How Could No One Else Like These Movies?

I’ve talked about how there is plenty of good to be found in B-movie before, but what about those A-list movies that everyone writes off? Aren’t there movies on your personal favorites list that elicit groans and eye rolls from everyone else? My sister, for instance, has sung the praises of Howard the Duck (1986) from the moment she first saw it. Heck, I’m sure there’s someone out there who thinks Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and also other stuff: The Movie (2016) is the best cinematic adaptation of both its main characters. I’m not sure how that might have happened, but I’m sure that person is out there. 

Anyway, here are just a few of my own favorite, little-loved movies.

The Cable Guy (1996)

Remembered mainly for Jim Carrey’s then-record twenty-million dollar paycheck, Ben Stiller’s second venture in the director’s chair was almost immediately dismissed upon release as “too dark,” “bleak,” and “not containing nearly enough scenes of an adult male attempting ventriloquism via his buttocks.” For my money, though it is not only a great film, it is the best film that writer Judd Apatow, director Stiller and star Carrey has yet to make. 

Yes, it is the pitch-black tale of a cable installer gone rogue who injects himself into a hapless customer’s life, a la The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (1992). It’s more thriller-esque elements are tempered by an all-consuming sympathy for both of its main characters. Both Steven (Matthew Broderick) and the alias-laden titular Cable Guy (Carrey) are woefully unable to relate to people outside of television*. Broderick’s character has the capacity to change and be better by the end of the movie, whereas Carrey is a far more broken, far more tragic character. We, the pop culture obsessed inevitably fall on a spectrum somewhere between the two leads, and we can only hope that our lives are a little more Broderick and a little less Carrey.

Also, it has one of the greater homages to “Amok Time” ever produced—what’s not to love? Seriously, go give the film another look, and if you still hold as low an opinion of the movie as you did twenty years ago… Well, then, just keep it to yourself. I really like it.

But we can all agree it’s better than Zoolander 2 (2016), right?

A View to a Kill (1985)

Roger Moore is my least favorite Bond. Yes, that includes the dour Timothy Dalton, the dim-eyed Australian George Lazenby, Peter Sellers, and… ahem… Woody Allen. That being said, not all of his movies are that bad. In fact, I’d be willing to say of his seven times at the end of the gun-barrel sequence, I actually like as many as two of them.

This—Moore’s final outing in the role—ranks dead last of the series on Rotten Tomatoes**, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. Everyone knows that Roger Moore actually went into outer space in one of his movies, right?

Beyond obvious better candidates for worse Bond movies, A View to a Kill has a lot going for it. The theme song, from film composer John Barry and British group Duran Duran is a pure New Wave confection. The action sequences, culminating in a shoot-out at the Golden Gate Bridge is fantastic, and lest we forget: CHRISTOPHER WALKEN IS A BOND VILLAIN. Has there ever been an archetype that an actor was more destined to play than Walken playing one of the heavies in this film?

Critics point to Moore’s advancing age (57 at the time of filming) as contributing to the film’s underlying incredulity. For me, though, Roger Moore always brought a certain older quality to the role. Even in Live and Let Die (1973), he seemed stiffer, more mature than any of his brethren did in their initial movies. Besides, I think an increasingly geriatric Bond is an interesting idea, although I will admit both that I may be alone in this thinking, and that the movie—and the series, for that matter—never bothers to acknowledge that Bond might age.

But, come on! The man went into space in one of his movies! Why? Reasons, that’s why. As long as Moonraker (1979) exists, I can’t accept that this movie is the franchise’s nadir.

Any Terminator sequel minus James Cameron: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Terminator: Salvation (2009), and Terminator: Genisys (2015)

Now, I can already hear the inevitable question. Terminator Salvation, really? Yes, it’s sort of an over-cooked hodgepodge of several different rough drafts, but there are a few interesting ideas in the movie. If Christian Bale hadn’t insisted on playing John Connor in the film***, the film might have ended up very good indeed.

I guess I more mean to defend the films in the series that Cameron didn’t write, but that Schwarzenegger actually starred in. Rise of the Machines is a perfectly serviceable action yarn with one added feature. Earl Boen is in it. No, although that is great, the movie becomes truly memorable with it’s supremely bleak ending. While the series up until that point had made hay out of telling us that “there is no fate, but what we make,” this entry in the series is a summer popcorn movie that is content to let you out of the movie theater with the knowledge that it doesn’t matter what you do, the same fate awaits us all. Brave. Creatively correct? Not for me to decide, but brave, nonetheless.

Once Schwarzenegger moved on from the State House in Sacramento, he returned to the series in Genisys****. Poo-poo’d upon its release—and for that matter, once again putting the future of the series in doubt—the film is a hot mess of convoluted time travel*****, but if there is one thing I love, it’s a hot mess of convoluted time travel. I’ll admit that the movie might not be for everyone, but for me it’s the cinematic equivalent of a Fritos Chili Pie. It shouldn’t exist. It’s difficult to fathom why it ever existed in the first place. It might be detrimental for your health to consume it. But, damn, if it isn’t tasty as hell. This entry may have taken a sudden left turn into a valentine for the Fritos Chili Pie… Where was I? Oh, yes! Terminator JEN-ISIS is pretty watchable. Give it a shot!

There are so many more movies I could list…and I might just do so in a part two of this entry. In the mean time, do you have any favorite movies that no one else seemed to get? Let me know in the comments.

*Remind us of anyone?

**Not including the strange-but-watchable off-brand Never Say Never Again (1983), or the afore-alluded-to comedy version of a multi-car pile up that was Casino Royale (1967).

***Despite the initial concept of the film only featuring the savior of humanity in a minor supporting role

****Which is a dumb title, if for no other reason than I have to check how it is spelled each and every time I refer to it.

*****And, not for nothing, the studio spoiled the one big plot twist of the movie months ahead of time in its trailers.

Distinctive Penmanship… Like Salvador Dali or the criminally insane.

When I was a kid, I had a disagreement with my fifth grade teacher. She insisted that the only path for minimally functional—to say nothing of successful—adult humans lay through carefully constructed penmanship. Arguing in the negative, I claimed that in a future of mechanized wonder, where everyone is on America Online* and the streets are paved with Windows 95 updates, handwriting will go the way of phrenology and humorism before too long.

You might shy away from calling this little anecdote a disagreement, and opt more to describe it as an example of an 11 year old child petulantly refusing to make proper loops on my Js. You would be right in trying to re-define the incident, except for one small problem.

I turned out to be right.

Common Core curricula eliminates cursive penmanship** from the normal diet for children. Some argue it’s an arcane thing, and formative education could be better used to teach computer literacy and other skills that might actually exist in a job market in the future. Those brave souls who still think a capital Q is interchangeable with the number 2 argue that in the act of handwriting something, the brain is more fully engaged than it might be in the mindless clattering of a computer keyboard.

Oddly enough, I (mostly) agree with the people trying to keep the dream alive. Writing things by hand has plenty of value. I write the majorities of my rough drafts*** by hand, and it helps promote the free flow of ideas that I spend the next year chastising myself for ever committing to paper in the first place. It’s an essential part of my writing process, and just one of the many parts of that process that cause people to look at me like I need to up my therapy sessions to once a week.

I can see the value in promoting writing things by hand, but penmanship might be a bridge too far. I think handwriting should be between a person and their sheet of paper. And, with data mining quickly reaching Skynet-levels of intelligence, it might soon be the only thing that stays between you and an inanimate object. So there’s another point in favor of writing by hand, folks.

I think we need to start treating handwriting in the same way that human civilization has treated karaoke since it screeched its way to life in post-war Japan. It doesn’t matter how well you do it, it only matters that you do, in fact, do it****. 

To that end, some friends of mine at Nevermore Edits have started giving font names to our respective chicken scratches. My own particular style:

…has become known as “Militant Manifesto.” It’s encouraging. I won’t reveal the other font names that we came up with for ourselves, but I will say that we encountered someone at a book event this weekend who’s physician-like scrawl became “2 cc’s of Lidocaine.” 

What font name would your handwriting have? Let me know in the comments. In the mean time, try picking up a pen and don’t be so worried if anyone can read it.

*I allowed for the possibility that Compuserve would make a comeback when the Y2K bug eradicated everything we thought we knew about human society, but I digress.

**I’m sure we could go back and forth on that issue, dear reader. Maybe we will, one day. But for now though, focus.

***Except for this blog, which kind of goes against the point. Not entirely sure why I’m even bringing that up.

****Man alive, it is hard to write a sentence with that many “do”’s in it, without veering into the scatological.

Spring premieres, Part Two. Revenge of the Streaming Services.

Last week, I offered a brief list of upcoming broadcast shows that threaten to break the feeble machine mind of my DVR, and leave me always in the position of being what I like to be least: running behind.

The thought that I’m still wired into a major cable provider may strike some of you as quaint. But, for those of you who get the entirety of your televised entertainment from one of the many streaming services vying for your attention, I have a question for you:

Doesn’t your Netflix list stress you out just as much as my DVR makes me crazy?

I have to worry about both, and it’s driving me to distraction. In any event, I’m relatively sure if I severed my ties with my DVR, I would still feel like I have a part time job trying to catch up with my shows.

