Yup, this is the end of the blog. I came to this decision way way back in February, so it's not a surprise to me. I wasn't sure how far I'd get this year. I actually copied and pasted a whole bunch of old blog posts for Tuesdays thinking I'd run out of stuff for Two Cent Tuesdays, but I managed to hang in there until pretty much the end, so yay me! A lot of the book reviews I just copied off my book review site, picking them at random and dumping them on so I wouldn't need to bother coming up with new reviews unless there was something new I thought worthy of writing a review about. Pretty much all the Everyday Heroes I dug up back in February; the same for the Comic Captions, though I added a few Marvel ones later in the year when I started to use that site. The Phony Photos obviously I ran at the start of the year. So a large chunk of the blog has been running on autopilot for about 10 months. Which really people who complain they can't post often enough (ahem, Rusty) just find some time one day early in the year and bang out a whole bunch of posts for the year!
Anyway, since this blog isn't selling many books for me, there's no reason to continue it. I'm not sure what I ever did wrong, but it never could get much beyond the five or so people who regularly frequented the Grumpy Bulldog Blog.
Maybe my idea of regular programming never took off. I don't think this place ever became a destination for anyone. I doubt anyone ever woke up thinking, "I wonder what today's Comic Captions is?" Or, "I really need to get by Box Office Blitz picks in!" I'm not sure if that's my fault or your fault. I'd say the public deserves most of the blame. I mean I tried to come up with fun, interactive things to do, not just your typical boring litany of cover reveals and blogfests or rambling about my personal life. (Which is not a dig at certain long time visitors of this blog. Your ramblings are interesting; it's just other people's ramblings that are dull as dishwater.)
What I can say is the grand social experiment here failed. I'm sure most of it is I'm not a salesman. I never have been. I never will be. And I can't really abide small talk either. Some of the worst people in my book are those who have to yell "Morning!" and "How ya doin'!" at everyone and God forbid you don't answer them back they'll repeat it even louder like the fate of the fucking world rests on you exchanging stupid pleasantries with them despite that they don't even know my name and obviously have no fucking interest in how I'm doing. Even worse are the idiots who have to say, "Hey Patrick!" if I'm in a two block radius of them, no matter if I'm looking at them or not, as if it's some big accomplishment they can remember the name that's on two placards by my desk. Honestly about 90% of human interaction is absolutely pointless. I haven't any idea why we have to engage in these stupid games except stupid people can't stand to be alone with their thoughts.
So you can imagine I don't like going to 300 blogs a day and saying "Thanks for sharing!" on the off chance you might come read my blog and say "Thanks for sharing!" back. By the same token I don't like going to a blog and not having much of anything beyond that to say. Some of you could help me out there by having better posts! Except the people whose blogs I frequented regularly; they obviously passed muster.
Should I have followed more blogfests and posted more "awards" here? I never got into those things. I think they're dumb. I think the only reason they exist is so people don't have to think up ideas for themselves. I mean it's a lot easier if I let Alex Cavanaugh think up 2/3 of my entries than for me to think of them myself. Thinking gives me such a headache! (Why do you have a fucking blog then?)
I know, I'm not sociable. That's why I'm a fucking writer, people! So I can sit at my table at Arby's with my big noise-cancelling headphones on and type on my netbook and tune the rest of the world out. Which really this is always the dumbest part of the system to me. When I was just getting started, I thought you'd just be able to get an agent and they'd do all that marketing bullshit for you. But that's not what an agent does at all, apparently. I'm not sure what they really do or why we really need them except publishers don't want to be swamped with millions of shitty query letters. Basically I think I just needed the money to hire a publicist and an intern to do all this PR shit I can't stand.
Not that I don't like talking about my books. I LOVE talking about my books. I LOVE my books, period. I think that's a problem when I edit them; I love them too much sometimes. Then I can't understand why you people can't love them even 1% as much as I do. But I guess to you they're just more random books in a world with billions of them.
I kind of had this idea after it got accepted by a "publisher" that the Scarlet Knight series would be an easy sell. I mean the two top grossing movies in 2012 were superhero movies. In 2013 superhero movies were 2 of the top 3 in the "summer" season and I'm pretty sure "Iron Man 3," "Man of Steel," and "Thor 2" were all in the Top 10 for the year. But those are all established characters, some for 75 years now. And they're put out by multi-billion dollar conglomerates who can advertise everywhere.
I thought female readers (who make up the majority of readers) would appreciate a female superhero who isn't just boobs stuffed into a leotard. I suppose first female readers would have to know the book exists. When your "publisher" does nothing for you and you don't have the means to do much advertising yourself that becomes problematic. Three of seven Amazon reviews are presumably written by women and two of those only gave it 3 stars. Probably they would have liked it better if she just stood around sighing and let some dudes with six-pack abs save her. Your loss, ladies.
Anyway, before this turns completely into the last part of that Eminem song "Stan" (though I'll have you know I don't have any girls tied up in the trunk of my car), I'll just wrap this up. Thanks for reading, those who did. What a long, strange trip it's been.
Sadly Blue II passed away before my blog.
Signed, PT Dilloway Grumpy Bulldog Rogue Mutt Eric Filler Claire Lachance Paul L. Madden BJ Fraser
Happy Boxing Day to all those in the UK and its former territories. In America today is the day when people venture out to take back all the crap they didn't want. My relatives won't be taking back the stuff I got them because it was either A) Free from Amazon or B) A check. So there. Though I guess technically you do take the check to the bank to exchange it for cash.
Anyway, I'm writing this from the past, so I 'm just going to assume by now I've got a draft of Girl Power: League of Evil ready for initial ebook production. (I totally do!) I'll probably read it again on the Kindle one more time at least before it goes to CreateSpace for a paperback.
There's not much else to do on Boxing Day, so here's my writing year in review. 2010 was a manic year writing wise as I wrote a whole slew of books:
Change of Heart (Tales of the Scarlet Knight #4) (2010)
Betrayal Begets Blood (Tales of the Scarlet Knight #5) (2010)
Future Shock (Tales of the Scarlet Knight #6) (2010)
Living Sacrifice (Tales of the Scarlet Knight #7) (2010)
The Heart of Emma Earl (Tales of the Scarlet Knight #8) (2010)
Sisterhood (Tales of the Coven #1) (2010)
Chet Finley vs. The Machines of Fate (2010)
Plus I rewrote A Hero's Journey into what largely became the final draft. So really that was 8 books.
