Photobomb: Three Age Regression Thrillers with NO Gender Swapping, FREE Today!

Back in 2013 I had an idea for a story based on an old episode of Goosebumps which was in turn based on a book I presume that was called Say Cheese and Die...Again!  (My sister and I like to put a weary sigh into the "Again" part, like Ugh, here we go saying cheese and dying again.  Anyway the gist of that episode was there was a haunted camera or some shit and when this kid's picture was taken he got really fat and his friend got really thin.

In my story "Photobomb" a midde-aged woman and her annoying friend go out to a bar after a 25 year class reunion.  They're taking a selfie on the annoying friend's phone and in the mirror this ugly old woman shows up in the background--photobombing them.  The annoying friend makes some snide comments and the old woman overhears.  It turns out she's a witch and she puts a curse on them that whenever they get their picture taken, they go back in time.

The first time they go back to college at a very dark moment for the main character.  Then they go back to high school, then junior high, then a fat camp, then first grade, and finally day care.  Along the way the main character learns some things about her life and finds out things aren't quite as she remembers them.

It wasn't a terribly long story, so I came up with a few more.  The story "Carousel" was inspired by Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.  In particular there was a part when someone went on a carousel and regressed to like 12 years old.  In this case there's a teenage girl and her annoying mom who go to a carnival and at the carousel meet a creepy carnie.  The next morning the mom seems younger but her daughter doesn't make much of it.  Then the next morning her mom is a teenager about her age--and less mature.  That night the daughter tracks her down to the carnival and hears weird music that's like the carousel music played backwards.  Eventually she finds out that every night her mom has been getting on the carousel and as it goes backwards it makes her younger.  And mayhem ensues.

The third story, "Coven" was inspired by the Tales of the Scarlet Knight books.  In the later ones a witch and her lesbian girlfriend produce a baby they name Renee.  In this case that's somewhat true, though the identity of the father is changed.  Anyway, Renee is a little kid who hears a voice calling to her from a forest behind her aunt's house in the French countryside.  She finds a tree that seems to have a face.  It tells her that it used to be a witch who went against Renee's mother's coven.  Renee frees the evil spirit of the witch, which encourages her to challenge her aunt.  Renee finds she has the power to suck a witch's power out of them.  She uses it to turn them into powerless little kids.  There's kind of a Kill Bill-type thing going where she travels from one place to another to challenge each witch of the coven, until at last she comes back to her own mother.  Lots of mayhem ensuing.

You can get the full book of all three stories free just for today.  Of course if you have Kindle Unlimited you can get it free all the time.  Or I guess if you have Amazon Prime you can probably rent it for free too.

There was a fourth story, Race Against Time, but it ran so long that I spun it into its own book.  That's about a police detective (Lottie Donovan of the Scarlet Knight books because I'm meta like that) who is trapped in a sadistic virtual reality game with her kidnapped daughter.  There are a bunch of bizarre challenges that also reference other things I wrote (meta inside of meta!) and for each challenge they fail, Donovan gets 2 years younger and her daughter 1 because she's 36 and her daughter is 18 so do the math.  And yeah there are 18 chapters (plus an epilogue) so guess what happens?

Originally I published both books under the PT Dilloway name but later I decided they worked better as Eric Filler books.  Neither has any gender swapping involved, which is maybe why they don't sell as well as other books.

The Worldwide Leader No Longer Is

This is not about politics.  It's about sports.  For 30+ years ESPN billed itself as "the worldwide leader in sports" except now from commercials on Fox at least this is no longer true.  ESPN has been dethroned by Fox's relatively new FS1 network.

This isn't unexpected.  I read an article somewhere a few months ago about growing problems at ESPN.  A big part of it is viewership is down while they shelled out far too much money for properties like Monday Night Football.  This is probably behind the recent talent drain that saw commentators Bill Simmons, Skip Bayless, and Colin Cowherd exit along with Monday Night Football broadcaster Mike Tirico.  And of course all those people landed at competing networks:  Simmons on HBO, Bayless & Cowherd on FS1, and Tirico on NBC.

Like a lot of brick-and-mortar stores like Sears, KMart, Barnes & Noble, and Best Buy it seems ESPN is getting left behind as the world around it changes.  Let's face it, now that you can check scores, news, and highlights on your phone, people don't need "SportsCenter" like they used to; it's pretty much as antiquated as it made your local sports page.  It has become another crumbling institution.  It's kind of sad.  I wouldn't be surprised if they start to lose some of their properties like Monday Night Football or the college football playoffs to rival networks in a few years.  Typically what you see with these institutions is a slow downward spiral that is all but impossible to pull out of, at least never to the previous heights.

The Pipe Dream of Ending Trade Deals & Bringing Jobs Back

A big part of Trump's platform is ending trade deals like NAFTA and bringing manufacturing jobs to America.  This sounds good, especially in the Rust Belt, where manufacturing has been suffering since the 80s, but like building a wall across the southern border it's completely impractical.

