Black Friday

If you're looking for this week's Box Office Blitz, it posted on Tuesday.  Make your picks now if you haven't already!

And enjoy your shopping today.  Here's my thought on the subject:

Grumpy Trip > Grumpy Cat

Thursday Review: Mercury Falls

Happy Thanksgiving, pilgrims.  This book was originally self-pubbed and then for some reason Amazon bought the rights to put under their imprint. Maybe Amazon could show me some love like that?

Mercury Falls
by Robert Kroese
(4/5 stars)

When you write a humorous story about scheming angels and the Apocalypse, you're just asking to be compared to "Good Omens" by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.  And going against the combined talents of two great humorists like that, it's not going to go very well for you.  Still, "Mercury Falls" at least manages to be a fun read.

When the story begins, Christine is a reporter for The Banner, a Christian magazine, despite that she's not much of a Christian.  She lucked into the job after writing a news story about a doomsday cult and since then she's had to traipse around the country, profiling other doomsday cults who are inevitably wrong about the date of the world ending.

But after getting some new linoleum installed in her breakfast nook--which is a crucial plot point--she takes an assignment to Israel, where tensions are heating up in the middle east near a little place known as Armageddon.  After nearly being killed in a rocket attack, Christine finds a strange attache case and eventually finds her way to another cult leader who calls himself Mercury.

Mercury is an angel, but he's closer to the Joker than any of the angels you might remember from the Bible.  Really all Mercury wants is to sit on the sidelines and wait for the world to end, but when Christine shows up, he gets dragged into all the plotting and scheming between Heaven and Hell.

The rest of the story follows Christine and Mercury as they try to stop the Apocalypse, or at least make it less destructive.  There are the annoying "Dogma"-like moments of characters having to explain Biblical things, though not to the extent that pretty much destroyed that Kevin Smith movie.  Also unlike that movie it doesn't focus solely on Catholic dogma, so that a reader from any Western faith (or lack thereof) can follow along.  Since there's really not much talk about Jesus or the Messiah, Jews or Muslims as well as Christians should be able to read it.  Whether you're offended or not depends on how seriously you take your beliefs.

This is clearly not a book for the true believers, as it makes light of both Heaven and Hell.  The writing is nothing special, but the author does manage to make it entertaining enough that it doesn't drag along.  You probably aren't going to get any spiritual enlightenment from reading it, but it's not a bad time either.

Though of course if you haven't read it, "Good Omens" is a much better use of your money.

That is all.

November Recap

NOTE:  The jerks at Moviefone snuck in 3 new movies this morning that weren't listed yesterday for the Box Office Blitz.  If you wish to change your answers, you can do so until 6am Saturday.  The 3 other movies added are:

• Philomena*
• The Book Thief*
• The Christmas Candle*

Of the three I'd say probably only The Book Thief would do anything.  Anyway it's kind of annoying in this day and age they can't get their shit together until Wednesday for what's coming out Friday.


Here were the top 3 posts of the month.  They've been pretty tightly packed together so the order

keeps changing.

• Two Cent Tuesday: Rules Made to be Broken

• Book Report 2013

• Odeathon Blogfest
  

And here's some stuff I watched:

Star Trek Into Darkness:  Here's a backhanded compliment:  this wasn't as terrible as I feared it would be.  Still not that great and I still will not accept Chris Pine as Captain Kirk.  I could probably do a whole blog post on it but really the problem is they wanted to draw parallels to Wrath of Khan but the problem is the characters of THIS movie don't have the relationships as in Wrath of Khan.  In particular Kirk and Khan don't quite have the same level of hatred that was born of 20 years of simmering hatred.  And Kirk and Spock don't have 20 years of being best friends to draw on so when they try to parallel the warp reactor scene it just doesn't work because at this point these two characters can barely tolerate each other.  It's just not the same thing at all.  Karl Urban as Bones I thought stole the show at times; he can really sound like DeForrest Kelley at times.  Now that people have pointed them out, gawd, those lens flares!  Yeesh.  The plot was OK but I wish they'd stop stupid crap like starships operating underwater and in atmosphere.  They're called starships because they operate in the stars.  Duh. (2.5/5)

GI JOE: Retaliation:  It's probably a push on which GI JOE movie is dumber.  The first one set the bar pretty low.  Anyway, the plot of this doesn't make a lot of sense, especially the part about Zartan murdering Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow's ninja master like 25 years ago and then training Storm Shadow.  Say whaaaat?  Zartan isn't a fucking ninja!  It seemed like they really shoehorned that Snake Eyes plot line in there.  And of course most people would be sad that Channing Tatum was killed, but he sucked in the first one so it wasn't much of a loss to me.  At least this time they tried to get the look of some characters closer to the toys, though those all seemed to be COBRA characters.  They did take the superfluous mouth off Snake Eyes's costume; I mean what use does a guy who took a vow of silence have for a mouth on his mask? (2/5)

Now You See It:  I'd been wanting to see this movie for a while so I was hoping for more from it.  It was OK.  It involves four magicians (the Four HorseMEN despite that one is a girl) who use their magic shows to first rob a French bank and then an insurance tycoon.  I was surprised that most of the movie follows the FBI agent (Mark Ruffalo, aka the Hulk from the Avengers) and an Interpol agent, but there's a twist that explains why this is.  Though for that twist to work, someone would have needed to meticulously manipulate events for about the last 30 years, which I find inconceivable!  It's an OK heist movie but not everything I was hoping for.  BTW, Tony Laplume would be happy to see one character reading The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano at one point. (3/5)

Identity Thief:  Chalk this up with "Anchorman" and "Wedding Crashers" as a popular comedy I didn't really enjoy.  I chuckled a few times but never really laughed at anything.  I guess I didn't find a fat woman falling down and punching guys in the throat to be that hilarious.  Pretty much everything in this movie was done better by Steve Martin and John Candy in "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" or Robert de Niro and Charles Grodin in "Midnight Run."  The latter might be a bit more apt.  Might as well just watch those again. (2/5)

30 Days of Night:  Vampires take over an Alaskan town where it's dark for 30 days straight.  Unfortunately the movie has as much personality as the star Josh Hartnett, which is to say none at all.  What confused me the most was that the "vampires" eat people like zombies, which seems to be a really inefficient way to get blood. But did they really want blood or what?  Nothing is really explained about the vampires like who they are or what language they're speaking.  (2.5/5)

An Awkward Sexual Adventure:  This is pretty much the Canadian version of a Judd Apatow film.  Instead of a 40-Year-Old Virgin you have a 36-year-old Winnipeg accountant who's just really bad in bed.  So bad his girlfriend falls asleep.  While on a trip to Toronto he visits a strip club and meets a stripper with a heart of gold who has terrible financial management.  So they agree that he'll help her with her financial problems and she'll help to teach him about sex as his "Sexual Yoda."  Other than an oral sex scene there's less graphic sex than you might expect.  It was fun, but really could have used a little trimming since the end was pretty obvious. (4/5)

The Host (2013):  Like Hulk or Van Helsing, this is another failed attempt by Universal Pictures at launching a franchise.  In this case it's based off a pre-Twilight book by Stephanie Meyer.  Parasitic aliens take over all the people on the Earth, including some girl named Melanie.  From seven years of watching Deep Space Nine I know that you can coexist with a parasite and it could actually help you.  Instead these aliens just try to take over the hosts, except for William Hurt and a bunch of generic Abercrombie & Fitch models who hide in some desert caves.  (Honestly I didn't realize there were two guys after the main girl until like 3/4 through the movie.)  The aliens don't seem to have anything particularly interesting about them except a fondness for silver vehicles and white clothes.  It's a real accomplishment that the main character manages to be whiny and boring as two species.  The idea of them sharing a body would have worked better in the book.  In the movie it's kind of lame with her talking to herself all the time.  The human girl part can't ever seem to make up her mind whether she hates the alien or how she wants it to react to boys.  But it was neat how they grew crops underground, so that's something. (2/5)