2011 was a down year from that pace, as is only natural:
Awakening (Birth of Magic #1) (2011)
The Night's Legacy (2011)
Chance of a Lifetime (2011)
Second Chance (2011)
Last Chance (2011)
So basically down from 8 to 5.
2012 was way down for that. I didn't even write a new novel last year! The only projects were:
Young Family (Rewrite)
Time Enough to Say Goodbye (Tales of the Scarlet Knight #2) (Rewrite)
Dark Origins (Tales of the Scarlet Knight #0) (2012)
We Are Now (co-author) (2012)
The latter two were flash fiction collections so as you can see no novels in there. 2013 looked as if it would go that way too, until I decided for the hell of it to combine the Scarlet Knight and Chances Are series into what became Girl Power. Some wag on Amazon says there are all kinds of "what if all the superheroes get turned into girls" stories, though I don't know of any others myself. I wish that wag would have elaborated because I'd like to read other examples.
Then I wrote Sky Ghost: Army of the Damned, which as I wrote a blog post about didn't really turn out as I planned. In the movie business we'd say it's in "turnaround" right now. Sadly I'm not a studio so I can't hire other people to rewrite it. Though recently when I read the first new Wingman book by "Mack Maloney" (it's a pseudonym for someone I'm pretty sure isn't me--though that would be a good M Night movie) in like 15 years it did get me jazzed a little more on that idea. Amazon put the whole series on sale for Kindle so maybe I'll reread those and give this another shot. Plus my brother made this sweet-ass model of the Sky Ghost's plane:
Way cooler than any Sim!
That's something to maybe attempt in 2014.
After that I wrote the last two in the Girl Power series. The last one still feels messy to me. Again it's only natural with how sprawling the plot is. I guess for the last book in a series I like to pull out most of the stops. It's that way with the last Scarlet Knight book, the last Chances Are, the last Children of Eternity, and the last Rebirth. Because if it's the end it should be an epic conclusion! Why go down with a whimper? Plus some wag on Amazon said the first one wasn't plotted "deeply" enough. Challenge accepted, asshole!
The third book is probably the last novel but I was thinking of doing a book of short stories, each one focusing on one or two heroes of the Super Squad. Part of this idea came from reading Ian Fleming's whole Bond series (the ones he wrote, which in my mind are the only official ones) where a couple of the books are actually made of short stories, many of which have familiar titles like Quantum of Solace, View to a Kill, The Living Daylights, and everyone's favorite: Octopussy! If it works for James Bond why couldn't it work for me? So that's something else that might happen in 2014.
Though the thing is I keep telling myself I need to get away from the superhero beat. They don't hardly sell for shit. Since I made the first Girl Power book free I've given away maybe a hundred of it. By contrast I give away a hundred of Chance of a Lifetime in less than a week! Clearly from a capitalist point of view I'd do better to focus on suspense/thriller type books rather than superhero books. The only thing about superhero books is they're fun because you can do all sorts of crazy shit. I mean if you look at the comic landscape you have regular guys, noir-type guys, guys from space, guys from Norse mythology, guys with magic powers, so on and so forth. There's really no limit to what you can do. Sadly I just don't think the market is there--at least not for me. Oh well. It's not like I've spent much of the last 4 years on that...wait a minute...
Anyway, with 4 novels this year I guess you can call it a bounce-back year from 2012. We'll have to see what actually happens in 2014.
Merry Fishmas! For this yule tide Everyday Heroes I remembered an XMas miracle that happened about 15 years ago. The old couple involved--I don't know their names--are this month's Everyday Heroes.
It was Christmas Eve, I think 1997. I had just been doing some shopping in Bay City, Michigan and was going home on US 10 when a tire blew out! I managed to get the car to the side of the road and then got the paraphernalia out of the trunk to change the flat. I knew where everything was because just a month ago--on my birthday even--a different tire had gone flat.
So I get the jack out and set it up beneath the car and then get the car into the air. I start trying to get the nuts off and there's just one problem--the lug wrench breaks! Seriously the crappy lug wrench GM included cracked like an empty Solo cup left on the floor of a kegger for some frat boy to step on--how's that for a colorful simile?
And again this was 1997, so we didn't all have cell phones back in those days. I couldn't just whip out my iPhone and call AAA for assistance. This stretch of road was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, in farm country with the nearest town being miles down the road.
Then a car pulls up and this old guy gets out to ask if I needed any help. He got his lug wrench but it didn't fit. So he offered to give me a lift into Auburn, which was the nearest town. Since it was that or walk miles in the cold, what do you think I did?
They drove me to the pharmacy in town and I was able to call AAA from a pay phone. The old guy's wife (presumably) gave me a little church program that I still have in a Ziploc bag as a memento. Unlike in Hollywood me and the old couple didn't become the best of friends. I don't even remember their names and by this point they might not even be alive. But they definitely saved me from spending a large chunk of Christmas Eve walking to find a phone.
While I'm at it I got two other helpful strangers who are Everyday Heroes in car-related mishaps. The first was back in probably 1996 or maybe 1995. My sisters and I were in Bay City and I stupidly locked the keys in the car. To sum up our reactions it was basically, "Oh shit what are we going to do now?" I could have called my mom or dad to bring spare keys, which would have taken a while.
But then a tow truck shows up and the driver asks if we need help. Then he got out a tool to reach down through the window and pull the lock up. This was a 1977 Chevy Nova so it had those old-school locks where you could do that. And then he was on his way.
The funny part was the name of the tow truck company: Serendipity. I'd say it was very serendipitous.
And the last story was in 2003 or 2004 or so. My Bonneville's fuel gauge had been acting up recently, so I really had no idea how much gas I had. I was on I94 going home and it turned out I didn't have very much gas left! I managed to get it up a ramp, where it finally ran out. Unlike other people who just leave their cars any damned place, I got out and pushed the car over to the side of the road. I tried to get it into a church parking lot so it'd be out of the way but the incline was too steep and obviously I am not Superman who can lift a car over his head.
Enter another helpful stranger who helped me push the car up the rest of the way. Then he gave me a ride down to the corner to a gas station so I could get gas. Contrast this to the jerk gas station attendant who made me pay for a can to put gas in. He was an Everyday Villain. But on the plus side at least I had a can for if I ran out of gas again.
So there you go, Everyday Heroes (and Villains) are all around us! It could even be YOU!
I already used the December calendar page back in 2012, so I decided to make up a little XMas card in the Sims 3.