Think of it this way:  let's say you're a big company like Apple or GM or Nike and you have products being made in China.  You've spent a bunch of money on a plant there and hiring workers.  To bring those jobs back, you'd have to build or refurbish a new plant in the USA.  You'd have to hire all new workers.  And you'd have to pay those workers much more per hour than the Chinese workers and provide them with more benefits.  That's tens of millions of dollars of investment.

And if you're Apple do you think your foreign-owned competition like Samsung is going to do that?  Hell no.  So you're spending a shitload of money and hampering your manufacturing operation for months or even a year as you bring in a new workforce and get them up to speed, which makes your company a lot less profitable.  That in turn makes your shareholders nervous, which leads to losing stock value, which leads to executives losing big bonuses.

So what's the motivation for Corporate America to do this?  The goodness of their hearts?  HA HA HA HA HA!!!  Do you think they'd ever let Trump, Hillary, Gary Johnson, or anyone else set up the sort of tariffs and protectionist policies that could make it unprofitable for them to do business overseas?  Hell no.  And as much as both parties like to give lip service to jobs for the working folks, they care far more about big corporate donations going to them and not the other side.

As soon as a job leaves American borders it's gone.  It ain't coming back.  I mean, again, we've seen this since the 80s, if not sooner in the Midwest and Northeast.  How many textile mills in Maine or upstate New York ever reopened?  None.  Plenty of Big Three plants in the Midwest closed and remain eyesores in cities like Detroit or mostly-vacant lots like in Wixom, which I pass by most every day.  The best analogy is the Ford plant in Wixom was bulldozed and what replaced it?  An RV dealer and a Menard's.  High-paying union jobs with good benefits replaced by minimum wage and commission jobs.  But even if Trump is elected and gets a "good deal" from China you can't just snap your fingers and rebuild that plant and restock it with workers.

I watched 60 Minutes Sunday and they talked to a Trump supporter in Ohio (funnily his wife is a rabid Hillary supporter) who showed the reporter the steel plant where he worked.  It's been out of business for 7 months and already looks like a ruin.  So I hate to tell that guy, but that plant is never going to reopen.  Though maybe in time they'll bulldoze it and put up a Wal-Mart.

The ugly truth no one wants to mention is that there are too many people and too few "good" jobs.  Not just here, but all over the world.  And the problem is only getting worse.  No election is going to fix that.

When I was in middle school, every student council election, candidates would promise they'd get a pop machine in the cafeteria.  Three years later, still no pop machine.  (And then that school was closed, so they probably never did get it.)  That's what jobs are in elections:  everyone promises to bring jobs and no one really does so 2-4 years later we have another crop of candidates promising jobs.  At some point maybe we take the hint?

Goliath is the Legal Thriller I Hoped "Better Call Saul" Would Be But Isn't

I remember five or six years ago I watched the (failed) pilot for a Zombieland series on Amazon Instant Video.  It was not good:  no name actors, low-budget effects, and a fairly blah story.  Since then Amazon has gotten a lot better with shows like Transparent, Mad Dogs, The Man in the High Castle, and The Tick.  Goliath is the latest addition to that list.  It's a legal thriller from David E Kelley, who knows his way around legal thrillers like LA Law, The Practice, Ally McBeal, and Boston Legal, plus other series like Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, etc.  He was a huge deal in the 90s and early 2000s, though I think he kind of fell off the radar a bit in the last ten years.  Like Kelley, most of the stars of the show were bigger stars 10-20 years ago like Billy Bob Thornton, William Hurt, and Maria Bello.  Still, it makes for a winning combination.

In the title I mentioned AMC's Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul.  I watched the first season and really wanted it to be good, but it wasn't.  Instead of actually focusing on low-rent lawyer Saul Goodman and any actual cases, they decided to do this whole lame prequel/origin story thing that was boring as shit.  The reason why 99% of prequels suck is they spend most of their time trying to build mythology and explaining useless shit (the origin of Wolverine's jacket, revealed at last!) so they don't have time to actually create a decent story.

So while they begin with something of the same premise--a low-rent lawyer who used to be part of a big firm and is now working out of a seedy motel and the bar next door--Goliath can actually tell a story instead of trying to tell us the origin of  Saul's loud wardrobe.  The story is pretty simple:  a boat blows up on the ocean and the guy on board is ruled to have committed suicide, except his sister doesn't think so.  At the behest of another ambulance chaser, she goes to Billy Bob Thornton, who basically starts out as his character from Bad Santa if he were a lawyer instead of a safe-cracker.  Really they could have called this Bad Lawyer if they'd wanted.  Anyway, he isn't willing to represent her, but then they sleep together and he takes the case against a weapons company who is represented by the big firm he helped to create but left after a murderer he defended went out and killed again.

The big firm is run by William Hurt with a Harvey Dent-type look of half his face being badly burnt.  He sits up in his office with the blinds closed while spying on everyone and listening to opera music.  It definitely makes for a creepy vibe.  As you'd expect there are a lot of high-priced assholes working for him, one of whom is Maria Bello, who also is Billy Bob Thornton's ex-wife (in the show).  Like Netflix's Jessica Jones there's a gratuitous lesbian attorney subplot involving Maria Bello and the head of the defense team for the weapons company.

