New Release: Justice for All (The Outcast Book #1)

Today is release day for my first "normal" book in five years.

Robin Howe was a normal teenager until her police captain father is killed by henchmen of the evil Madame Crimson. When the justice system won't take any action to avenge her father, Robin takes it upon herself. Except her first attempt leaves her nearly dead and with Madame Crimson's people on her tail.

To protect Robin, her father’s former partner gives her a new identity that sends her to St. Martha’s Academy for Young Ladies in rural New Hampshire. There she tries to keep a low profile, which isn’t easy when Madame Crimson’s spoiled daughter Tonya takes a special interest in making Robin’s life there a living hell. Yet when a rival gangster tries to kidnap Tonya, Robin has to embrace her heroic destiny.

The ebook is available from Amazon for $3.99 and FREE on Kindle Unlimited
The paperback version is available through Amazon and other retailers for $12.99 

Thanks to everyone who helped me promote the book in advance!

Next blog post is Friday.  Hey, remember when I actually posted on Fridays?  Oh, right, I never stopped writing them.  You just stopped reading them.

What's Your Legacy?

So a couple of weeks ago my internet was on the fritz for whatever reason so I was listening to the "Light Classical" channel on my cable's Music Choice networks.  Eventually it brought up Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" which I would embed a YouTube clip of but it probably wouldn't play because you're not supposed to use Flash anymore.  So here's a link to a YouTube video.

Anyway, back in 1999 I was taking "music appreciation" for one of those useless "electives" they make you take so you can give them more money broaden your horizons.  On a CD or whatever the teacher gave us some samples of music and Barber's piece was on there and obviously I remembered hearing it before in Platoon and also episodes of Seinfeld and Daria.  We were assigned to do a report on someone in American music and I thought:  why not do a report on Barber?  Because really, who else was there in 1999:  Backstreet Boys?  Hanson?  Matchbox 20?  I was the only one to do a classical composer, so there.

As part of that I read a biography and some stuff on the Internet, some of which was referenced on the Music Choice thing while the piece was playing.  For instance he won 2 Pulitzer Prizes and an American Prix de Rome--whatever that is, but I assume it's good.  His opera Antony & Cleopatra opened the Met Opera House in New York.  He was also gay by all accounts.  He wrote a bunch of symphonies and operas and so forth.

But you know the only thing he's really remembered for?  "Adagio for Strings."  And only because of that famous scene in Platoon and other TV shows and movies.  That seems really sad to me.  On one hand it's good he's remembered at all, but it kind of says something about the real legacy of artists, which is probably not what they would choose for themselves.  Barber might have actually not liked that piece at all or he might have had one he liked a lot better.

It's the same way for lots of other artists.  I mean think of da Vinci.  All the stuff he did and mostly we remember him for that Dan Brown book--and also the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.  Conversely Dan Brown has written lots of books and he'll probably only be remembered for The da Vinci Code and only because of Tom Hanks's terrible hair in the movie version--or maybe not the last part.

Anyway, the idea is that as an artist you don't necessarily get to choose your legacy.  It'd be great if you remembered me for Where You Belong, my before-its-time look at gay marriage.  More likely if you remember anything at all you'd be like, "Isn't he the guy who wrote all those weird gender swap books?"  Or who knows, maybe some movie director or famous author will reference some obscure book of mine and that's what people would remember me for.  Maybe 50 years from now some college kid will be discussing the symbolism in P.T. Dilloway's Chet Finley vs. the Machines of Fate.

Stranger things have happened.

My master pizza!

Video Review 9/25/15

I’m trying a slightly classier name, but it’s still stuff I watched.  Less stuff since I was out of town most of the week.

Mad Max Fury Road:  I never watched the original three Mel Gibson movies, the last of which was like 30 years ago.  This isn’t a reboot even though Mel Gibson has been replaced by Tom Hardy.  Since the last movie was like 30 years ago you might think they’d do something to fill you in a little, but nah.  The video game commercial before the movie actually was more helpful setting up the world of Mad Max than anything in the movie.  But um there’s an apocalypse and now water and gas are precious commodities.  There's some freaky dude called Immortus Joe who has a bunch henchmen who look like Fester Addams.  They capture Max early on and use him for a mobile blood bank when Joe’s right-hand woman Furiosa (Charlize Theron) decides to make off with Joe’s favorite concubines in a “war rig” which is a tanker with water and gasoline.  There are two questions I have:  if the women are in the tanker, wouldn’t they suffocate?  That’s what happened in a crappy movie about blind bank robbers I watched; they tried to hide in a hollowed out tanker truck and died.  And Max is hooked up to a blood line for the better part of a day and can unhook it without even being woozy—then proceed to punch a shitload of guys and blow up a bunch of shit.  How much blood does that dude have?  More than the average person that’s for sure.  Despite that his name is in the title, Max is more of a secondary character in this.  He has less personality than most of the vehicles.  There are some cool action sequences though. (2/5)

Boulevard:  This was Robin Williams’ last movie and as far as that goes it was quite a way to cap off his career.  He gives a magnificent performance as Nolan Mack, a simple bank loan officer who has a nice routine life with a nice wife (Kathy Baker) and a good friend in an English professor (Bob Odenkirk, who is the comic relief like in “Breaking Bad”).  He’s supportive of his dad in a nursing home, though his dad wasn’t exactly Father of the Year.  And he’s due for a big promotion.  So everything seems pretty awesome, but then one night coming home from the nursing home, he stops on a bad street and nearly hits a young male prostitute.  He proceeds to take the prostitute named Leo to a seedy motel, though he doesn’t do anything to him sexually.  Nolan can’t resist seeing Leo again and again, though he tries to act more like a father than a lover most of the time.  I assumed he had lost a son or something, but there’s actually something else going on.  Really though Nolan needed to brush up on concealing an affair better, as he just about does everything to make his wife, friends, and colleagues suspicious.  I always liked Robin Williams better in his dramatic roles and this is no exception.  I think it’s because in dramas he didn’t have to be “Robin Williams” with the energy and voices.  In this final performance he’s actually really low energy and soft spoken.  I’d say it deserves some Oscar consideration. (4/5)