I tried to find holiday stuff for the Sims 3 but didn't have much luck. About all I could find were child's shirts, so I made kid versions of Val, Stacey, and Kari from the calendar and then I made a vaguely holiday looking adult Emma.
And like 4 months later I still couldn't find anything for adults. But I did find holiday-themed fabrics to make some tacky sweaters. Check this out:
Happy Holidays! May they be SIMply the Best! Punny!
Incidentally, I already made my 2014 calendar using Sims 3 versions of my Girl Power characters. Here's a preview:
Here we go with the final round of Box Office Blitz. Who won and who lost? Let's find out!
The top 3 movies this weekend were:
The Hobbit 2 $31.5M
Anchorman 2 $26.7M
Frozen $19.6M
Frozen beat out American Hustle by just $500,000 which radically changes the scoring.
First off, some controversy with the Sacko matchup between:
#5 Maurice Mitchell &
#8 Briane Pagel
Neither one made any picks before the cutoff date. So on Saturday I sent a Tweet to both and the first one to comment won 7th place. That turns out to be Briane. Which means Maurice wins the Sacko by default. In this case, not the two sweetest words in the English language.
Next, the pointless matchup between me and David Walston
David picked:
1. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues $41M
2. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug $34M.
3. American Hustle $24M
That's 100 for Anchorman 2 and 100 for Hobbit 2 and 0 for American Hustle. Which is 200 points
I picked:
The Hobbit 2 $40M
Anchorman 2 $35M
American Hustle $20M
That's 200 for Hobbit 2, 300 for Anchorman 2, and 0 for American Hustle. Which is 500 points.
I win! Which means I move from 6th place to 5th place...oooh.
Next the 3rd place game between #1 Rusty Webb and #7 Michael Offutt
Michael picked:
1) Anchorman at $49 million
2) Desolation of Smaug at $35 million
3) American Hustle at $25 million
That's either 200 points
Rusty picked:
Anchorman 2 $35 mil
Hobbit 2 $25 mil
American Hustle $15 mil
Also either 200. Neither one got any movies right. Michael is closer on the Hobbit, so I guess he wins
Finally the championship between #3 Chris Dilloway and #4 Andrew Leon
Andrew picked:
1. Anchorman 2: $39m
2. Hobbit: DoS: $32m
3. American Hustle: $20m
Which is 200 points
Chris picked:
Hobbit: $32m
Anchorman 2: $26m
American Hustle: $18m
That's 500 points.
Chris is the champion! So a Dilloway won, just not me.
Here are the final playoff standings then:
Chris Dilloway
Andrew Leon
Michael Offutt
Rusty Webb
P.T. Dilloway
David Walston
Briane Pagel
Maurice Mitchell
Congrats to the winners and thanks everyone for playing. As is traditional with the NCAA tourney here's One Shining Moment, the 2010 version that briefly shows my avatar Blue II.
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 Marvel Holiday Magazine #4
I'll go first
Santa Doom: Looks like someone is on the naughty list!
Now it's your turn!
Here's some additional food for thought. I listen to a lot of XMas music, though this year I hardly bought any for once. I half-heartedly checked Amazon but there didn't seem to be any new albums that were interesting. Which got me thinking: what artists do you wish had a Christmas album? Here are some I wish had an XMas album (some have a track or two but I want a full album, dang it):
Bill Shatner (I know he's Jewish, but come on, do some secular/Hanukkah songs!)
At last after about a 23-week odyssey we have reached the final week for season 2 of Box Office Blitz. Regular season victor Rusty Webb was dethroned last week by Andrew Leon while Chris Dilloway narrowly defeated the Cinderella team in Michael Offutt. Who will be crowned the ultimate Box Office Blitz champion?
To make things more interesting we have a couple of new movies this week celebrating 70s culture--as if anyone should want to. I'm one of those rare guys who hated the original "Anchorman." It felt like it went on forever even though it was only 90 minutes. The old boy-against-girl story was so shopworn too. The previews for this second one make it seem even worse, so obviously I won't be seeing it. Meanwhile I'm sure I'll watch "American Hustle" on DVD at some point, though watching 70s movies is such a chore because the clothes, hair, cars, and just about everything else sucks so much.
There's also Disney propaganda and some corny movie with talking dinosaurs.
Anyway, to recap here are the matchups this week.
The championship game is:
#3 Chris Dilloway vs.
#4 Andrew Leon
The 3rd Place Game is:
#1 Rusty Webb vs.
#7 Michael Offutt
Now for the matchup that means almost nothing:
#2 David Walston vs.
#6 P.T. Dilloway
And bringing up the rear is the Sacko Bowl featuring:
#5 Maurice Mitchell vs.
#8 Briane Pagel
Here are the brackets so you can see how we got here:
Here are the movies to choose from this week:
Anchorman 2*
American Hustle*
Dallas Buyer's Club
Delivery Man
Frozen
Gravity
Homefront
Last Vegas
Out of the Furnace
Philomena
Saving Mr. Banks* (Who is Mr. Banks?)
The Book Thief
The Christmas Candle
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Thor: The Dark World
Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas
Walking With Dinosaurs*
My picks to ensure I stay in my cozy 6th place hole are:
The Hobbit 2 $40M
Anchorman 2 $35M
American Hustle $20M
Now you make your final picks in the comments. On Monday night we'll learn who wins!