From there the big law firm does pretty much everything they can to keep Billy Bob Thornton and his ragtag team from taking the case to trial and winning it.  They run over his client, frame him for a DUI (which included tazing his daughter), set up two witnesses on drug smuggling charges, and even put a dead body in his trunk.  He has some dirty tricks too like having a prostitute friend sleep with a cop to coerce some information from him.

So yeah neither side is squeaky clean, but that's the real world for you; it's never really black hats vs. white hats.  The case does eventually get to trial, where it's hampered by a judge doing everything possible to help the defense and an important witness who has a stroke.  Who wins?  You can watch to find out.

There were some things I don't think were really dealt with adequately:  who kills the mysterious "Karl Stoltz" for one thing.  How did William Hurt get burnt?  (A flashback like they do in Breaking Bad and Arrow would have been good there.)  Other than having slept with Billy Bob Thornton and the other side's lead attorney, Maria Bello doesn't really contribute a lot to the story.  And at the end there's a "hot mic" (or cell phone) moment that's a cliche I get tired of.  There are some unanswered questions, but that's for season 2, right?

If you have Amazon Prime you can watch the entire 8-episode season for free.  Unlike some of those old series on Amazon it's actually worth the time.

BTW, I was glad among all the dirty tricks, the bad guys didn't kill the stray dog Billy Bob Thornton was always feeding and even letting sleep in his room on cold nights.  I kept fearing someone was going to do a Godfather and leave the corpse in his bed or something.  Maybe they're saving that for next year.

Counting Down to Halloween

With Halloween approaching, I figure it's time to break out my horror movie box sets, of which I have two.  While I've seen plenty of horror movies I don't actually own that many of them.  But anyway, here's my movie countdown to Halloween:

• Oct 21:  Halloween 6:  Producer's Cut (the version that nearly makes sense)
• Oct 22:  Halloween 3
• Oct 23:  Halloween 2 (the original, not the reboot)
• Oct 24:  Halloween 4
• Oct 25:  Halloween 5
• Oct 26:  Halloween H20
• Oct 27:  Halloween Resurrection
• Oct 28:  Sleepaway Camp
• Oct 29:  Sleepaway Camp 2 & 3
• Oct 30:  Jason X & The Crow (Because it's about Devil's Night)
• Oct 31:  Halloween (the original)

If I have time I have some other ones I could slip in like Shaun of the Dead, Young Frankenstein, Darkman, and American Psycho.  But even I have my limits.

The Infiltrator: Breaking Bad in the 80s

I haven't watched Netflix's Narcos so I don't really know a whole lot about Pablo Escobar and his drug empire.  Really by the time he went down I was like 7, so it's not like I was following it on the news back in the day.  Anyway, The Infiltrator is about an undercover agent who helps to bring down Escobar's operation.

Bryan Cranston, who built his own drug empire in Breaking Bad, plays Robert Mazur, a Customs agent who could retire when he's "wounded" by his microphone burning him while on a sting.  Instead he goes undercover as a Mob-connected guy named Bob Musella--the name taken from a tombstone in the cemetery, which is apparently how you came up with aliases before the Internet.  He lures in some low-level players in Escobar's operation and then starts to wrap in the bigger names, up to Escobar himself.

It's not really as interesting as you might think it would be.  There is some gun play and close calls, but Bob is never all that deep into it.  He's not out making drug deals or hanging out with Escobar in Colombia or anything like that.  Mostly he's double-dating with his fake wife (Diane Kruger) and one of Escobar's top men Roberto and his wife.

It's a good reminder that reality, even when you dramatize it, is usually not as exciting as fiction. (2.5/5)

Fun Fact:  I watched part of an interview with Bryan Cranston on 60 Minutes.  Apparently while Walter White and Hal on Malcolm in the Middle wore briefs, the actor prefers boxers.  Yay, journalism!

Bonus:  One of the previews on the DVD was for the Terence Malick film Knight of Cups.  It stars Christian Bale as an uninspired Hollywood writer who has problems and does...stuff.  I put it on mostly because it was free on Amazon Prime and it was Sunday night and I thought it'd put me to sleep.  It couldn't even do that effectively!  The best way to describe it is that it's like a 2-hour cologne/perfume commercial.  You know, the kind with some big celebrity wandering around to pretentious, "symbolic" imagery with a breathless voiceover.  Like Malick's Tree of Life it's a pretty vanilla story with a lot of showy visuals to make it seem weighty.  Tony Laplume will love it.  Normal people, not so much. (1/5) (Fun Fact:  Instead of this, rent The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, Leaving Las Vegas, or Permanent Midnight, all of which do a better job with Hollywood writers who have problems.)

Halloween Tricks and Treats!

Halloween is coming up and yesterday I released my fifth Halloween-themed gender swap story:  Transformed for Halloween 3:  Curse of the Dead Girl.  I already showed one of the characters on Friday, the anime babe based on Sailor Moon.

A dark gender swap story not for those under 18 or those with a heart condition! Read it at your own risk.