The Host (2006):  This is a completely different animal from the movie of the same name above.  This is a Korean kaiju movie where something that looks like a mutant catfish crossed with a squid is created thanks to a stupid American doctor who orders a bunch of toxic chemicals dumped into a river because the bottles are dusty.  (Which harkens back to Godzilla where the monster is woke up thanks to stupid Americans dropping nukes.)  Cheesy effects and hammy acting make it hard to take this seriously; the movie can't seem to decide what tone it should strike, whether it's a corny "Shaun of the Dead"-type parody or an actual monster movie.  The 2 hour running time is probably a half hour too long and really the monster needed to be bigger and on screen more. (2.5/5)

Olympus Has Fallen:  This movie was all kinds of implausible.  First off, I'm pretty sure the two F-22 fighters wouldn't line up on either side of the cargo plane so they can get blown out of the sky.  Common sense would dictate one stay back to cover the other while it checks the situation out.  The rest of it plays out like Die Hard meets Air Force One only without any fun or cleverness.  Whoever played the defense secretary was so awful I really wanted her to die, and quick.  Anyway, despite all that it was an OK but really dumb action movie.  (2/5)

Hulk Vs.:  I appropriately watched this before an episode of Agents of SHIELD one week.  About 60% of it is dedicated to Loki bringing Hulk to Asgard during the Odinsleep (when Odin is recharging like your iPhone) to rampage around while Thor tries to stop him with his hammer.  The other 40% is dedicated to Hulk fighting Wolverine in the Canadian wilderness, though probably 50% of that 40% is actually focusing on Wolverine and the Weapons X project who want to use Hulk for their own ends.  This really demonstrates how pointless the Hulk often is as the fights between him and Thor and Wolverine get pretty dull pretty quick because for the most part it's always going to be a stalemate.  Really if you're going after the Hulk you should fight him with scented candles and Yanni music to cool his rage; hitting him with a hammer or stabbing him with claws just makes him angrier.  Unfortunately he doesn't rip Wolverine in half like in the comics.  Boring!  (2/5)

Redemption (2012):  This isn't your typical Jason Statham movie, though he does still kill plenty of people.  Statham is a British soldier who's on the lam after going AWOL from Afghanistan.  He's living on the streets with a girl named Isabel until Isabel's pimp catches up to her.  Statham escapes the pimp's henchmen and crashes into a flat whose owner is conveniently gone for the summer.  So hey, why not steal his identity, right?  Especially since a new bank card is conveniently in the mail.  Then he starts trying to get his life together and in the span of a couple of weeks goes from homeless to a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant to an enforcer for a Chinese gangster--talk about upward mobility!  Along the way he tries to find out about Isabel with the help of a nun whose mobile kitchen he used to frequent.  As the title suggests it's about him trying to redeem his life of bad choices.  But it all comes down to a final choice between hanging out with the nun at the opera or getting revenge for Isabel.  Which do you think he chooses?  It's a little slow but better than your typical Statham fare like "Parker" and "The Transporter."  Still probably not as good as "The Bank Job" or a couple of early Guy Ritchie movies. Statham seems like the British Nic Cage in that he's capable of doing better material but he has a really shitty eye for picking scripts.  (3.5/5)

Erased:  The start of this reminded me of "The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret" in that a guy (Aaron Eckhart) is recruited for a job overseas that turns out to be for a company that doesn't really exist.  In this case it's far more sinister than comical when he goes into work with his daughter one morning to find everything (people, phones, computers, Post-It notes) vanished.  All his bank records and personal records from that time are erased too.  So to find out what's going on he basically does his Liam Neeson and goes around Belgium kicking people's asses.  This is another of those pretty much straight-to-Redbox movies that's not bad if you like a cross between "Taken" and "The Bourne Identity."  (3/5)

Assault on Wall Street:  They probably take away your reviewer's card if you admit to liking a Uwe Boll movie.  But wait, I only liked it for a really shallow reason!  Boll's inadvertent genius was casting Erin Karpluk as the main character's wife and I had such a huge crush on her from watching this "Being Erica" show on CBC a couple years ago.  (I think I made a couple of veiled references to it in my Wordpress blog back in the day.)  How much of a crush?  The young Sylvia in the Scarlet Knight books is pretty much modeled on her and so is the woman in my short story "Meet Cute."  So when she's sick and dying in the movie I could totally feel the guy's frustration and rage.  If I had a machine gun I might have run off to Wall Street for delusional vengeance.  But if you don't have a huge crush on that chick then you might not feel the same way.  Other than that it takes way too long to get up to the assaulting part of the movie.  I mean well over an hour goes by before he starts on that.  If you really, REALLY hate bankers then you might like this.  I might have to take some points off because Boll didn't work in a gratuitous naked scene.  C'mon it's R-rated, why not go for it!? (3/5)

(BTW, if you can ever get the chance go watch that "Being Erica" show.  The first season was pretty cool.  It was like "Quantum Leap" meets "My Name is Earl" as she gets to go back in time to right a list of various wrongs in her life.  I had to buy it on DVD since I'm pretty sure you can't get it from Netflix and the like except maybe in Canada.  I never watched the next season or two because everything seemed worked out pretty well in the first season, so why bother watching it unravel and then reravel again?)

Phantom:  You know how in some Russian submarine movies like The Hunt for Red October they hire British actors to use their normal voices so they at least seem foreign or in others like K-19 The Widowmaker they have everyone do bad Russian accents?  Well Phantom decides the hell with all that and just lets all the Americans talk like Americans even though they're playing Soviet submariners.  That kind of lazy inattention to detail is compounded by the message at the end saying all the records on this story are still classified so who the fuck knows what really happened?  The probably completely bogus story "inspired by real events" is one part Red October, one part K19, and one part Crimson Tide as a Russian sub captained by Ed Harris goes out to test a new "phantom" machine for confusing American subs and then gets taken over by David Duchovny as a Russian commando who wants to start WWIII.  Appropriately later the night I watched this I caught the end of Dr. Strangelove on TCM which is a much better movie about crazy people trying to start a nuclear war.  (2/5)  (BTW, don't confuse this with The Phantom with Billy Zane as the 30s hero or with Phantoms, in which Affleck was the bomb.)

This is 40:  This movie has some good bits, but at 133 minutes, it's much muuuuuuch too long.  It rambles on and on and at the end we're not really any farther along than when we started.  This was based on characters from "Knocked Up" which I watched only once, which was enough.  At least this one doesn't have Seth Rogen in it; that would have only made it worse.  It's another good object lesson on not working with your family; Apatow has his wife as the wife and his kids as the kids; if they had a dog it'd probably be his dog too.  The older kid is OK but the younger one is worse than any of those kids on those AT&T commercials.  Of course readers who are married and over 40 might get more from it than someone unmarried and not 40. (2.5/5)

Lovelace:  A lot of movies I complain are too long (see above) but this one was actually too short.  It seems like they skip over so much stuff and just give lip service (huh huh) to a lot of other stuff.  It's the kind of dramatization where you'd probably be better served watching a real documentary.  The story as presented is pretty cliche.  Sort of naive young woman gets involved with older, abusive guy.  Only instead of just knocking her around he forces her to make perhaps the most well-known porno ever.  As for the sex there really isn't anything graphic actually depicted.  Some nice boob shots, so that's something.  (2/5)

