’t recognize them if I saw them. I’d edit them out of existence in a vain attempt to further polish that which is stainless. I have to accept that this is all practice, while admitting that the time for practicing ended long ago.
I… I have fought a battle, as a younger man. I won that battle. I have been slippery since. It began when I shed my skin as I grew. I can’t even tell you who I am. I’m… I’m fucking along for the ride, man. I’m not steering this ship. I’m not driving. I’m not asleep at the wheel, I’m that introspective passenger who leans against the window and doesn’t say shit and when you finally decide to bother them to ask what they’re thinking they say “That’s a lot of birds.” and go back to shutting you out of existence.
I wish I could shoot blood out of my eye-ducts, like that toad does. I want nothing other than to be left asleep while this body finalizes the ritual of life, bouncing against the rocks as the currents dictate, rolling into the deep when the final churn comes. I just don’t want it to sound like such a pop song.
I’m not naming names. You know who you are. You know what you did. And although you might get a good album’s worth out of a single failed relationship, you cannot milk that same failed relationship with the same gusto for a sequel. The sponge is out of milk. I’m kinda out of things to say.
I could talk about how great My Chemical Romance is in concert, but then I’d have add an asterisk about ingesting mushrooms, and if we’re going to talk about that night and the mushrooms, then we really have to bring up the guy we saw sitting on the ground, outside, after the concert ended. He was hugging a fire hydrant as if it was the only thing keeping him from being swept away. I leaned out the window and yelled “Hey! It’s good to see someone else took more drugs than ME tonight!” at him, and the look he gave me was one of utterly foreign sobriety.
Poor child was acting like an idiot without the added adventure of chemical enhancement. If you don’t have a reason to be attracting the attention (drugs or another form of psychotic break from reality) then you’re really just a pathetic little sponge, aren’t you? Flopping around, begging for milk?
Dead Birds. That’s what we’re watching tonight. And Amazon can’t decide if it’s Dead Birds or Deadbirds. See, it’s listed as one, but the title picture of the movie calls it out otherwise. I’m going with “I don’t really care and I think I’m starting to see the downside to a liquid diet and I really have the fucking munchies. Also, totally unrelated and unrequited, at least, at the moment, I grew two small tubs of what I now understand are affectionately called “Dinosaur Eggs” or, as I much prefer “Space Popcorn”.
These are mushrooms that don’t turn into mushrooms and then just… grow as blobs. Blue blobs. And the blue is the psylocibin, so… These things are strong. I’m all twitchy as hell and I just ate a couple little broken ones here and there… shit… I’m supposed to be talking about a movie.
Ok. Dead Birds. Since that’s what it says in actual text. Uh… “Set during the Civil War Period. A group of criminals take refuge in an abandoned house only to find it inhabited by the walking dead. Now they must decide if their fate inside its walls is worse than the one that awaits them on the outside…”. Yeah. I mean…
What is this? They break into Rob Zombie’s guest cottage or something? Cottage. Cottage cheese. Think about that. “small house cheese”. I recently took a picture of myself at the laundromat titled “I am the Big Cheese”, but like I said earlier, I’m not driving, I’m just along for the ride. I can’t accept any award for the photo, even if it won, since I didn’t take it. The drugs took it.
How is that different than a monkey taking a photo and then the journalist whose camera it was now get sued? What the fuck is wrong with our world, when people and animals are dying faster and faster and we’re gonna argue about who owns the rights to a photo taken by a lemur? Motherfucker was probably just trying to steal the camera! And see?
Here I go, up on the crucifix by the “Lemur Anti-Kleptomaniac League” again. Always trying to silence me. When I was on Tinder I described myself as “Half Jason Statham, half King Julian”, so you persecuting fuckers have to leave me alone!! I’m willing to admit my mistakes.
If you could ask the Lemur, he or she or however the fuck they identify would probably admit (potentially) that they didn’t mean to take that specific photo- and that they think that if we’re really serious about equal rights and ownership of created art, then well, REPERATIONS, motherfucker! Or at least, let us into the community colleges so we can learn how to really work the cameras so we can take the photos that we want to take.