Four frat brothers go on a beer run for the Halloween party. Greg meets his girlfriend Gretchen at the liquor store, but when his frat brothers abandon them at the store, Gretchen winds up killed in a botched robbery. One year later, the three frat brothers are turned into the objects of their darkest fantasies. But when their fantasies start to become deadly, has Gretchen come back from the other side to take her revenge?

Besides this, I also wrote another one under my other pseudonym:  Trick or Treat 2.

Now that his kids have all left the nest, Clark decides to take a year off from Halloween. Before he can get a chance to relax, though, a young woman in a witch costume shows up at his door to demand candy. When he doesn't comply, he finds out she's a real witch, who changes him and his wife into little girls. Now if they don't want to end up in diapers, they have to get a bucket of candy by midnight.

Both are $2.99 or free on Kindle Unlimited.  But wait, there's more!  Until Friday, you can get the other three Halloween-themed stories for FREE!  That's this:

Five wives, tired of their husbands' behavior, hire a witch to put a curse on them. At midnight on Halloween, the men are transformed into their wives' costumes: a little girl, a schoolgirl, a whore, a Goth girl, and a cheerleader. Now they have to spend all of Halloween in these bodies, under the control of their wives.

This:

In every neighborhood there's a house no one wants to visit. On Waukegan Street it's the house of Old Lady Montgomery. On Halloween night Gabriel Tobman goes up to the front door of the house to play a trick on the old woman. Instead, she's the one dishing out the tricks by turning him into a girl. Now every hour he's getting four years older. The only way to end the curse and get his life back is to have thirteen orgasms by dawn. Can he make it or is he destined to become the new old lady of Waukegan Street?

And This:

As easy as stealing candy from a baby.

For Billy Knutsen this is more difficult than he thought. After he steals Halloween candy from some kids, he and his best friend are turned into little princesses who have to fill their treat bags or be stuck as girls forever.

All free!  No Kindle Unlimited needed!  So even if you never thought about reading those, now you can get them for free.  Plenty of spooky gender swapping to last you through Halloween.

BTW, this is the Dead Girl from Transformed for Halloween 3 in her German restaurant uniform:

Sims I Like: Anime Babe

In the forthcoming Transformed for Halloween 3, three frat brothers are haunted by the spirit of the girl they left to die a year earlier.  Each one becomes their sexual fantasy and is then murdered, sort of Nightmare on Elm Street-style.  A nerd named Melvin's fantasy is the star of a Japanese anime series that's loosely based on Sailor Moon.

The top is a Sailor Moon top I downloaded, as are the boots and skirt.  The hair was probably from a different anime show, but whatever.  I thought the purple would be fun for the hair.  I tried to make the eyes as big and round as possible, but they aren't exactly like anime characters.  And here's just a funny pose I captured:

Luke Cage Packs a Powerful Punch

The short version is to say that I liked Luke Cage more than Jessica Jones, about the same as Daredevil Season 2, and a little less than Daredevil Season 1.

The problem in the first few episodes was the villain.  Cornell "Cottonmouth" Stoaks is a mid-level crime boss in Harlem.  He owns the Harlem's Paradise club where Luke Cage works nights as a dishwasher.  But then one night Luke has to cover the bar and meets Detective Misty Knight (and immediately beds her) while a couple of kids who work/go to the barber shop where Luke works days decide to steal some guns Cottonmouth is selling.  Gradually Luke is drawn into Harlem's underworld.  The problem is with his superstrength and unbreakable skin, all Luke has to do is march down to Harlem's Paradise, beat the crap out of the guards, and snap Cottonmouth's neck.  Instead he goes after Cottonmouth's business, mostly by robbing his "vault" in a community center.  I was seriously wondering why he didn't just go beat the shit out of Cottonmouth and end all this because Cottonmouth doesn't have superpowers like Kilgrave in Jessica Jones and he doesn't have the power (physical and political) of the Kingpin in Daredevil.  So it was really a mismatch.

Fortunately the oft-alluded-to Diamondback finally enters the fray along with the "Judas bullet," a bullet that can penetrate Luke's skin because it's made of alien metal.  Like they needed to invent Kryptonite to have a weapon to make Superman vulnerable, there needed to be something that could make Luke vulnerable (other than mind control) to up the stakes.  With the bad guys and police armed with Judas bullets, Luke couldn't just walk up to any bad guys and kick their asses right away.  So at that point it definitely made the season better.

And kudos for the Justin Hammer/Hammer tech references.  You might remember that from Iron Man 2 back in 2010.  I'm not sure if they ever said what became of Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) at the end of that movie, though I suppose he was rich enough to buy his way out of prison and keep his company going.

Anyway, I suppose some people (like Quentin Tarantino) would like more of the 70s, jive-talking Luke Cage, but in 2016 that would come off as pretty racist.  There were complaints on both sides that it wasn't "black enough" and more ludicrously that there weren't enough white people in the cast, but I thought it walked the tightrope pretty well.  Luke's constant wearing of hoodies, especially when he's confronted by cops in the street, harkens back to the Trayvon Martin incident and especially with what's happened in recent months that gives it more social relevance.  It's good Marvel/ABC sprung to film it in Harlem instead of one of those Vancouver-as-New York kind of deals like the CW does.  Not that I could tell the difference, but other people certainly would be able to.

