When Calculating Ratings, One Size Does Not Fit All

 Since Amazon started letting people rate books without writing anything, some of my older books have been getting more ratings.  Something I noticed is that for older books, these new ratings can be weighted quite a bit more than ratings already given years ago.  Like this for From Warrior King to Peasant Girl:

You see there was a 5-star and 4-star review from 2016 when the book released.  For years that's all there was.  Then some dick came along last year and gave it an anonymous 1-star rating.  As you can see, that anonymous 1-star rating with no words (and who knows if it's even a verified purchase) is now 47% of the rating!

If you look at where it says "how ratings are calculated" notice that it says one factor is how recent a review is.  So it seems like a logical assumption that because this one-star rating is 5 years newer it gets weighted a lot more than a 4-star review that doesn't say verified purchase and more than a 5-star review that is a verified purchase.

But really, how does that make any sense?  The book is the same as it was 5 years ago, so it shouldn't matter whether someone's review is newer or not.  I understand where that might matter for something like a toaster where a newer review could relate to a newer model, but books are pretty much static.  Time should not be a factor.

Poking around Amazon, they put that same message on all their products, which is the problem.  Well, two problems.  One is that they aren't up-front about how they calculate these things.  Two is if they are using the same model for every product.  Like I said, that model might work fine for household products or electronics or something like that, but it doesn't make sense for books.  It makes a little more sense for music or movies where you get different formats or maybe a "deluxe version" or "director's cut" or something like that where if they don't have a new product page you might get old and new reviews lumped together for different versions.

But books it still doesn't really make sense, especially when the book is in the same format it was 5 years ago.  It would be nice if Amazon were more transparent about how they're calculating these things and actually didn't just apply the same formula to everything.  But I doubt we'll ever see any change on either of those things.

HEAD'S UP!  Friday begins the A to Z Challenge!  Get your "thanks for sharing" comments copied to your clipboard now.

More Annoying Clickbait Tactics

 One of the irritating things about Facebook are its stupid algorithms that decide because you clicked some stupid Comicbook.com or Screen Rant or Collider or whatever article that you must love clickbait articles.  So here's a whole bunch more!  And then it gets worse because some of them are so fucking stupid that you can't help reading it.

In the last few months I've gotten a lot of articles from Cracked.com on my feed.  A few articles have used this tactic of using "facts" that are just mind-numbingly, obviously false.  

For instance, one article was about obvious and easy ways to settle a debate.  In a section on the Enterprise vs. a Star Destroyer, the easy solution is for the Enterprise to just beam everyone off the Star Destroyer.  Hey, good idea...except Star Destroyers have shields!  Just like the goddamned Enterprise, so no you can't just beam everyone off because the transporter wouldn't be able to go through the fucking shields!  Anyone who knows even the most rudimentary things about ships in Star Wars would know that.  But, hey, I guess you got me to read your dumb article, so good one.

An article I didn't click said in the preview that since Star Trek ships are going at the speed of light, time for everyone on board would be frozen but not for the rest of the universe so years could go by anytime they go anywhere.  Yeah, that's not how "warp" drive works, dumbass.  The warp bubble allows the ships to go faster than light speed and negates the time dilation effect.

Another Star Wars related one was the "fact" Luke would have frozen to death if he spent the whole night in the Tauntaun.  Except as someone pointed out, Han says he's just putting him in there "until he gets the shelter built."  The next morning when the snowspeeder finds them, you can see the shelter Han put together.  So obviously Luke wasn't in there all night.  So that wasn't Hollywood's mistake--it was the article writer's mistake.

You have to wonder if the writers are just too lazy to even do the most basic research on Wikipedia or Wookieepedia or whatever the Star Trek equivalent is or if they're actively trolling people.  The thinking might be that if they post something that's so obviously false, people will react and respond and maybe click stuff.  The downside, like with Screen Rant's "Marvel's Superman" bullshit, is it makes you look like a complete moron.  Because that is pretty basic shit for fans.  I mean, I'm not a Comic Book Guy-type superfan of either franchise and I know that shit.  Then I feel like a nerd because why do I know that and you, a somewhat "professional" writer, clearly don't?

If it's not intentional, then these writers need to find another line of work because writing about pop culture is clearly not for them.  I'm just saying.

While I'm at it, another annoying tactic that Comicbook.com has been using is to say, "[streaming service or network] has [cancelled or added] this fan favorite show [or movie]!"  The idea is you're supposed to click the article to find out what's been cancelled or added.  Usually some hero will put it in the comments so you don't have to actually read it--sometimes I'm that hero.  A few times the writer screws it up by putting the name of the show in the first line so it shows up on the preview so I don't have to actually read the article.

Sometimes it's funny then because the "fan favorite" or "cult favorite" is something I've never heard of.  That happens a lot with Netflix shows since I haven't used that in almost 4 years.

Those articles are pretty pathetic just because it's so obvious what they're trying to do.  It feels so desperate.  It's like when you're a kid and a sibling or someone on the playground crows, "I know something you don't know!"

I suppose a lot of this could be avoided if instead of relying on ad clicks, these sites just had fundraising drives and people actually gave them money to function.  But would I do that?  Probably not.  In large part because these sites don't really generate much that is of value.

Has Our Culture Reached a Cul-de-Sac?

 A little while ago Disney aired a commercial showing people dressed up and dancing from different eras like 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and now.  If you watch there's really no difference between the 2000s and now.  A Pepsi commercial that did the same thing a year or two ago did like the 60, 70s, 80s, and then today, skipping the 90s, 2000s, and 2010s.  Then when I watched the documentary Skin:  The History of Nudity in the Movies, there was more to say about nudity in the 19th Century than in the 2010s--since I think this was released before 2020.  For the 2000s to present it just talked about American Pie, 50 Shades of Grey, and Zack & Miri Make a Porno--more for the MPAA trying to censor the title than content.  On top of that, the number one movie just about every year for the last 14 years has been whatever MCU or Star Wars movie made the most.