With the holidays this month I'm not going to do a recap post, so here are some mini reviews of movies I've watched recently:
Thor 2 The Dark World: I thought this was slightly better than the first one, though still not among my favorite Marvel movies. Despite that it's Thor's series it's still Loki who really makes these movies by injecting some fun into them. Though really the "twist" involving him was pretty obvious and stolen straight out of the crappy GI JOE movie. It should make for some interesting plots down the road. It was good at the end they did find something for Natalie Portman to do besides sit and lie around. Not that I really understood how all that stuff at the end worked. I ain't no scientist. (3/5)
Mud: This is kind of like "Stand By Me" with a little "Winter's Bone." Two plucky young boys go out to an island where they find a boat caught in a tree. Living in the boat is a bum who calls himself Mud. He starts asking the boys to run some errands for him, telling them he has to meet his girlfriend and escape with her from some guys. It takes the boys a while to realize that Mud is largely full of shit. Yet some of it is true. Anyway, it was a decent movie, if a little on the long side. I was actually surprised when I realized this was taking place in present day, though it's in the Deep South so they still don't have things like cell phones or computers, so it might as well have been the 60s or 70s. (3/5)
Stand Up Guys: Like the more popular "Last Vegas" and upcoming "Grudge Match" there is something a little depressing about all these old stars getting together. In this case it's Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, and Alan Arkin. Pacino is released from prison after serving 28 years thanks to being a "stand up guy" and not squealing on his associates--the other two old guys. After an extended Viagra joke, we learn there's a countdown ticking before Walken has to kill Pacino for killing some mob boss's son in the crime that landed him in prison. So most of the movie is the old guys enjoying one last night on the town, which involves stealing a car, getting in a chase with the cops, beating up some mob goons, and burying a dead body. The end is one of those where we don't know who exactly lives or dies, which is kind of annoying. Anyway, I really enjoyed it as a movie about death that doesn't get too weepy or sentimental about it. (3.5/5)
The Great Gatsby (2013): I had read this book in high school, which was a long time ago, so I didn't remember it too well, especially the end. Anyway, my foremost thought about this movie was that it was really loud. Most everything was so bright sometimes it almost hurt my eyes. And then there was the music, much of which was modern stuff by Jay-Z and the like, which really made no sense but this is Baz Luhrman we're talking about, the guy who previously cast Leo DiCaprio as Romeo in a modern-day Romeo + Juliet. Anyway, if you never read the book most of this is a soap opera of the 1% involving a lot of rich people who are all having affairs and such. Despite how much Tobey Maguire as Nick tries to convince us how great Gatsby was with his hope and such, I just found him to be a rich douche, the kind who thinks he can do whatever he wants because he's rich, but as so often in movies we're supposed to feel sorry because he can't have the one thing he wants. (This was essentially the point of Citizen Kane.) Poor little rich boy. Someone should count how many times he says "old sport;" it gets really obnoxious after a while. (2/5)
Frozen Ground: It was appropriate I watched this the same day as star athlete Jameis Winston wasn't charged with rape in a disgusting laugh-filled press conference by the DA. It's appropriate because the opening act of this movie involves Anchorage police who refuse to take a prostitute's story of being raped and held hostage seriously. All except one cop who sends evidence to the state troopers, where it comes to Nic Cage's attention. As he begins to investigate he starts connecting the dots between the girl's story and what's happened to many women who've gone missing from 1971-1983. Much of the movie then has the prostitute running away time and again and Nic Cage having to find her and keep her dumb ass alive. The ending is a little too formulaic but this is based on true events. (3/5)
World War Z: I wasn't all that interested when I was watching this, but later it occurred to me that I should have given it props for not following the standard zombie movie plot. Pretty Much Every Zombie Movie Ever is a bunch of ragtag survivors lock themselves in a house, mall, prison, etc. and then turn on each other because live humans are worse than undead ones. Instead this has Brad Pitt running around from Newark to South Korea to Jerusalem to Wales to find a cure for the zombie outbreak. Along the way he dodges zombies in a bunch of rather lame setpieces. I mean there's no way anyone could make human ladders like they do without a CGI assist and then he just walks away from a plane crash. Plus I just plain don't like Brad Pitt; he's such a douche. I mean I know he does charity work and adopts orphans with Anjelina Jolie, but then there's this:
BTW, for Dr. Who fans the next Doctor has a small role near the end of the movie where he does important things like open a door and use a computer. So there's that. I was happy they were smart enough to think the same way I have in moving a bunch of survivors onto hospital ships and the like. I mean duh, you're a lot safer from the zombies on the boat than in a house. I really need to get my "Love Boat With Zombies" show together. (2/5)
Before Sunset: Since "Before Midnight," the third in this series, came out this year I decided for the hell of it--and lack of better things to watch--to put all three movies on my queue. I already watched "Before Sunrise" which was a pretty good romantic movie about two young people who spend a night together in Vienna. "Before Sunset" picks up 9 years later when they meet again in Paris. Ethan Hawke has written a book about that night in Vienna and Julie Delpy decides to visit him in the bookstore where he's dodging questions about the validity of the book and expounding on terrible ideas for books. The first hour or so is them walking around Paris and sitting in a cafe and talking about this or that. The last twenty minutes or so it finally gets down to brass tacks but then ends unsatisfactorily. The good thing nowadays is you don't have to wait 9 years to know what happens next. Anyway, it was really a pale imitation of the original where it seemed they did a lot more in their walking around. (2/5)
Before Midnight: Spoiler alert! So I guess what happened after the last one is Ethan Hawke knocked her up--with twins! So they decide to live in sin in Paris. Picking up 9 years later, this movie finds them on vacation in southern Greece. As with the other two it's divided into segments of them standing or sitting around talking: at the airport, in the car, at dinner with friends, walking into a Greek town, and then comes a massive argument that goes on much too long in a hotel room when they're supposed to be having sort of a honeymoon. A lot of the tension is brought on because Ethan Hawke wants to see his son from his former marriage more often and even though he moved to Paris for Julie Delpy, gawd forbid she do him the same favor. Anyway, the way it ends again leaves things unsettled, at least until 2022, right? Anyway, this was sort of like "This is 40" only mercifully 20 minutes or so shorter and a more exotic setting. Neither of the last two entries really lives up to the first one but I suppose young romance is a lot better than middle age. So it goes. (2.5/5)
On a side note, I do like the concept of making a new movie every 9 years to check up on the characters. It's like what John Updike did with his Rabbit Angstrom books where every 10 years or so there would be a new one to chronicle the next stage in his life from his late teens to middle age. It's better in a way than standalone movies because the characters have a lot more history and you can literally see how they've changed with each film. When you watch them back-to-back-to-back you essentially get a microcosm of adult life. It would be nice, though, if a little bit more happened besides them walking and talking.