The Skeleton Twins:  I wasn’t surprised to see the Duplass Brothers attached as Executive Producers because this was a lot like one of their movies like Jeff, Who Lives at Home or Cyrus, neither of which you’ve seen or will see.  You’ll probably never see this either because there aren’t explosions or dragons or alien robots or anything.  It’s about a pair of twins (not named Skeleton) played by Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig.  Bill Hader’s character is gay and a struggling actor until he tries to kill himself.  Then he goes to upstate New York, where his sister is overcompensating to be “normal” by becoming a dentist and marrying an affable dude named Lance (Luke Wilson) all the while she’s had numerous affairs, the latest being with a scuba instructor.  Her brother reconnects with his old English teacher (that guy from “Modern Family,” not Al Bundy or the fat one…I’ve never watched the show) he used to have a thing for.  This is a good, nuanced drama about the struggles involved in being gay and the struggles with marriage.  You should give it a chance. (4/5)

Exodus, Gods & Kings:  I was surprised at how old-fashioned this was.  Not really as much as the old Charlton Heston movies, but there was actually a “god” (played by a little kid) and no really plausible explanation for how all those plagues happened.  Kind of expected more from the guy made Prometheus and Blade Runner.  There was also a lot of old-fashioned Hollywood casual racism in casting white people Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver, and Aaron Paul as Egyptians.  Hey, just give them a tan and black hair and it’s all good, right?  Um, yeah, right.  Seriously, you think I’d believe Jesse Pinkman as an Egyptian?  Fuck you, Ridley Scott.  Anyway, a lot of the background of Moses seems cribbed from Gladiator and Robin Hood; financially I think this did more like the latter.  As a backhanded compliment it wasn’t as asinine as Noah.  So there’s that. (2/5)

Un-American Chronicles

Most of us think of self-publishing as only books with words, but self-published comic books and graphic novels are a growing industry as well.  Most of the artists and writers who work for Marvel and DC's big titles also have their own "creator-owned" books with smaller publishers.

Un-American Chronicles is a new self-published series.  The first issue was only 99 cents, so I decided to pick it up and read it.  Despite being self-published, this is just as good as most mainstream titles, and better than many self-published ones I bought in a bundle a couple of years ago.  The art drawn by Juan Alarcón and colored by Carolina Bensler has a slightly different style for each of the five segments while the stories by Arcadio Bolaños vary in genres.

The first story "The Outsider" is more of a horror piece like the Stephen King story "The Body" that was made into the movie Stand By Me.  In this case three boys find a bank robber in a well and after they decide to leave her, they're haunted by presumably her evil spirit.

The next story is a drama about a boy who takes on a bully while at the same time his father is in one of the World Trade Center buildings on 9/11.

The third story is a humorous little yarn about a guy who keeps rejecting the advances of gorgeous women, not realizing these women all share a secret.

There are two more stories that are only a page apiece but they promise to be continued.

That's a lot of stuff going on for 23 pages.  Much more than you get in the standard superhero comic these days, most of which is punching and stuff.  Far less punching in this.

For 99 cents it's a really good value and hopefully the start of a great new series.  Buy it from Comixology and you can read it on your PC, tablet, phone, or whatever.

You can also visit the author's blog here for comic reviews written in English and Spanish.  (Which is impressive since I can barely do them in one language.)

The Continued Hypocrisy of Grumpy Bulldog

I wrote two whole series of female-centered superhero stories (Tales of the Scarlet Knight and Girl Power respectively) so wouldn't it make sense that I would like female superhero comics?  Such has not been the case recently.  So now I have to call myself out for hypocrisy [again].

A month or two ago I did a mini-review of the soft reboot of the Batgirl comic.  I for the most part liked the original, but the reboot didn't really strike a chord with me.  It just seemed to be pandering to millennials with all this crap about social media and I noted that basically all they did to the character besides change the venue and costume was make her put-upon like Spider-Man.
Recently I read G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel reboot or retooling or whatever you'd call it.  I think it was one of the few things to get a Hugo Award this year.  I had pretty much the same reaction as the Batgirl one:  meh.  People were so ga-ga over it, hailing it as genius and yet it didn't seem that different to me.  Other than the fact that she's a Muslim girl of Pakistani descent.  The whole story of a teenager who develops powers and has to somehow learn what to do with them while trying not to get grounded by parents (or guardians) is a pretty old one.  It most closely reminded me of the Miles Morales Ultimate Spider-Man that I read.  Add in an underdeveloped bad guy, no decent superhero fights, and the lame cartoony artwork and there wasn't much genius on display.  To sound like a Rabid Puppy it seems like it only got a Hugo because of the Muslim angle.
I also read the first volume of the soft-rebooted Captain Marvel (not the DC Captain Marvel, aka Shazam but the Marvel Captain Marvel that will soon be a movie) and didn't like it either.  That was more that Marvel's space ones don't really appeal to me.  I'm not sure why since I love Star Trek and Star Wars.  Maybe it's because I think superheroes should stay on Earth, though some of the Green Lantern ones haven't been that bad.  Plus since this wasn't a total reboot you had to know a lot of crap that had been going on with Builders and Spartan empires and whatever else and I really wasn't up to speed on any of that.  Nor did I much care.