Accidental art. What is it? You want an object to decorate your mail-box. You create it, maybe our of wood, maybe out of metal, all depends on your medium, and then you paint the thing, since anyone who knows anything knows that painting things makes them last a whole lot longer than not-painting them does.
So you use the same backdrop as you give this object a couple different coats of paint. Maybe you even use a couple different colors, like if you have to prime something first… then when you’re done with whatever crappy thing you just created and proudly hung on your mailbox… go back inside to where you were working, and look at the backdrop you used for your painting.
All those outlines are stencils of a sort, and you have images overlapping images along with overspray and rivulets of overexuberance… “This is fucking cool as hell!!” you think to yourself when you look at it with a little glow on. But here’s the fucking Sixty Million Dollar Question. Is that art if you didn’t intend to create it? Yes, you most probably could take it to some sort of Warholian exhibit and sell it, if you weren’t so lazy. But the question is, is it art? I don’t know.
I’m gonna smoke more, and then watch the movie, take some notes… I’ll get back to you with an answer. Promise.
Review Notes
Review Notes
I just offered my buddy Salvia Divinorum to give to his sister instead of marijuana “If you want to see what your sister looks like as a panicked fish swimming through it’s own astral existence.”
I’m also seeing strange glimmers. Reflections.
I need to drink water. My ears keep re-pressurizing. Or maybe I keep re-pressurizing my ears. I’m going to take some Sudafed. So that makes… like… 8 drugs…
I really like the title. Looks like it cost money to film something that close.
Fairhope, Alabama 1863. Crazy. 17 years before this house was built.
I think I just got dab oil on the Chromebook’s screen. Oh well.
Old timey shit. Bales of cotton.
Bunch of… Southern soldiers riding in on horseback.
Seems they want to do some banking.
MUTTONCHOPS!
Ok, there’s a message involved. I think I’m following.
And now… a gang? Coming into town?
Everyone is wearing Southern Coats.
Oh! Wowie! That was some kung fu shit! Or… uh… I think it was. I didn’t expect that.
I’m not sure what happened. My brain spizzzzed for a bit there.
Guys in the bank, waving guns. Hollering, I think the correct term is.
Uh… So… uh… Guy got his head blown apart, and a bunch of guys got shot, and… the gang got the loot.
I don’t think they took any casualties.
They sure had fun making the red spray though!
I don’t think I like the actor playing the leader. Reminds me of Bam Margera.
Some little kid got shot. That sucks.
Bam got shot. Good.
Pretty sure they making this up as they go.
Oh, shit. Whole bunch of dead bodies.
Couple old men picking over the corpses.
Something racist was said. yay.
And there’s the fat guy. He’s in everything these days.
No idea what that corpse scene was about.
YAY! RIVER CROSSING!!
So… lots of dead corn, and then a house in the distance. Not creepy at all.
I don’t like the whistling. Please cut it the fuck out.
A scarecrow?
So… they all decide it looks human but none of them are going to do anything?
And did they really need to add Slavery into this?
What the FUCK??
I thought that was a hog at first- I bet that’s the sound they used… but WTF is that?
Is that our undead? It’s like one of the Eyeless monsters from Resident Evil. This better not be what our undead are. I’ma be pissed, I tells ya! Mabel! C’mere! I gots something ta says ta ya!
I gotta say, those are impressive CGI clouds. That’s the mushrooms talking.
Have they even looked to make sure that’s actually money?
“Place looks deserted.”
“No shit. I think we got that part figured out.”
Dude just stepped on a bird?
Ok, DO NOT FUCKING WATCH THIS MOVIE ON DRUGS.
What the fuck was up with that intense zoom into the dead baby bird? I’m cowering! Repulsed in fear!
Lantern.
Reminds me of where I used to go for Meeting For Worship.
Footprints?
Finally, they check the money.
“Don’t chew on the gold, Jesse.”