This is the End:  Like "This is 40" above it had some nice bits but was too long.  Like the Ocean's movies it was probably more fun for the people making it because they could all hang out and get paid for it.  For me it was less enjoyable.  Too much time is spent in the house after the Rapture begins.  The highlight of that is when they do most of the drugs and make a Sweded version of a "Pineapple Express 2" trailer.  Once they start getting out of the house the plot begins to move again.  But I have to say if Heaven involves smoking weed with Seth Rogen and spontaneously dancing to the Backstreet Boys then I'd volunteer to go to the other place. [Cue "Twilight Zone" guy saying, "This IS the other place! Hahahahahaha!"] (2.5/5)

The Place Beyond the Pines:  I probably should have read more about this movie before I added it to my queue.  It was really confusing.  We start with Ryan Gosling as a carnie who rides a motorcycle in a metal cage until he finds out he knocked up Eva Mendes.  Then he starts robbing banks.  When he's busted by a rookie cop played by Bradley Cooper, it turns into a whole different movie about dirty cops.  Then we skip forward 15 years so we can catch up with their kids, who are fucked up in different ways but then seem to become their fathers.  It was really hard to follow the thread of the story since it seems like 3 different movies spliced together. (2/5)

Goosebumps:  When I was browsing Netflix's Halloween channel I saw they had the old Goosebumps TV show based on those R.L. Stine books from the 90s.  So I decided to watch a few episodes I remembered seeing back in the day.  At best the show is like "The Twilight Zone" for 8-year-olds while at worst (far more frequent) it's completely nonsensical crap marred by acting and special effects much worse than anything on TZ back in 1959.  One of the better episodes is basically a retread of a "Twilight Zone" episode where someone finds a magic lamp and gets 3 wishes that of course backfire.  (This was also the basis of a Simpsons Halloween parody.)  In this case a gawky teenage girl gets 3 wishes that go horribly wrong, like when she wishes to be the best player on her basketball team she's the only one who gets a basket in the whole game.  And then the genie says, "What?  You were the best player on the team!"  The point being that you should never ever make a wish (or a deal with the devil) because it will always backfire.  You really have to question the callousness of some of these characters like in that episode I mentioned, the girl's mortal enemy gets turned into a statue and she's like "Woo hoo!" and in another episode a boy accidentally alters history so his bratty sister disappears and then is like, "Meh.  I'll fix it later."  Anyway, if you need a nostalgia fix from the 90s there are better ways. (1/5)

Box Office Blitz Regular Season Finale!

It's the epic conclusion to the regular season of Box Office Blitz!  Remember there are spectacular prizes on the line.  Also remember that we'll be guessing on Friday-Sunday, not the whole long weekend.  At least if you have a long weekend; some poor bastards have to work Thanksgiving and Black Friday.  I never really get the Black Friday thing.  Stampeding with a bunch of other schmucks to try to get $10 off a crappy DVD player they only have 3 of doesn't seem like fun to me, especially when I can stay in my nice cozy motel room and buy stuff from Amazon without all the hassle.  And now all this crap where we can't even take 1 day off from all this madness; no we have to do it on Thanksgiving too.  You people make me sick.

But anyway, those who win the fabulous prizes will have slightly more money to buy Chinese-made crap with, so that's something.  The rest of us are just playing for playoff positioning and pride.

Meanwhile, there's like two new movies in wide release.  I wonder, does James Franco get this year's Jude Law Award for Guy Who's in a Ton of Movies in the Same Year?  There always seems to be some dude who pops up in 4-5 movies one year.  This year Franco's been in "Oz the Great & Powerful," "Spring Breakers," "This is the End," and now "Homefront."  Did I leave any out?  At least unlike when Jude Law did it back in 2004, Franco's movies weren't all bombs.  Actually I think Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has at least that many too: Snitch, GI Joe 2, Pain & Gain, and Fast & Furious 6.  His were all released within like 3 months too.  Again they weren't all bombs, so that's pretty impressive.  Though the Rock's is kind of cheating because GI JOE 2 was supposed to have been released last year and then got pushed back.

Anyway, here's the list of movies from my local megaplex (* denotes a new release)

• 12 Years a Slave
• Black Nativity*
• Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2
• Dallas Buyer's Club
• Delivery Man
• Ender's Game
• Free Birds
• Frozen*
• Gravity
• Homefront*
• Jackass: Bad Grandpa
• Last Vegas
• Oldboy* 
• Philomena*
• Rush
• The Best Man Holiday 
• The Book Thief*
• The Christmas Candle*
• The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
• Thor: The Dark World

 And I'll pick

1. Hunger Games 2 $50M
2. Frozen $30M
3. Homefront $15M

You make your picks in the comments.

Guest Post: Cheyanne Young: How to Make Time for Writing When There's No Time for Writing

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT:  If you haven't been paying attention to this year's Flash Fiction Fest, you should finally be able to read the first of my 7 flash fiction stories in the Mortal Sins series, even though it's listed under Neil Vogler's name.  (Welcome to the humiliating world of professional writing.)  In case you don't remember, the stories involve a bank security guard who becomes a mortal enemy of the Scarlet Knight.  Of course you can also buy the whole collection for 99 cents from Amazon.

And now here's a guest post from Cheyanne Young, author of the excellent YA superhero novel Powered.

How to Make Time for Writing When There's No Time for Writing

By Cheyanne Young, author of Powered

As much as I'd love to live the life of a full time writer who can lounge in pajamas all day, drinking coffee and producing an endless line of beautifully written novels, I unfortunately still need a day job. I'm also a mother and wife and have one energetic puppy that loves attention. (At least I still get to drink coffee all day) Finding time to pursue my passion of writing is challenging, but I live by one motto that I also use to motivate me to exercise:

One hour is only 4% of your day.

What can you accomplish by writing for just one hour? For me it's about 1000 words. I haven't always been able to reach this goal in an hour but I've found that nothing improves my writing abilities better than writing. (Who knew?) If you have a busy life like mine, it may be difficult to find an hour a day to write, but here are some tricks that will help you squeeze in more writing time each day:

• Carry a notebook with you. (Or alternatively, a netbook/tablet if you have one) Now you can write during unexpected down time like while waiting at the doctor's office, or while on hold with the cable company. Are you bored at your child's sports practice/dance class? Write! 
• Ask yourself this: Do I really need to watch TV right now? I think the biggest time suck for many people is the television. I hate realizing I've just wasted hours of my life watching reruns of some show I've already seen. Turn off the TV and get to writing. Plus if you DVR your favorite shows, you can skip the commercials later.
• Learn to eat fast. If you get an hour lunch break at work, eat your food quickly and then use the rest of the time for writing. Half of my novels are written on my lunch breaks.
• Organize your life. If your house is free of clutter then you can't waste twenty minutes looking for your kid's jacket before you leave the house. That's an extra twenty minutes you can spend writing. An organized life means there is always more time for writing. 
• Wake up an hour earlier than usual. Just kidding. Don't do this. I would never do this. I love sleep too much.

Thanks Cheyanne!  Go out and buy a copy of Powered on Amazon or wherever starting November 28th!  And you can enter to win a Kindle Fire or Amazon gift card below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Box Office Blitz Week 20 Results!

As predicted it wasn't even a contest this week.  "Catching Fire Catches Fire" or some variation thereof is the headline every hack headline writer will be using this week.  Meanwhile Thor 2 dropped another 60% after a 57% drop the week before.  As I said, Mouse House should be worried.

The estimated results are:
Catching Fire $161M
Thor 2 $14.1M
Best Man Holiday $12.5M

And my awesome picks were:

1. Hunger Games 2 $100M
2. Thor 2 $18M
3. Best Man Holiday $15M

Though admittedly I was way off on the dollar amounts.  It's still a trifecta.

And thanks for all the birthday wishes and Tweets.  Everyone (but me) will get 100 extra points this week.

Maurice Mitchell picked:
1. Hunger Games 2 $98M
2. Thor: The Dark World $23M
3. Best Man Holiday $16M

That's also a trifecta plus 100 bonus for 1000 points.

