High Points in Lowbrow Cinema: John Carpenter’s The Thing (plus bonus rant)
John Carpenter’s The Thing is probably one of my all-time favorite horror movies. Released in 1982, it flopped at the box office primarily due to competition from a certain alien whose initials are E.T. Since that time, however, it has gained cult status, mainly due to its orgy of old-school special effects, a great ensemble cast, and one of the greatest lines in The History of Horror Films, which is featured in the clip I’m showcasing.
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I’ve been meaning to post this clip for awhile, but I kept procrastinating. Today, certain events conspired against me and now I have no choice but to post it. See below for the full rant…
My next-door neighbor is a prick. He’s one of those people who always has to be complaining. Not whining, but bitching and grousing about how things aren’t to his satisfaction. I invited him into my apartment one time and he started bitching about how old the carpeting is and how I should complain to the management to get them replace the carpet. I told him that the inconvenience of having to move all the furniture wasn’t worth getting new flooring, but he just wouldn’t let it go.
He also considers himself an audiophile. He’s got this high-dollar stereo system - I think the speakers alone were about 1300 bucks - yet he listens to stuff like AC/DC and most of his CDs are bargain bin “Greatest Power Ballads of the Eighties” type of shit. Mind you, I really like AC/DC, but they’re basically a really good garage band; you’re supposed to listen to them because they fuckin’ rock, not because you want to marvel at the separation of the highs and midranges of “Whole Lotta Rosie”.
Anyway, today my neighbor asks me about getting his TV set up for high-definition. It took about 10 minutes to explain to him that he wasn’t going to get HD capabilities with just the coaxial cable coming out of the wall. (He’s from Germany, so there’s some language difficulties, but most of his communication problems can be attributed to the fact that he’s a dipshit.) He kept telling me that since they’re making the switch to digital transmission in 2009, that he should be getting HD out of the cable, and I kept telling him that digital cable and HDTV are two completely different things.
Because I’m a nice guy, I took a peek at his setup and offered to give him a component cable for his DVD player so he can enjoy a better picture. I don’t think he even owns a DVD, so I brought over my copy of The Thing to test the picture (all that snow combined with scenes with lots of shadows make it a good disc for testing picture quality).
So here’s a guy who has a 36-inch flat panel HD-ready TV, and he has basic cable and a standard composite A/V cable hookup for his DVD player. I hook up the component cable and he acknowledges that the picture looks better, but he starts obsessing over the sound. He had the audio cables from the DVD player going into the “A/V IN” jacks of the TV, and cables going from the “AUDIO OUT” jack into his stereo amplifier, so when I moved the audio cables to the component input, he could no longer get sound from his stereo. I told him that could be solved simply by routing the audio cable straight from the DVD player into the stereo amplifier; the “AUDIO OUT” jack on the TV was redundant. I’ve got a drawer full of cables, so I told him I could easily find one that was the proper length.
He then spent at least 30 minutes dicking around with the sound on the TV, totally ignoring my offer of a cable to hook the DVD player up to the stereo. Finally he decides that a better picture isn’t worth it if he can’t get audio out of his stereo speakers. Before I left, I again had to remind him that digital TV and HDTV are two different things, and I had to tell him to quit pointing at the picture of the HDMI/DVI cable in his TV’s user manual. “Unless you buy a product that has DVI output, you don’t need an HDMI/DVI cable,” I had to tell him about three times.
Believe it or not, here’s where things get ridiculous. I told him that should he ever buy an HDMI cable, he should be prepared to spend some money. My neighbor then starts bragging about how much he paid for the cables on his stereo, and as I’m going out the front door, he opens the closet and pulls out this box with all these expensive RCA jacks. I suggested that he use one of those cable to hook up the DVD player to his stereo, and he acted all indignant, saying - I shit you not - “that would be a waste; these cables are too expensive to hook up to a television”. I should have kept going out the door, but I couldn’t resist: I had to ask, “Aren’t they going to waste just sitting in the closet?”
