Know what I hate more than atheists, Arabs and the government? Vampires. They are the Bloc Party of monsters. Fey, affected, cliché-ridden, unoriginal, devoid of ballsack and yet for some reason young ladies love the SHIT out of them. Why? They’re not scary and NO they’re not sexy. In fact quite the opposite. Literary vampires most often symbolize love unrequited — the mysterious, well-dressed, attractive and perpetually unattainable man of every pubescent goth gal’s fever-dreams.

In other words, they’re gay dudes. And I can understand how maybe in the Victorian Age teenage girls needed metaphorical, literary gay dudes to fill that void but circa 2008 there’s plenty of real gay dude to go around. Which is why I can’t understand the continued appeal of vampires. Isn’t Clay Aiken enough? Aren’t the Jonas Brothers and Tokio Hotel still touring? Never mind the fact that we’ve got Alan Ball’s True Blood – which drags out every vampire cliché in the book and infuses it with bad summer stock theater doing Tennessee Williams – to remind us each week why vampires suck, and I don’t just mean AB+. We’ve also got the ridiculously popular “Twilight” books and their eagerly anticipated (by fat Mormon girls anyway) film adaptation coming in November. And isn’t Anne Rice still shitting out the occasional trashy vamp novel?

Vampires are everywhere and they’re ALWAYS the same. No one ever bothers to put a new spin on them. Handsome mystery man with penetrating eyes and chiseled features? Check. Den of “evil” vampires who dress like gay bikers at a Nine Inch Nails concert? Checkity-check. Shitloads of whining, pining and longing? Cheeeeeck-check-check. This dude? Check-checkity-fucking-check. Just once I’d like to see “fat fucking slob who plays video games all day” vampire. Or “Mexican with a mullet who hangs out by the soccer field drinking Budweiser Chelada tallboys” vampire. Anything but that same old surrogate gay guy we’ve seen a million times over.

And why do vampires always dress in leather pants and frilly shirts? Okay, you’re supposedly 400 years old yet you look like you should be rocking “The Final Countdown” on a keytar while a fan blows your permed mane. You’re telling me vampire fashion began with mid-80’s Headbanger’s Ball and ended at Hot Topic? Put on some Dockers and a Lacoste shirt for a change, buddy. Or how about some sans-a-belt slacks, velcro shoes and a cardigan? You’re older than my grandpa, start dressing like it.

Anyway, with an obvious lack of regard for my feelings re vampires, Pan’s Labyrinth/Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro is writing a trilogy of novels — with veteran thriller author Chuck Hogan co-(ghost?)-writing — about a vampire virus that plagues the earth and wipes out most of human kind. First novel in the series will be entitled “The Strain,” which I believe is Mexican for “I Am Legend.”

I only wish Richard Matheson was a vampire so he could show up at del Toro’s mansion door one dark night and punch the director in the gunt. “Stop stealing my shit, Del Toro!” Matheson would say. “I ain’t dead – I’m everliving! And I’m gonna kick the everliving shit out of ya!” Yeah, that would be cool. Richard Matheson fan-fiction > vampire books.

On the upside, at least it’s not a crappy 70’s TV show or campy 80’s horror movie. On the downside, it’s an adaptation of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick to be directed by Timur Bekmambetov – the Kazakhstani explosteur responsible for this summer’s completely incomprehensible Wanted – from a screenplay by Adam Cooper and Bill Collage, the writers who brought us 2004’s Olsen Twins vehicle New York Minute.

They wrote a fucking Olsen Twins movie. Now they’re adapting Melville.

Of course Cooper and Collage will be XTREMING the epic tome up for the unwashed McCain-voting masses. In addition to such liberties as equipping the eponymous sea mammal with rocket launchers, jet packs and a giant robot claw, the guys who failed in their attempt to make the Olsen Twins viable for the big screen have a Queer Eye makeover in mind for Captain Ahab, who “will be depicted more as a charismatic leader than a brooding obsessive” (yes that’s an actual quote, per Variety).

Uh-huh. Because, you know, there’s really no need to sweat a little detail like THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT OF THE NOVEL. This really begs the question: Why even call it Moby Dick? Melville didn’t invent whales, if the only point here is to make a CGI whale movie why not just come up with your own spin and call it WHALESPLOSION or DETHORKA or fucking BLOW HOLE? Wait, there was already a movie called Blow Hole. Jeff Stryker’s in it, it’s really good. But back to my point: The intended audience for this movie – retarded people, idiots, UFC fans – has no clue that there’s a novel called Moby Dick, or even that there are such things as novels. They can’t read and probably won’t even know what whales are until you explain it to them. So why go through all this effort to piss off people like me – who might actually care, and have nothing better to do with their time than complain about this sort of shit on the internet – when you can come up with your own brand-spankin’ new franchise-worthy intellectual property? Seriously. I am asking you. YOU. Why?

Here are a few additional idiotic quotes from co-screenwriter Adam Cooper – whose only other writing credit on IMDB besides the aforementioned Anorexia Twins abortion was the 2006 box office failure Accepted:

“Our vision isn’t your grandfather’s ‘Moby Dick…”

Thanks. Because after years of therapy I’ve finally gotten over the childhood trauma associated with my grandfather’s “moby dick.”