It got me thinking:  is society in the last 25 years so homogenous that when it comes to these montage commercials or documentaries there's really nothing to say?  Has fashion, music, dancing, movie nudity, and everything else run into a cul-de-sac?  It does seem that way sometimes.  I mean, if someone were frozen in 1997 and they were unthawed today, they'd have a hard time adapting to the technology, but I don't think fashion, music, dancing, or movies would be shocking at all.  But maybe that's because I live in the Midwest and I'm middle-aged, not young and hip on one of the coasts.

I was trying to think of some big change, but there aren't any that really lasted.  There are blips like when guys wore those ugly-ass Ed Hardy T-shirts and grew Duck Dynasty beards.  Pop music today probably has more autotune and shit than in 1997 but it's not that different, is it?  (I don't know; I don't really listen to it.)  From my limited experience, I don't think BTS is that different from the Backstreet Boys, except they're Korean.

So I'm thinking that's why it's hard to really show anything definitive for the 2000s or 2010s in those montage commercials and why "the 1990s" is usually the early 1990s.  But maybe I'm wrong.

But in a way I think it's good because in these montage type things when we think of what defines a decade, it's usually what young, white, middle-class kids were wearing, listening to, and how they danced.  So maybe our culture isn't homogenous so much as there are just so many different cultural groups that we can't pin it down to one thing.

Those are my thoughts.  What are yours?

Why Focus on the Boring Guy?

 

A couple of months ago, I read an omnibus of the first three books in the "Max Porter" series of mysteries because they were only 99 cents and the author is someone I am "friends" with on Facebook despite that we've probably never actually talked to each other.  I'm not sure he's even "liked" anything I've ever posted.

The basic premise for the series is that Max is a former professor in Michigan (somewhere) who loses his job and moves with his wife to North Carolina, where he gets a job researching things for a bad guy named Hall.  Soon Max discovers his office is haunted by the ghost of a detective from the 40s named Drummond.  So, OK, we have a normal guy and his ghost sidekick.

But then about midway through the first book Max's wife Sandra reveals she can see ghosts.  Not just Drummond but all ghosts like the kid in The Sixth Sense.  At that point it's like, "Wait, wait, wait, why the fuck have we spent all this time with ordinary, boring Max when his wife literally has a superpower?"  She can communicate with (and even punch) ghosts while Max can...read books at the library?

It really makes me wonder why this isn't the Sandra Porter series because obviously Sandra is a lot more interesting than Max.  I mean, really, she sees dead people!  While he's just some ordinary schlub.  It just bugs me that we're not focusing on the right character.

I mean, it'd be like if when I wrote the Scarlet Knight series instead of focusing on Emma, the superhero, or the witches or Marlin the ghost I focused the series on Becky, an ordinary person with no superpowers or anything.  It wouldn't make sense.

Not to say that can't sometimes be interesting like comics focusing on Lois Lane or Astro City or Common Grounds with issues focusing on ordinary people dealing with the issues superheroes create. 

A way for this to work is if the boring guy is the one who actually does all the work solving the crimes and the superpowered people just get all the credit.

But usually you want to focus your story on the most interesting characters.  It's the old idea:  lead with strength.  In this case, lead with your most interesting characters.  If you have a character who's a ghost or has superpowers, focus on them over some ordinary guy.

That seems like common sense to me, but what do I know?

Tales of the Scarlet Knight: The 10th Anniversary Bundle!

 While I thought of doing a 10th anniversary version of Where You Belong, I never really got around to doing it because I doubted I would change much of the manuscript and I didn't really have much I could put in a book because stuff like the old web page doesn't really work that well in an ebook or paperback.

I did decide to do something for the 10th anniversary of A Hero's Journey being published--not 10 years since it was written; it's actually been 13 years since the first draft was written.  I'm not sure about other genres but in erotica there are all these bundles that some pseudonyms throw together.  I tried doing a "mega bundle" of all my old Transformed gender swap stories but then Amazon held back calculating the rankings for like 3 days so hardly anyone ever saw them and so unlike all these other bundles that somehow jam up the bestseller list mine never got any traction.

Anyway, I decided to do a 10th Anniversary Bundle of the Tales of the Scarlet Knight series.  Unlike the old omnibuses that feature 5 books apiece (the first with episodes 1-3 and then two prequels) this has everything, including the Special Edition of A Hero's Journey that I released in 2020 to mass not giving a shit.

Since I was putting extra stuff in, I included the original version of Volume 2:  Time Enough to Say Goodbye, the 7 flash fiction story collection Mortal Sins, and the first appearance of Emma Earl in the short story Heart of a Hero.  It comes out to over 4100 pages!

If for some reason you never read the series, now is a great time to buy it because it's an incredible value at only $4.99!  Especially if you have Kindle Unlimited.  For obvious reasons it is only in Kindle format.  A paperback would probably have to be split into several parts and then what would be the point?  At some point I might take it off KDP Select to put it on B&N or Draft2Digital or something like that.

If for some reason you don't know what the series is about, it features Dr. Emma Earl, a young genius who goes to work for a natural history museum on the same day a weird old box is brought in.  The box turns out to be the housing for an evil spirit known as the Black Dragoon that tries to seduce Emma but when she resists, it finds a new host.  Emma then hears a call that leads her down to an old bomb shelter, where she finds a suit of red plate armor that gives her superpowers.  She then becomes the latest incarnation of the Scarlet Knight and has to battle the Black Dragoon.

The other books have Emma battle demons, an alien, a terrorist plot, a Russian gangster, and the evil goddess Isis.  She's joined by two old French witches, the ghost of Merlin's personal assistant, a guy who lives in the sewers and talks to rats, and a world-weary police detective.