David Walston picked:
1. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire $180M
2 .Thor: The Dark World $18M
3. The Best Man Holiday 15M

That's also 1000 points

Michael Offutt picked:
1) The Hunger Games $110 million
2) Thor $21 million
3) The Best Man Holiday $18 million

Also 1000 points

Briane Pagel picked:
1. Hunger Games 2: Hunger Boogaloo. (That joke never gets old): $80mil.
2. Dallas Buyer's club $20 mil
3. 500 Vince Vaughns: $10 mil.

That's 200 for Hunger Games 2 plus 100 bonus for 300 points.  Though if I could I'd give him a million bonus points for the birthday emails and tweets.  (OK I could but that wouldn't be fair to everyone else.)

Andrew Leon picked:
1. Catching Fire: $155m
2. Thor 2: $16m
3. Best Man Holiday: $15m

That's also 1000 points.

Chris Dilloway picked:
Hunger games 2 - $142m
Thor 2 - $16m
Best Man - $10m

That's also 1000 points

Rusty picked:
Catching Fire: $130 mil
Thor 2: $17 mil
Best Man Holiday - $16 mil

That's also 1000 which clinches the regular season win for Rusty.  Congrats!  Now he can rest up for the playoffs.

Andrew Leon picked the closest on the Hunger Games 2 so he gets the extra 300 for the round.

Here are the updated standings going into the final week of the regular season:

	Box Office Blitz
	Scoreboard
	Season 2
		20	Total
1	Rusty Carl	1000	14200
2	David Walton	1000	12300
3	Chris Dilloway	1000	11700
4	Andrew Leon	1300	10700
5	Maurice Mitchell	1000	10100
6	PT Dilloway	900	9900
7	Michael Offutt	1000	7400
8	Briane Pagel	300	6200
9	PK Hrezo	0	600
		7500	83100

I doubt we'll see any changes in the seeding unless some people forget to play while others do really well.  BTW, I'm posting Week 21 on Tuesday so you can make your picks before the holidays.

NaNoWhineMo: Final Edition

It is the penultimate week of NaNoWriMo but I already met the 50,000 word goal last week.  It was about 5:30 last Saturday when I hit the 50,000 word mark.  So yay me.

I really didn't get much out of NaNo, but then I didn't put much into it either.  One day I was checking the site and it said it was "Thank your ML Day" and I was like, "What the fuck is an ML?  Martin Luther?"  Still don't know what it is or why I should thank that.  But then I only have 2 "buddies": Rusty and Jay Noel.

The surprising thing to me is it really doesn't seem like the people who run the NaNo site have embraced the social media thing.  That site seems like it's stuck in a pre-2006 design where all the interaction is focused internally on the site.  For instance, when I go to the "Update Your Word Count" button it should have icons that let me automatically send an update to Twitter, Facebook, etc. so I can let all my "friends" know.  And I should be able to send invites to all my "friends" via social media or Email.

I'm not quite sure what they what want you to donate money for.  I guess to keep the crappy site running and they do some programs with schools or something.  But I remember in one email they said donating money helps you win.  Huh?  How does donating money help you reach 50,000 words?  Unless I'm donating money to some grad student to write for me.

Anyway, the secret to NaNoWriMo is simple:  write a bunch of words.  They say to write them every day, but as you can see I mostly wrote mine on Friday and Saturday.  If you don't have your weekends free to spend 6-8 hours writing then you probably will need to budget time every day for writing.  Or most every day.

When I wrote the epic Where You Belong I developed a schedule like this:

Monday-Thursday:  Write from 6ish-9ish at the library
Friday:  Day Off
Saturday:  Binge Writing
Sunday:  Day Off

Basically Monday through Thursday I'd pack a sack lunch for dinner and eat it on the way to the library.  Then I'd work 2.5-3 hours in the back of the library on the book.  That's a good way to write without many other distractions, unlike if you try to do it at home.

Then Friday I took the night off to go watch a movie or something and do my grocery shopping and crap like that.  Why?  Well for one thing all the libraries close at 5pm on Fridays.  The other is it was good after four days of intense working to take a break, especially since the next day would be the crazy 8 or so hours of binge writing.

I always like to think of it like an athlete, like a relief pitcher in baseball for instance.  You can't call the guy out of the pen every single game or his arm is going to fall off.  The idea is you pitch him 2-3 days in a row at most and then give him a day off to rest.  So it is with writing.  You try to do it every single day you're just going to wear out, so you need a break now and then.

Friday was a good point for a break and then so was Sunday.  I tried one Sunday to write but I ended up thinking, "Can't I just go home and watch football and eat pizza?"  Besides, I reserve Sundays for my domestic crap like doing the laundry and dishes and whatnot.  Plus like Friday it was good to have a break before going into four straight writing days and also to wind down after the Saturday binge.

So there you go, the sum of my wisdom on that topic.  Don't write every day; write a lot of days.  And it helps if you know how to type.  I was taught the old home row way, which works pretty well for me.  By comparison one of my coworkers uses that hunt-and-peck thing and it takes him like 10 minutes to pound out a two-sentence email.  If you type like that, it's going to be a challenge to write 50,000 words no matter how long you work.

This should be the NaNoWriMo theme song:

NaNo participants: You've got to struggle!!!

Anyway, my story is rapidly charging through the second act and heading towards the grand finale.  In that finale heroes and villains and everyone else has to come together to fight a Galactus-like creature that will consume all life on Earth unless someone can stop it.  Like The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Pacific Rim, and Independence Day a lot of the final battle will depend on someone ramming a nuclear weapon down the bad guy's throat.

Up to that point a lot of the action stems from an alien weapon that turns the world's men into women.  If you're not familiar with the first story (which you're not) in the first Girl Power story a villain uses a salvaged alien weapon to essentially turn the Justice League--Superman, Batman, Flash, and Aquaman--into women.  In the third story someone figures out how to use the weapon to cover the whole planet, which creates mass chaos.  It's a lot like Y The Last Man, of which I read the first issue and Briane Pagel's very thorough review.  Only things are even more fucked up than that comic for a couple of reasons:

1. The weapon suppresses the "fight" part of a person's fight-or-flight instincts, essentially making most people cowards, except a few who have the will to overpower it
2. The weapon makes men into women and also makes women into younger women, which really compounds the problem
3. There's a huge Galactus-type thing out there waiting in the wings!

It's the combination of 1&2 that allow the world's supervillains to seize control of most of the world's cities.  And those cities the supervillains don't claim, other riffraff might step in to claim, like the biker gangs that take over the airport in Detroit.  It also makes Earth easy pickings for #3 there.

So here are some before and afters of some characters.  To start with here's Midnight Spectre's trusty butler Jasper:

Here's the staff of The Atomic City Star, which obviously is like the Daily Planet of Superman lore.

First there's intrepid reporter Kate King:

And then freelance photographer Billy Leyton, who in Book 3 marries the resident Supergirl, Apex Girl.  Imagine if Jimmy Olsen hooked up with Supergirl.  That'd be freaky, right?

Their boss is Larry Black, like Perry White, get it?  That's one of the more obvious references.

And here are some of the villains, the ones who don't become heroes.

There's Rad Geiger, who has this obsession about "perfecting" humanity via radioactivity.  As a woman she declares herself Queen of the World.

Geiger's henchwoman is Icicle, who obviously is a freeze power villain:

There's also Inertia, who is a creepy stalker fan of Velocity Girl/Kid (the Flash essentially)

And "General" Carnage who uses a Venom-like serum to make her minions into supersoldiers:

And as you might guess Clownface is based on the Joker:

A side plot involves Apex Girl being captured by essentially the Green Lantern Corps and taken into deep space for a trial on some trumped-up charges.  Here's what the Galactic Peacekeeper Lieutenant Kila looks like:

Kind of a Sinestro look but she's the good one.  The other ones are really too alien to make on the Sims 3.  One is kind of crab-looking and another is like a rock creature and so on.  The Peacekeepers don't have power rings; they use a combination of high-tech staffs and good old-fashioned magic.