Pain & Gain: Kind of funny Michael Bay's idea of a prestige movie is a bloodsoaked crime dramedy. It's very, very loosely based on a true story of three bodybuilders who kidnap a rich guy and get him to sign over all his stuff to them. I think it was Maurice Mitchell who mentioned how much this movie differs from reality. You get a glimpse of that at the end when they put the pictures of the real people next to the actors and you can see how completely different everyone looks. Besides this lazy inattention to detail the movie is marred by an over 2-hour running time and not one, not two, not three, but SIX different voiceover narrators. I mean we probably spend half the movie listening to voiceover. Yeesh. If you ignore those problems it's a fun crime caper through the first kidnapping but then starts to lose steam after that when they foolishly stick around to play with the rich man's toys and fritter his money away. I'm thinking Bay should stick with giant robots blowing shit up. (2.5/5)
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone: This was an incredible flop at the box office back in March but it's not a terrible movie. It's a largely predictable movie about the eponymous magician who gets his comeuppance after a falling out with his partner. When he gets a job at a nursing home and meets his hero, he starts to get his mojo back, but first he must defeat a rival "magician" in Jim Carrey who pulls all sorts of masochistic stunts a la David Blaine. A lot of those stunts are pretty gross. Anyway, the trick they make up at the end is clever but kind of lame. I would agree with the movie that the David Blaine types aren't real magicians. I mean hanging upside-down over Times Square for a week or whatever isn't "magic" in any sense; it's just a test of physical endurance. Anyway, if you want a largely safe and predictable comedy this isn't bad. (3/5)
The World's End: This is probably my least favorite Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg collaboration, but that's only because "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" were so good. In a way this combines elements of both films with the small English town setting and the creatures running amok. Only instead of zombies we have alien replicants from beyond the moon! I was surprised to see this was only 1 hr 49 minutes because it felt longer, especially the end, which seemed to drag a bit. It was the kind of ending where I think, "Didn't we already end the movie 10 minutes ago?" I think the movie have been better without the replicants really. Some more normal hijinks might have worked better. As it is, once the replicants show up things just seem to go off the rails and keep going right on into the sunset. But it wasn't terrible either. (2.5/5)
Only God Forgives: This is the perfect Tony Laplume movie: slow, violent, lots of artsy-seeming stuff, and hardly anyone seems to like it. For non-contrarians, this is an almost incomprehensible crime drama set in Thailand, where Ryan Gosling sets out on a circuitous quest for vengeance for his brother, who raped and murdered a 16-year-old prostitute and was then murdered by the girl's father at the behest of a cop who likes to sing karaoke and chop people up with a sword he carries on his back. Giving Ryan Gosling some incentive is his evil drug-dealing mother. She's so evil she compares her son's dick sizes at dinner to Ryan Gosling's Thai girlfriend. And then shit happens. I was bored and confused and "Almost Human" was coming on so I started to fast forward. (1/5)
And since it's near the end of the year and everyone loves lists, I'll rank the movies I saw in the theater this year:
Pacific Rim
Gravity
Thor 2
Iron Man 3
Man of Steel
2 Guns
Runner, Runner
Dead Man Down
Die Hard 5
Tomorrow the final round of Box Office Blitz Season 2 begins!
With Cyber Monday I finally upgraded my technology into the 2010s by acquiring a Kindle Fire tablet. The cool thing about that is now I can read comics anywhere without having to haul a bunch of paper around. Or at least DC Comics because I haven't gotten my Marvel account to work yet so unless I buy their comics from the Kindle store I can't open them on the tablet.
Anyway, here we go:
Global Defense Force: This is an indie comic I got for free from my brother. While you could compare it with a number of superhero origins, it reminded me most of the early 2000s Firestorm comics I read early in the year where a kid gets caught up in a mysterious explosion and finds himself bonded to something that gives him superpowers. Only in this case it's alien armor that lets him fly, gives him X-ray vision, and some other cool stuff. The alien armor talks to the guy to advise him which again makes me think of Firestorm. It's not exactly up to professional standards but it's still a good start. (5/5)
Green Lantern: Rebirth by Geoff Johns: This undoes pretty much the last 12 years or so of Hal Jordan stories where he'd lost his mind after Coast City was destroyed, turned evil, sacrificed himself to relight the sun, and then became DC's spirit of vengeance the Spectre who is totally different from Marvel's spirit of vengeance Ghost Rider in that he doesn't have a flaming skull or motorcycle. Anyway, some weird stuff begins to happen with the Green Lanterns and with Hal Jordan but he's the only one who can stop it. The story was good though it's probably better if you've read all those other Hal Jordan comics, which I aim to do at some point. (4/5)
Iron Man Extremis by Warren Ellis: I bought this on sale mostly so I could test how comics read in the Kindle Fire. (The answer is it can be kind of bulky if you're zooming into the panels and trying to navigate.) Anyway, this is at least in part the basis for the Iron Man 3 movie, though a number of things have been changed to fit with the movie franchise. In this Extremis is pretty stable; it doesn't make people blow up. It does give them superstrength, superspeed, and the ability to shoot fire, which is pretty cool. It is startling since I've only watched the movies about Iron Man for the most part to note how little personality Tony Stark has in this. He's basically your typical brooding antihero with a troubled past. Apparently though this began a 21st Century reboot that inspired the movies so that's something. (3/5)
Action Comics (New 52) Vol 2 by Grant Morrison: I enjoyed most of the first 8 issues of Morrison's Action Comics reboot, so I was glad I could finally read the rest of his run on the title. Vol 2 starts out focusing on Earth 23's Superman, who is black and also president of the United States. Another universe's Lois and Clark show up with another Superman on their tail, which leads to trouble. This begins a hodge-podge of stories that will probably pay off in Vol 3 but as a stand-alone volume this doesn't have much in the way of cohesion. The heart of volume 2 is Clark Kent "dying" and Superman taking on a new secret identity. There's also the "forgotten Superman" who was in Kansas before Clark Kent. As part of the hodge-podge nature of this volume it only includes 4 actual issues, plus the #0 issue that is a nice story involving a kid who steals Superman's cape, and also the Annual #1 issue about a Kryptonite-fueled dude called K-Man who tries to kill Superman. This is Lex Luthor's only appearance in this volume. Given all that I don't think you're getting your money's worth unless it's on sale. (2.5/5)
Action Comics (New 52) Vol 3 by Grant Morrison: Volume 3, the conclusion of Morrison's run on the series, gathers up a lot of the loose threads from especially volume 2 in order to bring it to a conclusion. As with Morrison's "Final Crisis" it involves a somewhat whimsical solution that doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense. All this 5th Dimension stuff is a couple dimensions over my head really but overall it's entertaining. And to throw Laplume a bone here some of the backup features by Sholly Fisch are as strong as the main issues. I especially liked "A Boy and His Dog" which is touching in the same way as that episode of "Futurama" with Fry's dog and "Goodbye" where Superman gets a chance to go back in time to say goodbye to his pa--the Earth one. Though really I'd have liked if Morrison got back to the more down-to-Earth Superman in the first few issues of his run. I suppose though after 75 years we expect all these far-out universe-spanning stories. (3/5)