If you want a superhero story that isn't grim & gritty or just blatantly ripping off Marvel or DC, then buy it today!

Stuff I Watched & Don't Feel Like Writing a Whole Entry About

 Some movies and TV shows I like writing a whole entry about.  And others...not so much.  These are the latter category.

Free Guy:  I think this was one of those movies delayed by the pandemic that probably would have made more money if it had been released in a normal time.  Anyway, the premise is sort of like The Lego Movie where an ordinary boring character suddenly realizes there's a whole other big world out there.  In this case it's Ryan Reynolds as an NPC, one of those background guys in video games, who suddenly gains free will.  There's a girl with colorful hair just like The Lego Movie who helps Guy explore the world and becomes his love interest, though it's different in that she exists in the real world and he doesn't.  Taika Waititi is the bad guy who runs the software company and stole a lot of code from two small time programmers.  The company tries to destroy Guy but with the girl's help he fights back.  It drags on a little too long but there are some fun Easter eggs, especially in the end fight with "Dude," a buffer Ryan Reynolds.  These eggs show what happens when you own Marvel and Star Wars and Fox.  (3/5) (Fun Facts:  Ryan Reynolds and Taika Waititi were both in Green Lantern and both movies were produced by Greg Berlanti, a founder of the "Arrowverse."  Hugh Jackman, Deadpool's arch-enemy, voices an informant in an alley.  I watched the movie on Disney+ but it's also apparently on HBO Max.)

The Tender Bar:  This movie was written by the writer of The Departed, directed by George Clooney, and starred Ben Affleck.  You'd think when you combine three talents like that you'd get a great movie--but you'd be wrong.  Really wrong.  Not that this isn't well made (mostly) but it's just really, really dull.  There's barely any conflict at all.  Even Mitch Albom and Nick Sparks novels have more conflict.  The movie is about this kid named JR whose mother moves him back to Long Island to her dad (Christopher Lloyd)'s house where his Uncle Charlie (Affleck) also lives and works at a bar called The Dickens.  Charlie becomes JR's father figure because his real dad is a shithead alcoholic DJ who bounces around and is never in JR's life.  The movie skips about halfway through to JR going to Yale (for free), where he meets a young black girl who basically strings him along for years before marrying someone else.  He gets a job at the New York Times but they ultimately do not keep him on.  Still, he has a loving extended family, goes to an Ivy for free, and immediately works at one of the most prestigious newspapers in the country.  His dad not being around and him not getting his first love have to pass for the only drama in this bland film.  Early on his mother has a malignant tumor cut out...and nothing more comes of it.  Which is the same thing that happens in The Room, where Lisa's mom is said to have breast cancer but it never goes anywhere.  In The Disaster Artist, the actress playing Lisa's mom laments this fact.  JR's mom is still around at the end of the movie and apparently perfectly healthy.  So what was the point of mentioning the cancer if it has no bearing on the narrative?  I guess in part I shouldn't be mad because this is a true story.  I should be mad that anyone thought to publish a memoir about this and that talented people would adapt it into such bland treacle.  (1/5)  (Fun Facts:  With Affleck and Clooney you have two Batmans and Tye Sheridan, the second Cyclops, plays the older JR.  At the end, Uncle Charlie gives JR his car, which is about the worst gift for someone moving to Manhattan where you either have to pay a lot of money for a parking garage or spend a lot of your time finding somewhere to park the car.  A classic car would probably be a target of thieves too.  I'm just saying.)

Mayor of Kingstown:  This is a crime series on Paramount+ starring Jeremy Renner.  It's that familiar story of the guy who doesn't want to take over the kingdom/empire/criminal enterprise being forced to do that.  In this case there's a city in Michigan (somewhere) with a couple of prisons and Renner's dad and then his older brother made a living by being a liaison with prisoners and sort of being a go-between with the prisoners and guards.  But after his brother is killed in a robbery, Renner's character has to take over the family business to maintain the peace.  Except things start to fall apart until there's a full-scale riot.  Meanwhile an inmate named Milo is plotting to get money for...something and recruits a hooker named Iris to seduce Renner's character, but he resists until she's nearly killed.  I liked the show, though it leaves some questions at the end.  Like where's Milo?  And what's going to happen with all those dead bodies in the bus?  I was annoyed that no one took a few seconds to do a Google search and realize Michigan hasn't had a death penalty in a long, long time.  I mean before you set up this whole show, maybe you should have actually fact-checked that?  It literally would have taken less than a minute to ask Google or Siri or whatever.  I'm just saying. (4/5) (Fun Fact:  There are a couple of nods to the MCU like when Renner buys a bow and arrows to shoot at a bear rummaging around his cabin.  Iris is also referred to as a "Black Widow" when she auditions as a stripper.)

Star Trek Discovery, Season 4:  Season 4 has Michael Burnham in command of the USS Discovery and a new, Galactus-level threat facing the reborn Federation.  In broad strokes it sounds exciting and perhaps as a 2 1/2-hour movie it would be, but stretched into 13 episodes it's less so.  There are a few dull episodes, especially when they approach and enter the "Galactic Barrier," which is different though maybe no less silly than that Great Barrier in Star Trek V.  "Rosetta" particularly felt to me like vamping so they could have enough episodes for the full order.  (I suppose we could blame filming during the pandemic to excuse it.) "All In" was where they got to have the most fun, pulling off a hive of scum and villainy better than the recent Boba Fett show, which is saying something about both franchises.  The finale was disappointing to me.  I never felt any real tension that anyone would  die or anything like that.  Even when Book "died" and Tilly and Vance seemed doomed, I knew the 10-C aliens would have saved Book and stop the DMA in time.  Guess what?  They did.  They were pretty much a deus ex machina so that the only one to suffer any consequences was Tarka.  Like I said on Facebook, all we needed was them to spin the Earth backwards to turn back time like Superman.  I'm sure other people liked it better because it was all Happily Ever After.  Maybe instead of having a "big bad" to focus on all season (Klingons, Red Angel, "the Burn," DMA) they should try a more episodic approach next season.  But they probably won't. (2.5/5)