Here are just a few shows that are part of the wave of programs coming to the watch instantly services. Just accept that they’re there and get to watching. One show at a time. One season at a time. One day at a time. We’ll get through this together.

Orange is the New Black

The first breakout streaming hit* did several miraculous things. First, Craz—I mean, ahem, Suzanne. All of Suzanne. Second, the series has elevated Kate Mulgrew from somebody I never cared for as an actor** into an undeniable badass. Third, that glorious second season finale. Rosa saves the day. It’s the most satisfying episode of television since the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special, only this episode had more nuns in it.

Seasons three and four were fine. They were. Maybe I missed Jason Biggs more than I ever thought I would. Maybe they can never top the end of Vee’s reign of terror. At any rate, it’s not that seasons three and four have been less good, just less memorable. A sufficient cliffhanger ending to season four means just anybody could be shot when season five picks up, and I’ll still be there.

Season five premieres June 9th, 2017 on Netflix.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

The first season of this show was absolutely stellar. Starting off with the same kind of breakneck bordering-on-cartoon sensibility that propelled Tina Fey’s other sitcom 30 Rock to seven seasons of brilliance. It also had the role Jon Hamm was born to play. Sorry, Don Draper. The third season promises—if the finale of the second season is to be believed—more Kimmy, more Tituss, more Mrs. Voorhees, and most importantly, more Hamm. If I manage to make it the whole first weekend without watching the entire season, I’ll be severely disappointed in myself.

Season three premieres May 19th, 2017, on Netlfix.

House of Cards

Like a show we talked about last week, Veep, House of Cards is returning in a new world that may not welcome its more dastardly plot elements with the same appetite. The first two seasons of this remake of the British miniseries were insidiously good, seducing us into nearly liking protagonist Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) before fully revealing his depravity. Kind of like the electoral college, am I right? 

Seriously, folks. For my eyes, the show has suffered a little bit since Underwood has gotten everything he could have possibly wanted, but now that Mrs. Underwood (Robin Wright) is undeniably his partner in crime in every possible way, and he’ll have to fight what he’s accomplished, the show might find a new life again.

Season five premieres in its entirety on May 30th, 2017 on that old chestnut, Netflix. Hopefully, this is just after you’re caught up on everything else you’ve been meaning to watch on your “My List” list.

MST3K

This is the one I have been looking forward to the most. The show aired some of the worst-of-the-worst in B-movies, but instead offered enough snark to fuel the entirety of the 1990s. Sadly, the chatter of Crow, Tom Servo, and their resident human from the confines of the Satellite of Love were ignominiously removed from the Saturday morning schedule of the Sci-Fi channel in the fall of 1999, and I don’t think I’ve bothered watching the network since, whatever it calls itself now. Both Joel Hodgson and Michael J. Nelson have gone on to bring MST3K-like content to the internet, but it hasn’t been the same, mainly because trying to get the Rifftrax audio files to sync up with your DVD turned into a bit of a chore.

Now, Netflix (remember them?) continues their groundbreaking work in curing the scourge of cancellation, and is bringing back the B-movie mocking show with a crowdfunded season. Joel Hodgson is creatively spearheading the new episodes, but will not rejoin as its star. Standup comedian, MST3K-acolyte, and Nerdist co-host Jonah Ray will join the Bots as Jonah Heston. Fans of the show often like either the Joel years or the Mike years. I’ve been a fan of both, so even if I haven’t always been Ray’s biggest fan, any additional episodes of the show are a good thing.

The season’s 14 episodes premiere on April 14th on a streaming service that rhymes with betflix. But, if you’re uninitiated and the show sounds intriguing to you, Netlfix currently has a run of some of the best episodes available now. I particularly recommend Manos: The Hands of Fate (although I would recommend Manos even without the funny show surrounding it), Pod People, and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians… As it turns out, I may be a Joel-guy. Who knew?

Honorable Mentions: Premiering Sometime?

Castle Rock

Or, hey, maybe we should talk about a Hulu show during this post!

I liked last year’s Hulu miniseries 11/22/63, bringing to life Stephen King’s best book in recent years. Some complained about the casting of James Franco, but I didn’t mind it, even if he wasn’t who I was picturing when originally reading the book. Some complained about the ending of the series, but it was pretty close to the book, and I think it worked.

The one problem I had with the miniseries was understandable. They omitted one neat sub-plot, which featured Jake Epping traveling through the town of Derry, Maine during one of his jaunts to the early ‘60s. There, he encounters a few of The Losers Club from IT. I mean, I get it. With the narrow constraints of TV, to say nothing of the far-flung rights of King’s oeuvre, getting the connections in his work can be a little tough.

Until now…

Tying together IT, Shawshank, Misery, and more? Sounds fantastic. Now, next to nothing is known about what the show will actually be, but if there’s not a battle royale between Annie Wilkes, Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and Andy Dufresne, then they’ve failed to deliver on the promise of their trailer.

Premiering sometime, although even production isn’t scheduled to start until this August, so it may be a bit of a wait.

Star Trek: Discovery

At the start of this year, I was ready for a new president, whomever she, he, or it might have ended up being. I knew I could weather the post-Obama world, safe in the knowledge that there would be new weekly Star Trek to help ease the pain. When Bryan Fuller—who cut his teeth on Trek, and went on to make the insanely terrific Hannibal—rose to be the showrunner of the new series, all the better. When Nicholas Meyer joined the writing staff, it might have turned into my most anticipated series ever.

Then it became clear that they would not make their January 2017 premiere. Then Bryan Fuller left his regular duties with the show, in an awkward realization that he was too busy to commit the time needed to make the show as good as it needs to be. Then, the show wasn’t going to make it’s revised premiere date of May. The new series—set ten years before the voyages of Kirk and company in the original series—is now scheduled to be released sometime.

What returning streaming shows fill you with anxiety for the time you are guaranteed to spend on them? Let me know in the comments. For now, though, I have to stop this blog where it is. If I keep writing, I’ll never get caught up on all this TV I feel the need to watch.

*Except for maybe Homestar Runner. Kids, ask your parents.

**I’m looking in your direction, UPN.

April is the Cruelest Month for your DVR: There are Too Many Returning Shows

Remember when the DVR was a boon to convenient TV watching? Neither do I. Remember how Hulu and Netflix tried made things easier by keeping entire seasons safe and secure for when we’re ready to watch them? Me neither. Between (in no particular order) writing, another job that actually pays the bills, a cat, a wife, and a growing interest in pinball, who has time to actually watch the second season of Marvel’s Agent Carter* or, for that matter, any of Daredevil**?

I’ve kind of written off the hope of ever being caught up on shows in which I’m casually interested. That’s okay, I’d like to do other things with my waking hours***. However, It looks like there will be a massive confluence of premieres for shows I absolutely love in the next few months. So much so that I’m seriously going to have to seriously think about giving up on the pinball if I am to have any hope of keeping up with my cursed queue of shows.

Here are just a few of the premieres of terrific shows coming in the next few months that will serve to only cut into my productivity.

Rick and Morty

If you’re reading this, you may have to work a little harder to catch the third season premiere of Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland’s faux Back to the Future descent into insanity. Since season two ended in October 2015, fans have become increasingly irascible as to the unanswered question of when new episodes would be delivered. Harmon—never one to shy from a fight on twitter on the subject—once devoted an entire free-style rap session on his podcast, Harmontown, to trying to put the issue to rest****.

With almost no fanfare, Adult Swim ran a loop of the third season premiere for several hours last night. It’s a terrific episode that puts the show back in its evergreen format yet also manages to move everything forward*****. I can’t readily think of any other season premiere being released in such a clandestine fashion, and it was in perfect sync with the sensibilities of the show. Adult Swim’s live stream will apparently re-run the episode at the tail-end of series-long marathons airing currently, so check in and time your viewing out. Or, you know, watch the whole show and then get caught up. It’s amazing.

Season 3 premiere(d) on April 1st online. The rest of the season is due to air sometime this summer on Cartoon Network.

Fargo

I was as surprised as anyone when one of my top ten favorite movies of all time turned out to yield not only a watchable show, but my favorite show currently on the air. Maybe I was being unfair in my skepticism. Maybe the Canadian-made train wreck Robocop: The Series is the outlier.

But Fargo is the real deal, dontcha know. The first season is a little too tied to the mythos and format of the movie, but still manages to deliver on the goods. Season two, on the other hand? Typewriters. Flying Saucers. Ted Danson. These are a few of my favorite things, and they all play a prominent role in the second batch of ten episodes. The further the show moves from the movie that birthed it, the more it captures its absurdist, yet hard boiled sprit. I can’t recommend this show enough, and ad infinitum I’m on board with the prospect of ten more episodes on spec. With Ewan McGregor playing twin brothers? Oh, ya. Real good, then.

Season 3 premieres April 19th, 2017 on FX.

Better Call Saul

Despite loving Breaking Bad, I slacked on watching the second season of Saul. I’m not sure why I didn’t get on board with last year’s season. It might have had something to do with 2016 being an expansive garbage fire that will take years to recover from, but I’m getting kind of tired of blaming last year for everything. Season 2 is on Netflix now, and I plan to tear through those episodes in anticipation of the forthcoming Season 3. Gus Fring is back! With his face and everything. As 2017 appears to be just a parboil of terrible, I may keep my appointment with the best fictional lawyer in all of the Land of Enchantment.