Besides that I remember I didn't much care for the last run of Wonder Woman comics.  (Boring, repetitive plot and horrid artwork.)  I read a volume of Spider-Woman comics and didn't like those either.  (Lame story where she gets bailed out by the big boys at the end.)  Other than the original New 52 Batgirl it seems I haven't really liked any female superhero comics.  That's pretty hypocritical for someone who wrote all those books, right?

Then I tell myself that it's probably OK because I'm not the target audience for those books anyway.  I'm an almost 38-year-old white guy, so I'm not really the target audience for a comic book about a 16-year-old Muslim girl.  I mean if you are a 16-year-old Muslim girl it's probably pretty awesome to have such a comic book, the same as if there were any fat, nerdy unemployed 38-year-old white guy superheroes that would be awesome to me.  So maybe it's not so bad.

Or maybe I'm a terrible, terrible human being.  I guess in the age of outrage we are supposed to be supportive of all these other cultures and stuff.  But couldn't you throw me a bone with one decent superhero fight?  I'm just saying.  Now get the hell off my lawn.

PS:  Though it doesn't entirely fit, another graphic novel I didn't really like recently was a Superman/Wonder Woman called Whom the Gods Destroy by Chris Claremont, known more for his X-Men run.  Anyway, there was some weird shit, stuff that if I did it no one would publish it.  The comic takes place in an alternate universe where the Nazis still rule Europe in the 80s or 90s or whenever this was from.  They nuked Metropolis in the 60s, which drove Superman to the moon.  Anyway, the Olympian gods start working with the Nazis and at one point Superman becomes a centaur who runs around fucking female centaurs.  The only way to remove the curse is to turn him into a mortal teenage girl, basically Supergirl without the powers.  Because that makes sense, right?  Meanwhile Lois Lane is given Wonder Woman's powers and fights Nazi Wonder Woman.  I guess even I have my limits on weird stuff.

Stuff I Watched 9/18/15

Here's more stuff I watched:

Behind the Candelabra:  Despite what the title kind of implies, this wasn't really a "biopic" of Liberace.  It focuses mostly on his relationship with Scott Thorbin (Matt Damon) from 1977 to the end of his life.  Basically Scott is picked up at a bar by Scott Bakula, who takes him to a Liberace show and backstage he gets picked up by Liberace (Michael Douglas) and soon moves in with him.  Over the next few years they become sort of like an old married couple, though apparently Scott never let Liberace do much to him sexually, for which Liberace compensated with a number of other people.  The strength of the movie is the relationship between Liberace and Scott and how it changes over the years as Scott loses his innocence and becomes jaded.  This was an HBO movie but with the stars involved, it could easily have been a theatrical release. (4/5)

The Fog of War:  This "documentary" is mostly an interview with Robert Macnamara, the secretary of defense for JFK and LBJ who oversaw the US's entry into Vietnam.  I was disappointed the filmmaker Erroll Morris didn't really confront Macnamara, who blamed LBJ rather than take any responsibility.  He basically hid behind the idea he was just doing his job.  He pretty much said the same thing about working for the bombing wing that firebombed much of Japan in WWII.  But he did admit that mistakes were made.  In the case of Vietnam it was largely we didn't understand that to the Vietnamese this was a civil war, not part of some greater global pissing match between the USA-USSR-China, which is how Macnamara and others saw it at the time.  There was a certain amount of irony in that this was recorded shortly before George W pushed for war in Iraq; his administration really could have used the reminder about not repeating mistakes. (2/5)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014):  With Michael Bay involved and Megan Fox starring, I was planning to hate this, but I didn't, which is kind of a backhanded compliment.  The turtles look kind of weird and Splinter the rat looks really gross, but otherwise it's a lot better than the last 3 Transformers movies.  The plot is fairly cliche, with a weapons designer trying to create a crisis to then solve said crisis, but it's not like you can expect a whole lot. (3/5)

Not Safe for Work:  Did you ever wonder what Die Hard would be like if he were a paralegal being chased by an assassin?  That's pretty much what this is.  A paralegal asks one too many questions and gets fired but goes back into the building after close only to find out some bad stuff is afoot.  It's OK but the assassin was kind of an idiot.  I mean he's wearing a $3000 suit and telling someone he's from building maintenance.  Um, yeah, that's believable.  Something must have gone wrong in the production of this movie.  It's from Universal not a tiny studio and it's directed by Joe Johnston, who has directed stuff like Captain America: The First Avenger and yet I don't remember this getting a theatrical release and it's only 74 minutes.  They didn't even try to pad the credits to stretch the run time.  Anyway, obviously then they could have added a little more, especially to the ending. (2.5/5)

Outcast:  Don't confuse this with my upcoming novel The Outcast, Book #1 (pre-order it now!); this is about two white guys who save China after they flee the Crusades.  The emperor or whatever of China dies and in Gladiator fashion wants his young son to run the place but the older son isn't going to go along with it and so tries to kill the guy, who hooks up with opium fiend Hayden Christensen who for some reason looks like he's auditioning for Imagine Dragons.  Later they find Nicolas Cage, who has a terrible accent.  And in Gladiator fashion it all ends with a duel. I'm not sure how two random knights managed to get to China many years before Marco Polo or why later they're walking through a desert with camels.  Well obviously historical accuracy wasn't a priority.  (2/5)

Next:  I remember Roger Ebert saying this movie was good.  With all respect to the dead, I disagree.  Mostly it was boring and the end was unsatisfying.  Nic Cage is a Vegas magician with the ability to see 2 minutes ahead in time...sometimes.  Other times he can see farther than that, mostly concerning some girl he hasn't met yet (Jessica Biel).  Anyway, Julianne Moore is a bitchy FBI agent who wants to use Nic Cage to find a stolen Russian nuke some French guy stole for some reason and took to LA again for some reason that didn't seem all that clear.  But most of the movie involves Nic Cage trying to evade capture.  And then the end does sort of a "Superman" (1978), which was a little silly.  It was just one of those high concept movies that didn't pan out.  Plus lots of crappy CGI and green screen. (2/5)

