We're back from our spring retreat on Europa and ready to get our blog on!

All of that space travel and meditation has our minds filled with sci-fi thoughts. While The Martian Invasion of Oz has a sci-fi inspired plot, its real inspiration was the work of L. Frank Baum and the wonderful fantasy worlds he created. It is kind of a fantasy adventure with some science fiction frills attached. The sci-fi films that we have been most grooving on since touching down at the ol' Emerald City Zen Center have been ones that we think of as "Sneaky Sci-Fi" - movies that are actually science fiction but are disguised as other genres.

Here are our recommendations for some high quality "Sneaky Sci-Fi".



1. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) Director Colin Trevorrow
What appears to be a comedy about a sarcastic, burn out reporter (Jake Johnson) dragging along two college interns (Aubrey Plaza and Karan Soni) to write a magazine piece on a small town eccentric (Mark Duplass) who placed a personal ad seeking someone to accompany him on a time travel adventure, becomes a funny, poignant reflection on loss, regret and why being able to correct the mistakes of our past via time travel is such a tantalizing concept. It's a movie about why we are attracted to the time travel genre that has nothing to do with hover boards and Deloreans and everything to do with the burden of guilt and regret.



2. Daybreakers (2009) Director Michael & Peter Spierig
At first glance this movie looks like it's going to basically be a Resident Evil movie with the zombies swapped out for vampires, but this dystopian look at a future where humanity has been transformed into vampires by a viral outbreak is about a whole lot more than cheap fang-filled thrills. The protagonists of the film (Ethan Hawke) is a vampire scientist racing against time to create a blood substitute before the world's supply of viable human blood is used up. What he discovers along the way is a human resistance movement, a cure for vampirism (in the form of Willem Dafoe) and a plot by his corporate scumbag boss (Sam Neill) to use the blood shortage to his benefit. It's a film about human mismanagement of natural resources and socio-economic inequalities in our health and justice systems. Good stuff.


3. The Prestige (2006) Director Christopher Nolan
In between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale got together to make this movie that initially appears to be a mystery designed to pay homage to the great Victorian stage magicians. Instead, this story of rival magicians (Bale and Hugh Jackman) being destroyed by their shared obsession for their art has a secret sci-fi heart beating the form of David Bowie as legendary inventor/scientist Nikola Tesla. The film ruminates on obsession, love, sacrifice, art and duality in a package that is a thousand times more satisfying than anything with a guy dressed up like a bat punching a clown can ever be.


4. Robot and Frank  (2012) Director Jake Schreier
Set in the not too distant future this film films finds former, dashing cat burglar Frank (Frank Langella) struggling with the onset of dementia and at odds with his son (James Marsden), who has bought a robot companion (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard) to look after him. At first Frank resents the presence of the robot but soon a kind of friendship evolves when Frank realizes that his new mechanical friend is just what he needs to get back into his old career. This funny and sad character piece treats future technology, such as the robot, in such an off handed, mundane manner that you lose any sense of wonder of it and just accept it just as you accept your smart phone and tablet nowadays. This allows the audience to be submerged in the world without being distracted by the bells and whistles that so often accompany looks into the future.


5. The One I Love (2014) Director Charlie McDowell
A married couple (Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss) on the verge of divorce are sent to beautiful coastal retreat by their creepy marriage counsellor (Ted Danson). Once there, they discover doppelgangers of themselves that represent their ideal version of the other. The movie uses this premise to explore a deeply troubled relationship and how our expectations and desires are often in stark opposition to the reality we live in. While the film sometimes feels like a Twilight Zone episode that has ran too long at times, as well as having a couple niggling plot holes, I guarantee that you will be thinking about it for days to follow - which is a sure sign of good art.

Listen, Bud, he's got radioactive blood!

 In A Zen Master in Oz and The Martian Invasion of Oz we meet Captain Pug, who explores the multiverse from the helm of his reality hopping steam ship, The Laughing Tortoise.
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Another hero has been in the news lately on account of doing his own leaping from one reality to the next.

Our hero!