“This is an opportunity to take a timeless classic and capitalize on the advances in visual effects to tell what at its core is an action-adventure revenge story.”

And thanks for confirming that you haven’t bothered to read the novel. Adam Cooper, you may well be a great guy in real life. You probably have a wife and kids and/or gay partner you’re supporting with your writing, you’re probably voting for Obama and drive a hybrid, hell maybe you even donate half your money to cancer patients or burn victims, and Crom bless ya for sticking to it and succeeding in a town that paves its streets with the dashed dreams of creative hopefuls, because no matter what naysayers like me might think about your work, at least you’re doing what you want to do in life, and that in and of itself is an achievement we can all admire. So please don’t take this the wrong way when I say that I hope you die of AIDS.

As you’ll no doubt recall from your middle school history class, the greatest humans to ever walk the earth are:

Grrrr-AARGH! (The Renaissance Caveman who harnessed fire AND invented the wheel in the same lost weekend whilst drunk off his gourd on saber-tooth-tiger-urine wine)
Gandhi
Jesus
Zombie Jesus
Ted Nugent
Einstein
Rocco Siffredi
William Shatner

Not necessarily in that order. You’ll notice there’s not a single woman’s name on that list. That could be because the gender-biased oppressive patriarchy dominating society since the hunter/gatherer times has suppressed the storied accomplishments of womyn throughout history. Or it could just be because women are dumb-as-shit walking vaginas who are only good at one thing, and that’s prattling on about the minutia of their day for hours on end. I’m leaning toward the former, but will admit the jury’s still out.

But back to Shatner. When J.J. Abrams announced that he would be directing Paramount’s Star Trek reboot, many Trek fans were secretly crossing their fingers and praying to each one of the large-breasted Green Space Deities that Captain Kirk taught the meaning of love to with his cock that their beloved Shat would take the high road and bow out of any involvement, he possessing the self-awareness to realize that his time portraying his career-defining role had passed. But such fans clearly did not understand the true meaning of William Shatner. There IS no high road, only ONE road: the Shat road. Of COURSE Shatner had a hissy about not having a featured role. Of COURSE Shatner believed that he –even at age 77 and Jerry-Lewis-bloated – is the only actor on EARTH capable of playing Kirk; even a young Kirk at Starfleet Academy. Frankly I would’ve been disappointed with Shatner if he HADN’T pitched a fit, which is why the video below – wherein Shat and his twin daughter Liz call Abrams to the carpet for being a liar – makes my nipples lactate with joy.

Thing is, I believe Shatner. I’ve dealt with enough passive-aggressive Hollywood dooshnozzles to recognize the tell-tale bullshit stench of the back-patting Brutus. Don’t get me wrong, I think the new Trek movie’s gonna be awesome, and I’m just as certain that Chris Pine will completely pwn as Kirk as I am that a Shatner cameo would’ve come off as contrived and corny. But come on, Abrams; you could at least be up front about it. At the very least because the LAST thing you want to do when making a Star Trek movie is piss all over the franchise’s demigod — and the legion of fanboys who worship him. But mostly because Shatner – one of the eight human wonders of the world — deserves more respect than that.

Hey filmmakers: Want to guarantee that your movie feels dated by the time the BluRay comes out? Give the task of writing your theme song to whoever yesterday’s taste du jour was, regardless of whether or not their sound works with the tone of the film. See William Friedkin’s To Live in Die in L.A. and grok the Wang Chung score to see what I’m laying down. Or just give this song from Quantum of Solace a listen.

Don’t get me wrong, Alicia Keys’ voice is the sex, and she’s one of the few mainstream name-recognizable music artists out there worth a shit. And though I dig Jack White quite a bit (especially sans his Down Syndrome incest wife/sister/drummer), while his nasal tenor crooning would befit a Guy Richie post-modern take on the spy genre, I fear it’ll be as out of place as a Tapout tee-shirt, flip-flops and camo-cargo shorts on a Bolivian donkey during the silhouettes-of-naked-ladies opening credit sequence of a James Bond film. It’s too bad too, because this song falls just short of being awesome thanks to its kitchen sink approach. The piano line is awesome, Jack White’s 60’s garage fuzz guitar is awesome, and when Alicia’s singing by herself it’s right on the money. But Jack’s voice is grating and out of place, and the horn blasts are there just because, reminding me a bit of “Apple Pie” by one-hit-wonder funk-metalers’ White Trash.

(”walking through the ghetto on a Sunday afternoo-oon!” Like those hair-farmers would’ve made it fifteen mintues in the ghetto without getting ass-raped).

It’s a shame Amy Winehouse lost the gig due to her being a gangrenous zombie crack whore. While I take great joy in ridiculing her public persona, as a potential singer of James Bond themes she was a strong choice – at least a helluva lot better than Chris “Pissing on my Legacy” Cornell. Couldn’t the producers have lured her into the studio with some crystal meth, Jack Daniels and human brains? “Braaaaaaaaiiins” might be the only lyric she’d be capable of singing, but it’d sound like something straight out of a 1960s spy movie!