I think Jesse is the fat guy. I’ll call him Jesse now.
That house is literally and without exaggeration better than mine. It’s direlect.
What? Dude, that’s not fucking cool! No need to be calling racially prejudiced bullshit!
And Jesse, you’re a twat for not sticking up for your comrade.
Damn, you’ve gotten fatter, too.
So… old photos?
Strange sounds?
Rusting of doors? The basement is locked. Or maybe it’s the closet?
See? Teamwork!
Or… not. But… is there no handle on the other side?
Man, how do you liquify a peanut butter and jelly?
Look under the beds!
A child’s laugh…
Jesse… pirouettes better than he acts.
Dude, shoot. Now.
That racist fuck is behind him.
“Like the breeze through the trees.”
Ok, that was decently shot surgery. They knew the right line. Although, Bam is kinda annoying me.
I think these guys are out at a barn? Although it sounds like the surf?
In the barn… Slave quarters.
And a bunch of bones.
And a book. You know how we feel about books. Entire movies are written about not opening books.
And this one? Spells for raising the dead.
The racist and the fat Jesse are conspiring to kill everyone and take the gold.
“You hear me ask your opinion Boy?”
“Ain’t no boys in here, Speculator.”
Racial tensions.
And people conspiring to kill other people tensions.
Oh, and they’re drinking and playing cards to pass the time.
They are filthy. No way this is gonna end up in bloodshed.
Aww… Bam loves someone who doesn’t love him back!
It’s sex time!
(Apologies, the drugs wrote that)
Lay lady lay… lay across my big brass bed…
Is it coincidence that Bam is wearing a Clockwork Orange Hat?
Poker. Sex sounds from above.
Betting.
Todd goes off by himself, sits in a chair…
Not sure what’s going on…
He’s following boot tracks now.
Oh. Well. Then the boot tracks turn to animal tracks over the course of a couple steps. But… where the fuck are the boots if the human shed them to turn into an animal?
Pillow-talk. Yay. Fuck I’ve got the munchies.
Turns out this is an inherited property from some great uncle or something.
Something about maps.
“He called me Bill. I wanted you the first time I saw you.”
So, this guy feels bad for gunning down that kid.
Clyde. That’s the racist fuck’s name.
Jesse is off to get the horses in.
Dude like to talk to horses. I like that much about him.
Jesse is off to… the well?
Oh, no, he hears little kids pleading for help! From the well!
Throw in the bucket, you moron.
Don’t bother to yell for help…
Well, he did, see, after it was too late.
Hands out of the well, grabbed him, in he goes!
Wait, who is Joseph?
Pillow talk is… interrupted… by lying in the past…
Surrounded by coughing red and bleeding out your own arm. Oh! Is this how you met your murderous woman?
That dude is all burned to shit.
What the fuck? Burned dude trying to choke him?
Joseph is the fat guys name? Who the fuck is Jesse?
We are half way through this movie and I have not seen a zombie yet.
Bam is up to no good.
So… If I pour cereal and milk and then let it soak until I can just glug it down without chewing at all, that counts, right?
Bam is out in the middle of the cornfield, lost as fuck.
Everyone else is standing around in the rain.
“He’ll either come back or he won’t. Let’s all keep our pistols handy.” Now we crown us the king of binary statements, as well as point out that since all y’all actively plotting to kill all y’all else, I think everyone already has their pistols quite handy.
The racist fuck has to go do something off in the dark.
Yup. Everyone is cliquing up.
Bam, Todd, and the Leader guy. Who has sex with the woman, I think.
Oh, the racist fuck just needs to take a shit. Shadows outside. That’s not good.
Now the door is being rattled? Violently? Fuck pulling up my pants. I’m shooting first, shitting second, wiping third, and then pulling up my pants. I came in there to do something, and I don’t care who wants to stop me! I’ll find out in a minute when I examine their corpse.
Oh! But there’s no-one there!
Scary noises and thunder and rattling corn, though. Wooooo.
Inside, we’re dressing, the door is creaky and creepy…
You just take one quick step and kick it shut.