At some point I'll finish the first draft.  I figure like the Chances Are and Tales of the Scarlet Knight series this will be the end, though there will be room for sequels, prequels, spinoffs, and so forth.  I just might not feel like doing those.

Box Office Blitz Week 20

It's the penultimate week of the regular season.  Rusty sits firmly in control of first place, but most other positions are still pretty fluid.  The good thing for everyone is this is another week where you're guaranteed 200 points unless you're a complete idiot.  The #1 movie will obviously be that one about a fascist government that has almost unlimited power and yet is completely unable to kill a 16-year-old girl.  You'd think such a totalitarian government would have access to the world's best assassins, who could easily kill a girl whose only skills are shooting arrows and pining over Abercrombie and Fitch models.  But then I suppose they commit the classic comic book/Bond movie villain mistake of instead of simply killing the hero they try to kill her in some elaborate scheme.  Instead of sharks with lasers they decide on a Super Hunger Games and other such nonsense.  At least in Star Wars you could say the Empire had a hard time finding Luke Skywalker; these bozos know where Katniss lives (they even give her a house!) and still can't figure out how to kill her.  Anyway, this is why I never read books #2 and #3, because they sounded dumb.

Oh yeah and there's some dumb Vince Vaughn "comedy" playing.  Though I think a movie about Vince Vaughn fathering 500 kids should be labeled as horror.  I mean is there anyone you would less want to be the father of 500 kids?  Adam Sandler maybe.  Justin Bieber.  That guy in charge of North Korea. Feel free to weigh in on that.

Anyway, here's the list of movies from my local megaplex (* denotes a new release)

• 12 Years a Slave
• About Time
• All is Lost
• Blue is the Warmest Color* (It sounds like French lesbian porn, but it's French so it's "art")
• Captain Phillips
• Carrie
• Charlie Countryman
• Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2
• Dallas Buyer's Club*
• Delivery Man*
• Ender's Game
• Free Birds
• Gravity
• Jackass: Bad Grandpa
• Last Vegas
• Rush
• The Best Man Holiday
• The Counselor
• The Hunger Games: Catching Fire*
• Thor: The Dark World

 And I'll pick

1. Hunger Games 2 $100M
2. Thor 2 $18M
3. Best Man Holiday $15M

You make your picks in the comments.  And a bonus 100 points to anyone who knows the significance of today's date other than the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination.

May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor!

Thursday Review: Where You Belong

You may not remember but before I was the guy who wrote all those superhero books you don't care about, I was the guy who wrote this awesome book about gay marriage, which you also probably don't care about.  This is my review of my magna opus a year after I finished it the first time.  You can still buy it for all ebook formats and in paperback through CreateSpace.  Anyway, it's my birthday tomorrow, so I'm celebrating myself.

Where You Belong
by Patrick Dilloway
(5/5 stars)

It's been about a year since I finished writing and editing this book--and from the look of it I should have done at least one more edit. I figured that would be enough time to get a little perspective on the story since it wouldn't be so fresh in my mind. It's good to see that after a year I still like t. Maybe after five years that will be different, though I doubt it.

I set out to write something in the style of John Irving novels like The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules and generally I think I succeeded, though not as well as though books of course. If you're so inclined you can also compare it to Great Expectations, The Adventures of Augie March, or Forrest Gump.

Like those, Where You Belong is the story of a man's epic journey through life--much of it unwillingly. Frost Devereaux never had anything like a normal upbringing. His parents conceived him in a one-night stand during a blizzard and then were wed in a shotgun wedding sans an actual shotgun. Frost's mother hates the man who knocked her up enough that she forces him to live in a barn on her property, from which he is essentially a stranger to his own son. It's not much of a surprise then that when Frost's mother dies in a traffic accident and Frost's face is badly burned, his father takes off to leave him in the care of an inattentive aunt.

From there Frost might have grown up as an isolated lunatic if not for the arrival of redheaded twins from Boston: Frankie and Frank Maguire. They establish the pecking order early on where Frankie is the boss, her brother plotting behind the scenes, and Frost the loyal sidekick to them both. This pecking order remains for the next thirty years of Frost's life.

Much as Frost would like a nice, normal life, it remains tantalizingly out of reach. Or if he does find a moment of happiness it's soon pulled away. His friendship with Frankie lasts through elementary school, but the forces of puberty soon prompt Frankie to leave him behind. He turns to Frank and they head off to an elite private school in upstate New York, but Frank soon has other plans that don't involve Frost. In college, Frost finds a new friend in his roommate Peter, a Trekkie who searches the skies for signs of extraterrestrial life. This budding friendship is soon brought to an end in tragic fashion.

From there Frost ends up in an artist's colony in New Mexico before Frankie returns to his life. Again he thinks he has happiness in his grasp only for it to be snatched away. Heartbroken, Frost finds comfort with Frank only to find he's not that different from his twin.

Maybe this description makes the story sound depressing, but really it's not. Through it all Frost, like most of us, maintains a sense of optimism that someday things are going to work out. And maybe they will. You'll just have to read to find out.

What I like most about the book in reading it a year later is that Frost remains consistent throughout. Some people have described him as passive and he is, with good cause. Never having a stable existence, not to mention a facial deformity, he is an outcast. So it really makes sense--at least to me--that he takes on the sidekick role in order not to alienate those willing to be his friends. Not to mention characters like Frankie and Frank are naturally overpowering and domineering. For the most part these characters and Fate in general move Frost around like the feather in Forrest Gump. It's only near the end where he maybe starts to take control of his own destiny. Still, he remains consistent throughout the book.

For that matter, so do Frankie and Frank. As I said earlier, their pecking order remains in place throughout the thirty years covered by the book. Frankie remains passionate, with her heart on her sleeve while Frank remains a calculating schemer. Because love is blind, Frost never understands that the Maguire twins are more alike than he thinks and generally not good for him until it's much too late. Not to say they're bad people so much as just bad for him.

The downside of writing a book like this that goes from pre-conception to early middle age is that you have a lot of ground to cover. Unless you make the book 2000 pages long, inevitably things get skipped or glossed over. In the first draft I had trouble with dwelling too long on Frost's early years, so that things had to be sped up a little. I think not too much has been lost and so it's still an effective portrait of a man who like many of us is searching for a home.

That is all.

Everyday Heroes 11/13

It's November now and that means winter is just around the corner.  This is an old article but it's a good reminder that annual coat drives, food drives, and so forth should be happening soon.  Be an Everyday Hero and do your part this year!


VALORIE EVERSOLE - Daily Union Reporter CNHI

SHELBYVILLE, IL. — The recent Jason Jordan Coat Drive netted more than 300 coats of all sizes, meeting the needs of not only the local community, but also aiding those in homeless shelters in neighboring communities.

Dawn Reeves, mother of the late Jason Jordan organized the first annual coat drive held for a couple of weeks after Christmas. The collected coats were shared between the Shelby Christian Church, Big Momma’s Closet, the Pregnancy Crisis Center, and shelters in Mattoon and Decatur.

“We collected 314 coats this year,” Reeves said. “I am so proud of what we were able to do this year. Those at the shelters who received coats were seriously grateful.”

“I want to thank each and every one of you who personally filled the boxes and allowed me to remember Jason and help someone in this memory,” Reeves continued.

In addition to coats, Reeves received monetary donations which she is using to buy coats, especially those on clearance, to stockpile for next year’s drive. She will also accept coats in all sizes.

“Next year children will need new coats again,” Reeves said. She noted that it costs a family an average of $200 a year to buy new coats for their children.

Reeves emphasized that the coat ministry at the Shelby Christian Church is a ministry.