The internet has been whipped its collective self into a tizzy over the news that Spiderman will be appearing in the superhero blockbusters produced by Marvel/Disney. Prior to the announcement this week by Sony Pictures and Marvel that the Web Head will be hanging out with Captain America and the Black Widow on screen, such a prospect was a pipe dream for fans of the Marvel comic books and films.
The path towards this announcement is pretty twisty (as I supposed any journey from one universe to another should be). It starts in about 1984, when legendary low-budget film maker Roger Corman was able to secure the film rights for Spiderman from Marvel Comics. Unable to get his web slinger flick off the ground, Corman let the rights to the property lapse.

Corman says "hi".

In 1985, mid-budget studio Cannon Films, headed up by shlock peddling Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus (if those are not the names for a couple of super villians, what is?), secured the rights to Spiderman, with the understanding that if a film did not appear by 1990, the rights would revert back to Marvel.

Golan/Globus have some time shares they want to sell you.

The cousins did not have a clue about the character and thought they were going to make a horror film. So, they hired legendary horror director Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre1-2 and Poltergeist to name a few). Hiring Hooper seems to be about the only good idea Cannon Films managed to have. Golan/Globus commissioned a script in which Peter Parker gets the ability to transform into an eight-armed spider mutant and spends the film fighting an army of other animal themed mutant monsters. 


Freaked out by what was about to happen to his most famous creation on the big screen, Stan Lee stepped in and forced a new script to be commissioned that would more faithfully adapt the comic book character. Golan/Globus had a new script that now featured a much more familiar Peter Parker in college gaining his powers in the same accident that gives Doctor Octopus his. While this sounds like it might be on the right track, the fact that low-rent action hack Joe Zito was hired on as director is evidence that this would have been a pretty bad movie.

This is the kind of magic Joe Zito creates!

That bullet was dodged by all Spiderman fans when the budget for the proposed Zito-helmed flick was cut significantly due to Cannon losing a fortune on the failures of Superman IV and Masters of the Universe (a movie that we here at the Emerald City Zen Center have a great deal of undue affection for). This caused Zito to leave the project, making room for the king of modern day low-budget crap cinema, Albert Pyun.

This is Pyun's really terrible Captain America. What atrocity would he have inflicted on Spidey?

Before what could have been the worst superhero movie ever could be made, Cannon went bankrupt I 1989 and Golan/Globus split up. As part of the split, the company that bought Cannon gave Golan 21st Century Film Corporation and the movie rights to Spider-Man and Captain America.


Wanting to make good on this really excellent severance, Golan continued his efforts to get a Spider-Man picture made. In 1990 he managed to bring together up and coming independent film studio Carolco Pictures and big Hollywood studio Columbia  Pictures for a big budget adaptation of the comics, to be written and directed by James Cameron, that would have featured some seriously PG-13 language and a steamy sex scene between Peter Parker and Mary Jane. Carolco was so jazzed about the proposed film that in 1992 they paid Marvel to extend Golan's film rights for Spider-Man character up to 1996.

James Cameron also knows where Jesus is buried. For real!

It looked like smooth sailing, but everything was derailed in the courts. As part of his contract, Cameron had the right to determine who received credit on his movie and he did not want Golan's name on it. In retaliation, Golan sued Carolco and Columbia. 20th Century Fox got into the game by suing Carolco and Columbia for using Cameron, because they believed he had an exclusive agreement with them. 21st Century Films and Carolco went bankrupt. MGM bought the assets of 21st Century Films and sued Viacom (who had bought Carolco's assets) and Marvel. Needless to say, no movie got made and in 1998 the courts gave the film rights to Spiderman back to Marvel.


In 1999, Marvel sold the film rights to Spiderman to Columbia, now owned by Sony. MGM intervened and threatened legal action, since it still considered itself the legal owner to the film rights. MGM and Sony then cut a deal in which Sony would give up its attempts to make its own James Bond film series and MGM would lay off its Spider-Man claims.

Admit it, you totally thought this was kind of hot when you first saw it.

With the legal wrangling out of the way, Sony pushed forward with its movies and finally, in 2002 (18 years after this saga began) Sam Raimi's pretty much excellent Spider-Man was released to huge box office returns. This was followed by Raimi's awesome Spider-Man II (2004) and the not-really-all-that great-at-all, but not as bad as some people make out, Spider-Man III (2007).

