Today's Bout of Giggling

The Van Helsing List

Van Helsing Rule #1: All anti-hero types must dress in black, have mysterious pasts, a gruff demeanor, and the ability to crack witty remarks during the heat of battle. No matter how competent they are, or how many people they manage to save, they'll always find themselves hated by the public and mistrusted by their superiors.

Van Helsing Rule #2: If the cool anti-hero gets paired with a sidekick, it'll most likely be a kooky comic-relief gadgeteer who, inexplicably, winds up getting laid more often than he does. Corollary : It is NEVER right when the kooky comic relief gadgeteer winds up getting laid more often than the cool anti-hero. Especially if the cool anti-hero happens to be played by Hugh Jackman.

Van Helsing Rule #3: Lower-ranking clergy NEVER take the whole "obeying the ten commandments" and "celibacy" thing very seriously. (In spite of this, they are almost always more trustworthy and compassionate than the Vatican higher-ups...)

Van Helsing Rule #4: Cool anti-heroes love their hats and will do anything to keep from losing them.

Van Helsing Rule #5: The cooler-looking and "seemingly-more-likely-to-go-out-of-control-and-kill-the-person-wielding-it-than-the-person-it's-aimed-at" a weapon is, the better it works.

Van Helsing Rule #6: All crossbows basically behave like machine guns with arrows.

Van Helsing Rule #7: High heels and a tight corset are considered acceptable vampire-hunting garb.

Van Helsing Rule #8: Powerful supervillains like to keep their friends close, their enemies closer and the one object which is capable of saving the hero and contributing to their own demise in a lightly guarded room located within their own fortress.

Van Helsing Rule #9: All unknown viscous fluids are dangerous and should be avoided at all costs.

Van Helsing Rule #10: In Eastern Europe, the full moon occurs approximately once every four days.

Van Helsing Rule #11: You need never keep track of where you're going in a desperate pitched battle, because ALL you need to do is swing on a rope and/or crash through a window and you'll automatically find yourself at the one place you needed to go to next.

Van Helsing Rule #12: The stroke of midnight can, if the plot calls for it, go on for twenty minutes or more.

Van Helsing Rule #13: Female characters who fall in love with the cool anti-hero are invariably doomed. (The fact that they were able to kick *** and survive high falls, beatings and monster attacks for the first 98% of the movie is irrelevant. All it will take to dispatch them at the end is a simple stab wound.)

Van Helsing Rule #14: Cool, creepy art direction and millions of dollars of special effects cannot make up for a script conceived and written by a severely impaired tube worm...

There's a whole long page of fantasy cliches (PG-13, but SO true) and this was at the bottom and made me laugh more than all the rest. It's true. I liked Van Helsing, but it lacked plot and logic. Badly.