Season 3 premieres April 10th, 2017 on AMC.

Doctor Who

I like Peter Capaldi. I like him as The Doctor. I really do. And yet, I’ve found his two seasons at the helm of the TARDIS to be a little underwhelming. Maybe it’s that the 50th anniversary special was so satisfying in its timey wimey acrobatics, and maybe it could be writer/producer Stephen Moffat tiring out after five years in charge of the BBC production. Either way, I’m still on board with twelve more hours with the Twelfth Doctor. There tends to be a creative renaissance going into a regeneration, and the thoughts of who might succeed Capaldi as the mad (wo)man in a box continues to light the imagination on fire.

Series 9 (or season 36, if you’re nasty) premieres April 15th, 2017.

Veep (and also Silicon Valley)

One of the best live-action comedies currently on the air is bound to incite some different feelings than it had in the past when it arrives for a new season in the next few weeks. Superlative showrunner Armando Iannucci left the show after last year’s season 5, which can always throw the rhythms of a show off.

Also…

Also, not for nothing, I worry that a show about a childish, misanthropic politician careening between justified embarrassment and improbable success might not be as funny as it used to be in the before time, long long ago.

Here’s hoping.

Season 6 of Veep will premiere on HBO on April 16th, 2017, and the fourth season of Silicon Valley (about which I don’t have conflicted feelings) premieres one week later, on April 23rd, 2017.

Next week, I’ll delve into some of the streaming shows that will soon drive me to distraction. Are there any shows I’m missing? Let me know in the comments. I can’t imagine how I’m ever going to find time to watch these unknown shows, but let me, all the same******.

* Which isn’t on Netflix, but has been on my DVR for a year-and-a-half.

** Which is on Netlfix, but hasn’t moved from my “my list” list since it premiered two years ago.

*** Is there a way for shows to be injected into my brain while I sleep? I’d imagine Hulu is working on something along those lines. It might get me back into Gotham.

**** He mainly just repeated the words “They’re drawing it” for fifteen minutes through an auto-tune filter.

***** Or is it backwards? Is the show all about McNugget sauce?

****** Am I getting my footnote groove back? I may just be.

Movie List Year Thing

So, I thought about committing this week’s blog post to a notion I’ve been nursing about how we can all try to be better people to one another in these grim days of psychopathology by way of political partisanship. Sadly, it was coming off as sort of sanctimonious. I blame it on eating some bad egg rolls and falling asleep while the John Adams miniseries played in the background the night before I started writing it. Second, the Republicans pulled Trumpcare, which made being sanctimonious also a bit of poor sportsmanship. I’ll probably still post that entry at some later date, mainly because I just can’t help myself.

In the mean time, people from all corners of the internet have been posting their favorite movies from each year since they were born. The first instance I saw of it was in this article on the AVClub here, but I can’t say with any certainty that the trend started there. So naturally, I have managed to come up with my own list. Some of them were entirely too easy to choose. I’m looking in your direction, 1985. Some years were shockingly bereft of choices, and I’m as surprised as you are that Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) made the list. Some years, I couldn’t pick just one. I tried to whittle them down, but if you think 1998 can’t fit both You’ve Got Mail and Shakespeare in Love, you have another thing coming. That other thing, of course, is Primary Colors.

All in all, I’m relatively proud of the eclectic nature of my list. Or, at least, I’m surprised that it ended up being as eclectic as it was. There were only three movies each featuring either Batmen or Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. I kept myself to only two films featuring various crews of the starships Enterprise. That’s got to count for something approximating personal growth. And despite nearly a decade of wall-to-wall movies from Marvel studios, only one of them made my list. Only one film based on a toy, and it was the legitimately good one. So that’s something. Okay, so there are 15 sequels on a list of 40 movies, but I think that says more about Hollywood’s unwillingness to make new things than it does about my inability to try new things. Let’s go with that.

'84 Ghostbusters

'85 Back To The Future

'86 Aliens

'87 Robocop

'88 Die Hard/Rain Man

'89 Batman*

'90 Gremlins 2: The New Batch

'91 Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country/Silence of the Lambs/Rocketeer

'92 Chaplin

'93 Groundhog Day

'94 Ed Wood

'95 The American President

'96 Fargo

'97 As Good As It Gets

'98 Primary Colors/Shakespeare in Love/You've Got Mail

'99 Man on the Moon

'00 Wonder Boys

'01 The Royal Tenenbaums

'02 Bubba Ho-Tep**

'03 X-Men 2

'04 Anchorman

'05 Batman Begins

'06 Casino Royale

'07 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

'08 The Dark Knight

'09 Star Trek

'10 Toy Story 3

'11 Midnight in Paris***

'12 Skyfall/Lincoln

'13 Iron Man 3

'14 The LEGO Movie/X-Men: Days of Future Past

'15 Creed

'16 Arrival/OJ: Made in America****

'17 Logan (so far)

What’s on your list? Let me know in the comments.

* Yes, I get that this film resoundingly doesn’t stand the test of time, but I can’t help my long-standing, irrational love for it. If you quote the movie, I am compelled to parrot the next several lines. If you happen to say any normal phrase like “Let’s go shopping,” I’m going to do the same thing. Batman is on the list. Deal with it. I’m mainly trying to convince myself by this point, aren’t I?

** Now that I think about, I can remember one other movie that was released in 2002 that may be worthy of a second look.

*** I know, I know…

**** Say what you will, but I’ve watched that whole documentary twice. It’d be pretty dishonest of me not to include it on the list.

Cheat Week, Volume Two, Part Two: F'in Finally

I try to only do these off-week mini-entries every seven weeks or so. It's now been nine weeks. A couple of things happened that informed more full entries in the last two weeks. Mainly just a robbery and a rock concert. No need to go back into it, go read it for yourself! I'm due a break; my therapist says so!

A lot of things are happening here at Party Now, Apocalypse Later. "The Once and Future Orson Welles" is (still) on track for publication later this year and "The Fourth Wall" is firmly in production. In fact, I spent most of the afternoon in the recording studio laying down some dialogue for the latter. I'm also sleeping occasionally, which I'm told might improve the stuff we put out. Maybe we'll talk a little bit more about that in the weeks to come.

I did want to share one thought this week that, while important, isn't really enough for its own full entry.

Logan (2017) was pretty terrific. It delivered on all the promise of the fantastic trailer but there is one thought that I'm not seeing anyone else zero in on, and I thought I'd share it with you here. Warning, significant spoilers for the movie follow, if you haven't seen the movie yet.

Seriously, MAJOR spoilers.

Still here? Okay.

Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) has survived a lot, including but not limited to: The Cuban Missile Crisis, the attempt on Richard Nixon's life, the Age of Apocalypse, the disaster at Alkali Lake, the onslaught of Sentinels, and DEATH. Seriously, the man survived death! But then he spends two nights in Oklahoma City, and is dead forever. Take the warning, folks. The place is worse than Kryptonite. 

The Rock Music That The Kids Are Into These Days

I should note before I get into the meat of this piece that my entire concert experience is as follows:

1. Gladys Knight at the MGM Grand*
2. Carrot Top
3. Carrot Top (again)**
4. The Barenaked Ladies, Ben Folds, and Sinbad at Orange Peel 2003
5. Billy Joel and Elton John, Oklahoma City 2010
6. End of List.

Now, with that out of the way, I can say that it was with a heavy heart that I agreed to go to something called a “Cain’s Ballroom” to see a performance by something called a “Jimmy Eat World.”

If you’re confused, you can imagine how I felt. I still don’t know what any of those words mean.

Have you ever heard of the term “standing room only?” It’s an absolute revelation! So much so that I have a message to whoever invented such a notion. The President would like to appoint you to his cabinet. That’s right, you’re the new Secretary for Comfortable Leisure Time***. Congratulations!

Things descended from there. At some point shortly before the opening act finished their 45 minute set a terribly nice young woman placed her coat next to me. She then mouthed something that—for the amount of bass rattling my skeletal system—might have been a satanic incantation, before rejoining the epileptic mosh pit out on the dance floor. Yes, that’s right, folks, for three-and-a-half hours, I was the coat-check guy at Cain’s Ballroom, and that place doesn’t even have a coat check room.

What’s more? The headliner didn’t even play any songs I recognized until the freaking encore! Also, there was an encore. If hell exists, I will probably spend my eternity sitting on a shitty wooden bench in the middle of a concert for a band I’m not really into while they play almost exclusively stuff from the new record. Also, I’m watching some stranger’s coat.

So, maybe I didn’t enjoy the concert. That’s okay. Plenty of people enjoyed it, and I’m more than ready to admit that I’m in the wrong here, but I really didn’t enjoy it. Really. 

In my own defense, if you assumed that my social allergy to what the youths of today with great and growing decrepitude of my body and soul, I’ll have you know that, personality-wise, I’ve been in my mid-forties since I was twelve. I would have always hated this. It isn’t that I’ve become an old man, it’s that I’ve always been kind of a lame wet blanket. So, there. 