It probably would have been good if I had found the Luke Cage backstory parts in Jessica Jones, because that was months ago and I was a little fuzzy on some of the details.  While there are a few references to Jessica Jones, Daredevil, and the Punisher, the only character from those to appear is Claire the (former) nurse.  She and Luke come close to going to bed together, but never really make it.  At the end Claire takes the number for martial arts training to provide a bridge to the Iron Fist show that will be coming up.

The end was kind of a bummer as Luke seems heading back to prison.  Though with the evidence to free him in play, he should be able to get free.  I'm not sure whether Season 2 will come before or after the Defenders movie.  If it's after they should start that with Matt Murdoch walking into the prison with the evidence and freeing Luke.  Then you've got two of the Defenders together already.  Genius.

Anyway, I enjoyed most of the season and I'm looking forward to the next one. (3/5)

Sims I Like: Ms. T

Back with this entry I complained that I couldn't make a female character with a Mohawk.  But in an update earlier this year Maxis let you create transgender characters and mix-and-match male/female clothes, hair, and so forth.  So now by using the male hair you can create a female character with a Mohawk.  So I made one for the upcoming My Roommate Changed Me Into a Goth Girl 2 where at the end a guy becomes a tough girl with a pink Mohawk.

Besides the Mohawk she has leather pants, a Ramones T-shirt, boots, and lots of tattoos.  Not as many piercings as there should be, but that's a deficiency in the game.  Another of the mods I picked up was one that lets you get some different skin colors like the really pale white I used here.  There's also blue, green, turquoise, purple, red, yellow, and so forth if you ever want to make aliens.  Pretty sweet.

More Comic Book Reviews You Won't Read and Don't Care About...

The title says it all!  So let's get to it because we all have better things to do be doing than this.

Return of the Living Deadpool:  It's a world where the population has been overrun by zombies and Deadpools!  In Night of the Living Deadpool, he found that when bit by a zombie the zombie would become him.  Now months later there are hundreds of Deadpools around.  Will the real one please stand up?  So basically Deadpool and a girl fight zombies and a lot of Deadpools.  It's far more Deadpool than just about anyone has ever wanted.  Deadpool! (2.5/5)

Arkham War:  During DC's forgettable "Forever Evil" crossover event in 2013 there was a subsection about all the villains of Arkham getting free to overrun Gotham City and split it among themselves while Batman and the other heroes were gone.  Meanwhile Bane gathers an army from Latin America and invades the city to take it over.  I mostly wanted to read it because at one point Bane builds his own Batman armor sort of what Azrael used to defeat him in the 90s, but there wasn't as much of that as I would have liked and the inevitable Batman vs. Bane battle was anything but royale. (2.5/5)

Original Sin:  This was a forgettable Marvel crossover event from 2013 or so.  Someone has killed "The Watcher" this creepy bald alien who lives on the moon and...watches stuff happen but never gets involved.  Someone then uses the stuff the Watcher has saved up over the years to traumatize the heroes.  Notably Thor loses his hammer and later it's picked up by Jane Foster who has since been Thor.  That's probably the only memorable thing to come out of this.  Otherwise it's OK. (2.5/5)

Captain America:  Operation Rebirth:  Back in the 90s Captain America "died" (again) when the serum in his blood petered out or some damned thing.  Anyway, he's brought back to life by his archenemy the Red Skull because Adolf Hitler is taking over a cosmic cube and could destroy all reality.  So they have to work together to stop him but of course there's a double-cross.  The art is extremely 90s and the Avengers team featured at the beginning is pretty pathetic: no Cap, no Iron Man, no Thor, no Hulk, no Vision, etc.  Anyway, another forgettable series because really since then Captain America has "died" and come back probably 3 more times. (2/5)

We Stand on Guard:  Set about a hundred years from now, global warming has prompted America to fake a terrorist attack as an excuse to invade our neighbor to the north.  Years later, a small group of Canucks valiantly fights back.  It's a little heavy-handed but I could definitely see something like this happening, probably sooner than this predicts. This could really have used more than 6 issues because it all happens so quickly.  (3/5)

Amazing Spider-Man:  Worldwide:  I'm not even sure which series renumbering this is anymore.  Marvel seems to renumber their comics every year, now there are so many Amazing Spider-Man #1s and Thor #1s and Captain America #1s and Iron Man #1s that who can keep track?  Anyway, the Secret Wars event handed New York City to Miles Morales Spider-Man so Peter Parker gets to roam the world as a billionaire playboy with lots of cool gadgets.  It really is like Batman only with a sense of humor.  A group called the Zodiac is after stuff Peter's company has and so he and SHIELD have to stop them with new toys like the Spider-Mobile.  Like the rest of Dan Slott's lengthy Spidey run it's lighthearted fun but not too campy.  About the only thing lacking was Spidey's love life.  I'm not sure who he's even supposed to be shacking up with anymore.  (3/5)

