"This City Is Afraid of Me. I Have Seen Its True Face."

Couldn't sleep last night. Bad stomach. Wicked thunder storm. Existential angst.

When life hands you lemons, though, you pop in a tape of Puppet Master: The Legacy, break out your flamenco guitar and, for the 547th time, try to perfect your execution of the finger picking on Cat Power's "Baby Doll." At least, you do if you're Steve Forceman, PI.

(I know what you're thinking, Sloth. Cat Power? Well, Steve Forceman, PI is tough, not callous. There's not just a difference there; there's a roaring, windswept gulf. Besides, there was a fridge fulla beer, but Steve Forceman's stomach wasn't having it. I sucked up that eighth beer, in spite of acridness in my throat and an insistent gag reflex, and I played away with pride. F#, modified Bm chord/ F#, open A, B/ F# modified Bm chord. And so on.)

(What's that, Sloth? The flamenco guitar seems a little suspect. Well, I might point out that Chan is clearly Tapping OUT the beat on her guitar, flamenco style, at the beginning of "Baby Doll." And a man of action like Steve Forceman, PI always uses the instrument that is most appropriate to the job.)

Now about that Puppet Master: You've heard of a clip episode, right? Well, this was a clip-freakin'-MOVIE! And of course, I hadn't even SEEN a prior entry of the Puppet Master series in its entirety-- only the bits & pieces I positively could not otherwise avoid. I'd only rented this one on random impulse. Sort of. Actually, my cat thinks the Puppet Master films are terrifying, but I think the catnip has addled her brain.

Anyway, the only new stuff-- which was also the only stuff that made any sense whatsoever-- was about 10 minutes of "framing" footage, in which some leather clad cupcake tried to extract the secret of Toulon's puppet-animatin' magic from some b-movie Topol clone by threating him with a little, tiny pistol. The only good violence here was this part where she shoots him in the foot, and that was over in, like, 2 seconds. But she was easy on the eyes in her form fitting black espionage jammies. I looked her up on IMDB. Her only other credit was in a late period Buffy, in which she was flirting with Xander or some shit.

(Now if Steve Forceman had been trying to get the same info out of this withered old hack, he woulda done something REALLY sadistic, like make him WATCH a late period Buffy episode in its entirety-- Geneva code be damned!)

The verdict: two enthusiastic thumbs up... my ass. I fell asleep in front of an infomercial hosted by twin dwarves in suits. Really. They were pulling some sorta Carlton Sheets schtick about buying property with nothing down. All of the testimonials were provided by persons of a subtly bizarre appearance. (Can something BE subtly bizarre, Steve Forceman wonders?) Like, this one guy who had a clearly fake little, almost Hitler mustache glued to his face.

So Steve Forceman is signing off. I wish something would happen. All this sitting around wears on a man...