Yeah, the Green Goblin in these movies does look pretty goofy.

Meanwhile, Marvel set up its own film studio and got out of the business of licensing its characters to other studios. The first film it released, Iron Man (2008), was way better than anyone could have anticipated and laid the ground work for a series of faithful adaptions of Marvel characters to the screen, all of which occurring in the same shared universe, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Each film put out by Marvel has been pretty damned good, except for Iron Man II, which is really problematic.

They turned this into cinematic gold, what can they do with Peter Parker?

Marvel was striking gold for itself with films about Thor, Captain America, Iron Man and The Hulk, Sony was fumbling the ball pretty badly. In 2010, the cancelled Sam Raimi's proposed Spider-Man IV and announced that they were going to reboot the franchise with the aim of creating an expansive universe based around Spider-Man and his supporting cast, with spinoffs etc. coming to a theatre near you in order to emulate the MCU.

Are they about to kiss? Now, that would be an interesting movie!

The result of this was 2012's thoroughly forgettable The Amazing Spider-Man, perhaps only notable for its excellent casting. While not as successful as the previous Raimi films, Sony remained optimistic and brought back director Marc Webb to make the universally panned The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and announced plans for a spinoff film starring the Spider-Man villains The Sinister Six. Unfortunately for Sony, the second Amazing Spider-Man film did not generate the money anticipated, throwing all of the studio's Spider-Man Cinematic Universe plans into chaos.

This is why you get to watch a movie with Spider-Man joining The Avengers!

Meawhile, Sony was producing another movie titled The Interview (2014), starring James Franco (who played Harry Osborn in the Raimi Spider-Man movies) and Seth Rogen, who was also the co-director and writer. The premise of the film is that two goofball American journalist get enlisted by the CIA to kill North Korean despot Kim Jung-un. When North Korea's Supreme Leader heard about the movie, he lost his shit. He saw the fact that a Japanese company funding an American film about his assassination as an act of war. In retaliation he had hackers break into Sony Pictures' computers and leak all sorts of information about the goings on of the studio onto the internet. In retaliation for an attack on an American film studio, The American government used its own hackers to shut down access to the internet in all of North Korea.

"Tell everyone on Ain't It Cool News that Set Rogen is so gay!"

What was revealed was that Sony Pictures was completely in panic mode over the less than stellar performance of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and were now discussing bringing back Sam Raimi to save the franchise with a new trilogy. It was also revealed that the studio heads had been in talks with Marvel/Disney (who had purchased Marvel Comics) to bring Spider-Man into the highly coveted MCU family of films. But, negotiations were stopped by Sony Pictures heads that did not want cede any creative control to Marvel.


When the heads of the Sony Corporation in Japan got word of this, they were plenty pissed. Why would a studio haemorrhaging money not want to partner up with the undisputed kinds of making superhero movies?  The email leaks were in December 2014 and the announcement that Sony and Marvel/Disney were now going to partner up to make Spider-Man's cinematic outings came in early February 2015, shortly after some serious shake ups at Sony Pictures. Seems like somebody came from Japan and made heads role in Hollywood.


The plan is now for Spider-Man to appear in Marvel/Disney produced films set in the MCU and for Sony to make Spider-Man solo films set in the MCU. It also means that all of the continuity that Sony was building up for its proposed Spider-Man Cinematic Universe will be scrapped, with the strange caveat that The Sinister Six movie is still in the pipeline, only to be delayed.


So, we are going to get new directors and new actors but Spider-Man will still be Spider-Man. It's a heck of a long way to go to get form one universe to the other, but at least he made it all in one piece. We hope.

Let's talk politics - Libertarianism and perpetual adolesences.

In The Martian Invasion of Oz, the Parliament of Oz's committee on lunches is stuck in a stalemate over whether to serve parliament's lunches buffet or family style. The reason for this is the philosophical disdain Prince Rand of Pauland has for family style dining. The Prince comes from a nation of small, anthropomorphic, naked mole rat people that live according to a Libertarian philosophy that dictates doing anything for anyone else demeans the person having the thing done for them and steals from the person doing that thing, since it should not be anyone's responsibility to do anything for anyone else. Of course, the other members of the committee, being right-thinking Ozites, are opposed to Prince Rand's selfish world view.

