In spite of the drought, I spotted a couple of patches of bluebonnets along Loop 1604 in northern Bexar County in the past week.  We had a good hard rain last night, so they should be popping up all over now.

Can you really blame them for censoring this?

I mean, really.

As I feared, they ruined it:

Cogswell calls the zombie flick "Dawn of the Dead," one of the best American films, and says the first "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" "is a freakin' work of genius."

"To me, it's as naked and existential a trip as Albert Camus, or something like that. People think it's trashy and gory, but they have it all wrong. It's an existential art film, in which the blood and gore is mostly in your own mind."

He says Lovecraft, who inspired a slew of largely forgettable movies, wrote "in the eternally threatened present; the apocalypse can come at any time."

Director Gildark agrees. "I think Lovecraft really speaks to our times, that there are forces around us beyond our control," he said. "But, the thing in the story that matters most is coming home as an adult and dealing with what you come from and your heredity. No matter how far you get from it, it's always there."

Good enough, so far.  But then...

There is a gay love story in the film that Cogswell thinks audiences are ready for, given the mainstream success of "Brokeback Mountain." Cogswell, who calls himself "38 percent gay," or "bisexual, if you need a more clinical definition," says part of "Cthulhu" was inspired by gay friends who shared stories of growing up in small towns.

I guess it was too much to expect that he would just do a good job of depicting the original story without having some agenda that he would be preaching to everyone about.There was no romance in The Shadow Over Innsmouth, gay or otherwise.  It is a story about finding the horrible truth about one's own heritage.  Lovecraft had what we would today call a "medical history of insanity" in his family, and he always feared that he himself would lose it someday.  This story is a reflection of that fear.

As for not revealing the twist at the end of the story:  dude, a lot of people have read it.  So unless you're going to make up your own twist, don't worry about that too much.

Also:  I don't know much about this sort of thing, but is it possible to be "38 percent gay"?

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