“It is not an income-based program. If you need a coat, contact the church to get one,” she said.

Reeves expressed thanks to those who helped in the coat drive.

“I want to especially thank Richie Singh at the Marathon Serice station for picking my cause to help. He put the information out on his sign. I think that really helped remind people everyday. It was a blessing from someone that I don’t know,” Reese said.

She also gives thanks to Shelby Christian Church, Traci Zientara, Meagan Stenger, Ladies of the Moose, Custom Care Cleaner, Donna Storm Susan Stephens, Krista Smith and family, County Market, Walmart, Qik N Ez, Casey’s, Shelbyville Chamber of Commerce, all Communty Banks of Shelby County locations and employees.

Reeves continues to collect coats at Community Banks anytime.

“My boss supports what I’m doing – we’re trying to take care of my community,” she said.

This year’s drive is set for December 15 – 29.

Two Cent Tuesday: The Good Ol' Days

BOX OFFICE BLITZ NOTE:  It turns out the rich get richer as when the actuals came in Thor 2 dropped from $38M all the way to $36.6M, which means Rusty was closer than David and thus won the round and got the 300 bonus points.  That means the magic number for Rusty to clinch the win is 601.

Last month I finished Canada by Richard Ford.  The book takes place in 1960, which got me thinking and then commenting in my review that really a book that takes place in 1960 can't be considered "contemporary" fiction anymore.  Instead we really ought to consider it "historical fiction" which covers everything from the cavemen on through the mid-20th Century.  Because really when you do the math for anyone to have been alive in 1960 they have to be 53 years old.  To actually have a memory of 1960 they would have to be at least 55.  So basically only people who qualify to join AARP could consider that a contemporary period.

This phenomenon isn't entirely new.  I remember in The Simpsons where Homer's friend Carl asks, "Why aren't there any new oldies?"  And we of course chuckle because it seems ridiculous to have NEW oldies.  But in actuality there are NEW oldies.  I mean when I was growing up "oldies" were pretty much 50s-60s music:  Elvis, the Beatles, Beach Boys, etc.  Nowadays when I'm in the chair at the dentist (the only time I'd ever listen to an oldies channel) you'll routinely hear stuff from the 70s-80s.  I get depressed to hear acts like U2 and Prince on the "oldies" channel.  Another decade and all the bands I grew up with in high school like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the Counting Crows will probably be relegated to "oldies."

This becomes a problem in books because let's face it when you're writing about 1960 and you're not courting a large social issue like The Help or something like that, then your demographic is definitely going to skew old.  Which might be a good idea because I'd wager old people buy more books.  But then you face that problem of old musicians like most of those from the 50s and 60s in that your audience keeps getting older and starts to shrink because they are literally dying off.  Before you know it, your editor has to sit down with you and give you the pink slip.

And the thing with a book like Canada is the 1960 setting really has no purpose.  My theory is the author only used it because that's the decade familiar to him as a teenager like the narrator in his book and thus it's the easiest for him to write about.  The book could easily have taken place at any time between 1960 and now because again he wasn't courting any big societal changes.  There was nothing about civil rights or really anything political or controversial in there.  So it really just strikes me as lazy on the author's part.  Ford isn't the only one guilty of this.  I thought pretty much the same with John Irving's Last Night in Twisted River and Jeffery Eugenides's The Marriage Plot.  There are probably a lot of others that would qualify as well.

This would be akin to if I set every story I wrote in the 1980s-1990s (mostly the 1990s) because that's when I grew up.  I've never really done that, largely because my sci-fi stories are set in the future and by the time I got to writing more general fiction it was the 2000s and they were set in present day for the most part.  In Where You Belong I didn't start it in 1977 when I was born; I started it in 1973-ish, or at least that was when Frost Devereaux was born.  Why?  Mostly I wanted Frost to be in college in the early 90s when there was still rampant paranoia and panic about HIV/AIDS.  I don't think, though, it's really important for me to capture my nostalgia for days gone by in my fiction.  I think most of the nostalgia in that book was through Frost's college roommate Pete who was into Star Wars and Transformers and stuff like that, but then Pete meets a bad end so subconsciously I guess I killed the nostalgia.

Anyway, I guess the point is that especially when you get older, you should be cognizant that just because you're familiar with a time period doesn't mean everyone else will be or that they'll have the same affection for it.  And it might do you some good to get out of your oldies comfort zone and into something more modern.  But especially with older writers who have been around a while I suppose that can be difficult to realize the decade you remember as your golden age is now golden oldies to most everyone else.

As I've said though, if you're going to use an old-timey setting then at least make it have some relevance.  Just because that's when you grew up is lazy writing and really goes against the idea that you shouldn't write autobiographical fiction.  That's something Mr. Irving preaches and yet seems to violate with regularity.

I'd make an exception for actual autobiographies.  For instance many of the Chubby Chatterbox's stories wouldn't be the same if they were set in modern day.  Since they are autobiographical I don't mind that at all.

Maybe when my generation all gets to be old-timers I'll feel differently.

Comic Captions 11/18/13

It's time for another Comic Captions, where your job is to recaption a comic book panel.  The goal of course is to make it as humorous as possible.

This week's comes from Sinestro Corps #1

I'll go first

Anti-Monitor:  Kneel before Anti-Monitor!

Now it's your turn!

Box Office Blitz Week 19 Results!

You know if I'd predicted that "Thor 2" would nearly get beaten by "Best Man Holiday" at the box office you'd probably have thought I was certifiable.  But that's what almost happened this weekend!  Granted Thor 2 still won with almost $40M but makes me think Marvel might get just a teensy worried that it dropped like 55% without much serious competition.  Yup, this is the beginning of the end for Marvel's superhero movie dominance.  (Probably not.)

The surprising totals were:
Thor 2: $38.5
Best Man Holiday $30.6
Last Vegas $8.9

Here were my picks:

1. Thor 2 $50M
2. Bad Grandpa $10M
3. Best Man Holiday $8M

Predictably I finally picked Bad Grandpa and now it's a no show.  Jackass indeed.  Anyway that's 200 for Thor 2 and 100 for Best Man for 300 total.

David Walston picked:
1. Thor: The Dark World $40M
2.The Best Man Holiday $14M
3. Last Vegas $8M

That's a trifecta!  900 points

Michael Offutt picked:
1) Thor $40 M
2) Last Vegas $20 million
3) Bad Grandpa $10 million

That's 200 for Thor and 100 for Last Vegas for 300 total

Andrew Leon picked:
1. Thor 2: $42m
2. Best Man Holiday: $18m
3. Free Birds: $8m

That's 200 for Thor and 300 for Best Man for 500 total

Rusty picked:
Thor 2 - $35 mil
Best Man Holiday - $22 mil
Last Vegas $10 mil

That's also a trifecta for 900 points.

Briane Pagel picked:
1. Thor 2: Asgard Boogaloo: $55 mil.
2. Free Birds: $10 mil.
3. Charlie Countryman: $9 mil.

That's 200 for Thor 2

Chris Dilloway picked:
Thor 2 - $37m
Best Man - $33m
Free Birds - $10m

That's also 500 points.

David is closer than Rusty on Thor 2 so he gets the 300 bonus points...for now.  If the actuals tip it Rusty's way I'll let you know on Tuesday.

Here are the updated totals:

	Box Office Blitz
	Scoreboard
	Season 2
		19	Total
1	Rusty Carl	900	12900
2	David Walton	1200	11600
3	Chris Dilloway	500	10700
4	Andrew Leon	500	9400
5	Maurice Mitchell	0	9100
6	PT Dilloway	300	9000
7	Michael Offutt	300	6400
8	Briane Pagel	200	5900
9	PK Hrezo	0	600
		3900	75600

Andrew Leon moves into 4th place and just 100 points separate me and Maurice from 5th place.  The magic number for Rusty is 1101 points to clinch first place.  Of course that's only if David got 1200 points each of the next two weeks.