You don’t listen to the little kids voices.
Can we please have some fucking shamblers?
At least she has the balls and thought to check under the bed.
And, well, it didn’t end well. There was this little kid, and then he turned all hollow-eyed and vampiric.
These zombies aren’t really zombies. Shit.
Bam is having trouble. Says he’s queasy. Gonna put him in the little kid bed. Yeah, that’s smart.
If you believe her about the boy, why the hell are you allowing them to shut you in that room with it?
Standing gold patrol is thirsty business.
Now they’re having a lover’s spat, while Bam’s wound is infected.
The racist fuck is all discombobulated.
Bam… Are you awake or dreaming?
“My parents used to lie together on this bed. This is where consumption took her.”
Now he’s hallucinating some guy… talking about… demons and putting his children down?
Yay! It’s time for them to fight over the gold and leadership of the gang!
Racist fuck backs down.
Fuck. What can I liquify?
Racist fuck just sat on a bed and on a doll of nightmare stiches face.
Sleeping time.
Raining time.
Now everyone is nodding off. And hearing shit.
Man, there’s no fucking zombies in this movie. This is some bait and switch bullshit.
Ghost in the windowpane! Wow! That… sucked.
Now the door that wouldn’t open creaks open.
Nice camera angle, but it’s 101 shit.
Todd heading into the basement.
Racist fuck waking up… seeing… a little girl cowering in the corner.
I actually like this actor. I remember him from other shit. Too bad he has to play a racist fuck.
So anyway, the Racist Fuck gets scared by the little girl ghost who does the same freaky CGI face thing.
Guy in the basement finds a bunch of… butchery tools, and then suddenly there’s a woman staked out on the ground…
Something about the others?
She’s hallucinating someone else?
What the fuck??
Oh, this is some… didn’t need to see it… shit.
Like a latex stomach in Nightmare on Elm Street.
But what the fuck is that? A totem pole?
Oh! We might have seen a zombie Joseph!
Bam doesn’t look so good.
Going after Clyde…
Bam looks bad. Like, Bad. Evil.
Bam has some kinda note that he’s all about.
Will. That’s the Leader’s name.
Bam is talking about spirits and ghosts who want to change our world and torment us.
And his boo-boo really hurts.
Because… it’s black lined? I think that infection…
He’s off his rocker.
Bam’s having some sort of possession?
Flashing back to… he’s the plantation owner, being lynched…
Tied to a cross… he’s the scare-crow…
They want to know where the corpses are…
Then there’s a lot of clouds…
And a whole montage that sort of tells the story of a whole lot of human sacrifice going wrong in the attempt to bring back a dead woman and instead demons coming back and a flayed person and it goes on for quite a bit and maybe there’s a couple glimpses of zombies?
Then Annabel or whatever wakes up and it looks like the Bam is dead and then she pukes a bunch of white foam.
Oh, turns out that this was a trap? All along?
And yes, he sacrificed a lot of people. It was bad.
I would also flee.
Now it’s all about the gold. 2 guns and a knife in play. What happened to friends?
I like the way she closes her blade.
Whoah! Audio hallucinations!
Voice of reason says let’s get the fuck out of here.
Voice of reason says he’s going anyway.
And in the barn…
There’s just chunks of meat where the animals used to be, everything is dismembered and headless.
Todd throws big chunk of bloody meat at Anabelle.
Now more audio hallucinations…
More flashbacks…
“I can’t trust my eyes anymore! And there’s worse things than dying!” Well… yeah. That’s part of the fun. And yeah. Being here. Watching this. Is worse than dying.
So we wander off into the rain. And argue about the gold.
Bam is missing. Todd is lost. I am hungry.
Um… So, Todd is standing out in the rain in the cornfield, and he turns around, and there’s one of those black-pit eye creatures, and it snarls at Todd, and Todd disintegrates into nothing? Like, warped into another dimension?
Oh! They’re at the scarecrow again, and they think it’s Todd up there!
“All tied up with hemp!”