Prince Rand of Pauland?

The King of Pauland!

Prince Rand is modelled after the American senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Senator Paul is the son of former congressman Ron Paul of Texas and to understand the son you first need to understand the old man.

Ayn Rand - Advocate for open marriages and rape

Ron Paul was a doctor in Texas seriously enamoured with the writings of Ayn Rand, who espoused her philosophy of Objectivism through her work, most famously in the novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Objectivism basically states that there is nothing more important than the individual and that the purpose of life was to pursue your own individual happiness and any systems that impede achieving this happiness are immoral, this includes any political systems that focus on the collective of whole of humanity, such as socialism, communism or any kind of political restraint or oversight. Rand and her philosophy venerate unfettered capitalism as the ultimate system to allow people to achieve their individual greatness. Any closer look at this belief system reveals that it is codified selfishness but it appeals to a lot of people.



Rand's philosophy is especially appealing to adolescent boys who feel that they are being held back by their schools, parents, society etc. from being really bitching and awesome. If only everyone would just get off their backs, they'd show everyone how amazing they are! One day, when they get out of their folks' house, you'll see.


Luckily, most of us grow out of this state of mind. We realize that we need the rest of society to help us achieve happiness and that a lot of the things that we were getting so pissed off about were really there to help us develop into decent human beings and not sociopathic jerks. In other words, we grow up.

Not all of us do though. Some people never leave that perpetually agitated and selfish adolescent state of mind. One of these poor developmentally arrested folks was comic book legend Steve Ditko (co-creator of Spiderman), who created the characters The Question and Mr A to embody Objectivists philosophy in the superhero world. It's no surprise that a person who spends their life writing about men who buck the limiting laws of society to implement justice at a level governments can not would be drawn to Objectivism. Mr Ditko never got over his love affair with Ayn Rand's thinking, but thankfully the comics industry did. In the 1980s, DC Comics transformed The Question's violent Objectivism to a more mystical Zen-influenced outlook.

Mr A. - Ron Paul's secret identity.

Ron Paul is another person stuck in perpetual adolescent angst and holds tightly on to Rand's wish fulfilment narrative. When Richard Nixon ended the dollars' direct association with gold, mild mannered obstetrician Ron Paul decided he was the one who had fight a gallant crusade to defend holy Capitalism from destruction. After a couple of defeats, he entered the House of Representatives in 1976. From 1976-1985, Paul became closely associated with fellow Rand devotees, the billionaire capitalists Koch Brothers and their organization Citizens for a Sound Economy, which pretty much created the whole anti-Obama, pro-angry white man Tea Party movement.

The Koch Brothers - Beware!

In 1985, Ron Paul lost his bid for a senate seat. Not one to sit on his laurels, he began publishing his Objectivist/Libertarian newsletters, The Ron Paul Report and Ron Paul Survival Report, through which numerous homophobic and racist articles were printed. In 1988 Dr Paul joined the Libertarian Party and for President, ostensibly to promote his Objectivists ideals on a bigger stage. In 1992 he opted to stay out of the Presidential elections and instead through his support behind former Nixon speech writer/TV personality/Holocaust denier Pat Buchanan's failed effort to challenge George Bush the Elder in the Republican primaries.


Paul returned to the House of Representatives in 1997 as a Republican and served until stepping down from office in 2013. In 2008, he decided to have another go at the White House and this time he hit pay dirt. The guy became an internet sensation with angry white guys obsessed with 9/11 conspiracies and pot heads who ignored all of the horrible things he wanted to do, like end social security etc, because he would end The War on Drugs. He became a kind of icon to the stoned and paranoid set and gave GOP frontrunner John McCain quite a lot of grief and exposed the alleged war hero as the weak national candidate he really was, setting up Obama for his victory in the general election.