Now, it would be fair to ask me at this point that if I was going to hate such an event on spec, then why would I have bothered to go? There are lots of bad reasons to do things, and there are lots of good reasons to do things. To make other people happy is probably a pretty good one. Making Lora Sutton Boyle happy, despite every cell of your rapidly aging body insisting you do anything else? That’s the best reason to do anything, if you ask me. She really wanted to go, and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her. Apparently.

Didn’t think that this blog was going to end with some gushy stuff? Neither did I! I was totally content to just dump on Jimmy Eat World for 600 words, but here we are.

In the interest of allowing for equal time, my wife, Lora, wanted to add the following editorial comment: The concert was amazing, and Mac Boyle is the best husband. Even though I now might owe him a midnight screening of RoboCop at Circle Cinema. Love is weird. (Seriously though…Jimmy Eat World is AMAZING in concert!)

*Between 1994 and 2000, I visited Las Vegas and average of two times per year. If my father had been less skilled at Blackjack, we might have said he had a gambling problem. As it stood, we just got a lot of things comped. Hashtag privilege. #makehashtagitsownwordagain

**Not to be confused with the act I tried to tour with during college, “Carrot Top Again.” If not for a cease-and-desist order, I might have my own theater in Branson right now.

***Pending Senate approval.

A Funny Thing Happened While I Tried To NOT Get Robbed.

I’ve lived an absurdly crime-free life. Up until this week, the only time I had been robbed was when I was living in Stillwater about seven years ago, I had left a bike out in front of my apartment, fully intending to use it once again. A year and a half later, when I moved out of that apartment, the bike was gone. I never filled out a police report, mainly because a) I was going to feel pretty silly reporting something stolen anytime in the last eighteen months* and b) I was thrilled to not have to move a large object I had no intention of ever using again. 

So, you can imagine my surprise… consternation…? rage…? when I go go to work on Wednesday morning to find the two front doors of my car ajar. Digging deeper, I saw that the glove compartment was also open.

Someone had broken into my car in the night. Now, no windows were broken and the car appeared to completely undamaged, so my next realization was that the only reason this had happened was because I had likely not completely closed my driver’s door before going into the house for the evening.

Then I remembered what I had left in the car. in the interest of meeting the often-sporadic sales needs of a small publishing company, I kept a wide selection of titles in the trunk of my car.

And now they were gone. Two cases worth of books, about two-hundred dollars in merchandise, about 75 percent of my stock. All gone.

And things got stranger from there.

For one thing, there was trash in my car. They didn’t clean that up. Rude, if you ask me.

Second, there was change near the ash tray. You know, objects of inarguable monetary value. Not a fortune, but certainly a few dollars worth. They didn’t touch a dime.

Third, in the back seat I had a copy of the first edition of Stephen King’s On Writing**. I think I am safe to say that the volume has some value if you were to try to sell it to a used bookseller. Again, maybe not a fortune, but certainly a few bucks, or at the very least a goodly sum of store credit. They completely left that book alone.

No, they only took several copies of Orson Welles of Mars, The Devil Lives in Beverly Hills, Right - A Novel of Politics, and A Loss For Normalcy. 

Theory number one: a couple of goofball thieves wisely opted against obvious dumb things to steal. When they were confronted with two, nondescript heavy boxes, dreams of high-end merchandise danced through their heads. They got away with the booty, only to realize that the joke is on them.

Theory number two: I have some very passionate, somewhat larcenous fans out there, and this was the culmination of a profoundly daring heist.

Now, this objectively sucks. Or it did, for about ten minutes before it became undeniably weird and amusing.

Sure, it was a violation of my space to have someone go through it, perhaps while I slept, and the loss of those books is an irritant, but we’ve all—myself included—had a good laugh about it all. I’ll have to re-buy books, but it also allows two titles (namely Right and Normalcy) to go to an admittedly needed second edition. Not for nothing, the robbery also gave me a subject for this week’s blog post, when some weeks I’d pay the value of the books I lost just to get an idea to fill this corner of the website. What’s more, I get that sinking feeling that a novel in my near future will start with an up and coming writer losing his stock of books, and then going on a one-man war on crime. A new novel idea is a steal at twice—hell, three—times the price. 

So, for all that, you crazy kids who stole my books, thanks! You’ve given me far more than you ever dreamed of taking***.

*And, no, officer, I can’t get any more specific than that.

**If you haven’t before, you should be reading that book right now, regardless of your feelings of King’s work as a whole. And, man, does opinion on King range in sort of a ridiculous sort of way. There are people that believe he is the only good novelist who ever lived, and there are plenty of people who think leaving him buried alive in the center of a dead planet wouldn’t begin to cover the crimes of Maximum Overdrive (1986).

***Between writing and publishing this post, I realized that the scoundrels also stole a sweater jacket. Now I’m really mad. That thing was cozy!

I can be wrong: TV shows I missed for no other reason than I’m an idiot

Taste is a funny thing. Our judgments—especially aesthetic judgments—can feel like they are coming from pristine logic, when all-too-often they are simply arbitrary decisions birthed fully-formed from an unknown oblivion. For instance, I hate Dr. Pepper. I mean, I really hate Dr. Pepper. If I get Dr. Pepper by mistake at a drive-thru, I have to go into seclusion for a week. Dr. Pepper tastes like evil. When I flung Orson Welles into a future dystopia, I had the air tinged with a scent that could only be that unholy quaff. It hid death. Despite everyone’s apparent love for the stuff, I think it’s awful. 

But at least I’ve tried Dr. Pepper.

There are too many things I’ve dismissed on spec, and I’ve often been wrong. I could talk about chili and how I’m still a little angry that none of you told me that it was the most amazing thing conceived by humanity, but I don’t think its too far to say food is almost entirely about taste. Art, or rather, pop culture is another matter entirely.

For years, I would check out when anyone talked about Joss Whedon’s superlative TV series, Buffy The Vampire Slayer. To my memory back then, it was a not-very-good movie that appeared and disappeared from theaters and featured Paul Reubens playing not Pee-Wee Herman. I often got it confused with My Boyfriend’s Back (1993), another film of mildly similar subject matter. The WB (and then UPN) aired it, which put it along other sterling series as Platypus Man and The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer, so it had to be good, didn’t it? Was there anything in that show that I couldn’t get from the summer where I—for lack of anything better to do—watched every episode of Dawson’s Creek?

I was wrong. It’s terrific. From a solid first season that might have leaned a little into the gross over-generalizations listed above, Whedon weaved an intricate and joyful mythology that continues to expand, over a decade after it left the airwaves. And I missed it while it aired, simply because I thought my taste was ever-so refined, and couldn’t be brought down to such a pedestrian and vulgar level. 

I know, I’m such a Giles. I’m okay with that.

I would have thought that I have an open mind as years have gone by, but just in the last month or so, it’s become clear that I need to lighten up on the prejudging of the TV shows. I might be missing some good stuff. With pounds of recommendations to guide her way, Lora began to watch This Is Us when it premiered in the fall. I kind of wrote it off. I’m not sure what my reasons were. It might have had something to do with the fact that I have been a little burned out by shows featuring a large cast depicting a multi-generational family since I gave up on cottage industry that is Modern Family. Shows like Parenthood, Life in Pieces flew right past me, and This Is Us was preparing to do the very same thing.

Then, Lora watched several episodes while I was trying to get some work done, and that work never got done. The show takes the very real lives of this family and shucks it through the prism of multi-flashbacks and gradual reveals that made LOST the show it was. And I might be going out on a limb here, but I don’t think This Is Us is going to end with all of the characters re-uniting in purgatory after they die…

At least, I hope it doesn’t end like that. I’ve got a little more hope that despite all of the very real ups and downs, everyone outside of Milo Ventimiglia* will end up in a good place. I’m that fond of these people.

I know, with all of that gushy stuff, I’m such a Toby. As a general rule, find the character on a television show named Toby, and then be like them. You’ll thank me later.

Then there’s my big turn around in the last few weeks. Whenever anyone spoke glowingly of The Golden Girls, I always assumed they were doing so ironically. Now, I’m not against liking something ironically. How would Dave Coulier ever find work if people refused to allow irony to play a factor in their enjoyment of things.

But, man, was I wrong about The Golden Girls. Spawned from the heyday of the NBC sitcom, the adventures of Dorothy, Blanche, Rose, and Sophia gave several of the legitimate geniuses of the TV comedy their first crack at bat. Christopher Lloyd** (Cheers, Frasier, and yes… Modern Family), Mark Cherry (Desperate Housewives), and Mitchell Hurwitz (Arrested Development) all cut their teeth on the show, and it shows. The Golden Girls is a legitimately staggering joke machine, where most shows were content to hang their hats on more poignant character work or an unhealthy diet of misanthropy. 

What kept me from this show for long? I may just be an old grump, but hopefully a lovable old grump. I know, I’m such a Sophia. Or, at least, I want to be Sophia when I grow up. We all should. Any shows that you regret having not picked up since they premiered? Let me know in the comments.

*Spoiler alert, as it only happened this past week, but say what you will about Ron Cephas Jones’ William, but his ending was far happier than most of the life that preceded it.

**No, not that one.

The following blog has been edited for content and to fit in the time allotted: The long-lost art of movies on TV.