Oh, it’s the racist fuck. And his eyes and mouth have been sewn shut.
And… his chest cavity… filled with straw?
And it somehow tries to bite, and then everyone flinches, and you can’t see how but the scarecrow head comes off and there’s red.
Ok. We’re down to two idiots running around in a wet corn field. This is a great movie.
I am so fucking beyond caring at this point. Stop yelling, stop pointing your gun, stop looking intently…
Aww… friendly fire strikes again.
Daytime. Grieving.
Getting up and walking away.
Being threatened by your dog… Who gets the best of you, sends you fleeing.
Except it’s the mutant hog thing?
And then you run out of the corn and there’s a soldier with a gun and he shoots you with it. Right in the chest.
Bunch of southern troops looking around, find the dead hog. And they find some of the gold.
So they’re gonna hang around and look for more gold.
————End Transmission——————–
Plot Autopsy
Plot Autopsy
- Cowboy posturing ends up in a gunfight in a bank robbery
- Have people wander around arguing and film it as “travelling”
- Finally get around to some serious corn appreciation.
- There’s mutant ghosts and gold and shit, but man, there is a lot of corn here!
- Hey, seriously now… have you appreciated the amount of corn that this represents? Even wet!
- I’m not sure how I feel knowing that those two men are wandering in the corn fields I’ve come so fond of.
Zombie Description
Zombie Description
They’re not fucking zombies. There’s like, a skinless hog creature, and then a bunch of ghost-kids. There’s even a fucking “Ghost in the window against the rain storm” moment. This sucked. It had nothing to do with the undead, and they barely pierced together a coherent… no… rather, it was incoherent… but we struggled on, as the bus always does. Some puritan’s wife died so he cut up a bunch of people and created demon things and then things got out of control when Halloween came.
Where the money went
Where the money went
Evidently, too much money went into ultra-high-frequency zooming into and red-tinting dead baby birds. Because you know what? They spent some money on that. And then I watched it. And I did not enjoy it. So, fucking waste of money, unless it was just to make sure *anyone* on psychedelics who watches your movie will hate you, it wasn’t worth it.
Best Weapon
Best Weapon
Really drawing a blank here. I mean, the movie had plenty of violence, and weapons, but everything was so fucking normal and boring. I’d have rather watched The Patriot over this, and I don’t like that movie. Guns, knives, old books with spells… who gives a shit? This was insipid. This was limp. This needs Cialis if it wants to go on the offense.
That was new!
That was new!
I’ve never had a dead baby bird zoomed in so intensely before. Yes, I ate some mushrooms, yes, I ate more than I intended, but holy fuck. No, it’s wholey fuck. As in, there is nothing left that they could have done to that dead baby bird to make it more… what the fuck am I watching?
Can I get a hand?
Can I get a hand?
No. There was nothing zombie here. There was nothing undead here. They did a good job with some gore, some well deconstructed bodies, but there wasn’t a fucking zombie moment to save the movie’s life.
Overall Recommendation
Recommendation?
Look. I’m going to be honest. I think a skunk and a dog mixed it up somewhere in my neighborhood while I was watching that movie. For the final 20 or so minutes, I’ve been able to smell a slight but persistent stink. This movie, however, leaves you with, what, 90 minutes of stink? It’s like my neighborhood smells- no zombies and stinky. The movie itself was an absolute piece of shit ripping off every other movie that ever offered up anything into it’s genre. This is lazy and incompetent, but the one fucking thing it has going for it are it’s special effects. Unfortunately, they peaked around The Grudge level, so… shrieking CGI children morphing into vampiric ghost things… yeah. Fucking stinks when you get right down to it, doesn’t it? What was I asking at the end of my intro? I don’t remember, but the answer is no. No, there’s no hope. No, we have no fucking bananas, no, I don’t want to see yours… Oh yeah. The picture. Is this art if it wasn’t intended to be? Or rather, I think the actual question is… man, fuck this movie. I got nothing left and I wanna take a piss.
Peanut butter is a liquid, right?