J Edgar:  I remember this came out and I didn't get around to watching it.  Which was probably for the best.  It's a long, rambling tale framed by J Edgar Hoover dictating his memoirs, though as we learn he's sort of an unreliable narrator.  Most of it focuses on his closeted relationship with his right-hand man and his creepy relationship with his mom.  If you ever saw Oliver Stone's "Nixon" it's kind of the same thing in the rise of a socially awkward mama's boy.  Unlike what we've often heard about J Edgar Hoover, there's no cross-dressing, though at one point he holds up one of his mom's dresses to his body. (2/5)

Excess Baggage:  Alicia Silverstone is a rich brat who fakes her one kidnapping for money and attention.  But then she ends up getting sorta kidnapped for real by Benicio del Toro.  And then mayhem (and romance) ensues.  It's kind of lame and predictable. (2/5)

Repo Man:  The premise for this was pretty simple:  Emilio Estavez becomes a repo man to make some money.  But then somehow it turns into the X-Files with FBI agents and UFOs and whatever the fuck was going on; I couldn't really keep track. (1/5)

So I Married An Ax Murderer:  Lame, unfunny Mike Myers comedy from the early 90s that proves Mike Myers is only funny when doing a character like Wayne or Austin Powers.  Though maybe all the Scottish stuff in this was his inspiration for Shrek.  BTW, did you know Chris Farley was supposed to be Shrek?  After he died Mike Myers took over the role.  That's more interesting than anything in this movie, though it did at least have a twist to not make it completely predictable. (1/5)

Spun:  This is kind of like a slightly less depressing Requiem for a Dream.  Jason Schwartzman is a methhead who winds up becoming the driver to a meth cook (Mickey Rourke) and his girlfriend, the late Brittany Murphy.  And then mayhem ensues.  It didn't really hold my interest; I fell asleep about halfway through.  Even rewatching later it didn't really hold my attention very well.  (2/5)

Double Team:  Back in the 90s you had basketball stars like Michael Jordan and Shaq appearing in movies, so someone thought it would be a good idea to team Jordan teammate Dennis Rodman with Jean-Claude Van Damme.  The needlessly complicated plot has JCVD not killing Mickey Rourke, for which he's sent to some island that's like that show "The Prisoner."  He escapes to hook up with Rodman, who's a weapons dealer.  Mayhem ensues that at the end involves landmines and fighting a tiger.  Just because.  Besides the tortured basketball puns (including the title) Rodman at one point says he doesn't play with the "bad boys" anymore, which is a reference to the two championships he won with the "Bad Boys" Detroit Pistons.  Ha.  Fortunately for us Dennis Rodman's acting career never really took off. (2/5)

Ballers:  This is kind of like Showtime's House of Lies meets ESPN's old Playmakers show.  The Rock(!!!) is a former NFL player turned "financial manager" which largely means getting his players out of sex scandals.  Like Spike's Blue Mountain State there's not really any football, though it's because this takes place during the lengthy offseason.  Those who talk about a lack of diversity on TV would be happy about this as Rob Corddry plays the token white guy in the cast.  Overall I liked it as like the other shows I mentioned it's kind of a soap opera with sports.  The end was a little too happy, not really setting anything up for a Season 2.  Not that I wanted a "Game of Thrones" style mega-downer ending, but everything seemed to work out too neatly.  The real question I kept having is if Omar Benson Miller is Forest Whittaker's son; he looks so much like him but the IMDB page didn't really say anything.  Anyway, it was on HBO but you can find it on HBO Go or on demand or something.  (2.5/5)

And since apparently no one read last week's, I'm going to rerun it.  Suck it.

Justice League:  Gods & Monsters:  This is an alternate universe or "Elseworlds" tale where Superman is the son of Zod, Wonder Woman is the granddaughter of the "Highfather," and Batman is a scientist who turned into a vampire.  While not evil like the Crime Syndicate (the real Justice League's doppelgangers) this is a lot grittier Justice League.  When someone starts rubbing out scientists in ways that look like the Justice League is responsible, they have to find the real killer before the government wipes them out.  This was really good.  The bad guy wasn't too easy to spot, so that made it better than if it had just been Lex Luthor or someone obviously evil.  While it's a cartoon featuring superheroes it is definitely not for your little kiddies, especially the "Red Wedding" on Apokolips.  This is more for fans of grownup comics like "Watchmen."  The vampire Batman makes me wish they'd do a movie version of the Batman: Red Rain graphic novel. (4/5)

Enough Said:  I haven't watched this whole movie in one sitting but I caught pretty much the whole thing in pieces.  Basically Julia Louise-Dreyfuss and James Gandolfini are single parents whose kids are about to leave the nest.  And they develop a relationship but things don't necessarily go that smoothly.  It was OK but the ending is the kind where it just sort of ends without resolution.  And obviously there won't be a sequel since Gandolfini is dead. (2/5)

The Barber:  Similar to the Kevin Costner movie "Mr. Brooks" this is about a young guy who hooks up with a serial killer to try to learn the craft.  Twenty years ago Floyd Visser terrorized Chicago by stalking and killing young women.  A police detective thought he had Visser nailed but he ended up going free and the detective killed himself with his young son in the next room.  Skip forward to the present in a small town where Visser is working as a barber who is a pillar of the community.  A young guy shows up and wants to be trained in how to kill people.  It's pretty obvious what's going on but the movie throws a curve ball near the end that's just a red herring.  Maybe you can guess what's going on just from the description.  Anyway, it's a good movie for the most part.  Scott Glenn does a dark turn on his recent kung-fu master roles in "MARVEL'S Daredevil" and "Sucker Punch" as the supposed serial killer and mentor.  (3/5)