SPECIAL NOTE: This entry is coming out a little late, because I’ve been spending most of the day working on that wonderful annual ritual of the tax return. I half considered just devoting this week’s entry to publicly releasing said return to the public. You know, for reasons. It’d be that easy. Then I realized that the particulars of my financials would be more dark comedy than political commentary. I may still do it next week.

As a kid, my favorite time of year wasn’t Christmas or Halloween or my birthday. It was—and for some reason I do think it happened every year—when a local broadcast station would air Robocop (1987). Now, of course, the version of the film that I got to watch and record back then had almost nothing to do with the ultra-violent, ultra-cynical version of the film that Paul Verhoeven intended*. I would have to wait years before I saw the true film, but the edited version was plenty for the time being.

It occurs to me recently that there is an army of movies that I first saw in diluted form. It’s an imprecise art form. While it may not be worthy of celebration, it may bear a little analysis.

Now, the primary way in which movies are modified, of course, is through the revision of dialogue featuring profanity. Having dealt with a bit of re-recording dialogue for video, I can attest that it is an activity that demands exacting precision, but almost always has to be abandoned when “good enough.” Now, when preparing a film for television broadcast, forget both precision, or “good enough.” Forget even making some degree of basic sense. Observe the lowest of the lows in the following video (Note: it isn’t safe for work).

See? The contortion of your run of the mill four-letter words can certainly lend itself to some borderline-insane near-homophones. My personal favorite of these substitutes—and for some reason, it does not appear in the supercut linked above—comes from Fargo (1996). In that film, every “fuck” became some variation on the word “frooz.” I had not before or since heard the word “frooz” used by humans. In fact, a quick Google search confirms that it is by no means an English word, and has likely never been uttered at any point in time in North Dakota or any of the surrounding states. This did not stop the term from becoming a popular expletive in my house growing up.

It goes beyond that, though. Listen again to some of the dialogue snippets in the above clip. Often, the original actors refuse to re-record the dialogue for the television broadcast. I can’t say I blame them—talking about a “monday-to-friday plane” would drive anybody to the brink of madness, but I think even I could do a better Bruce Willis impression than the guy who said “Mr. Falcon.” Mr. Falcon isn’t even the name of a character in Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990)!

The bizarre editing choices don’t stop with the dialogue. I recently procured the 2-disc, special blu ray of Halloween II (1981) that included the television version. It touted extra footage, but they really should have highlighted a litany of inexplicable editing choices. The movie is hardly a classic at its best, but with all of the jumbled up scenes, arbitrary cut aways, and inexplicable music cues, it’s barely watchable. The choices don’t even seem to be in the interest of eliminating violence, or even to accommodate commercial breaks. They just wanted to see if they could take an average film and rip it apart. Well, frooz that.

Any movies that stick in your mind from watching them on TV? Let me know in the comments. Maybe next week I’ll release my tax returns. Maybe**.

*For the purest forms of cynicism and violence, I would had to have tuned into the news. To this day, I don’t understand why CNN, MSNBC, or Fox refuse to market their product to kids. Especially now, the weirdness on regular display would transfix the imagination of people of all ages.

**Is it possible I went through an entire blog entry with only one footnote? No, because for some reason I felt the need to comment on it here.

Nerd Blind Spots

Recently, I started reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time. After 32 years, I was probably well overdue, and… well, it sure is detailed, now, isn’t it?

My intermittent antipathy to the tales of Middle Earth goes way back*. I’ve seen** the movies, but they never seemed to connect with me like they did with a lot of my other nerd brethren and sistren. In fact, I saw only Fellowship of the Ring (2001) in theaters. The most memorable thing from the screening was laughing—and being the only one to do so—when Frodo uses the alias Mr. Underhill. The reason I laughed? Well, my friend, I laughed because that was the same alias Chevy Chase used in Fletch (1985) to infiltrate the country club. I’m willing to venture that I may be the only man on the planet who laughed at that particular moment, for that particular reason.

So, to put it mildly, I don’t have the fond, entrenched relationship with the works of Tolkien that you might. I didn’t grow up with the stuff. That’s okay; you’re going to miss some stuff. Nerd culture*** has become so undeniably massive that it is impossible to absorb everything. For instance, I desperately want to watch Penny Dreadful. It sounds like it might be right up my alley. Also Daredevil, and Jessica Jones, and Westworld, and pretty much everything, on and on, forever. Amen. And yet, I haven’t watched any of them. There’s a lot to take in, and not a lot of time to do it, especially when I’ve got to spend some time making stuff destined to join that pile.

There’s also some stuff that once tried, doesn’t taste good and recedes further into our blind spot. We all have them, the nerd blind spots. I’ve met people who have read every X-Men comic ever printed, but have seen only one episode of Star Trek. It isn’t for them. Clearly, these people have never seen Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), but that’s okay. They will, and then they will come around.

I’ve got my own blind spots as well. Countless people—many of whom I respect—believe that television was perfected with Supernatural. Now, again, these people have clearly never seen The West Wing, or Community, but I digress. Whenever I, if even for a few minutes, watch the adventures of Steve, Blinky, and the archangel Bert****, I lose interest. I come to the conclusion that whatever the show is doing, Buffy the Vampire Slayer did it better. I know I may be alone on this one, and I accept both my solitude and your judgments.

My own nerd blind spots don’t stop there. I hung in with The Walking Dead for a few seasons because I felt like I should like it, but I never did. The show has carved a nihilist odyssey out of the zombie genre, and I’m left sitting here knowing that—were I a character on the show—I would have been one of the few reasonable people that went up with the CDC*****. Pokémon? I have next to no awareness of pocket monsters. Pokémon GO flew right over my head. Anime in general has never appealed to me. Yes, I know that will only invite further judgments, and yes, I’ve seen a few episodes of Cowboy Bebop, and no, it doesn’t do it for me, either.

What are your nerd blind spots? How crazy are my own blind spots? Let me know in the comments.

*You might say it goes there and back again. Ha! You see, I’m picking up the lingo!

**read: fallen asleep during

***A term I think I loathe, but I am also at a loss for a better term of equal brevity that I could use.

****Those are the names of the characters on Supernatural, right? Admission: I have yet to watch Supernatural for more than a few minutes.

*****No, I still want to live, despite the entire world being essentially on fire now. I don’t see the point in going on in the face of abject, unrelenting dystopia, or you know… more than 48 hours without wi-fi.

Surprise! On M. Night and his rebound.

NOTE: SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS FOR SHYAMALAN’S LATEST MOVIE, Split (2016) follow. Also, I’ll talk about significant spoilers for plenty of other movies including Arrival (2016), Midnight in Paris (2011), and Back to the Future (1985). However, if you haven’t seen Back to the Future, what in the absolute hell are you doing reading my blog? Go watch Back to the Future. I don’t even know what to do with you anymore. Have you watched it yet? Okay, now we can get on with the blog.

Photo from comingsoon.net

Surprises in movies are a rare thing.

I spent last week heralding the art form of the movie trailer, but movie previews do have the tendency to load up the prospective movie goer with too much information. Honestly, when was the last time you went into a movie and didn’t know nearly everything about what you were going to see? It’s a rare thing to be surprised by a movie.

The stories of the test screenings for Back to the Future are an interesting example of the opposite phenomenon. A California audience was brought into the screening and told nothing about the film that would follow, besides that Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd is in it. Could you imagine how that movie played without any additional information? It’s a light and breezy 80s teen comedy for the first half an hour, before the very fabric of the space-time continuum is up for grabs.

Surprise time-travel may be one of my favorite things in movies. Arrival does it well, and Midnight in Paris singlehandedly elevates the late Woody Allen catalogue based solely on the device.

Then Lora informed me that she had both a) been spoiled on Split’s surprise ending and b) I would love the ending.

I had been pretty cool on M. Night Shyamalan’s work in recent years. Since I guessed—and then immediately dismissed—the twist ending of The Village I’ve had the feeling that his work was going downhill pretty fast. The Visit (2015) was a return to form for him, but I felt like he may never reach the zenith of his output, Unbreakable (2000)…

More about that in a minute.

With Lora giving it her now-spoiled seal of approval, I thought only one thing could force my wife to guarantee that I would love the movie’s inevitable twist ending. McAvoy’s split personalities would somehow be tied to some bending or breaking of the rules of the fourth dimension. That’s fine, I guess, but I wasn’t sure how they could possibly fit such a plot development into the movie.

Turns out I was wrong, but Lora was right that I loved the twist that was in the movie.

Ever since Shyamalan completed Unbreakable, there have been whispers about a potential sequel. The principals involved were game, but the original box office receipts were tame, especially compared with the money explosion that was The Sixth Sense (1999). It seemed like an Unbreakable 2 would join the ranks of Ghostbusters 3*, The Rocketeer 2**, or the Star Wars sequel trilogy*** as things that were just never going to happen.

But the moment that McAvoy’s Kevin Wendell Crumb escapes authorities for one final discussion with himself and the supernatural beast that lies within, a very familiar James Newton Howard score begins to play. That can’t be right, I think. Then we cut to a diner, where a news report of the events of the film plays out. Someone mentions that it reminds them of that crazy terrorist in the wheelchair they captured fifteen years ago. No one remembers his name.

“Mr. Glass,” David Dunn replies, looking an awful lot like Bruce Willis. “They called him Mr. Glass.”

Boom. Credits.