211:  I mentioned this movie in a previous article about how it inspired me to come up with a GI Joe reboot idea.  This is another of those cheap straight-to-streaming jobs starring Nic Cage as a retiring cop in a small Massachusetts town.  The town becomes the target of some bad mercs when their client tries to screw them by wiring their money to banks all over--including one in that town.  Most of the movie then is a shootout between the cops and mercs.  It's not really great "cinema" but it's an OK distraction. Unlike Bruce Willis, I think Cage still at least puts some effort into these things. (2.5/5)

Trauma Center:  Speaking of Bruce Willis not giving effort, there's this straight-to-streaming movie!  It takes place in Puerto Rico, where a woman witnesses a murder by some corrupt cops.  She's shot in the leg and the corrupt cops want to get the bullet out because that could identify them.  Mayhem ensues with Willis half-assedly playing a not-corrupt cop trying to rescue the woman, who limps around the hospital for most of the movie.  A pudgy, older Steve Guttenberg appears in a small role in case you wondered what the hell ever happened to him since the 80s. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  The Golden Raspberries created an entire category of Worst Bruce Willis Movies for 2021.)

Backtrace:  Sly Stallone seems to have enough star power yet (and maybe invested his money well enough) to avoid straight-to-streaming movies like Willis, Cage, Travolta, and so on.  But there is this one from 2018.  Matthew Modine is an old guy who lost his memory after being shot in the head after he and a couple of guys robbed a cement plant or something.  He hid some of the money away beforehand and no one has been able to find it.  He wakes up unable to remember anything about that and goes to a mental hospital for years.  Eventually his son and a female doctor break him out and shoot him up with experimental drugs to try to find out where the money from the robbery went.  They have to "backtrace" to different places trying to jog his memory.  Stallone is a local cop who's been following the crime for a while.  Christopher MacDonald (the bad guy in Happy Gilmore) is an FBI agent who, what a shock, turns out to be corrupt.  It was not great but like 211 it's an OK distraction for about 90 minutes. (2.5/5)

Money Plane:  I first heard of this from a Rifftrax email because they did a riff on it.  It was a "Just the Jokes" kind though so I didn't buy the riff until I saw the movie was on Hulu.  As you might figure then it is a pretty bad movie.  Some guy who I guess is or was a pro wrestler leads a crew who are the ones you get if Danny Ocean, Leverage, and The A-Team turn you down.  After a job goes wrong at an abandoned factory private museum, the crew has to get on the "money plane" and steal a bunch of crypto and money.  What is a "money plane?"  It's a plane where Joey Lawrence (whoa) lets fake rich people bet on stuff like how long it will take a cobra to kill someone.  With more money for better actors, real-looking sets, and decent writing this could have been an interesting premise, but in the end it all comes off looking cheap and dumb.  For instance, this brilliant crew plans to take over the cockpit of the plane and yet never imagined the contingency where there would be a pilot AND a co-pilot?  You know, like every commercial airliner in the sky?  Thomas Jane and Kelsey Grammar cash paychecks, the latter as the mustache-twirling villain who doesn't actually have a mustache.  I'd recommend buying the riff just to make it more fun, but that's just me.  (2/5)

Sweet Virginia:  I thought that starring Jon Bernthal of The Walking Dead and The Punisher on Netflix this would be another of those cheap action movies that's mostly forgettable but an OK distraction.  Instead, this is a slow, meandering plot with Bernthal as a motel owner who used to be in the rodeo but now has early-onset Parkinson's or something.  Meanwhile, a woman has her husband killed by a hitman who was pretty stupid not to get money up front.  The woman figures her husband's life insurance or something will pay the hitman off, but it turns out her husband had a lot of financial trouble, so the hitman goes to Plan B, which is robbing Bernthal's woman who has money for...reasons.  It was all really slow and boring and while Bernthal's acting is good, but he doesn't really do a whole lot.  Besides always having the money for your hitman ready up front, another lesson this movie teaches is that if you have a stab wound that's been bleeding, don't wear a white shirt! (2/5) (Fun Fact:  This movie follows that old Chekhov dictum about showing a captured Nazi rifle over the front desk of the motel and then using said rifle in the final act.)

Small Engine Repair:  This also stars Jon Bernthal and it likewise fooled me into thinking it would be a cheap action movie.  The first hour is Bernthal, the star/writer/director John Pollono, and some other guy telling stories about their lives in Manchester, New Hampshire that usually ends with drunken fighting.  The stories are so disjointed and there's seemingly no point to them, so I finally fast-forwarded and found out there is actually a point:  Pollono's daughter gets embarrassed on the Internet and tries to kill herself.  So he invites the preppy drug dealer to his small engine repair shop to kill him.  They show us the killing and disposing of the body...which doesn't actually happen.  They don't even kill him because he took some pictures with them on Instagram before they knocked him out and tied him up.  So what?  Sure the police might ask them questions, but all you have to do is get rid of his car and say he left.  Who's going to know?  I almost think it would be better with a second watch knowing what I do now.  But I really don't feel like it.  (1/5)

Seeking Justice:  Pluto TV's On Demand in January had some more straight-to-streaming Nic Cage movies that probably weren't on Hulu.  This one he's a teacher whose wife (January Jones) is raped.  He's visited by Guy Pearce, who represents a secret society that can kill the rapist, but in return will want a favor.  Nic reluctantly agrees and the rapist is killed.  Six months later the favor is called in and when Nic finds out the guy they want him to kill isn't a bad guy but a reporter looking into the secret society, everything starts going to shit.  There was some OK action but considering Nic's wife was the one raped they don't give her a lot to do and really she seems a lot cooler about what happened to her than he does.  At one point he steals a valet ticket and gets a cool Escalade that apparently doesn't have LoJack or any kind of fancy tracking system?  It has a DVD player and stuff but no OnStar or anything?  Otherwise it kind of drags a little before the big final set piece in an abandoned mall--I bet it was hard to find one of those. (2/5)

