…And comes back with a vengeance.

As my twelve dedicated readers have surely noticed—I’ll be heart-broken if you haven’t—Rooster Illusion has been absent for the past two weeks. Yeah, I thought something seemed different. I assumed it was your hair. Well, to answer those of you more observant than Disembodied Voice, my unannounced two-week absence was totally unplanned. But I’m going to pass it off as a kind of post-grad white boy’s walkabout.

Where did I go? What have I been doing? Well, I’ve been playing a lot of Skyrim. Since that’s not very writer-ly of me, let’s just say that I’ve been wandering the vast, sun-bleached deserts of the soul. A summer of unemployment can wear down on a guy, but I’m back. And just to prove it, you’re getting three reviews this week. And since a few of you—three or four, by my guesstimate—might not believe me, here’s some of what you’ve got in store:

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954):

“…And that’s what these movies are about, when they’re at their best. Finding the humanity in the monstrous….The scientists in Creature, even the one who kind of instigates everything, have good intentions. Even the Gill-man is only lashing out against people who have wronged him in the past.”

Total Recall (2012):

“…utterly bland and kind of inoffensive, I guess. I didn’t hate it. Much in the same way that nobody really hates cardboard.”

Whip It (2009):

“I don’t know if this is a totally realistic representation of roller derby culture. I do know that roller derby looks awesome and that I kind of wish I were a girl so that I could do it. A quick Google-ing tells me that men’s roller derby does, in fact, exist. But you know what? It doesn’t look even half as cool.”

So there you go. I went down the river, got off the boat, saw the horror, the horror, and now I’m back. And better than ever? That remains to be seen, but abso-goddamn-lutely.