I’m the only one laughing in the theater. Some fifteen-year-old in the front row who thinks he is the smartest entity currently alive cries out, “DID ANYBODY GET WHAT THAT WAS ABOUT?”

“YES!” I cry, happy to engage with someone who was likely too young to possibly understand what was happening.

“OKAY, SO WHAT HAPPENED?” the little shit retorted.

“GO WATCH UNBREAKABLE!” I tell him.

“OH, OKAY,” the little kid says. An unspoken “old man river” is appended to his dismissal.

My unbroken trend of wanting to get into shouting matches with strangers after movies conclude aside, I’m blown away by this movie. It’s a solid Hitchcockian-with-a-touch-of-the-supernatural yarn, something that by this point Shyamalan should be able to do quite well. 

But, as with all great twist endings, the final moments of the film make it something else: a surprise sequel to Unbreakable.

A. Surprise. Sequel.

Has that ever been done before? Dan Aykroyd shows up for a cameo—ostensibly as Ray Stanz—in Casper (1995) but that is more of a gag than a greater link to a larger mythos. Robert Downey Jr. reprises the role of Tony Stark for the first time in The Incredible Hulk (2008), but that little easter egg was well-advertised in the initial push to create hype around the then-embryonic Marvel Cinematic Universe…

But this? I legitimately don’t think anyone has ever made a surprise sequel before. Maybe I’m wrong. If I am, let me know in the comments. In the meantime, I’ll be watching my well-loved Unbreakable blu-ray and waiting patiently for the climactic showdown still to come between David Dunn/Everyman/Security Man and Kevin Wendell Crumb/The Beast/The Hoard.

*For the record, I’m fine with the remake, but that doesn’t diminish how much I would have enjoyed seeing another direct sequel with the players still all in there prime. Probably by 1995, that was never going to happen.

**Which might still happen! Believe!

***Wait, what?!

The Great Movie Trailers

Trying to focus on the positive in life, I think it is high time I devote this week’s blog entry to that supreme American art form, the movie trailer.

It feels like we’re in a golden age for movie previews at the moment, although I’ll admit that my feelings on this may entirely be attached to my reaction to the latest trailer for Logan (2017)*.

Amazing. Tragic and funny. Thrilling and mysterious. The movie will have elements with which we are familiar, but will still be something completely different. I was barely 16 when X-Men (2000) came out in theaters, but now I feel like Hugh Jackman looks in this movie. Also, any time Patrick Stewart says the word “fuck”, an angel gets its wings. That’s basic science. Or, at least, it might be now.

We might have forgotten that hype is part of the fun in the lead-up to The Phantom Menace (1999), but when The Force Awakens (2015) was finally unleashed from the nostalgia incubator that calls itself J.J. Abrams, it turned out that the whole movie—culminating in nothing more than a head turn from Jedi Master Luke Skywalker—was just a two-plus-hour trailer for The Last Jedi. That all being said, the second trailer for the latest non-spinoff movie in the series is one of the all-time greats.

Hell, Mark Hamill gets more to do in just shy of two minutes than he did in the entire movie that followed! But listen to that narration. It sounds like it is lifted dialogue from Return of the Jedi (1983), but it’s different. With the words “You have that power, too” Luke might be talking about Rey or Finn or BB-8 or Unkar Plutt, but we don’t know any of them yet. Luke Skywalker is saying we—the moviegoing public—have that power, and that we need to join him in an adventure.

And we surely did.

When did the Trailer declare its independence as its own film genre? Was it the rise of the preeminent Don “In a World…” LaFontaine? Probably after that. Was it the emergence of ubiquitous “trailer sounds”?

Probably before that. 

Some say that the practice of paying full admission to a movie of no interest, just to see the trailer of another movie started with the inflated box office of Meet Joe Black (1998), which hosted the teaser to the aforementioned The Phantom Menace, but there appears to be plenty of anecdotal evidence that ten years earlier, people opted to see the hastily assembled trailer for a little independent film called Batman (1989).

Rushed out to diminish the fears of comic book fans who thought Mr. Mom would be the second coming of Adam West, the trailer doesn’t do much. Just a taste of Jack’s Joker, just a taste of what the costume would look like, and just a taste of the Anton Furst-fueled Batmobile. We didn’t even get any of Danny Elfman’s score. The trailer was never the same.

A trailer, when it is operating at peak efficiency, can even sell a movie that has no hope of delivering on any of it’s promise. Take this piece of evidence, heralding the great Paramount release for Christmas, 1990.**

The Corleone’s taking over the Vatican? I’m in! Michael Corleone confronting the dark void where his soul used to be? Where do I sign up? Sofia Coppola is in the movie?! Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

But what about movies that didn’t tie in to established properties? For any movie that features Wolverine, Mark Hamill, and the Caped Crusader***, most of the advertising work is already done. It’s the special kind of trailer that insists you go see a movie you know next-to-nothing about.

Hell, I want to go watch that movie right now. You know what? I just might do that. Did I miss a trailer? I’m sure I did? Did I miss an element that makes trailers great? Let me know in the comments.

*Also contributing to the feeling? The released-on-the-same-day-as-Logan second trailer for Power Rangers (2017). Any trailer that actually makes me want to see that movie is a work of superlative advertising art. Then again, Bryan Cranston, so I was probably going to be on board either way.

**Special thanks to wonderlist.com for turning me on to the one redeemable feature of The Godfather: Part III.

***An even better pitch: a movie featuring all three of those elements! I predict an opening weekend gross of 100 dollars!

A Message From The Future

I usually blog on Sundays. All this week, I had no clue what I’d write about this Sunday, but then, it turned out I didn’t have to think about it. I received an email from myself. It is dated 2025, and I have no reason or inclination to doubt its veracity. So, take it away, future me:

Dear World of 2017,

I remember being a (now much younger) man and feeling the overwhelming sense of relief when Barack Obama took the oath to become the 44th President in 2009. It came after a long period of nonsense that we never thought would end. It seemed like Aretha Franklin’s hat was telling us that the good times would be here to stay.

I don’t need to tell you that the good times eventually went away. If my calculations are correct, you’re going to receive this note only a few hours before things are going to get much, much worse*. It stings, it’s scary, and it feels like things are only going to get even worse from here on in. 

They will get worse, but like all things—including the radiation from the plutonium-powered MacBook I used to write this missive—it will eventually wear off.

Things are going to get weirder, too. Think the whole Russian hooker thing felt like a trip into an alternate dimension**? Just wait until you get to the mongoose incident in 2020. It’s… No, I won’t ruin the surprise.

But the day is coming—and maybe sooner than you think—when some dazed and weary reporter will type the words “Donald Trump entered the lame duck phase of his presidency today…” I hope it feels as good to read those words as it will in a few short years, and as it still feels to type them now.

It feels terrible right now, but to paraphrase Ed Harris in Apollo 13 (1995)*** this won’t be the worst disaster we’ve ever experienced, it will be one of our finest hours. We’ve survived worse than bad Presidents. If we survived the giant snake monster from Alpha Epsilon V, we can survive anything.

Artist's rendition.

Wait, has the snake monster thing not happened yet? I’m getting my dates confused…

Anyway, things will be harder than they were before, but harder isn’t impossible. The challenge is to make the ascension of Donald Trump nothing more than a sad footnote, and not the irrefutable turning point he so desperately wants it to be.

Need some non-paradox-creating prescriptions for the next several years? 

Take care of each other. 

Don’t buy into the crap the currently-powerful are flinging. 

When the time comes***, fight for what you know is right. 

Above all else, prize your critical thinking skills more than Rey prized her eight-bladed light saber in Episode IX: Balance of the Whills.

I know we can do it; I’ve seen it. Until we see each other again: I’ll see you soon*****.

*On the off-chance I miss the mark, and this message somehow reaches the Hillary Clinton campaign anytime before October, 2016: MICHIGAN! Dear sweet, jeebus, keep your eye on Michigan… Why am I not sending the message then and there anyway? The Cubs winning the pennant disrupted the Space-Time Continuum too much. I’d explain it more, but I’d have to draw a diagram, and who has that kind of time?

**Am I creating an alternate timeline with this letter? After the 2016 you guys have had, aren’t you a little hungry for a little alternate history? I know I would be.

***And to paraphrase Justin Bieber in the remake of Apollo 13 (2019). Like I said, things get weird.

****Spoiler alert: that time is now. That is, the “now” of 2017, not my “now.” If you’re waiting until 2025 to make a stand, you’re too late. The giant snake monster of Alpha Epsilon V wore most of us out.

*****What’s that? You really want me to tell you about the mongoose? That would violate my sworn oath as a time traveller. I couldn’t possibly…

Okay, I’ll give you the transcript of one joke that was on The Tonight Show starring Seth Meyers around the time that was pretty terrific: 

MEYERS: President Trump is in the news again…

(audience laughs)

MEYERS: I haven’t even gotten to the punchline!

(more laughter)

MEYERS: President Trump now says he wasn’t aware it was a mongoose…

(more laughter)

MEYERS: He instead thought it was Mike Pence’s cybernetic arm!

(uproarious laughter)

Oh, man… Maybe you guys aren’t ready for that joke, but your kids are gonna love it.

If you wish to continue reading the blog, turn to page 86; If you take the gnome's advice and lay siege to the castle, turn to page 89.