Having planted the seeds of Rand inspired political selfishness, Paul made another bid for president in 2012.  Again, he made life miserable for another weak Republican front-runner, this time the hapless Mitt Romney. Of course, he loss and Romney wobbled into the general election to be clobbered by Obama. But the damage has been done. The senior Paul left the national political scene with the stage set for a new generation of Objectivist demagogue in the form of his son, Randall "Rand" Paul.

Social Security, Mocial Mecurity, he will legalize weeeeeeeeeed!!!!!

The younger Paul was raised in his father's cauldron of White privilege, greed, self-aggrandizement and moral self-righteousness. A doctor like his old man, Rand Paul became popular with his father's followers while giving speeches on the campaign trail in 2008. He was embraced and in turn embraced the Koch Brothers' Tea Party madness and was elected as a Senator for Kentucky in 2010.


Combining his father's Objectivist influenced philosophy with the more socially conservative mindset of the Tea Party base, Rand Paul has become a hot item in Republican circles. He is intent on ending all restrictions on Capitalism; such as the EPA, FDA, gun control and basically any oversights on how business is conducted in the United States of America. At the same time, being the politically astute heir to his father's throne, his Objectivism ends when it comes to the government intervening in a woman's reproductive rights and supports legislation to outlaw abortions. Likewise, the right of an individual to achieve happiness ends when it comes to Gay people marrying. Rand Paul is opposed to legalizing Gay Marriage, because you know, its icky or something.

With the 2016 presidential elections looming, Rand Paul is being spoken about as a serious contender for the Republican nomination. He is sure to appeal to a lot of those angry white guys worked up over conspiracies about 9/11 and false flag operations at school shootings while they listen to Rush and smoke bowls full of low grade weed bought off of their neighbor's stepson. I just hope the rest of the nation does not get sucked into his con.


 

Life on Mars - Our other favorite Martians; Part 1 - Ziggy Stardust

Ziggy Stardust - In 1972, David Bowie transformed himself into the extra-terrestrial  psychedelic, bi-sexual leader of the alien rock band, The Spiders From Mars(themselves named after a 1954 UFO sighting above an Italian soccer stadium that was later credited by officials to migrating spiders).  

The height of early 1970's Martian fashion

Ziggy came to earth to warn the population that it needed to get its act together before the planet's impending demise. Unfortunately, hedonistic Ziggy became consumed by the rock and roll lifestyle and was destroyed by drugs, sex and the adulation of his fans before his job was done.

Alien fashion icon.

Ziggy may have failed in his mission to save the human race, but what was accomplished was Bowie ascended to icon status and became the kind of Pope of Glam. His time as Ziggy set Bowie on a course of ever changing stage personas and constant musical experimentation that has made him one of the few rock stars of his era that are as still as prescient as they were in their youth.

The cultural impact that Ziggy had can not be overlooked. His sexual ambiguity and androgynous looks inspired numerous pop stars that came after. The 1980s was the decade where Ziggy's offspring really sprang into the public eye. Robert Smith of The Cure, Adam Ant, Boy George, Morrissey, Annie Lennox and other pop stars of the Reagan/Thatcher era who played with gender and sexual identity through either behaviour or eye-shadow can all trace their lineage to Ziggy Stardust. The effect these sexually ambiguous performers had on culture as a whole was to help soften views on sexual conformity and create acceptance of LGQBT people within the mainstream. Flash-forward a few decades and you have a world in which Marriage Equality is the law of the land in the vast majority of the USA and Europe. Without Ziggy Stardust, none of this may have been possible.

Perfection captured on vinyl

Musically, the impact of the two Ziggy Stardust albums, The Rise and Fall Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Aladdin Sane, are two of the most influential albums of all time, representing an evolution of rock music as transformative as the one caused by The Beatles in the 1960s. The sound of these albums, especially that of Spiders' guitarist Mick Ronson, can be heard throughout the punk and later alternative rock movements.

Bowie really, really likes Ronson's guitar playing. I mean, really likes it!

Pretty good stuff for a failed space-age messiah.







The Rottenest of the Undead.