Spawn: Origins, Vol 1:  I watched the crappy Spawn movie and the less-crappy Spawn TV series but had never read any Spawn comics until they went on sale a couple weeks ago.  The first two issues are like the first season of the series:  lethargic and confusing.  The last four get things moving a little more.  It's a little less confusing than the TV show and not as dumb as the movie.  Kind of annoying though that it ends in the middle of a story arc where a cyborg hitman is sent by the Mafia to kill Spawn.  Anyway, these were OK even if I don't have the nostalgia working for me like other people. (3/5)

Spawn:  Origins, Vol 2:  I decided to buy the second volume.  It starts off concluding the story from the previous volume as Spawn takes on the cyborg hitman in a not entirely satisfying battle.  From there it's kind of a hodgepodge.  The series by then had I guess enough notoriety to attract some top-flight talent.  Alan Moore of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, etc writes issue #8 where a child murderer Spawn killed travels through Hell and ultimately becomes a Hellspawn.  Neil Gaiman of Sandman, Coraline, American Gods, etc. writes issue #9 about an angel named Angela (ha) who tracks down and kills a Hellspawn in the Middle Ages and is then defeated by the modern Spawn.  Frank Miller of The Dark Knight Returns, 300, and Sin City writes a moronic story about two cheesy gangs fighting over Spawn's favorite alley.  The funny part was they don't list the credits in the book but I could guess which was written by which author.  I rule!  Anyway, there are new concepts about the Hellspawns and their powers and such introduced but overall it has that lethargic feel from the early issues.  It'd be nice if instead of moping around the alley waiting for stuff to come to him, Spawn actually went out and kicked some ass.  But part of the problem is McFarlane set up this idea that a Hellspawn has only so much power and when it's gone, he dies, so that kind of limits what the character can do.  So you end up with more moping and playing defense than going on the offensive. (2.5/5)

Wonder Woman: Earth One, Volume 1: This never really gets into much superhero stuff, except that she stops a bus from falling off a bridge and lifts a jeep over her head.  Most of it is set on Paradise Island as young Diana, like Luke Skywalker, wants to go out and see the world.  She finds Steve Trevor and fights in a tournament to take possession of an invisible jet to take him home, but her mom isn't happy about it.  That's pretty much all there is to it.  The first origin given to Diana is the "shaped from clay" George Perez one but then there's a more modern one that's akin to invitro fertilization.  The next volume promises to have more traditional Wonder Woman stuff as she enters "Man's World." While some of the worldbuilding and attempt to create a backstory is nice, a little less conversation, a little more action please, as Elvis once sang. (2.5/5)

Stuff I Watched: September Edition

The stuff I watched after Labor Day:

Our Brand is Crisis:  This is one of those poorly-marketed dramedies that I had no idea what the fuck it was about prior to watching it.  Apparently Sandra Bullock is a great political consultant who gets hired by a candidate for president of Bolivia but her archenemy Billy Bob Thornton is working for another candidate.  The title comes from Sandra Bullock's strategy to play up a "crisis" in Bolivia that only her candidate is tough enough to handle.  Numerous dirty tricks ensue from both sides.  You start to wonder if either candidate is actually deserving of winning.  That's a question Sandra Bullock asks herself only after her guy wins and immediately starts breaking campaign promises.  It really should have been obvious prior to that. (2.5/5)

Blind Heat:  I assume this mess went straight-to-video back in 2000 from the low production values and equally low rent cast.  The underrated Jeff Fahey is a hostage negotiator who goes to work for a computer company guy in Mexico City.  But it turns out Jeff Fahey sucks because he doesn't really free the hostage, but he does delay things long enough for the hostage to get a huge case of Stockholm Syndrome.  The title comes from her being blindfolded while she and her captor get it on many times.  So the hostage runs away with the captor, the computer guy ends up divorced and alone, and the rest of the kidnapper's gang is left free to carry on.  You're doing a heckuva job Jeff Fahey! (1/5) (Fun Fact:  This was prescient of the kidnapping problem in Mexico City highlighted by the much better Man on Fire about four years later.)

The Adventures of Pluto Nash:  As maligned as this is, it's actually watchable if you assume that the cheesy effects, music, and acting are all meant to satirize corny old sci-fi movies.  Kind of like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie.  I mean otherwise it'd just be a steaming pile of shit about a club owner on the moon who's being run out of business by his clone. (2/5)

The Fundamentals of Caring:  In this original Netflix dramedy, Paul Rudd is a sad soon-to-be divorced guy who takes a job being the caregiver to a teenage boy with muscular dystrophy named Trevor.  Trevor watches a show where a hot chick tours kooky landmarks like a two-story outhouse and so Paul Rudd gets the idea to take him to see some of those landmarks, though it soon becomes a quest to see Trevor's father in Salt Lake.  Along the way they pick up Selena Gomez and a pregnant woman whose only function seemed to be to give Paul Rudd a moment of redemption for accidentally killing his son.  Overall it's fun with a serious side.  You'll laugh, you'll cry, and whatever else.  One big moment at the end was kind of spoiled because you could so tell it was done with a green screen background, but then this wasn't Ant-Man so why spring for the great effects?  (3/5)  (Fun Musing:  I probably should have gone to see more of those kooky roadside attractions on my Western tour two years ago.)