Stranger Than Fiction:  I usually avoid Will Ferrell movies but eventually I decided that since this was not a lame comedy and involved writing I could watch it.  Basically it's about an IRS agent who starts to hear an author's narration and finds out she's planning to kill him in a book.  As writers you've probably all had a character who was supposed to die and you didn't really want to go through with it.  So is the problem for the author in the movie, especially when her character shows up on her doorstep.  Makes you wonder how GRR Martin can so gleefully kill off so many characters. Overall it's a decent movie; one of Ferrell's better performances. (3/5)

The Mexican:  This movie paired Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts when they were still pretty much at the height of their popularity.  Neither one is of course "the Mexican;" the title refers to a fancy old gun in Mexico that Brad Pitt has to retrieve, but things get complicated when the car he leaves it in is stolen.  Meanwhile, Julia Roberts is kidnapped by James Gandolfini and they start to bond, though he's gay so they don't bond in that way.  Anyway, it's a mostly fun crime movie with a few twists and turns to keep it interesting. (3/5)

Detention:  The description was a girl in detention has to save her class from a masked killer at the prom.  Which seems straight-forward enough.  But somehow it works time travel, body swapping, aliens, and a guy with fly blood in his veins into the mix.  The result is very, very odd and yet a lot of it is pretty funny.  If you ever read or saw John Dies at the End it's kind of like that as far as "horror"-type movies go.  And someone like me enjoyed all the 90s references. (2.5/5)

The Phantom:  This was from the brief period in the 90s when they tried to revive ancient 30s heroes.  Basically the idea here was to combine Indiana Jones with a superhero movie.  The result was a lot better than The Shadow, but still not all that great.  Since it was an origin story for a property dating from my grandparents' time, it would have been nice to get some background on who the Phantom is before 90% of the movie has gone by.  Anyway, it was decent though it could have used some better effects too. (2.5/5)

Enemy Mine:  I probably watched this on VHS back in the 80s but it was on HBO so I thought I'd revisit it.  The effects have really not aged well.  The overall story is pretty decent where two pilots, one human and one "Drac" crash onto a desolate planet and become friends.  There are a couple of plot holes it seems near the end especially as Dennis Quaid basically comes back from the dead to save the day despite that he had spent hours (if not days) being shipped off the planet to a space station.  They didn't realize he was dead?  Between that and the crappy effects it's a little hard to watch. (2/5)

Reno 911! Miami:  I only caught a few minutes of this show when it was on Comedy Central, usually before or after South Park.  Anyway, somehow it got a movie that has a completely implausible plot.  The Reno sheriffs are the only left to patrol Miami when the real police force is trapped in a convention hall.  So they have to keep the city safe and find who did it.  Hilarity is supposed to ensue but didn't really.  Paul Rudd and Patton Oswalt guest star as the bad guys, the former doing a Scarface impersonation. (2/5)

Epic Movie:  Speaking of movies that aren't really funny!  I didn't really choose to watch it; I just left it on HBO and didn't go fetch the remote.  Anyway, this was made in 2007 so it's a mash-up of movies from 2005-2006 like Chronicles of Narnia, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, X-Men Last Stand, and Pirates of the Caribbean with bits from Snakes on a Plane, The da Vinci Code, Superman Returns, and Harry Potter.  As you'd expect it's cheap, low-rent reference "humor" that is mostly pretty lame. (1/5)

Community Season 6:  Before Yahoo! bought an original series, it would have been nice if they had actually developed a decent Roku app to watch it on.  I think their app was mostly designed for video clips, so watching a whole 30-minute-ish episode it kept buffering.  Plus there's no sign-in so there's no way to resume when the thing bombs.  You could say it's my connection but I watched Seasons 1-5 on Hulu without much of a problem.  Anyway, the problem especially with this season is cast attrition.  They had pretty much the same group through the first 4 seasons then Chevy Chase left and shortly after Donald Glover left.  They replaced Chevy Chase with Mike from "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" but he's gone in this season as well as original cast member Yvette Nicole Brown.  The new additions aren't really great either.  The Paget Brewster character was pretty well worthless though the Keith David one is better because Keith David is awesome; he's #2 on my list of guys I'd like to do an audiobook for me--after James Earl Jones.  Anyway, when you've replaced half your cast almost it's hard to keep things going at the same level.  The loss of Donald Glover is probably the most noticeable because Abed without Troy is like Inspector Spacetime without Constable Reggie (or Dr. Who without a companion, Sherlock without Watson, Bert without Ernie); it leaves no one to help build blanket forts and so forth.  I'm just not sure what the point of the sixth season really was.  It didn't really advance any character development and except for a sort of Ed Wood-ish sci-fi movie there wasn't much in terms of madcap adventures; the dean didn't even wear any funny outfits.  As a backhanded compliment, it wasn't as bad as Netflix's season of "Arrested Development."  The showrunners liked to talk about "six seasons and a movie" so I guess now it's time to Kickstarter a movie into existence.  Though I don't know why.  Has there been a single good movie out of an existing comedy (not a big screen reboot)?  The Simpsons was OK, South Park was lame, and I don't know about Sex and the City or Entourage.  It works better with sci-fi series like Star Trek or Firefly.  That's a long way of saying this was not the greatest. (2/5)