We here at the Emerald City Zen Center love us some zombies and in The Martian Invasion of Oz we introduced the Ozombies, led by Gabraham Stinkin.  That said, we don't love all the zombies that have been put out there. Here are three zombie films that we highly recommend you avoid.

1. Against The Dark (2005)

That coat button is about to shoot off and go right through a zombie's brain. Well played, Seagal.

 

Imagine a world in which a plague has transformed the majority of the population of the planet into vampire-like zombies. You flee for your life and barricade yourself in a hospital to avoid the horde of ghouls from ripping you to shreds. Things look bleak indeed but take hope! Help is on the way - in the form of bloated, right-wing, ego-maniacal, mumble-mouthed, zero-charisma having has-been Steven Seagal and some nameless sidekicks dressed like geeks everywhere did right after The Matrix came out in 1999. The problems with this straight-to-video, Romanian produced brain haemorrhage of a film are legion but if you're making a zombie picture in which your unstoppable horde of flesh-eating fiends is easily defeated by the sluggish sword play of a well past his prime Steven Seagal, you have some pretty lame zombies on your hand. I mean, the guy can hardly bend!

2. Dead At The Box Office (2005)


One of those where you wish the film makers would have spent the money it cost to make this movie on cyanide instead.

A mysterious film canister containing a Nazi experimental film somehow ends up in a Chicago area cinema. When it is played, the audience is transformed into zombies. Not the worst premise ever but the execution makes you beg to be executed. This Gary, Indiana filmed no-budget, eye-gouge inducing piece of blech is an example of why the democratization of the media via digital technology is not exactly going to lead to a utopian future. With its poor lighting, horrible acting, sloppy cinematography and Kevin Smith-wannabe dialog, this could be one of the worst things to ever happen to the horror film genre. We attended the premiere of this hot-mess nearly a decade ago and there are parts of our brains that have still not returned to their normal state after being atrophied by this miserable excuse for a movie.

3. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972)

If only the movie was half as interesting as this poster.





A group of actors are led to an island somewhere near Miami but their director, who is the most annoying person on the planet. This young, vaguely hippy-ish film troupe end up having to deal with the not-at-all funny practical jokes of their director, played by actor/director/make-up artist/doll-maker Alan Ormby, who in the midst of the lame-hijinks accidentally raises the dead when he stages a kind of black magic ceremony. Director Bob Clark went on to make the classic slasher-film Black Christmas (1974); the inexplicably popular, unfunny, teen sex-comedy Porky's (1982) and the holiday classic A Christmas Story (1983) but this tedious piece of low-rent junk has none of the tension of Black Christmas or the humour of A Christmas Story, but it does have all of the unfunny of Porky's. When the zombies finally do show up, about half-way through this soul killer, you just hope the cheap looking things quickly do away with the cast so you can work on self-inflicting head injuries in the hope that you will lose the memory of having seen it.                                           

Predictions for 2015

Welcome to 2015! This is the year that Griff Tannen smashes up the Hill Valley courthouse and the Chicago Cubs beat Miami to win The World Series. These are well known and documented future events. We here at The Emerald City Zen Center have contacted our old friend Captain Pug, whose exploits have been documented in A Zen Master In Oz and The Martian Invasion of Oz (both available now on Amazon's Kindle service), to pop into his reality hopping steamboat, The Laughing Tortoise, and find a universe where time is running a year ahead of ours. He brought back several amazing insights into the year ahead. We have sifted through them and present our top 5 predictions for 2015.

1. Nigel Farage revealed to be a Muppet: The leader of the anti-EU, anti-immigrant, anti-progress and pro-banker UK political party UKIP, Nigel Farage, will be revealed to be a puppet that escaped from the Henson Creature Shop.

2. Rand Paul actually appreciates the FDA - Libertarians (racists who like to smoke pot and make themselves look smart by spouting off about Ayn Rand's objectivist crap philosophy) will be devastated when in an unguarded moment, Rand Paul admits that he is glad that the Food and Drug Administration is around to keep the acceptable levels of rat faeces in his peanut butter as low as possible without ruining the taste

3. UK Prime Minister declares his love for actor/comedian/social activists Russell Brand at a press conference in front of 1 Downing Street. At an anti-bedroom tax rally in London, Brand is surprised by Cameron parachuting in with an engagement ring to pop the question.