In the past couple of weeks I have both befriended and been eaten by a Yeti. I have brought death and chaos to the noble people of Atlantis, while at the same time becoming one with the collective consciousness of the gill people. I have also lost and found and lost again the jewels of the unfortunately named Nabooti*.

No, my efforts to travel back and forth through time have not progressed much beyond the refrigerator box I drew a flux capacitor on twenty-five years ago. I know, I’m a little disappointed in me, too. Instead, I have dived head-first into the wild world of “Choose Your Own Adventure” books.

For those uninitiated, “Choose Your Own Adventure” is a brand** of children’s books that saw their heyday in the 80’s and 90’s, that allowed you—the reader—to make decisions that, given the branched nature of the storytelling, determined the course of the plot. 

In some of the off-brand variations on the form, you guide the direction of a third-person narration, although in these cases the story invariable ends well for the characters you guide. Before you ask, yes: It is a little disconcerting to float through a narrative with the authority to dictate the direction, but not the power to control precisely how matters conclude. 

In the purer versions of these books, you take on the role of the protagonist, and your decisions effect your efforts to get through the story much more directly. Did you make the wrong turn at the market near Machu Picchu? You’re going to get attacked by a wild band of trolls. Do you enter the glowing nebula, despite the advice of the inter-dimensional aliens to the contrary? That’s a great way to have your spaceship invaded by trolls. Do you decide not to bother with the adventure at all? Sadly, you now have troll squatters in your house.

The point is, it doesn’t really matter what you do, you’re going to get killed by a troll. Seriously, the books are not afraid to eschew the need for a happy ending. What’s more, the author—R.A. Montgomery for many of the original branded books—isn’t afraid to instruct children that sometimes, you can make the all of the right choices, and still reap a disastrous result. I, for one, think it is never too early to introduce children to a rudimentary form of existential nihilism, and “Choose Your Own Adventure” seems to agree with me.

Branched-storytelling always seemed like slim, simple fun. The books are short*** and easy to read. Maybe the writing in the genre is simple, but the construction of these stories is complex to the point of being almost counter-intuitive. Writing in second person is mind-boggling enough, but the twists and turns lead those (i.e. me) trying to reverse engineer the structure of these stories to have to re-think story structure at it’s very basic level.  

Normally, one (again, me) will write a story using some variation on Joseph Campbell’s template for the hero’s journey****. To successfully create a branched-storytelling work, you have to throw Campbell out with the bathwater. The hero can not merely answer the call to adventure, and then change in some significant way in the pursuit, although some version of the story should have that basic construction. Different story paths need to be interrupted, diverted, folded in on themselves, restarted, contorted into a potentially infinite loop, and terminated with no obvious notice to the reader.

In short, the form can begin to resemble the vagaries of mundane life far more than other fiction. I’m going to continue working on cracking the format, and who knows? Maybe I’ll have my own version of the gamebook to enter into the pantheon. Stay tuned.

If you believe I will write a gamebook in the future, watch this space. If you think my fear of trolls has finally reached its peak, turn to page 116*****.

*Which continues to remind me of a warm afternoon in the spring of 1994, where I played a small part in finding the equally unfortunate title “Horny” by Carolyn Emery tucked away in the Lee Elementary School library. Our endless amusement at the description of a day-in-the-life of a horned lizard during her egg-laying period attracted the ire of the powers-that-be, and the book was never heard from again.

**Or “gamebooks” to avoid the kind of unconscious brand identification that has lead to the tyranny of Band-Aids.

***Naturally, as they were primarily written for a younger audience.

****For a good, quick distillation of Campbell’s monomyth form, I can recommend no greater source than Dan Harmon’s story embryo/circle. Find a quick breakdown here.

*****And sometimes there isn’t even a page 116!

Cheat Week: Volume Two, Part One: But what this book *presupposes* is... Maybe he didn't?

Well! I'm already one week in to the new year, and I'm calling my first blogging cheat week, although it has been seven weeks since the last time I skipped a week.

This time, I have plenty of good excuses. I am writing, I assure you. Orson Welles, The Fourth Wall, and other little projects, they are all getting my full attention this weekend. I think I may have cracked the big questions from some of these projects that still plague me, and if I don't get them down on something resembling paper now, they may evaporate quickly.

I'll be back next week, talking about yet another project with which I have been tinkering. I'll give you a hint: If you want to keep reading this blog, turn to page 97. If you take the gnome's eerie advice and barge into the witch's cave, turn to page 99.

Another hint: Turn to page 97. You're going to have an unfortunate date with a massive fire ball if you go the other way. 

To Blog, or not to Blog. Let’s not question it too much.

At the beginning of the year that must not be named*, I set out on a few simple goals. Most of them went un-realized, although not for lack of trying. I wanted to clear out the piles of unwatched DVDs/Blu Rays I can’t seem to stop buying, even if owning objects free of the cloud is now amusingly quaint. Those piles still mock me. I wanted to read 60 books, besting my record 58 read in 2015. I barely made 30, but will once again set my sights for 60 this year. I also wanted to blog—even if only a little bit—every week throughout the year.

That one I accomplished. In a year powered by disappointments, I’ve checked in with at least something every week. Now what?

Taking stock of the entries I wrote over 2016, I realized this blog is now a volume with over 45,000 words. To put that into perspective, A Loss For Normalcy—the collection of the sermons I’ve done at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Stillwater over the years**—is just over 23,000 words. The current draft of this year’s*** The Once and Future Orson Welles hovers at just over 57,000.

So, I guess I could try to package all of that into a volume of some kind… But then again, that seems kinda dumb. You’ve already read it. Do you want to pay to read it again? How would I even begin to format that many footnotes? It boggles the mind.

And yet, that leaves the matter of the sheer tonnage of words I have committed to this space. Had I not blogged last year, The Once and Future Orson Welles might be closer to publication. I might even have a good start on a sixth book. Hell, I might have found time for some sort of hobby in between two jobs. If I truly think about the time I’ve been blogging as a waste, should I continue? Is it even worth blogging anymore?

I think it’s worth it. Blogging has a purpose, but it may not be apparent on the surface. The most important part of trying to make a go out of this writing business is building a relationship with you, the reader. A blog like this one is how I start to personally reach out to every person in the world, even if I’ve got to make that connection one person at a time. It’s paid dividends in the last year. I’m a more successful writer today than I was one year ago; I intend to be more successful one year from now than I am today. This blog will continue to be part of that.

So, yes. I’m going to continue this blog into the new year. We’ll talk about movies more. And then some more. As a couple of the other projects I have been putting work into during 2016 start to come of age, we’ll talk about those, too. This time next year, I’ll have another 40,000 words of musings behind me. Every little bit of writing I do makes me a little bit better at writing. Now, with all of that said, I’ll get back to work. 2017 is only a few hours old as I type this and I already feel like I’m six months behind. That, or I’m just nuts. I’ll let you decide.

*And let that be the last “2016 is a terrible year” joke. It’s over now, we have no excuses for dwelling on it. That is, at least, until January 20th. Then, we can start the jokes all over again.

**Buy it here!

***I guess I’m really committing to the idea that the book is coming out in 2017, aren’t I? I’ve announced it 8 or 9 times by now.

And to all a Yippee Kay Yay: That old argument, concluded.

Every year the same thing happens, with only minor variations on the theme:

YOU (I.E., THE ROYAL YOU):  What’s your favorite Christmas movie?

ME: (ready for this) Die Hard.

Silence passes as You try to determine whether or not I am trolling you. For the record, I’m not.

YOU: No, really.

ME: Die Hard.

YOU: Doesn’t count, but whatever. What’s your real favorite Christmas movie?

ME: Die H—

YOU: (sighs) —never mind. Merry Christmas.

ME: And a festive yule to you.

YOU: Go to hell.

ME: Happy New Year*!

###

No, you never mind! No, you whatever! Die Hard (1988) counts as a Christmas movie. I’m not sure why you—again, that is the royal you—insist on not accepting that as an answer, but I think it is high time we talk about it a little bit.

Imagine if you will a movie about a prickly, even difficult protagonist. Through only his own misbehavior—and a few cell-phone less plot contrivances—he is now alone. And then, CRIME! And then, BOOBY TRAPS! And then, VICTORY FOR OUR HERO AND REUNION WITH THE FAMILY.

Quick, which movie is that? Die Hard? No, it’s Home Alone (1990)! Is anyone going to make the argument that Home Alone doesn’t qualify as a Christmas movie, when it’s plot is so indistinguishable from the loose sequel to the The Detective (1968)**, that I’d bet all of the money in my pocket, against all the money in your pockets*** that someone—presumably John Hughes—originally pitched the movie as Die Hard with a precocious kid.

Is that it? Is the reason that one film is a Christmas classic, and the other is “just an action movie” the fact that one stars a kid and the other merely stars the man who would one day sleepwalk his way through The Kid (2000)? Seems kind of dumb to me, but, as the royal you indicated above, “Whatever. Never mind.”

Except, no, not never mind. Not again. I give up the ghost on this argument every year. The line must be drawn here. This far; no further.