Vengeance:  A Love Story:  This is based on a Joyce Carol Oates story called "Rape:  A Love Story" which I'm going to guess was a bit more subtle and maybe had less of a body count.  The movie is about a woman being raped by a group of meth heads on July 4th in "Niagara Falls" (actually Georgia) which was witnessed by her 12-year-old daughter.  Nic Cage is a cop who met the woman a couple years earlier when she was out with a girlfriend and had a couple drinks with him, then gave him a probably fake number.  He happens upon the woman's daughter after the rape and takes them to the hospital.  The rapists are quickly found but when it comes time for the grand jury hearing or whatever, the sleazy defense lawyer who makes Saul Goodman look like Atticus Finch (Don Johnson) turns it into a circus that totally smears the victim, saying she offered sex for money and her daughter just didn't understand what she saw.  I think the title of the original story was supposed to go with this idea that the defense lawyer tells the criminals that a trial is really about two stories.  In this case the prosecution's story is that this is a rape while the defense's story is this is a love story--if you call drunken prostitution a love story.  After the hearing, the rapists and other people torment the victims while Nic Cage decides to murder the rapists.  So there's still some juxtaposition with the title in that it's about vengeance, but also it's a love story in that he's doing it because he loves the woman.  Anyway, the whole thing felt like a Lifetime movie with better production values. (2.5/5)

Dying of the Light:  I am 99% certain I saw this before, but I can't find a review of it on this blog or my movie review blog.  Pluto TV doesn't list the year of the movie like Hulu or Amazon, so when I put it on, I was like, "Hey, that young guy looks like Anton Yelchin."  But of course he died in 2016, so was it really him?  It was, because this movie came out in 2014.  Anyway, Nic Cage is an aging CIA agent who 20 years earlier was captured and tortured by a Muslim extremist.  Confined to a desk now and suffering early-onset dementia, Nic's character gets word from another analyst (Yelchin) that a rare drug is being shipped to someone in Mombasa.  The Muslim extremist who tortured Nic has a condition that would need that drug.  So he and the younger guy end up going to Bucharest and then Mombasa to track the guy down.  Along the way, Nic is struggling to hold it together because of the dementia that causes him to forget things and hear noises and have sudden bursts of emotion.  In what should have been the end, Nic and the Muslim extremist meet in Mombasa and the "bad guy" is so sick he can't get out of his chair to pray and Nic starts forgetting why he's there.  In the end, Nic just leaves and decides to go home.  That would have been a good enough ending for me, but I think the producers didn't think that was a strong enough ending, so they tack on some henchmen of the Muslim extremist shooting at Nic and the analyst, who is wounded, and then Nic kills the henchmen and drives back to the extremist guy's house to finally kill him.  Then he dies on the way back when he drives on the wrong side of the road.  Was that better?  I don't really think so.  Overall though it was still a decent spy thriller. (3/5)

Trespass:  This was from 2011, when Nic Cage could still work with top-flight talent like Nicole Kidman and decent talent in Ben Mendelssohn.  This could have been a cheap straight-to-streaming movie because it almost entirely takes place at a house where supposedly rich Nic, Nicole, and their daughter live when Mendelssohn, his brother, and a couple others break in to rob the place.  There are numerous twists and a lot of screaming and shooting and stabbing and lighting things on fire.  The twists made it so I never quite knew what was coming, so it was not bad overall. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Director Joel Schumacher worked with Nic Cage and Nicole Kidman back in the 90s in 8mm and Batman Forever respectively.)

Inconceivable:  It's not a documentary on Wallace Shawn's character in The Princess Bride.  It's pretty much The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, only the babysitter turns out to be the donor for Gina Gershon and Nic Cage's kids.  Nic Cage doesn't get much to do while the rest of it isn't great because it's pretty much been done before. (2/5)

Primal:  Nic Cage is a big game hunter who captures prey to illegally sell to zoos who gets stuck on a freighter with a serial killer and a terrible CGI white jaguar.  X-Men and Taken's Famke Janssen also appears as a naval officer.  It was an ok disposable action movie. (2.5/5)

Pharma Bro:  This documentary on Hulu is not great.  The core concept is a guy moves into the building of Martin Shkreli, the guy who became known as the "Pharma Bro" and Public Enemy #1 for raising drug prices by an obscene amount.  The idea is the filmmaker wants to get close to Shkreli, but other than giving him a six-pack of beer, not a lot comes of it.  The guy making the movie doesn't really have the commitment of Michael Moore in trying to get to Shkreli or when he goes to the guy's old company.  In case you forgot about this, it does help refresh your memory.  And it should bum you out that A) Shkreli didn't go to jail for raising drug prices (like Capone, they busted him on something else) and B) there is still no law addressing what Shkreli did and C) no one lowered the price of those drugs yet.  As for why Shkreli was such an asshole, there's really no answer. (2/5)

Donut King:  It's weird that this was executive produced by Ridley Scott through his company Scott Free Films.  Maybe he likes donuts?  Anyway, did you know by the mid-80s pretty much 90% of donut shops in California were owned by Cambodians?  It's all thanks to "Ted" Ngoy, a Cambodian refugee who learned donut making, started his own shop, and then began bringing over other Cambodians and leasing shops to them.  It juxtaposes a lot of cute family stuff and animation with the horrors in Cambodia in the late 70s.  And then it starts wandering down blind alleys about other shop owners and "cronuts" and stuff like that.  To put it in order, Ngoy and his wife had a cute love story in Cambodia, fled to America, started the shop, became huge successes, but then Ngoy squandered it all gambling and having affairs.  While there are fewer Cambodian donuts shops now, there are still many with many of them being run by second- or third-generation immigrants.  I do wish it had been a little more focused in its narrative, but it's still an interesting story.  And how these immigrants work really makes me feel lazy. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  One of Ngoy's innovations was using pink boxes for donuts instead of white because it was slightly cheaper.  The pink boxes are now often seen in TV and movies when someone buys donuts.)