4. Barack Obama defeats invading alien force single handily and FOX News complains he did not do it fast enough - An invading fleet from the planet G'rx arrives to enslave the human race this year. Thankfully, President Obama is able to reveal that he had been trained as a child for just this moment. After destroying the fleet and killing the G'rx emperor in a sword fight, the world rejoices. Fox News' Sean Hannity questions if it really should have took the president an evening to repulse the alien invaders. He goes on to state his belief that the delay on the president's behalf was politically motivated.

5. Dalai Lama releases number one selling dance track of all time - The dance floors of the world pulsate with the deep grooves of Tenzin Gyatso - the 14th Dalai Lama's dub-step inspired dance track, Bodhisattva Booty, drops on an unexpected public this summer.

H.E. Double Hockey Sticks! Our Top 10 Demons

In The Martian Invasion of Oz, we are introduced to Floyd, The Cthulhi of Oz. He is a pacifistic spawn of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu that wants to give up the life of bloody conquest and defilement for a peaceful existence in the Land of Oz. In honour of Floyd, here is a look at some of our favourite demons.

10. Pazuzu - This ancient Babylonian "king of the wind demons" is the god of the Southwest wind and the bringer of famine and locusts. He was such a nasty number that he was invoked to drive off all of the other evil beings out there. He would have faded into obscurity if it were not for William Peter Blatty's novel The Exorcist and its film adaptation.

9. Asmodeus - The son of the biblical King David and a succubus, he is the demon of lust and is one of the embodiments of the Seven Deadly Sins. He is documented in The Book of Tobit, Talmud and other sources as being a real jerk to anybody that gets in between him and any lady that he fancies. He's also wicked looking, with three heads (bull, ram and man), one rooster's leg, a serpent's tail and rides around on a lion with dragon wings. He cuts quite a figure.

8. Mara - This tempter demon tried to lure Buddha away from his meditation prior to reaching enlightenment. He turns the mundane into the irresistible, distracting us from the spiritual path.

7. Randall Flagg - AKA Walter O'Dim, Martin Broadcloak  and numerous other aliases. He is the embodiment of evil spreading chaos and discord as he struts his way through Stephen King's multiverse as laid out in The Stand, Dark Tower Series and Eyes of the Dragon. He brings down civilizations for fun and is responsible for more dirty deeds than an army of NFL prospects.

6. The Crimson King  - Stephen King's offspring of a demon and Arthurian-type hero Arthur Eld, seeks to destroy the order of the multiverse in order to rule in the chaos that would remain. He is Randall Flagg's boss and his malevolent influence is responsible for all of the evil supernatural doings in King's work.

5. Pinhead - The leader of Clive Barker's Cenobites in his novella The Hell Bound Heart and star of the Hell Raiser film series, Pinhead leads the S&M themed Cenobites on their mission to inflict suffering on anyone unlucky enough to solve one of the puzzle boxes that lead to the realm of their dark god, Leviathan.

4. It - The nameless, shape-changing demon that liked to go hunting kids in the guise of Pennywise the Clown in a small Maine town in Stephen King's novel, It. He is a sworn enemy of the Maturin the Turtle, a giant, benevolent being that barfed the universe into existence. This makes him one of King's most obvious "Devil" analogues.

3.  Baphomet - Originally conceived as the icon worshipped by The Knight Templars in anti-Templar propaganda in the 14th Century, the goat-headed demon was adopted as a symbol by Anton LeVey for his  Church of Satan in the 20th Century. This gives him some pretty good demonic street cred.

2. Moloch -  According to The Old Testament, this ancient Canaanite god was the focus of sacrificial child sacrifice. While this may have been a misinterpretation of the Minotaur myth, the bull-headed Moloch has become associated with oppression and greed.

1. Lucifer -  Hmmmmm . . . . Could it be Satan? Yes, yes it is. Old Scratch, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles and on and on. Western Civilization's greatest anti-hero/bogeyman. The one Milton had intone "Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven" is the king numero-uno of demons, even more so than Ronnie James Dio or King Crimson!