The League Season 6:  This originally aired this time last year when I was living in motels.  I don't think there's a motel except maybe the fanciest that would have FXX on its channels and it's really not good enough of a show to buy on Amazon.  FX is kind of assholes in that they make you wait a whole year to watch the prior season on streaming or buy it on DVD; they do the same shit with Archer and Always Sunny in Philadelphia and it really sucks.  I mean at least put the DVD out a couple months later; it's not like they rerun these that much and again, who the hell has FXX?  So, um, anyway, this is basically more of the same meathead comedy about a fantasy football league.  Since obviously they film these in advance sometimes the inaccurate predictions of the football season are some of the best humor.  Like in Season 5 where the one couple on the show was competing to get Rams running back Isaiah Pead who in real life never amounted to anything except to have a funny name.  Anyway, you've never watched seasons 1-5 and you probably never will, so why am I even bothering to talk about this?  But then that's true for most everything else on here. It does always make me want to play fantasy football, though I usually remember pretty quick why I don't:  it's super annoying.  (2/5)

If you want an indication of how unoriginal Hollywood is, there are at least 7 Leprechaun movies for some reason.  The first one was notable mostly for starring Jennifer Aniston just before she made it big in Friends.  Since they were all on Crackle I decided to watch the others, though Crackle got rid of them before I finished but Netflix to the rescue!  Which is better since Netflix doesn't have commercials.

Leprechaun:  The original and still the best, which isn't saying much.  The plot setup doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  An Irish guy captures a leprechaun in Ireland (somehow), steals his gold, and then goes back to his house in North Dakota, where the leprechaun tracks him down.  Ten years later, a guy buys the house and decides to bring his daughter (Jennifer Aniston) from LA to help spruce it up.  Then a little kid and a mentally challenged painter find the gold and mayhem ensues.  It's an OK blend of action and humor, though I don't think it was good enough to spawn five sequels and a reboot. (2.5/5)

Leprechaun 2:  So the evil Leprechaun has waited 1000 years to claim his bride--the descendant of some chick he was going to marry but then she died--and it just so happens that the tree he lives in is transplanted to Hollywood, where the girl he's supposed to marry just so happens to be.  Convenient, no?  But the leprechaun is ugly and she's in love with some loser, so obviously she doesn't want to marry him.  Mayhem ensues. I fell asleep the first time with like 10 minutes left so I had to rewind to the not-so-thrilling conclusion. (2/5)

Leprechaun 3:  There's pretty much no continuity with these.  Somehow though the leprechaun was blown up in the last movie in this one he is frozen as a statue until someone takes off a magic necklace.  Then he rampages through Vegas to get back a gold shilling.  Again I fell asleep the first time around. I caught up later to find out that some loser gets bit by the leprechaun and starts turning into one.  Meanwhile anyone who makes a wish on the missing gold coin gets it granted--though is soon killed by the leprechaun in some bizarre over-the-top fashion.  Guess it's good I didn't find any gold coins when I was in Vegas.  The way they beat the Leprechaun seemed pretty implausible.  I mean setting fire to gold with a blowtorch would just melt it, right?  At best.  It wouldn't make the stuff disappear.  And if there was still one coin left, wouldn't the leprechaun still be alive?  I'm overthinking it I know. (2/5)

Leprechaun 4:  This would have to be in the running for worst movie ever.  The plot makes absolutely no sense.  Somehow the leprechaun is in space in the future and trying to kidnap and marry an alien princess.  A ship with a bunch of dim-witted soldiers is sent to stop him.  There's a parody of the scene from Alien where the leprechaun bursts out of some dude's dick.  If that's not enough for you there's the transvestite cyborg dance number and creepy spider-scorpion-guy.  Between the nonsensical story, hammy acting, and awful effects it makes me yearn for great films like Batman & Robin. (1/5)

Leprechaun 5:  To say this was an improvement isn't saying much since there was literally nowhere to go--except "to the hood."  The lack of continuity continues as we basically forget the 4th movie existed, which is for the best.  In the 70s Ice-T finds a leprechaun statue and steals its gold flute and puts the leprechaun in his office, where its unleashed when some wanna-be rappers rob the place.  And then mayhem ensues.  This was pretty much offensive to every ethnic group as well as those of good taste.  But it's probably the only place where you can see the guy from "Willow" and various Star Wars movies rapping. (2/5)

Leprechaun 6:  The problem when you switch writers and directors with pretty much every movie is there's no consistency.  Like at the end of the last movie the leprechaun was still alive.  Then at the start of this one he's frozen or whatever again until some black kids "in tha hood" find his gold and reawaken him.  In some of the movies the leprechaun is always rhyming and others (like this) he isn't; I guess it depends how lazy the writer is.  In some movies the leprechaun uses magic a lot and others (like this) he really doesn't.  There was a lot less goofy rapping and stuff so it's a little less offensive.  It's kind of annoying that the leprechaun is seemingly killed about two-dozen times.  He's shot, burned, punched repeatedly, has his eye gouged out with electric hair clippers, stuffed into an incinerator, but somehow he can't survive falling into wet cement.  Um, really? (2/5)

Leprechaun Origins:  This was a reboot from last year.  Like all the other reboots of horror movie franchises it's pretty lame.  Basically this is just a generic "cabin in the woods" story.  Four dopey young people are taken to a remote village in Ireland and preyed upon by the "leprechaun" which according to this is a feral combination of Predator and Gollum.  As bad as most of the original Leprechaun movies were, at least they had a sense of humor.  This was just a total bore. I mean there's not even a sense of irony or any winking references to the previous movies or anything.  I'm not sure if whoever made this even watched any of the other movies.  To top it off, it's the annoying kind of movie that stretches the credits out to like 15 minutes so they can pad the run time.  Interspersed between screen of the credits are shots of someone looking around a basement.  After a while it's like, "Is there a point to this?"  I mean in the "Dawn of the Dead" remake they showed footage from a video camera at the end to show you what happened to the people.  This was just to give an excuse to stretch the credits and lead up to a lame "scare" where the "leprechaun" leaps out at you.  The whole thing was so unoriginal that it was a total snooze.  (0/5)

Writing Wednesday: An Anti-Social Experiment Proves There is No Wrong Way to Write Gender Swap Erotica

Reviews are a problem I have had with my gender swap erotica books.  It seems I only get that grumpy 1% of readers who want to bitch and moan about any little thing.  And usually they seem to dissect my books like they're supposed to be Proust.  Which is funny because I look at other authors who write on similar topics and they get these glowing reviews.  I read their books and think, "Really?  Why don't the jerks who complain about my books complain about this shit?"