Now You See Me 2:  File this under "Unneeded Sequels."  It really has all the hallmarks of a bad sequel, starting with changing directors and writers and replacing the female "Horseman" (Isla Fisher) with an annoying new girl played by Lizzy Caplan.  It just doesn't have the same magic as the first movie (har har) because it's really using a lot of the same tricks.  Really lame too how they tried to redeem Morgan Freeman's magic cynic character too.  Definitely a waste of time. (1/5) (Fun Musing:  For the third movie they should have Will Arnett's Bojack Horseman join the team.  Also, I agree with people who joked they should have called this movie "Now You Don't."  I mean think how funny that would look on the shelf:  Now You See Me and then Now You Don't.  Boom)

Anatomy of a Love Seen:  Some hot lesbian sex is the most redeeming feature of this movie.  It's a very muddled (and very short) plot that involves two actresses who were filming a movie where they were supposed to fall in love (and fuck) and apparently started doing that IRL.  Except the movie picks up when they have to come together again to reshoot a scene and the awkwardness that ensures.   It all ends up rather confusing. (2/5)

Money Monster:  I didn't see this in the theater (though I listened to about 5 minutes of it while waiting for X-Men) so now that it's on Redbox I went out and rented it.  George Clooney is a Jim Cramer-like investment show host/clown with Julia Roberts as his harried producer.  A tech company recently lost over $800 million in value in about a single day and a guy who is extremely pissed at this raids the set and takes Clooney hostage.  As the police (led by Giancarlo Esposito of Breaking Bad) try to negotiate a settlement, Clooney and Roberts investigate the tech company to find answers.  It's not a spectacular movie but it isn't boring and it's well-made. (3/5)

Waffle Street:  A guy (some actor who reminded me of Nathan Fillion with black hair) loses his job in the finance sector in 2008 and decides that since he's a pariah in that industry he'll work for Papa's Chicken & Waffles as a server.  And then he finds out that if you work 1000 hours you can qualify to own a franchise.  So he sets out to do that in as little time as possible while selling his house and car and generally making life miserable for his pregnant wife.  There's no real stakes though because he has a father and grandfather who own their own shipping company and can always bail him out if needed.   So it's kind of like watching a trapeze act working with a net--just not as dramatic, is it?  Still it's a decent light dramedy.  Besides Danny Glover as a grill cook there's really no one notable in the cast.  Just saying. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  The title is the actual name of the restaurant where the real-life version of the guy worked because it is apparently Based on a True Story.)

Let's Go to Prison:  Sometimes you just want to watch a dumb comedy.  This would fit the bill nicely.  Dax Shepherd is a career criminal who yearns to get revenge on the judge who keeps sentencing him.  But when the judge dies, he instead sets his sights on the judge's asshole son (Will Arnett) and is aided by the son's legal staff, who all hate him.  He ends up going to prison for 3-5 years and Dax Shepherd soon joins him to make sure he has a really interesting time.  Things take a turn though when the son inadvertently kills the head of the white supremacist gang, Michael Shannon.  Not surprisingly there are a lot of rape jokes and such. It falls down a little in the third act, but otherwise it's some fun, dumb entertainment. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  The movie is directed by and co-stars Bob Odenkirk, better known as Saul Goodman to Breaking Bad fans.  Ironic he did this project right before that show and that he plays a lawyer in both.)

The Virginity Hit:  I should have realized from the description this was a "found footage" movie.  The title comes from these four high school seniors who are trying to lose their virginity.  When they do, they take a hit off a special bong.  The last kid is trying to lose his virginity but things go south with his girlfriend when he finds out she got drunk at a frat party.  Anyway, the found footage thing is so limiting to the point that the kid and his girlfriend are in a room to have sex and instead we're watching a group of his friends listening to them argue through bugs they planted.  That's pretty lame.  So lame I fell asleep. (1/5)

The Wackness:  This coming-of-age story is set in NYC, 1994.  A kid who sells pot in an old Italian ice cart (you know, like a hot dog cart) graduates high school and whiles away a hot summer with the stepdaughter of the shrink he sees--and sells pot to.  It's partially like Good Will Hunting as the kid and shrink (Sir Ben Kingsley) bond, only the bonding is mostly while smoking weed.  It's a good mix of drama and comedy that will give you all the feels.  Though a lot of the slang is pretty goofy.  Yo, it's like mad goofy, homey.  Totally wack.  Word.  Did people really talk like that?  Like, OMG that is so lame!  (3/5) (Fun Fact:  the title comes from the girlfriend telling the kid that he always looks at "the wackness" or the dark side of things.)