Batgirl (New 52) Vol 1 by Gail Simone: Since Barbara Gordon was crippled in The Killing Joke there have been a number of Batgirls over the years. With the New 52 Barbara Gordon is back in the saddle, thanks to some neural implant dealies or whatever. (Something that makes more sense than being punched in the back really hard.) She moves out from her dad's place and soon gets to work after this dude called Mirror who's killing people who've been saved by chance. This takes up the first 4 issues while the remaining two of the volume focus on a woman named Gretel who's targeting Gotham's elite--including Bruce Wayne! This does a good job of illustrating Barbara's struggles to get back into the swing of things without being whiny or bleak. It's a good change of pace from the typical brooding antihero--see Iron Man Extremis above. (5/5)
Contrasting this we have: Spider-Woman Agent of SWORD by Brian Michael Bendis: Part of the problem with Marvel comics when I buy them on sale is I often have no idea where they fit in. At this point Spider-Woman, aka Jessica Drew, is recovering from when the Skrull attacked New York with their queen using her as a double-agent. While in the doldrums, she's sought out by the head of SWORD, which is kind of an MIB agency. She signs up to go to Madripoor to hunt down Skrull in the area. And then she proceeds to fight Hydra, the Thunderbolts, and local cops until she finally finds the Skrull...and gets her ass kicked until the Avengers show up to bail her out. Seriously. It's exceedingly lame when it's Spider-Woman's name on the cover and Wolverine kills the bad guy. I mean Batman shows up in the Batgirl comics, but he didn't dispatch the bad guy. Maybe there's a difference when a woman is writing a female hero vs. a man writing a female hero. It was OK up to that point if you like brooding antiheroes, but that ending just killed it. I suppose that's part of why the series folded with that issue. (1/5)
Detective Comics (New 52) Vol 1 by Tony S. Daniel: My Goodreads review was "OK but not spectacular" which is pretty much the gist of it. It's a decent enough take on Batman but it certainly isn't covering any new ground. This volume features 2 stories. The first involves Joker and the Dollmaker. This ends with a whimper as the Joker disappears early on and the Dollmaker isn't even apprehended by Batman. The second story involves Penguin and a casino heist. This had a more satisfying conclusion. As I said there's not much new here, especially not Batman dating a journalist. But still it's not terrible either. (3/5)
Avengers vs. X-Men by Various: Like the "Civil War" storyline this features Marvel heroes whaling on each other. Only in this case it's the X-Men vs. the vast Avengers roster (pretty much all non-mutant heroes) for whatever reason--the real reason being to sell comics. It has to do with the Phoenix, that thing you might remember from X-Men The Last Stand that turns Jean Grey into a total badass. Only since she's "dead" at this point it bonds with a bunch of other X-Men, who start remaking the world, which pisses the Avengers off. Then it's on, though like DC's "Final Crisis" and the end of Grant Morrison's run on "Action Comics" the end is a little whimsical. Of course like any of these big crossover series there's a bunch of
other stuff going on outside of the main title, if you want to buy fifty
other books or so. (4/5)
This series is also notable because it features Hope Summers, whose action figure I converted into a Scarlet Knight figure:
After years of selling books online, there has been kind of an odd trend. The books I've sold the most copies of are at two different ends of the spectrum. One book was written at the height of my literary powers and the other is a series written when I was just starting out and had no idea what the hell I was doing. Life is weird like that.
Of course the book I've sold the most copies of is Where You Belong. In large part because it had a 3 year headstart or so on most everything else. And also I pushed the hell out of it with a blog tour and website and everything. Why shouldn't I? It was the best damned book I ever wrote and will ever write. As I said it was written at the height of my literary powers (such as they were); I was really locked in or in the zone when I wrote that. I had a determination and purpose that I don't think I've ever matched, not even in the books that followed it. I mean, I enjoyed the Scarlet Knight and Chances Are books, but they weren't so literary in their ambitions.
As I said at the beginning, on the flip side the other series of books that have sold the most copies are First Contact/The Savior/The Final Battle published under one of my pseudonyms. (I'm not counting books given away for free.) I find it amusing that those have sold so well because I wrote those my senior year in high school. I did it pretty much on a lark too. Well part of it was my brother had moved out and so I had a room to myself for the first time and a newfangled word processor (a technological marvel for 1995--not really) so I finally had time and space to get down and do some real writing. Except of course I had no idea what the hell I was doing. Most of the story was cribbed from Robotech, Transformers, and Timothy Zahn novels. And I'm sure the grammar wasn't great from a grammar snob standpoint.
Anyway, I think the best thing about those books was because I was young and ignorant. I wasn't really worried about commas or -ing verbs or cliches or any of that bullshit. I just had FUN. It was purely for the love of the game, not about getting published or making money or anything like that. I don't think I've really been able to replicate that feeling again because you can't unlearn what you've learned; you can't really go back in time, which is the point Thomas Wolfe was trying to say.
On the other hand, Where You Belong was not really FUN to write. It was a lot of WORK. Months of late nights at the library and weekends at coffee places and Panera Breads. And that was just the first draft! Then there were more months to rewrite the entire thing in first-person! But then there was the moment where I could step back and finally say, "I did it!" And it was good. I haven't really been able to replicate that feeling either because I'm lazy and I just haven't felt the need since to put that much raw effort into anything. Not that the Scarlet Knight books or Chances Are books didn't involve any work--just not as much.
I guess if you want to get all sappy about it--which I will since it's the last Two-Cent Tuesday--there are those magical moments in a writing career. Maybe it's when you're just starting out and don't know any better or maybe it's when you're a grizzled veteran and finally find that one story that really gets you going, but those are the magical times that should be treasured.
Unlike a lot of weeks, this week there was only one trifecta. Can you guess who got it? I'll wait...
It was ME! Since I only won one week of Round 2 and that was week 15, I'm going to take a minute to savor this...
OK, I think that about does it. The results this weekend were:
The Hobbit 2 $73.6M
Frozen $22.6M
Madea XMas $16M
We'll do my matchup first since I already ruined that.
In the battle between me and Maurice Mitchell, I picked:
The Hobbit 2: The Search for More Money $80M
Frozen $25M
Tyler Perry's Wearing a Fat Suit Again $15M
Which as I said is a trifecta for 900 points
Whereas Maurice picked:
1. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smuag: $76 million.
2. Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas $49 million
3. Hunger Games: Catching Fire $11 mil.
That's 200 for the Hobbit and 100 for Madea for 300 points.
So I go on to the 5th place game while it's the Sacko Bowl for Maurice.