NaNoWhineMo Week 2

In Week 2 I was determined to bounce back from a lackluster Week 1 of Nano.  The problem I've had since I moved last time is finding somewhere to write in the morning.  There's no library open on Saturdays around here close by.  I tried Panera Bread once but it was too busy.

I decided to just do what I used to do and go to the Starbucks of a Target near where I used to live.  I still didn't get started until 11 because I bought a Blu Ray player finally.  When I got a new computer with a Blu Ray drive I stupidly thought there would actually be an app on there to play Blu Rays.  I had a couple at home from Netflix/Blockbuster and it seemed I could either pay $40 for a program to watch them on my 17" computer screen or I could go pay a little more to get a real Blu Ray player to watch them on my 30-something" TV.  Since I was probably going to do that at some point in the near future, might as well get it over with.

Anyway, so last week I actually got a couple thousand words done before 3pm.  Then from 3-8ish I was at an Arby's writing some more.  When I got home I finished out the chapter I was on which took longer than I intended to because it went in some strange directions, probably because I was tired.

The upshot is that I went from 13,XXX words all the way up to 25,500 words, which is over halfway to the Nano goal.  So there.  I had Friday off for "Veteran's Day" (aka hunting season) and managed to get started early enough that I got about 11,000 more words.  With a few thousand during the week, it's up to 42,7000.  So in theory I should be able to break 50,000 today.

The story is at that point where it's split into a whole bunch of different plots, something that happened to a couple of the Scarlet Knight stories.  It gets kind of annoying to juggle it all.  That's definitely when you need an outline to keep track of it.

A large part of the story focuses on the Super Squad Auxiliary.  These are basically "reformed" girl versions of supervillains who are recruited by a sidekick to battle other supervillains.  Here's what the rough drafts of what they look like:

Here's the fearless leader Melanie Amis known as Midnight Spectre's sidekick the Outcast who has a whole Catwoman thing going on:

And here's the world-class assassin Diane Giordano, known as Hitter

And the science whiz Tonya Kelsey, also called Ion Girl

And the She-Hulk-ish cavewoman Garlak, also known as Neanderthal

The new Mermaid isn't part of the Auxiliary through most of it but she shows up near the end with her sister:

Next week I'll post some of the other new characters.  You're so thrilled.

Box Office Blitz Week 19

It came as a surprise to no one that Thor 2 hammered the competition last weekend.  And I would fully expect that to continue up until the 22nd when the mighty Thor is slain by an ordinary girl with a bow and arrow.  I'm sure Loki will enjoy that.

And so without further ado here we go into the 3rd to last week of Box Office Blitz.  Basically as I said with the results on Tuesday, Rusty has all but locked it up.  He'd basically have to not play the next 3 weeks (or get 0 points) while David or Chris got a trifecta all three weeks.  It's possible, but not bloody likely.  Still David and Chris are battling for the 2nd and 3rd place prizes.  Meanwhile, Maurice, Andrew, and I are jockeying for playoff position, not that seeding will probably matter a whole lot; there is no home field/court/ice advantage in Box Office Blitz.  And of course Michael and Briane are fighting to avoid the dreaded Sacko for last place.

Anyway, here's the list of movies from my local megaplex (* denotes a new release)

• 12 Years a Slave
• About Time
• All is Lost
• Captain Phillips
• Carrie
• Charlie Countryman*
• Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2
• Diana
• Ender's Game
• Escape Plan
• Free Birds
• Great Expectations
• Gravity
• Jackass: Bad Grandpa
• Last Vegas
• Prisoners
• Pulling Strings
• Rush
• The Best Man Holiday*
• The Counselor
• The Invertible Defeat of Mister & Pete
• Thor: The Dark World

 And I'll pick

1. Thor 2 $50M
2. Bad Grandpa $10M
3. Best Man Holiday $8M

Best Man Holiday would probably do a lot better if it were called "Tyler Perry's Best Man Holiday" although that would make it sound like Tyler Perry were on a best man holiday, whatever that is.  I can't keep up with all that hip new slang, dadgumit.

Thursday Review: Werewolves in their Youth

This one sounds appropriate for Halloween two weeks ago but the werewolves are figurative.  Though every Republican asshole who talks about rape and abortion should read the one story.


Werewolves in Their Youth: Stories by Michael Chabon
(5/5 stars)

This is a superior collection of stories to Chabon's earlier "Model World". While the first half of that collection all seemed like carbon copies of each other, "Werewolves"--though each story centers around a marriage that has either fallen apart or is in the process of falling apart--has enough variety that reading all the stories back-to-back does not become tedious.

"Son of the Wolfman", where a woman who has been having trouble conceiving with her husband is raped and impreganated by another man, is the most memorable story because of the issues it deals with. All the other stories are good as well--I won't go into describing each and every one. "The Black Mill" is an interesting little horror yarn, but it's pretty tame by today's standards. I'd suggest Chabon stick with the genre he knows best.

There's not a lot to pick on with this collection of stories. The writing is flawless, the characters are all unique oddballs, and the stories are all interesting. One thing I grew tired of was the constant description of what every room looks like and every person is wearing. A lot of description can add to the atmosphere of the scene and such, but going into what everyone is wearing is irrelevant and becomes tedious after a while.

Anyway, "Werewolves" is howlingly good collection of stories (thank you, I'll be here all week) that I would recommend over "Model World". But I still prefer his novels.

Comics Recap 11/13

Another grab bag of comics that I bought in the last month or so.  Let's start with a couple of Marvel ones.

Thor #364-366:  I remember Rusty mentioned that in a couple of issues Thor was turned into a frog.  So when there was a sale and I saw those issues I thought what the heck and bought them.  Basically thanks to Loki, Thor is turned into a frog, though holding true to form he's larger and more powerful than a normal frog.  He unites with some other frogs in order to defeat an army of rats who are going to poison a reservoir in New York.  So if you think the Sewer Rat and his rat minions in the Scarlet Knight stories are totally ridiculous, I would point you to this storyline.  And then Frog Thor manages to lift his hammer:

This actually happened.

That was some pretty epic weirdness.  Right up there with the brief run of Peter Porker, Spider-Ham comics.  Maybe by 2025 Marvel will get so desperate those will become movies. (5/5)

Captain America:  Man Out of Time by Mark Waid:  Rusty reviewed this on Goodreads and it sounded interesting so when it was conveniently on sale a week or so later I bought it and read it.  It's a fairly interesting book that focuses on Captain America trying to adjust to life in the 21st Century, something that's been a little lacking in the first two movies that have involved him.  In this case he's unthawed by the Avengers and at first thinks he must be in some terrible dream, but slowly comes to realize he's not.  When a villain called Kang sends him back to 1945, though, Cap realizes that maybe things weren't as good in the 40s as he thought.  It's great this book doesn't shy away from subjects like segregation that I'm sure would be too risque for any movies to deal with.  But I couldn't help feeling the story was biting off more than it could really chew in just 5 issues. (4/5)

Ultimate Captain America by Jason Aaron:  A little bit of retconning here maybe where the Captain America during the Vietnam War wasn't the real one but an impostor. He's more like Bane from the Batman universe in that they gave him some serum and then some surgeries to enhance his body.  The story is sort of like "Apocalypse Now" with Steve Rogers as Martin Sheen and Frank Simpson Captain America as Marlon Brando.  Anyway, I didn't like these.  The way Steve Rogers Captain America was all pissed-off and cussing and whatnot he seemed more like the Punisher than the Captain America we're familiar with.  It just struck me as wrong. I didn't really find anything in this 4-issue series to enjoy.  (1/5)