I had this thought:  maybe it's that I make my books look too good.  I mean I spend a few minutes on the cover and try to get an image that fits instead of just some random picture.  I actually spell the title correctly even!  The formatting inside the book actually exists, which is to say there are paragraphs that are indented and the text doesn't show up enormous or all in one little column or anything weird like that.  And I go through the books to proofread them for any typos, though of course there's always the odd typo that I'll miss until later and maybe not even then.

So my thought was that maybe because I make my books actually not look like crap, I get these people who want to hold them to some ridiculous standard.  With that thought in mind, I decided to try an experiment.

I had recently written two books.  The first one I wasn't all that happy about.  So I decided that one I would screw around with to see if people would still complain or if they'd rave about it or what.  This was my prototype cover:

I changed it to this based on a "cover" I saw someone use recently:

You know you like this better!

Then I changed the title to "Changed in to his daughter's little sister" just like that with the typo.  Seriously I saw someone who misspelled their own fucking title!  And yes their book is probably outselling yours--and many of mine.  Instead of my usual pseudonym I made up a silly pun-based one:  Ivana Johnson.  Like Ivana Tinkle if you ever watched The Simpsons, which apparently most of you haven't.  Say it out loud and it might make sense.

The inside the book I didn't feel like going in to add unnecessary typos, but I did make the text really big and the indent really far in so it would look goofy.

At the same time I released the other book in the normal way.  With my usual pseudonym and formatting and stuff.

The result of this experiment?  Really no difference at all.  They have exactly the same number of sales, though the "normal" one has maybe more KDP Select pages read.  And they have the same number of reviews, ie 0.

So there you go:  put a lot of effort into it looking like no effort and you get the same as your usual amount of effort.  It's actually kind of depressing, like I could just throw anything out there without taking any time on it and someone would still buy it.  But money is money, right?

Donald Trump & Bernie Sanders Show the Good, the Bad, & the Ugly of American Politics

I've been trying not to do political posts because there's still over a year until the election and who really cares?  Yet what's going on the last couple of months has been pretty fascinating in that you have two dark horse candidates who have completely taken over the race.

The Republican side has just been ridiculous right from the start.  It seemed every week there was another hat being thrown into the ring, to the point when Fox "News" had a debate they had to actually make it 2 debates, one a "happy hour" debate, which was basically the kiddie table for those candidates with too little support to be allowed on the main stage.

So when Donald Trump, real estate mogul turned reality TV star turned former reality TV star threw his hat into the ring it wasn't a huge surprise.  The big surprise is that he has a huge lead over actual long-time Republicans like Jeb Bush or Scott Walker.

Meanwhile, the Democrat side seemed a cakewalk this time for Hillary Clinton.  There was no young, charismatic candidate like Barack Obama to stand in the way this time of her getting the nomination.  It seemed like no one was seriously even going to challenge her.

And then an elderly independent senator from Vermont named Bernie Sanders began to pick up more and more support.  Between Sanders gaining ground and the Republicans continuing to flog the dead horse of "Benghazi," Hillary probably has to be having visions of another nomination slipping away.  And at her age it's probably her last chance.

So on both sides you have dark horse candidates who seem to have come from nowhere to start changing the game.  The way they're doing it is in some ways similar, though in some ways vastly different.

I've never been a fan of Trump.  It's more than the stupid hair, though like with Bill Shatner, Sean Connery, etc if you're bald why not just man up about it instead of wearing the bad rug?  And like Jeffrey Feiger or Peyton Manning or Bill Gates he's had the same bad look for like 30 years now.  You'd think these rich guys could actually afford stylists, but I guess it's just part of their "image" or something.

Anyway, Trump has always been a huge hypocrite.  He used to put out these books about how awesome and successful he is while he has declared bankruptcy 4 times.  And he's had probably as many wives as Hugh Hefner.

What annoys me is Trump is a symbol of what's wrong with America in general:  he's a loudmouth billionaire who screws over the little guy but has bullied himself into the race thanks to all that money.  They say the first one to mention the Nazis loses an Internet argument but in Trump's case he's borrowing the Hitler playbook of finding a scapegoat for gullible people to focus their fears on.  Only instead of the Jews it's illegal immigrants.  Or maybe I should say he's using the Mayor Quimby playbook because that's exactly what Springfield's mayor did in The Simpsons when he needed to distract people from the costly Bear Patrol fiasco, which nearly led to Apu being deported.  Anyway, the Tea Party and NRA have accomplished a lot by pandering to baseless white redneck fears of "socialism" and Obama taking all the guns away and now Trump is just taking it to another level with all the anti-immigration crap.

Which, look, illegal immigration is a problem, but it's not THE problem Americans should be focusing on.  How about that billionaires like Trump own 95% of the wealth in America?  How about that Obamacare hasn't really fixed health care in America yet?  How about climate change that's creating increasingly uninhabitable conditions?  How about Social Security that will be as bankrupt as Trump's companies have been in the next 20 years?  Or how about that we'll be out of oil in the next 50 years?  These are all serious problems that aren't going to go away by building a completely impractical wall between the US and Mexico.  (And hello, walls never work.  See the Berlin Wall, Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall, that wall France built after World War I that did nothing to keep out the Nazis, and so forth.)