And to complete the loser's bracket we have #2 David vs. #8 Briane
David picked:
1. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug $80M
2.Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas $27M
3. Frozen $19M
That's 200 for Hobbit and 100 each for Madea and Frozen for 400 total
Briane picked:
1. The Hobbit: $75 million.
2. Madea's Christmas $50 million
3. Hunger Games $10 mil.
That's 200 for the Hobbit and 100 for Madea for 300 total
So David will play me next week while Briane faces Maurice in the Sacko Bowl
As for the winner's bracket we have
#1 Rusty vs. #4 Andrew
Andrew picked:
1. Desolation of Smaug: $72m
2. That Tyler Perry Christmas thing: $28m
3. Frozen: $18m
That's 200 for Hobbit, 100 for the other 2 for 400 total
Rusty picked:
Hobbit 2: $70 mil
Madea's Christmas $30 mil
Frozen $20 mil
Also 400 total. But Andrew's Price is Right bidding skills paid off as he's closer to the Hobbit without going over. That means he moves on to the championship.
Who will he face? Either #3 Chris Dilloway or #7 Michael Offutt, the Butler Bulldog of this tourney.
Round 1 featured one upset with Michael Offutt knocking off #2 seed David Walston. Can Michael continue his Cinderella run all the way to the top? Don't ask me; I'm not a bloody psychic.
The rules remain the same; only the matchups have changed.
In the winner's bracket this week we have:
#1 Rusty Carl vs.
#4 Andrew Leon
(It's just like when Kirk and Spock had to fight that duel in Star Trek)
and then
#3 Chris Dilloway vs.
#7 Michael Offutt
(This is the opposite of the other matchup)
And for the rest of us the matchups are:
#2 David Walston vs.
#8 Briane Pagel
and then
#5 Maurice Mitchell vs.
#6 P.T. Dilloway
(I'd talk some smack here but given my track record that's not a good idea.)
Ding, ding, ding, the fight's on!
Here are the movies to choose from this week:
Dallas Buyer's Club
Delivery Man
Ender's Game
Free Birds
Frozen
Genius on Hold*
Go for Sisters*
Gravity
Homefront
Jackass: Bad Grandpa
Last Vegas
Out of the Furnace
Philomena
The Best Man Holiday
The Book Thief
The Christmas Candle
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug*
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Thor: The Dark World
Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas*
My picks that will totally crush Maurice's (not) are:
Since it just had its "fall finale" (we can thank "Lost" for introducing us to that stupid concept; before then shows didn't feel compelled to tell you they were on a break) it's time to rant about "Marvel's Agents of SHIELD."
My review of the first episode basically boiled down to "Meh. It could get better." It really hasn't. I still watch it either live or On Demand but it doesn't really hold my attention. Tuesday's episode I was reading Marvel comics while the show was on.
I guess the problem is for me this show is hollow. The longer it goes on the more I wonder why it exists. The only answer is that after the success of "The Avengers" Marvel and its Disney masters thought it'd be great to have a show they could use to help advertise the new movies and keep people remembering the older ones. It seems like the kind of thing where suits in board rooms had some meetings and decided they wanted a TV show and then called Joss Whedon in and told him to make it happen, followed by handing him a big bag of money with a dollar sign on it.
The thought that hit me is essentially what Whedon did was try to take the overall dynamic of "Firefly" and apply it to a bunch of recycled "X-Files" scripts. I mean if you think about it they fly around from place-to-place, only in a C-17 instead of a space freighter. If you want you can even compare roles from Firefly to SHIELD like so:
Coulson = Mal, the leader
May = Zoe, the tough chick
Ward = Jayne, the tough guy
Nerdy Scientist (Girl) = Kaylee, the upbeat tech person
Nerdy Scientist (Boy) = Simon, the dorky but brilliant doctor
Hacker chick = River, the wild card no one trusts
(Sadly there is no Wash, Inara, or Shepherd. Maybe that's what they need!)
The problem is first of all Coulson is no Mal. In pretty much every way possible. The second is "Firefly" was a sci-fi Western. The same dynamic doesn't work in an X-Files/Men in Black setting. Both the X-Files and Men in Black boiled the cast down to just two people who played off each other, which worked. With Agents of SHIELD it just feels most of the time like a lot of the characters are extraneous. Do we need two tough people? Do we need essentially 3 science geeks who can't do much else? No. And Fitz/Simmons are so damned cutesy (even their names) that I want to punch them in the face. And while I compared the Hacker to River Tam in a way she's more the Wesley Crusher of the show, the civilian who's in way over her head and was probably intended to lend the perspective of an ordinary people.
I guess it all boils down to it's a soulless concoction made of shopworn parts and stitched together into a Frankenstein monster that lumbers around for an hour every Tuesday.
Contrasting this is Fox's "Almost Human" which I've really enjoyed since its premiere. "Almost Human" isn't really a new idea. Basically it's the old buddy cop formula applied in a different way. In this case it's like if John McLane were partnered with Commander Data. But you know what, it works!
While we often like to complain about formulaic approaches, let's face it, those formulas exist because when they're done right they work. By not trying to reinvent the formula and only changing the variables, "Almost Human" manages to be fun and endearingly old-fashioned with just enough freshness so you aren't bored. And sometimes that's all you want out of a show, no puzzles or conspiracies or weighty universal questions of existence that are inadequately solved. It's just two cops busting some punks, only one of the cops happens to be an android and the punks usually have some neat sci-fi-y gimmicks.
I only have two somewhat sexist complaints about the show. First they probably could have found a better actress than Minka Kelly, like pretty much anyone. Second, the captain needs a new hairstyle. I realized on Monday's episode what she makes me think of: the pig people from that "Twilight Zone" episode "Eye of the Beholder" where the woman's face is wrapped in bandages so you think she must be hideous but really she's hot and everyone else is a bunch of pig-nosed freaks. Basically she reminds me of the pig-nosed freaks largely because of her hair. I know, it's weird, but I'm just saying.
Anyway, the reason why "Almost Human" works and "Agents of SHIELD" doesn't in my mind is "Almost Human" knows what it is and what it's trying to do. Whereas I don't really know what the hell "Agents of SHIELD" wants to accomplish. I'm not sure Joss Whedon and company even know what the hell they're trying to do.
Sometimes when I've gotten stuck on a story that's the question I ask myself: what the hell do you want to do? What's this story ABOUT? I don't mean about in terms of a plot description; I mean in terms of message--what are you trying to SAY? Maybe in its hiatus Whedon and company can figure that out. If all they want is a 60-minute infomercial for Marvel movies then there are probably better, less expensive ways to do it.
I'm not quite done with my big pile of comics--I would be if I stopped buying them--so I'm pushing the Comics Recap and Everyday Heroes back a week.