Over the Top:  Because they've made about 3000 references to this movie on various Rifftrax movies, I finally got around to watching it.  This is one of the movies along with Masters of the Universe that really pushed Cannon Films towards bankruptcy in the late 80s.  In this case in order to retain Sly Stallone, they had to pay an obscene amount of money.  The movie itself is OK, like a more family-friendly Rocky only with arm wrestling.  Stallone is a trucker who side hustles in arm wrestling competitions.  When his estranged son gets out of military school, he picks the kid up at his mother's behest and they go on a road trip from wherever to California or somewhere and bond.  Robert Loggia is the kid's grandpa who hates Stallone for leaving his daughter for...reasons that are never really discussed in-depth.  A couple of things the Rifftrax crew make fun of is how at the tournament the announcer keeps telling us this is a "double elimination" tournament so you have to lose twice...except apparently in the final match where the other guy who probably never lost a match only has to lose once to Stallone to lose the tournament.  The other thing is they keep saying Stallone's character's name interchangeably as Lincoln "Hawk" and "Hawks."  Anyway, it's not the worst movie ever but it's not a great movie.  (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  The soundtrack includes a song by Sly's brother Frank Stallone.  Hooray nepotism!)

Karate Kid III:  This is another Rifftrax favorite; they featured the villain Terry Silver in part of a special but I hadn't had a chance to watch the actual movie.  It is pretty lame.  The first half is Daniel and Miyagi trying to start up a bonsai tree store.  Like a lot of bad sequels, the girl from the previous movie was written out off-screen and a new love interest brought in.  Anyway, Terry Silver is such a scene-chewing over-the-top villain that even Mr. Burns or Blofeld would tell him to tone it down a little.  I was surprised to find out they were actually using him in that Cobra Kai show; this seems like the kind of movie you'd want to retcon out of existence.  (2/5) (Fun Facts:  Paula Abdul did the dance choreography.  There was also a note that they got the permission of DC Comics to use the title "The Karate Kid."  I guess they probably had a character called that in the 70s or something?)

Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies:  After some blather about #metoo this is a surprisingly well-organized documentary that provides what the title says:  a history of nudity in the movies from some of the very first films in the 1870s showing naked people exercising all the way to 50 Shades of Grey.  It talks with historians, film critics, and actors including Malcolm McDowell, Eric Roberts, Sean Young, Mamie Van Dorn, and many more!  If you want the skinny (pun intended) nudity was hardly seen in American movies from the mid-30s until the early 60s and then through the 80s there was a lot more of it until it just sort of leveled off.  This mostly deals with mainstream movies, not the porn industry and mostly American movies, though some foreign films are thrown in for comparison.  And yes, there is nudity in this--a lot of it.  But it's all really tasteful.  Wink. (3/5)

Red Penguins:  This documentary is about Russia after the Soviet Union broke up.  The vaunted Red Army hockey team (the one Americans beat in the "Miracle on Ice" in 1980) was in dire straits because everything was so chaotic.  The Pittsburgh Penguins ownership came in to help run the team in part so they could get access to the great Russian players.  A young Jewish guy from New York was sent over there to run the team they renamed the "Red Penguins" as an amalgamation of the Red Army and Pittsburgh Penguins.  The American guy pulled a lot of stunts like circus bears serving beer on the ice and "cheerleaders" stripping on the ice to bring crowds in and introduce capitalism to the Russians.  But the venture ran into problems when the Russian mob started to get involved.  As someone who's watched hockey it was interesting, but it was one of those that skips around, making it confusing when things were taking place.  (3/5)

Rick & Morty Season 5:  I like Rick & Morty but I'm not one of those superfans.  For me this season was OK.  The episodes that actually had some emotional weight were good while the episodes that were mostly just random crap happening weren't as good.  One decent episode has Morty falling in love with "Planetina" a female Captain Planet whose grown "kids" are exploiting her for profit until Morty steps in.  But their love is not meant to be because Morty is not as hard-ass about the environment.  Another one is a spoof of Voltron, Goodfellas, and Scarface as Rick completes a Voltron-type team of robot ferrets and then starts building tons of copies and selling them.  The Voltron parts were fun but the other stuff was kinda meh.  The final episode was a downer as after breaking up the previous episode, Rick & Morty reunite in the "Citadel" a center of Ricks and Morties in the multiverse or whatever.  It was the kind of episode where if you really cared and kept all this shit together in your head it would be better.  I don't know; maybe this show has already peaked. (3/5)

Supervized:  This indie movie shot in Ireland stars Tom Berenger, Louis Gossett Jr, and Beau Bridges as aged superheroes living in a nursing home catering to former superheroes.  When one of their friends is stripped of his powers and dies, the former heroes have to uncover and stop what's going on.  Though in the end they don't really accomplish much as the bad guy dies on her own, though I suppose it is because she kind of OD'd on their superpowers.  Anyway, it's not a bad movie but it's the sort with a bigger budget it probably would have been able to do more. (3/5)

I Want You Back:  This Amazon Prime movie stretches a sitcom premise into 2 hours.  When Charlie Day and Jenny Slate get dumped by their significant others, they form a two-person support group and then decide to break up their former significant others.  Day befriends Slate's ex (Scott Eastwood) while Slate tries to seduce Day's ex's new boyfriend.  There are some extra complications thrown in to make it too long because you know what's going to happen, though there's no big kiss on the Empire State Building or anything like that.  There are a few laughs but it was not great. (2/5) (Fun Facts:  The climax involves the main characters flying from Savannah, GA to Atlanta, GA, which is about 250 miles, so they could have easily driven there in a few hours; with security and all that it would have taken about the same amount of time to just drive there.  Gotham's Ben McKenzie has a small part as a girl's dad for some reason; maybe he was married to or friends with someone in the production?)