You know who actually talks about those issues I mentioned:  Bernie Sanders.  Which is why I like him.  On Yahoo! they had an article about why Bernie is succeeding and I said basically, "Well duh, he's actually talking about real issues that affect the 99%."  You know, instead of pandering to baseless fears of the illegal immigrant bogeyman who will rape your sister, steal your TV, and then blow up the White House.  Of course that fired up the idiots wailing, "Socialism!"  To which I say, "So the fuck what?"  Hello geniuses, countries like China, Japan, Germany, etc. have been kicking our asses for a long time thanks to socialism.  There are a lot of countries that have a much better level education, health care, and standard of living than America because we blindly shout "We're Number One!  Yay, Capitalism!" even when we're not close to #1 because we let people like Trump and the Koch Bros. buy the government to make it work for them instead of us.

The thing is, Bernie Sanders has been a senator for a while so he's not really "one of us" but he's a lot closer to one of us than Trump is.

What both guys have in common is that they are perceived as "straight-shooters."  It's a far cry from the mealy-mouthed, sound bytes for the cameras, try to offend no one stuff you get from Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush.  I think in both cases it's because they don't have to care.  Trump doesn't get the nomination and he's still rich and he'll worm his way back onto TV eventually.  Bernie doesn't get the nomination and he's still a senator and he has still at least made some people actually consider important issues.  Neither one really has to worry (yet) about trying to placate the mass audience.

Michael Offutt suggested Trump is just trolling the Republicans and voters in general with this campaign and in that way maybe paving the way for a Clinton victory.  If only I could buy into that theory.  I think he just saw field with no firm contenders and decided to seize his chance if not for a nomination than at least to get some publicity.  Mission accomplished, right?

They're both also putting their parties on the defensive.  In Trump's case now you have other Republicans trying to out-crazy him on immigration with Jeb Bush trying to trademark "anchor babies" as a term of the children of illegal immigrants born in the US and Ben Carson promising to blow up illegals with drones and Scott Walker vowing to build a fence along the Canadian border to protect us from all the evil French Canadians I guess.  In Bernie's case now Hillary has to actually take positions on liberal issues.  It's also making candidates have to spend more money and time than they probably ever wanted to nearly 14 months before Election Day.

This is a situation you would never see in the UK or Canada where parliamentary elections are just a few weeks long.  Which is what makes American politics so annoying and so fun at the same time.  Of course after all this bickering and grandstanding, it's always kind of disheartening when less than a third of Americans bother to vote.  Maybe that number will be up in 2016; it can't be worse than 2014's turnout numbers.

Writing Wednesday: Do You Need to Write Good?

At length I have talked about annoying message board troll JayG, but why not one more time?  Actually I've heard this before from other people too but it's one of his favorite lines to trot out:  good prose leads to being successful.  If you're not successful, it's because your prose isn't good enough.

To which I always snicker.  Come on, dude, if that were true then literary books would be at the top of the bestseller list.  EL James would still be writing fanfics.  Nicholas Sparks would be doing...whatever he did before The Notebook.  The reality is that most literary books barely sell enough to qualify as midlist--if that.  Like art movies, the public rarely has much interest in arty books because newsflash:  the public is barely literate and thus doesn't give a fuck about prose.

Saying that prose is the determining factor is like saying the quality of someone's voice determines who will have a good music career.  Thanks to computers those who couldn't carry a tune in a bucket can have a hit album.  And it's definitely not about songwriting because many successful musicians either don't write their own songs or their lyrics are fucking terrible.  (Looking at you, Train.) 

To me "prose" is something to target because it's easier to accept for a lot of people than the truth, which is that it's all about the marketing.  If you're getting shot down by a hundred publishers, it's easier to think it's because you haven't tweaked your prose enough than to think it's because your story isn't salable.  I mean, come on, prose is something you can fix.  Having a marketable story is much more difficult.

Of course if you think about it logically, 95% (or more) of people you submit to won't even read a fucking word of your book's prose.  The only prose they're reading is your query letter.  Which, hello, that's marketing.   Thus having a marketable story is much, much  more important than having wonderful prose.

Not that you can write completely like crap.  If you have typos every other word you're just going to give any agent or editor a headache.  What you really need to strive for is competence.  You don't have to write like the latest Pulitzer Prize winner (whoever that is) to get your book published.  You just need a good idea with writing that doesn't completely suck.

So there you go:  strive to not completely suck.  Words to live by.  Or don't.  Why do I care?

BTW, recently I was overdosing on schadenfreude concerning JayG.  He was trying to big stuff someone by crowing about how adopting Dwight Swain's teachings led to him "selling" his next book.  When he mentioned the book I looked it up and found out he "sold" it to some pathetic fly by night operation that shortly after flew the coop.  This publisher sucks so much that there's not even a Chapter 1 and there's a typo on the back cover.  Of course he lied about that and said the person who mentioned that was just a troll, so I went and bought a copy for $3 off Amazon.  And yup, the "troll" was right.

Embiggen to see the typo.

The really funny part is I opened the front cover and found a personal note to his "favorite sister."  Ouch.  But I can see my sisters selling any books I give them--if anywhere would take them.  Or just dump it in one of those Better World Books boxes outside Meijer stores.

See, I'm not lying.

Now I sort of feel bad.  The original publisher of A Hero's Journey wasn't great but at least they're still in business.  This JayG is like the real-life version of the Dennis Farina character in "Authors Anonymous" except the back cover of his book wasn't in Chinese, so there's that.

So yeah, that's the value of "good prose."