In the meantime I ran into a slight problem with the cover for the third Girl Power book. Originally I was going to use this graphic, which is kind of cool:
The only problem is with the way the story is written there's no male bad guy so it doesn't make a lot of sense. So I went to go look up pictures of women brandishing a knife, of which there are more than a few. Maybe you can pick a winner from these:
Keep in mind these are just comp images, not finished products so they're in low resolution.
Any of these strike your fancy?
It looks like the chick with the knife behind her back is winning. It does have kind of a neat "Psycho" vibe. Here's a cleaned-up version:
Over a month ago I created a full bibliography of all the stuff I'd written and published since 1994. Eventually I got to thinking of a way to represent this graphically--in graph format.
Because the idea that occurred to me is that by looking at those books I could track my growth and lack thereof as a writer. So first let me post the chart and then I'll get down to explaining it. BTW, the numbers are pretty much arbitrary values.
Click to embiggen as Offutt would say...
The bottom (Y?) axis represents a year, some being listed more than once as they correspond to a particular work.
From the chart you could extrapolate a few distinct periods:
Period One: Infancy (1994-2001)
We start arbitrarily at 1 with A Light From the Darkness in 1994. It was by all measures not very good. It's the kind of thing I probably shouldn't put out there, but what the hell. Hardly anyone ever buys it. There's a slight uptick then with the Rebirth Trilogy as I eventually called it: First Contact, The Savior, The Final Battle. The story was a little sharper though the grammar was still pretty bad.
Period Two: Aggressive Expansion (2002-2007)
Starting in 2002 with The Leading Men I began to get into literary fiction. Really between 2003-2006 was when I was sort of hitting the books, really working on the craft and all that. That was when I naively thought if I just worked really hard at it I'd find that fabled Northwest Passage to getting published. There is a large drop for what eventually became Young Family (Children of Eternity #2) just because it took three drafts to get that into something not completely awful.
Period Three: The Peak (2008)
All that hard work on craft and all that left me burned out in 2007, but it opened the door to reaching the peak with Where You Belong in 2008. That's where I was in the zone as they say. I'll talk more about that next week.
Period Four: The Permanent Period (2009-Present)
Since reaching the peak, things have largely plateaued. There were a couple of setbacks in Time Enough to Say Goodbye and Awakenings, both of which required a couple of drafts. The Chances Are series I consider to be the best from this period, though others may disagree. More or less right on through the present things have been keeping an even keel. The name "Permanent Period" comes from Lay of the Land by Richard Ford where the narrator claims you eventually reach a point where great changes are no longer possible. You are who you are and that's how it's going to be from now on. That's not really a bad thing in my book; if you've been at it for almost 20 years and you still haven't figured out your identity yet that would be the bad thing to me.
The idea here is to chart a writer's growing maturity--or lack thereof. You start off knowing very little and then you learn until you reach the pinnacle of your powers and then you settle in.
I used myself because who else do I know that well, but really you could do this for any author who's been around 20-30 years. I could plug in my literary hero John Irving or someone like John Updike or Kurt Vonnegut or Stephen King or John Grisham or whoever else you want to name who's been around for a long time. I'd wager the chart would wind up looking pretty much the same.
You could look at it like an athlete in whatever sport. A guy breaks into the league, hones his game, becomes a star for a while, and then as he gets older settles back in as a reliable but perhaps not spectacular player before finally calling it quits. Think of Michael Jordan for instance. He was drafted in the early 80s and then through the 80s was honing his game before he exploded in the 90s as the king of basketball and then with the Washington Wizards he settled into being an OK but not great player for a couple years before he retired. So it goes.
Here we go with the first round of the playoffs. Read Friday's post if you want a recap of the rules. The gist is they're pretty much the same.
The top 3 movies of last weekend were:
Frozen $31.6M
Hunger Games 2 $26.1M
Out of the Furnace $5.2M
The first matchup between #1 Rusty and #8 Briane was essentially a bye week for Rusty because Briane has been sidelined with health issues recently. (If you could, send some good vibes Briane's way.)
Rusty picked:
Frozen $35 mil
Catching Fire $32 mil
Out of the Furnace - $8 mil
That's a trifecta for 900 points, which is more than enough to advance him to the next round.
Now we get to some real matchups.
#2 David Walston vs. #7 Michael Offutt
David picked:
1. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire $34M
2.Frozen $32M
3. Out of the Furnace $7M
That's 100 points for Hunger Games and Frozen and 400 for Out of the Furnace for 600 total
Michael Offutt picked:
1) Frozen $34 million
2) The Hunger Games Catching Fire $30 million
3) Out of the Furnace $10 million.
That's a trifecta for 900 points. Which means Michael gets the upset win!
Next up we have the Dilloway Bowl between #3 Chris Dilloway and #6 P.T. Dilloway
Chris picked:
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire $46m
Frozen $32m
Out of the Furnace $7 mil
That's a mere 200 for me. So Big Brother moves on to the next round.
And finally we have #4 Andrew Leon vs. #5 Maurice Mitchell
Andrew picked:
1. Frozen -- $32m
2. Catching Fire -- $30m
3. Out of the Furnace -- $6m
That's a trifecta for 900 points
Maurice picked:
1. Frozen $35 mil
2. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire $32 mil
3. Out of the Furnace $7 mil
Also a trifecta for 900 points!
But Andrew picked Frozen closer than Maurice so by a whisker he moves on to the next round.
Because I'm lazy and don't feel like rearranging the brackets all the time we'll do this NCAA basketball style. That means next week for Round 2's winner's tourney we have:
Yup, this is the end of the blog. I came to this decision way way back in February, so it's not a surprise to me. I wasn't sure how far I'd get this year. I actually copied and pasted a whole bunch of old blog posts for Tuesdays thinking I'd run out of stuff for Two Cent Tuesdays, but I managed to hang in there until pretty much the end, so yay me! A lot of the book reviews I just copied off my book review site, picking them at random and dumping them on so I wouldn't need to bother coming up with new reviews unless there was something new I thought worthy of writing a review about. Pretty much all the Everyday Heroes I dug up back in February; the same for the Comic Captions, though I added a few Marvel ones later in the year when I started to use that site. The Phony Photos obviously I ran at the start of the year. So a large chunk of the blog has been running on autopilot for about 10 months. Which really people who complain they can't post often enough (ahem, Rusty) just find some time one day early in the year and bang out a whole bunch of posts for the year!