Killers Anonymous:  In the past I've talked about how a movie like Smokin' Aces so desperately wants to be a Tarantino movie that it was kinda sad.  In this case, the movie desperately wants to be something like a Shane Black movie or Bad Times at the El Royle that it's just kinda sad.  And unlike that movie they could only afford two notable actors:  Jessica Alba, who's basically killed before the end of the credits, and Gary Oldman, who mostly talks on the phone and looks through binoculars.  So mostly you have nobodies playing hired killers who have a support group and while the premise sounds like it should be funny, it doesn't really turn out to be.  In the end it's not a bad movie but it never quite becomes a good movie even with various twists and turns. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  In one of my previous mega Stuff I Watched entries I mentioned Max Cloud, which was directed by the director of this.)

The Big Ugly:  The title does not refer to stars Vinnie Jones or Ron Perlman, though it really could.  Malcolm McDowell is a British crime boss and Jones his top enforcer.  They go to "West Virginia" (actually Kentucky) where Perlman is searching for oil.  The idea is the mob will fund the venture to clean its money, which will give Perlman the capital to operate.  Everyone wins, right?  But then the problem is Jones passes out and his young black girlfriend goes out with Perlman's son, who ends up killing her.  It's sort of like Road to Perdition or John Wick then as a guy seeking revenge blows everything up because the boss (Perlman in this case) is too intent on protecting his idiot son.  But in this case it works less well because the setting is too small so it's really not that hard to track the idiot son down and get to him.  It would have worked better if they had been in London, but that would have cost more.  It really could have been more exciting but maybe most of the stars are too old. (2.5/5)

This Was the XFL:  On Super Bowl Sunday it seemed appropriate to watch this 30 for 30 documentary on the XFL's rise and fall.  In the late 90s NBC lost its NFL contract and its sports president teamed with his buddy Vince McMahon of the WWE to create a new football league.  The problem is McMahon and his crew created a lot of hype but kind of neglected the actual product; they didn't even have any teams or players until about 2 months before kickoff.  There wasn't time for much training or bonding, so the first week it was pretty sloppy.  And some of the rule changes from the NFL didn't work out, like having guys scrambling for the ball instead of a coin flip--that led to a number of people getting hurt.  A lot of coaches and players also didn't really want to do the whole WWE reality TV thing either.  Viewership continued waning and hardly anyone attended or watched the "Million Dollar Game" to determine the championship.  But some of the technology like the "Sky Cam" and mic'ing up players became part of NFL broadcasts.  It was pretty interesting though not extremely hard-hitting because the filmmaker was the son of the NBC Sports guy.  (3/5) (Fun Facts:  At the end it says XFL MVP Tommy Maddox "won" Super Bowl XL in Detroit; in reality he was on the bench after losing his job to Ben Roethlisberger a couple years earlier.  Pittsburgh wide receiver Antwan Randle-El threw more passes in that game than Maddox.  Former XFL player Paris Lennon won a Super Bowl with Denver after a stop with the Lions.  Which was worse:  the XFL or Lions?)

30 for 30:  Scabs:  I actually forget the title of this at the moment.  Anyway, it was about the 1987 NFL strike that led to replacement players playing for 3 weeks.  It mostly focuses on the Washington Football Team as they won their games, including a crucial game against Dallas that was sort of David vs Goliath as Dallas had most of its regulars back by then.  A few of the players managed to stay around, but didn't get Super Bowl rings after Washington won it that season; they eventually got rings in 2018.  It talked to a number of the players but it's the sort of documentary that really could have been a 10 minute YouTube video or just a segment on SportsCenter. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  The Keanu Reeves movie The Replacements was very, very loosely based on this story.)

30 for 30:  Al Davis vs the NFL:  Really this should have been called Al Davis vs. Pete Rozelle because it only focuses on Davis, the owner of the Raiders, and Rozelle, the commissioner of the NFL from like 1960-1990.  Their "rivalry" wasn't really that electric because it was just through lawyers and other proxies.  I mean they weren't having it out in public or fighting in the street.  The biggest bone of contention was when Davis wanted to move from Oakland to Los Angeles in 1980 and Rozelle wouldn't let him.  A couple years later it did happen after the Raiders deadlocked in the first trial and won the second.  Then like 10 years later (after Rozelle retired) they moved back to Oakland.  After Davis's death, his son moved the team to Las Vegas.  Anyway, for some largely pointless reason they use "deepfake" to create zombies of Rozelle and Davis.  The Davis zombie looks like Mickey Rourke is playing him, which probably would have been better.  Since this was a couple years ago and wasn't ILM doing Luke Skywalker for The Mandalorian it looks weird and there was really no point to it.  (2/5) (Fun Fact:  An interesting 30 for 30 would be a full episode on the tiny Los Angeles suburb that gave Al Davis $10 million to put the team there on the site of a gravel pit.  The $10 million was nonrefundable and so the town lost the money and the team.  I'd like to hear more about how that went down and the fallout.)