Come to think of it, Star Trek: First Contact (1996) is also not a bad candidate for a Christmas movie, because Christmas should be a time for movies that are great! That, however, is probably an argument for a different blog. A blog I may never write, and an argument I’m probably prepared to lose. Why do I know that argument is hopeless? Because First Contact doesn’t take place at Christmas.

You know what movie does take place at Christmas? That’s right…

Maybe I’m taking too hard of a stand here. It is Christmastime, after all. Peace on Earth; good will towards men and lady-people****. All that crap. This blog should be gentle and happy and nice. If there is any element of the “Is Die Hard a proper Christmas movie?” debate that really grates on my nerves, it is the insistence that the holidays have to fit in a pre-conceived package. If you’re with people you love, and you’re taking time out from the have-to’s of life to enjoy things for a moment, then that should count. I’m sitting with my wife and cat as I type this*****. It’s Christmas Eve and we’re watching Die Hard. We’ve watched it around Christmas every year since we’ve been together.

It counts.

If not, I’ll just start claiming Batman Returns (1992) is my favorite Christmas movie. It’s entirely up to you.

*Fair warning. I may have some issues with Christmas that go beyond movie choices. I’m working on it. Kind of.

**Look it up. John McClane was originally played by Frank Sinatra. Fox was contractually obligated to offer Sinatra the role, but since he was already older than Methuselah by that point, they decided to make it unconnected with the other film. Then they wanted to make it into a loose sequel of Commando (1985), although screenwriter Steven E. de Souza disputes this. #themoreyouknow #nbcchimes

***Joke’s on you: I win either way.

****Santa screwed up that order so bad in 2016 that I’m getting tired of commenting on the general crappiness of the year.

*****Which, I suppose means that I’m not taking time off, but give me a break! I’m working on relaxing more. I’m not succeeding with any amount of frequency, but I am trying.

Some sort of pre-sequel: Thoughts on spoilers and Rogue One

So here we are, once again faced with a new Star Wars movie. I’m doomed to spend a day having to sheepishly admit—like somebody living under a rock their whole life—that I haven't seen all of the Star Wars movies yet.

But I suppose this time things are different. For one thing, the new movie, Rogue One, takes place before the beloved trilogy. It’s not really a sequel, per se, but more of a pre sequel. If only there was a simpler term for such a thing.

Ahem.

What is the same is the communications blackout most of us put ourselves in before squeezing in a screening. We're more worried about spoilers than we are about fake news articles*. I'm with you on this front. I've tried to avoid spoilers for Rogue One whenever possible, but there's got to be limits. Some things aren't spoilers. Some things are just predictable. But just because an ending is predictable, does that mean the movie itself is no good? We spent three prequel** movies knowing the fate of Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and company, and that is pointed to as one of the many reasons those films don’t work. 

Now I, before seeing the movie, have decided that most of Rogue One's heroes are not long for the galaxy. I'm not a soothsayer, nor am I an insider. I just don't remember seeing Felicity Jones or Tudyk-bot*** in A New Hope (1977), and logic alone dictates my conclusion. Does this make the movie doomed, like its prequel progenitors****

Now, I have written all of the above words before seeing the movie. I intend to continue my thoughts after I have finished watching it. See you on the other side.

####

Look at that, I was right. They all died. And yet, I think the movie largely works. Yes, Peter Cushing 2.0 seems like he is straight out of an above average video game cut scene, and the less said about retro Carrie Fisher, the better*****, but the whole package is satisfying.

It’s a satisfying movie, for no other reason that we got Darth Vader back, if only for a few moments. He has a brief interlude in the middle of the movie, wherein he exchanges villain-speak with Big Bad Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), which isn’t terribly thrilling beyond James Earl Jones’ welcome return. Later, though… Oooh, boy. He makes a return to the film in a big way. In that moment, he is not the dimwitted Lothario/precocious column of nonsense of the prequels. Nor is he the conflicted dead-beat dad of Empire or Jedi. He is the same mysterious figure that emerges from the myst in the first minutes of A New Hope. He is Darth Vader. The moment you hear that breathing and the see the red light of his saber, there is little else to do but hope that you had your affairs in order. I could have watched that scene over and over again for two-and-a-half hours******.

Would any of this have been ruined had I not surmised the fate of most of the characters? The ending is inevitable, but our heroes make every moment count for as much tension as possible. At the end of the movie, I’m about ready to believe these people just might make it. Also, Chirrut Îmwe is one with The Force, and The Force is with him.

So if Rogue One is a thrilling edition to the canon, and it doesn’t take much to figure out how the movie ends, then what excuse did Episodes I-III have? Were they just terrible? Was it all Hayden Christensen’s fault, even the movie he wasn’t in? The world may never know…

It was Jar-Jar. We all know it was Jar-Jar’s fault*******.

*#2016sentences

**Oh, I get it…

***Tudyk always dies. Too soon? #leafonthewind

****Pre-prequels? I’ll stop.

*****But these are nitpicks. In that spirit, here are some more thoughts along the same line. I think that the Artoo/Threepio cameo was extraneous, if for no other reason that there was a much better opportunity for them to appear in the corridors of the Tantive IV (yes, that is the name of the ship, look it up) in the final moments. They could have bickered just the same, and to the same effect, and it would have made more sense. Also: Oh Jek Porkins, Where Art Thou? #williamhootkinsforlife. One last one: Why didn’t Hannibal Lecter both know that he put the flaw in the Death Star design, and where that flaw was located? Because the movie would have been a lot shorter that way, that’s why.

******Not really.

*******#1999sentences

Right Out of the Gate: Fun With Opening Lines OR My End-of-Year Footnote Blowout

There are a lot of rules in writing. Many of them are dumb, but you should probably learn them before you start ignoring them. Only one space between sentences*, stick with the perspective of one character in 3rd person narration**, and may the Gods have mercy on you if you open a book with a Prologue***. The list goes on forever, and you could spend a lifetime trying to master them and still fall short.

What’s more, you could master all of these rules, only to stand helplessly by as someone succeeds despite—or perhaps because of—breaking them. You, too, could enjoy inexplicable success by flying in the face of everything that is fashionable in modern fiction. Few writing edicts are absolutely inviolable. In fact, the only rule that I can think of that can’t be broken**** is this: Hook them with the opening line.

It’s more than a first impression. It is a starting flag and a pace car. It’s the first thing you say when you’re trying to initiate one of those primitive mating rituals the kids are so into these days*****. The speed and ease through which the reader can pass through your material is largely dictated by those opening words. 

It seems unfair that a potentially great piece can live or die in the first few sentences. All of that work you put into your opus, and it’s over before paragraph 2. I get it. Listen, writers: the only thing I’m reasonably certain of after six years of seriously trying to do this: The default state of most people is to not give a shit about your book. If you get somebody to look inside, you need to compel them to keep going.

In that spirit—and because I’m slowly running out blogging ideas—I’ve decided to write a quick list of nothing but opening lines for short stories or novels. Some of them I might use one day, some of them come from others, and some you might be free to use in your own work. I forget which ones are which.

1) And after the rocking ceased, the Chief lit a cigarette******.

2) There’s no doubt about it, “Murder, She Wrote” broke up my marriage*******.

3) I brought the execution order to Mr. Samson. He had no idea that he was the subject of the document.

4) Plenty of people have absorbed an unlucky twin in utero. When mine whispered “Kill them all!” to me one day, I naturally had a few questions.

5) Call me Ishmael********.

6) Shakespeare died, and London held it’s breath. Chaos and destruction had followed him while he was alive, but no one knew what he could do to England from beyond the grave*********.

7) The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

8) It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

9) It was the day my grandmother exploded**********

10) The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us***********.

Some of these I found here. Any good opening lines that I or that last list missed? Anyone out there think a piece can escape without a good opening line? Let me know in the comments.

*I used to think this was really dumb, as it can cause unintentional ambiguity in text, especially if you as the writer are in the habit of using any sort of abbreviations, like for titles. I tried to make #3 an example of this, but it fell apart in that endeavor. I surrender. On this one.

**REALLY dumb. I’ll say pistols at dawn to anyone who wants to come back at me on that one. I may have been listening to too much Hamilton as of late… The rule is still dumb. We’ll talk about it later.

***See the previous footnote.

****Besides they’re/there/their. I’m not an anarchist. Settle down. Then again, if you’re writing in some kind of patois or Winston Groom/Flowers of Algernon intentional incorrectness, all bets are off. Maybe I am an anarchist.

*****Dates? Do kids still call them dates?

******You’re welcome. You know who you are. Both of you. One day it will open a piece. I promise.

*******Courtesy of J. Coplen. Also, I’m officially in danger of finally writing a post with more footnotes than actual post.

********Why is this a good opening line? I’ve never understood that one, but it seemed like I should add it either way. Everyone agrees it is a good line.

*********From what work might this opening line originate? Only time will tell.

**********This opening line is from The Crow Road by Iain M. Banks. Now, I’ve only just now heard this opening line, but I guarantee you it made me want to read the rest of the book. Thus, the power of the opening line.

**********A couple of things about this, the opening line from The Time Machine. First, you have to remember that in 1895 the term “time traveller” wasn’t a thing. Sure, Twain published A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court in 1889, but that book—grand as it is—doesn’t have much of an opening line. Also, Wells gets away with parenthesis, so he’s a man to be respected.