KHC Guest Eddie McMullen's Universal Dead

KHC attendees may remember horror journalist Eddie McMullen, who writes for FeoAmante.com and appeared at last March's KHC meeting.

Eddie was the art director on Universal Dead, a newly released webisode series:



Eddie is currently trying to raise money to direct a horror feature film.

Hollywood Witches Satirizes Industry Hypocrisies

Hollywood says it loves equal opportunity and multicultural diversity. Development executive Diana Däagen thinks the studio's hiring is based more on ageism, sexism, and nepotism.

And so, surrounded by followers of Wicca, astrology, Native American shamans, telephone psychics, UFO prophets, a channeled warlord from Atlantis, and the alchemy of Hermes Trismegistus, Diana's coven of New Age witches hatch a plot to infiltrate and diversify the entertainment industry until Hollywood "looks like America" -- no matter how many eggs must be broken along the way.

Only the intrepid supermarket tabloid reporters of the Hollywood Investigator and Weekly Universe family of family publications can stop Diana's path toward world media domination.

Hollywood Witches is an urban fantasy/satire, debuting as an Amazon Kindle ebook. Look for a paper edition later in 2010.

Libertarians Should Welcome New Anti-Torture Play

Robert Johnson of the New Jersey Star-Ledger reviews An American Rendition, a new play that tackles America's pro-torture policy in the "War on Terror":

"Americans would rather not consider the suffering of people water-boarded, beaten and deprived of sleep as part of our government's so-called war on terror.

"Choreographer Jane Comfort tackles what she calls this 'collective unwillingness to look' in 'An American Rendition,' a grimly mocking work of contemporary dance-theater coming to the Theatre at Raritan Valley Community College on Saturday.



"The piece recalls the by-now much publicized activities of government agents who sequestered individuals without trial and have subjected them to practices explicitly prohibited under U.S. and international law.

"While 'An American Rendition' focuses on the plight of a fictional character mistakenly detained and transported to a U.S.-operated black site, the piece ironically juxtaposes the gruesome incidents of his captivity with weirdly light-hearted scenes inspired by reality television."

Read the rest of the article.

Also read: Pentagon Possessed: A Neocon Horror Story.

An Easy Way to Promote Peace

Jon Rainwater suggests an easy way to donate money to the peace movement -- and it costs you nothing:

Your smarts can be put to good use AND help Peace Action West raise some money, quickly and easily.

Our friends at CREDO, the progressive mobile phone company, have figured out a way to put all those crazy things the right wing nuts say to work for good causes like us. They put together a quiz to test you on the latest conservative claptrap – it's called OMG GOP WTF?!

Every time you answer a question correctly, we get 10 cents. There are five questions, so that means that if we get 1000 people to take the quiz and you score okay…we get $500 dollars. Check out the quiz: www.omggopwtf.com.

But, you’ll want to act fast. The quiz only benefits Peace Action West from February 15 to February 21. Next week, it will be a new quiz and a new organization, so don’t wait!

Thanks,

Jon Rainwater
Executive Director, Peace Action West

Anti-Iraq War Satire on Kindle

Back in the summer of 2006, I wrote a screenplay, Pentagon Possessed: A Neocon Horror Story.

In 2007, it was a quarterfinalist in four screenplay contests: the Fade-In Magazine Screenplay Contest; Writers on the Storm; the AAA Screenplay Contest; and The Writer's Network contest.

Pentagon Possessed is an X-Files parody set against recent history. In my script, two FBI agents discover that dark supernatural forces were behind the Patriot Act, and America's entry into the Iraq War.

A reader for the Slamdance Screenplay Competition wrote in the coverage report: "The writer's awesome research into the details of the disinformation generated by the Neocon cabal within the government, in order to justify the invasion of Iraq, suggests strongly this should be a television docudrama, as the genesis of the Vietnam War was treated in John Frankenheimer's HBO presentation, The Path To War (2003). The scenes in the script based on this research are quite good, with a strong accent of mockery of the participants that is quite entertaining. For entertainment value, such a docudrama would beat Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 all to hell."

Pentagon Possessed is a satirical horror story that reminds us that governments will use fear of a foreign enemy to suppress civil liberties at home. That war is the health of the state. And that questioning authority is patriotic.

Despite some favorable attention in Hollywood, Pentagon Possessed was never bought or produced. Perhaps someday...

But in the meantime, I am making Pentagon Possessed available to the general public as an Amazon Kindle ebook.

Palestinian Artists vs. The Israeli State

Tonight I saw Slingshot Hip Hop on The Sundance Channel. An amazing documentary whose overarching thems is Art vs. The State.

Art vs. The State is a theme that every libertarian should sympathize with. But in this case, The State is Israel, which will discomfort some "libertarians."

Even so, all true libertarians will be moved by this powerful documentary of young Palestinian musicians expressing their struggle against Occupation and Israeli Statism through music. (See, not all Palestinians are terrorists! -- And isn't it sad that some people need to have that pointed out!)

There's also a minor theme of female Palestinian hip hop artists struggling for equal recognition within their own patriarchal Arab culture.

Slingshot Hip Hop won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

Artists compare Berlin Wall to Israeli and Mexico/US walls

The Nation magazine reports that an arts project is going up on Wilshire Blvd, one that commemorates the 20th year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

This project will prove controversial, because it draws parallels to Israel's wall to keep Palestinians out of Jewish territory, and the United State's wall to keep out Mexicans.

Read The Nation's report here.