The Nice Guys:  Like Money Monster, this was foolishly released in May as "counterprogramming" and wound up being lost in the blockbuster shuffle.  This is about a low-rent PI (Ryan Gosling) and a bruiser for hire (Russell Crowe) who end up working on the same case.  They both end up looking for a girl named Amelia who made a porno movie.  Everyone involved in that movie is ending up dead and she's next. Their bumbling, stumbling attempts to solve the case get them deeper and deeper into a web of conspiracy.  It's a fun buddy cop-type movie.  It's from Shane Black and bears a similarity to his previous Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang which was notable mostly for reminding Hollywood casting directors Robert Downey Jr still existed and probably helped him get the Iron Man gig.  (Later Downey Jr returned the favor by getting Black the Iron Man 3 gig.)  The downside is that it feels a little long.  That and like Carrie Fisher in The Force Awakens I think Kim Basinger was using so much Botox that she couldn't enunciate very well.  Or maybe she was drunk.  Either way, it was not pretty. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  The trailers kind of spoiled the ending by showing the Yellow Pages ad for the titular "Nice Guys Agency" so since they didn't know each other at the start you knew at the end they would be working together.)

The Flash:  Flashpoint:  Just a thought on the Season 3 premiere of CW's The Flash:  they took a big concept like DC's Flashpoint event and made it small.  Really not worth the effort. (2/5)

The World of Amazon Kindle Can Be a Shady Place

I've heard of shady dealings on Amazon before but it was a couple weeks ago that I saw such a thing with my own eyes.  First I downloaded this book called Gender Bender by "Claire Bottom."  Generic title, shitty author pseudonym, but it was free so I downloaded it.  Here's the description:

It's Taylor's birthday and his one secret wish is about to come true...

Taylor's body is magically replaced with a gorgeous blonde bimbo. But she only has until midnight to seduce a man or else she'll turn back.

A few days later I noticed another book called Gender Bender by someone named "Kimberly Rough" with the description:

It's Taylor's birthday and his one secret wish is about to come true...

Taylor wakes up to find his body magically replaced with a gorgeous blonde bimbo. But she only has until midnight to seduce a man or else she'll turn back.

Yes, it's almost the same description.  And looking inside, it's the same fucking book!  Only with a different shitty pseudonym.

Oh but hey it gets better!  I found yet another copy of the same fucking book only with yet another shitty pseudonym!

The description is slightly different:
It's Taylor's birthday and his one secret wish is about to come true...

Taylor wakes up to find his body magically replaced with a beautiful woman. But she only has until midnight to seduce a man or else she'll turn back.

"Beautiful woman" instead of "blonde bimbo" but otherwise the same as "Kimberly Rough"'s description.  Oh and the latter two even have the same cover graphic, just with different fonts.

And those three nearly identical descriptions are pretty much bullshit.  The first sentence is true, but he doesn't turn into a "blonde bimbo."  He turns into a brunette.  As for the "she has until midnight to seduce a man" all she does is having kinky sex with her stepfather while hoping he gets her pregnant.  Ewwwww.  Nasty.  I mean I know the stepfather isn't a blood relation but it's still yucky to think about getting nailed by your dad, let alone having him put a baby in you.

If those links above don't work, it means Amazon took my report seriously.  If the links are still there, they didn't.  When I saw the second version of the same book I thought maybe it was just plagiarism but when I saw the third one, I think it's pretty clear that this is some "author" trying to generate business by putting the same book out there in at least three different names.  Of course it wouldn't be a surprise if the story were plagiarized from someone else.

UPDATE:  Yesterday I was updating my website and on one of my books, wouldn't you know I found a fourth version of that book?  And then a fifth.  And a sixth.  And a seventh!  Mercifully that is all I've found, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are more of it floating around.

Makes me glad I got the one for free so at least the "author" isn't making any money.  Anyway, it's always good to remember that shopping for Kindle books can sometimes be like driving through a bad neighborhood at night.  Buyer beware!

Meanwhile, Amazon's thugs are stomping another of my books:  Transformed for Mother's Day Too.   I came home one day and saw that it was blocked.  Only later did they send the stupid boilerplate email saying there was a "content violation."

The thing is, I have no fucking clue what they're talking about.  This isn't erotica.  It wasn't filed under the erotica category.  There's no sex, no rape, no bestiality, no incest, or anything besides maybe a little bit of language.  It's basically a riff on Freaky Friday, which I'm sure Amazon sells on their site.

It just drives me crazy because they never tell you why they do this shit.  They just hide behind their boilerplate legalese.  And at the same time they say you can resubmit it (which I did that day) but it's kind of hard when they don't tell you why they blocked it in the first place.  All you can do is guess and hope for the best.  But really of all the books I have for sale, that's the one they go after?  It doesn't make any freaking sense to me.  A reviewer even said, "Very sweet. A real charmer. The only TG story I can imagine even my mother would have enjoyed."  That's how non-offensive it is.  It's so goddamned annoying.  I said it before:  Amazon hates sellers.  Whether you're selling a book or a laptop, whether you're me or Hachette Publishing Group, they'll stomp all over you if they feel like it. When is someone going to give them their comeuppance?