The guy’s English is decent enough that he can make a point when he needs to, but his audiophilia has rendered him completely irrational. Standard cables are apparently too cheap to be connected to his stereo, and expensive cables aren’t worthy of being connected to his TV. It doesn’t matter that he already has cheap cables hooked up to his stereo in a redundant setup that probably degrades sound quality.
It pains me to know that my neighbor will one day buy an expensive high-definition DVD player and shell out a ridiculous amount of money for a top-of-the-line HDMI cable… just so he can sit on the couch and watch Jean-Claude Van Damme movies.
I’m running out of naming options for these increasingly sick people. I started out a month ago with Church Burners. Then I had to add Ebola Boys. Church Burning Ebola Boys. Now what - Church Burning Baby Butchering Ebola Boys? That’s too long. Too unwieldy. Any suggestions would be appreciated. (Source: 
February 11th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
See, now you’re going to make me go watch The Thing again. Shame on you!
I’ve known some of the crazy audiophile people in my past too, I was friends with someone who owned his own speaker company and used to sit there and tweak things until they were just so, claiming he could hear the difference. He’d switch between channels and claim there was a minuscule variation but to this day, I’m sure he was just imagining it.
Come on, stop screwing with the speakers and just watch the movie already!
February 11th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Any day is a good day to watch The Thing again. Aren’t you glad it wasn’t a clip from the American Godzilla remake? But then, there are no high points in that lowbrow abomination.
I consider audiophilia a semi-respectable form of woo. I’ve known plenty of otherwise skeptical atheists who buy into it, but most of them are honest about it, admitting that it’s more of a fetish than it is some logical method of listening to music.
February 11th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
I like browsing the high-end audio displays at CES. Last time I went, probably at least a third were straightforward ploys to separate the rich and foolish from large chunks of their money. One can make a mint peddling cable to those folks.
I especially am fond of people selling “audio power interconnects”. In other words, power cords. There’s all sorts of advanced vocabulary employed in selling them, “crystal” and “coherence” being favorites. Yet the number of people willing to spend $800 on a special six-foot “audio power interconnect” seems to be far higher than the number of people willing to spend the $10Ks of money needed to re-wire the power in their home to upgrade beyond the cheap aluminum crud their builder stuck behind the walls in the first place. While in most cases, I’m all for consumer advocacy, nutcase audiophilia is one market segment that I actually enjoyed watching them get soaked.
February 11th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
While I do own the DVD of the American Godzilla (got it for $5 on clearance at Best Buy so I could have the entire set), I can’t say I’ve ever watched it beyond the time wasted in the theater when it came out. Give me the original Japanese Godzillas any day.
Anyone remember the old green markers they used to sell so you could draw around the edge of your CDs and make them sound better? It’s just sad how many people are so ridiculously gullible.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Wesley, that’s why I consider audiophilia a semi-respectable form of woo. While no woo is fully respectable, at least all that high-end audio gear is marketed to people with a substantial amount of disposable income.
I’ve often thought it’s odd that a lot of ads for audiophile gear turns up in science magazines. People who are scientifically literate shouldn’t fall for that stuff, and I think the people who write the copy for the ads probably know that. The ads seem to be aimed at people who want to impress their friends, instead of people who simply want the most bang for their buck.
Cephus, what did you think of the 50th Anniversary Godzilla? I thought they did a good job of packing in as much as possible, with lots of cameos. My only complaint was the appearance of Godzilla Junior. The guy who directed it also did the awesome Versus as well as one half of the Duel Project, Aragami. Aragami was okay, but I liked the other half, 2LDK a lot better.
Speaking of Japanese flicks, are you getting Miike’s Zebraman? It comes out next Tuesday. I’ve got it in the top of my Netflix queue…
February 11th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Godzilla: Final Wars was good, especially the scene where Godzilla took out the American version, which always gets a cheer from real Godzilla fans. I thought the Minya scenes were alright, he was mostly in for comedy relief and you noticed he moved from being in the back of the truck to the front seat to being seat-belted in, he was part of the family!
Zebraman is on my list of things to get, but it’s still a long list. Funniest thing I’ve seen recently was The World Sinks (Except Japan), a spoof of the novel Japan Sinks. It was done by Minoru Kawasaki, the same oddball director of Calamari Wrestler and Executive Koala