Marvel Universe vs. The Punisher by Jonathon Maberry:  Hey speaking of the Punisher, I read this series where he does battle against superheroes turned to primitive cannibals.  NOT zombies as the Walking Dead guy did like a year or two earlier with the Marvel Universe.  There's like a huge distinction there...not really.  Anyway, this format works really well for the Punisher because you don't have any moral quandries, which means even a liberal like me can root for him as he kills Deadpool (several times), the Hulk, and numerous other Marvel Universe characters.  In the end the main point is that the Punisher isn't much better than the "monsters" he's slaughtering.  Well, duh.  (4/5)

Marvel Universe vs. Wolverine by Jonathon Maberry:  Then like a year later they did another series apparently that focused on Wolverine fighting the cannibals.  This mostly takes place before the Punisher ones.  As people start turning into cannibals, starting with Spider-Man, Wolverine tries to track down a cure and protect Reed Richards and other scientists from the cannibals.  There's an inevitable clash with the Hulk which answers the question of whether Wolverine's parts grow back if they're torn off.  I think the Punisher one was slightly better but this wasn't bad.  (4/5)

Marvel Universe vs. The Avengers by Jonathon Maberry:  And then just for the hell of it another year later or so let's have another series focusing on the Avengers fighting cannibals!  At this point it's kind of silly because some of this stuff we've already covered in 2 series.  Most of it focuses on Dr. Doom's scheme to use science and magic to "cure" the cannibal plague.  Since it's Doom you know there's gotta be a catch.  Anyway, since it focuses on Hawkeye, one of the lamest Avengers, and covers a lot of stuff we already know about it wasn't that great.  I think the idea's pretty played out now.  I suppose the problem was with the Punisher one they pretty much killed everyone off so they can only mine the same ground over and over again.  The only sequel option left I think would be to have a Thor one to see how the plague affects Asgard.  I have to say though one of the most clever things is how Iron Man ends up like the Iron Man of the Black Sabbath song for the most part. (3/5)  Instead of Ozzy, you can listen to Bill Shatner covering the song:

Avengers Assemble by Brian Bendis:  This came out around the time of the movie as I guess a way to try to do some cross-marketing.  Though it really has nothing to do with the movie.  Basically some people calling themselves the Zodiac (because they all have the identity of a Zodiac sign; there are no clever references to the Zodiac killer though) start making trouble, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.  The problem becomes so large that it requires the Avengers to team up with the Guardians of the Galaxy to save the day.  Which the Guardians are pretty cheesy with the raccoon and talking tree and whatnot.  And you sort of need to know who the hell Thanos is and all that good stuff. (4/5)

Justice League of America Vol 1 (New 52) by Geoff Johns:  I bought this a couple months ago but then forgot I'd bought it until I saw a giveaway for the hardcover version on Goodreads and thought, "Wait, don't I own this already?"  D'OH.  Anyway, it wasn't that great.  Basically it's kind of a "JLA, Assemble!" thing where a new team is formed by the US government in large part because they worry the Justice League (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.) might go rogue.  In the meantime the new JLA made up of luminaries like Martian Manhunter, Hawkman, Catwoman, Green Arrow, etc. have to track down some evil Secret Society of villains.  Which they sort of half-assed do.  New Green Lantern Simon Baz (like the 17th human Lantern by now) is supposed to be on the team but isn't involved with anything, which was pretty damned lame.  Maybe this series got better once they were all assembled.  Or not.  (3/5)

Namor:  Curse of the Mutants by Stuart Moore:  At this point of the Marvel Universe Namor (aka the Submariner) is tangentially a part of the X-Men.  There was apparently a whole big story about vampires fighting the X-Men.  Namor and the Atlanteans end up battling underwater vampires first to find Dracula's head (seriously) and then to stop the underwater vampires from killing everyone.  It was OK but not particularly scary or anything.  Namor at this point is less of a dick than at some points but...still a bit of a dick.  The artwork by Ariel Olivetti is reminiscent of Alex Ross's in books like Justice and Kingdom Come, which I enjoyed.  For some reason the paper book version uses issues #1-6 but issue 5 is more of an epilogue and issue 6 is actually the start of a new story arc so if you bought that it would seem weird to break it there. (3.5/5)

I was happy that around Halloween Marvel put the real Zombies titles on sale finally.  The first two series were written by Robert Kirkman of The Walking Dead fame, so as you may have figured out he's pretty much doing the same thing only with superheroes.  There are like 6 series altogether but I only bought the first 3.  The one I really want yet has Ash of the Evil Dead series battling the Marvel Zombies.  That sounds like fun.

Marvel Zombies Vol 1 by Robert Kirkman:  It might have helped if they'd put the Fantastic Four titles that preface this on sale too since it starts when all the heroes are already zombies.  I was really disappointed with how boring most of this was.  Most of the 5 comics seemed dedicated to the former Avengers whining about how hungry they are.  (Because the zombies in this aren't the shuffling wordless Walking Dead/George A Romero kind.)  The appearance of the Silver Surfer and then Galactus livens things up (punny!) a little bit, but it still wasn't as good as I was hoping for. (3/5)

Marvel Zombies Vol 2 by Robert Kirkman:  Volume 2 is a bit better than Volume 1.  After using the power of Galactus to eat most everything in the universe, the former Avengers return to Earth to find Black Panther, Forge, and some other humans still there.  There's a battle then over a machine that would allow the zombies to come into other universes (ours for instance) so they can eat all them up too.  It was a little more action-packed it seemed but the idea of the zombies "curing" themselves by not eating was a little too simplistic.  Come on, Kirkman, cold turkey hardly ever works!  Maybe he'll try that on The Walking Dead at some point.  The other thing that kind of annoys me is how Giant-Man Hank Pym is always in charge.  What's up with that?  Anyway, there's a sort of cliffhanger ending I don't think has been resolved, probably because Kirkman is too busy now to get back to it. (4/5)

Marvel Zombies Vol 3 by Fred van Lente:  Volume 3 is not a sequel to Volume 2.  It's more of a midquel, fitting in between the 5-year-period in Volume 1 when the superhero zombies have left Earth and Black Panther and company have reclaimed the planet.  Zombie Deadpool shows up in our universe in Florida and so it's decided to send an expedition to the Zombieverse to find some untainted human blood so that maybe a vaccine can be made.  Since they aren't idiots they send in Machine Man and another robot who obviously can't turn into zombies.  This was more fun than the Kirkman books with Machine Man blasting zombies with guns and cutting them up with a chain saw and such, but it obviously doesn't really move the overall story forward at all.  There was another sequel about the Midnight Sons that picks up from this, but I didn't care about that.  And then there was a fifth one involving Howard the Duck that I weren't touching with a ten-foot-pole.  (4/5)

This is enough to give me a death wish...

At the same time as Marvel was having a sale on zombies, DC was having a sale on Sandman comics.  I'm not sure who got the better end of that exchange.  Anyway, I didn't feel like buying all 75 Sandman issues, so I just bought the one based on Shakespeare's The Tempest I heard about in a History Channel special and then I bought a graphic novel focusing on Death.  Which it's important to note that in the Sandman universe Death is a hot Goth chick.  Which I suppose would make dying a bit nicer, though really you're dead so it's not like you could probably DO much if you know what I mean--intercourse!

Death the High Cost of Living by Neil Gaiman:  It's the old story of Death takes a holiday.  Once every 100 years Death takes human form.  This time she's a 16-year-old girl named Didi who goes out with a whiny depressed boy to a club and such.  It's a fun story but afterwards I realized the whole point was the same sentimental tripe you'd get out of a Hallmark Channel movie:  life is precious, appreciate the small moments, blah blah blah.  But since Death looks like that and they're hanging out at nightclubs in New York it's more like a hipster version of the Hallmark Channel.  When Terry Pratchett's Death took a holiday in the Discworld a bit more happened in terms of plot.  I'm just saying. (3/5)