30 for 30:  Mike and the Mad Dog:  I only watched this episode because it's a short one at about 55 minutes, not 90-120 minutes like some others.  It's the origin of sports talk radio!  At least modern sports talk radio where you have 2-3 guys yelling at each other and dumb people calling in.  It started in the late 80s with Mike Francesca and Chris "Mad Dog" Russo on the new sports talk station WFAN in New York.  It was like a less cordial Siskel & Ebert where the two guys didn't really get along that well but did a show together for 20 years.  If this had been longer maybe it could have gotten into some more of the conflicts.  In 2009, by the time social media and "cancel culture" were really getting started, they broke up with Mike staying on WFAN and "Mad Dog" going to Sirius XM.  I don't listen to talk radio so I wasn't extremely into it and I have to say this probably didn't help the culture much more than Rush Limbaugh. (2.5/5)

American Dad Seasons 15-16:  When I started watching this show many years ago I really liked it because even though Seth MacFarlane co-created and stars in it, it's not just a rehash of Family Guy.  Most of the XMas episodes are still the best of any of those animated shows because they're just so crazy and hilarious.  But like Family Guy, The Simpsons, and South Park I think it's past that tipping point where it's just not that good anymore.  It's still good for a few laughs, but it's definitely jumped the shark.  Like those other shows I don't know if this will ever get cancelled because it's on TBS, so it's not like you need huge ratings to be considered "doing well" there; they're basically a big fish in a small pond since moving from Fox. (2/5)

Robot Chicken Season 11:  Speaking of, when I had some discount codes on Amazon I bought season 11 of this show.  With season 10 I complained that I was outgrowing the show or it was outgrowing me as a lot of the references were going over my head.  And that continues here where references to things like Hey Arnold (2 sketches even) don't resonate with an 80s kid like me.  There was a baffling sketch that went on too long about a pig boy going to a prom and I have no idea if that was a reference to something or an original but it was just not funny.  The Halloween special was pretty good.  Like American Dad's Christmas special it featured a Groundhog Day-type time loop as the nerdy kid has to try to get Halloween right.  Increasingly I feel like Captain America in the first Avengers where there's so much stuff that I don't get so that when there is a reference I understand, I'm so relieved and shout, "I get that reference!"  There was a really good sketch that features Dilbert and starts off as a Die Hard parody but then turns into a great joke about Dilbert's creator and what a piece of shit he is.  So there are still some good bits but like American Dad and those other shows I mentioned it probably needs cancelled at this point but also like American Dad it's still a big fish in a small pond so I don't know when that might ever happen. (2/5)

***

BTW, watching so many Nic Cage movies, I wondered if I could do an A to Z Challenge on it.  I looked it up on IMDB but I would have to fudge a few letters like Q, Y, and X, though there was a Z.  What a shame.  I'm sure people would love that.

Here's the rough draft of my list:

• Adaptation
• Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans
• Con Air
• Dying of the Light
• 8(Eight)mm 
• Face/Off
• Ghost Rider
• Humanity Bureau, The
• It Could Happen to You
• Joe
• Kick-Ass
• Leaving Las Vegas
• Matchstick Men
• National Treasure
• Outcast
• Pig
• Q?
• Raising Arizona
• Snake Eyes
• Trapped in Paradise
• USS Indianapolis
• Vengeance: A Love Story
• Weather Man, The
• X?
• Y?
• Zandalee

I think I have seen all of those except USS Indianapolis and Zandalee.

A to Z Challenge Topic! And My Philosophy on Collecting

 Since this blog started I've done the A to Z Challenge most years.  A few years I just used it to promote my stuff--like the first year.  Other years I did more intensive things like Books that were also Movies or my extensive Rifftrax/MST3K lists.  A few other years I did childhood favorite properties:  Transformers, GI Joe, and Robotech.  Last year I kind of half-assed it with Star Wars Black Series action figures.

At the end of that I thought about doing other toy properties, maybe even finding one for each letter...and then I never really got around to it.  So...I'm just going to sort of half-ass it again with Marvel Legends figures!  

For the most part I found one that I actually own at least one figure of, though some of the more obscure letters I couldn't.  I mean there are only a couple for Q, Y, and Z so what are the odds I own them?  I did fudge something for Q but Y and Z I had to go with something I don't own.  Still 24/26 is pretty good.

I inadvertently posted K back in January and while I quickly deleted the entry, if you follow this blog you might have been tipped off to that entry and the challenge theme already.

Here's one I couldn't include in the challenge because it took a while just to figure out who the hell it was:

I got just the figure loose with a couple of Deadpools from eBay so I didn't have a box or anything to say who it was and I don't think the listing on eBay said either.  When I looked up Marvel Legends figures on Amazon and Walmart I never saw him pop up.

Finally I went to a Wiki-type page and found out this is Speed Demon from the Superior Foes of Spider-Man batch in 2016.  Who is he?  I don't know.  What does he do?  Don't know.  What's the deal with that little car with a head on it?  Wish I knew.

As for how I choose what to collect, what you'll see with these Marvel Legend figures is I have three basic categories:

1. Stuff I Really Want
2. Stuff That's Really Cheap
3. Stuff To Complete Something

The first one should be pretty obvious.  Some figures are for characters I really want like Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine, or Deadpool.  In most cases I want at least one basic one just so they're represented.  It's like that with DC too where I wanted to have at least one of the main seven Justice League figures:  Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Cyborg so it doesn't feel incomplete.  I should probably get a Hawkeye so I have all the original MCU Avengers, though I do have a Ronin movie figure I got from Wish.

The second category, sometimes I see something cheap and buy it for the hell of it.  Pre-pandemic that would usually be clearance bins at Walmart, Meijer, or Target or discount stores like Five Below or Ollie's, though I've only ever seen one Marvel Legends figure at an Ollie's and it was one I already had (Sharon Carter) so I didn't buy it.  Ollie's has been better for Star Wars Black Series or Mattel DC Multiverse figures.  Anyway, during the pandemic sometimes I'll see something at a reduced price on Amazon or something really cheap on eBay or Mercari.

The third category is most Marvel Legends figures are released in batches of 6 and at least 5 of the 6 will have a piece that like with Voltron you can merge them to make a larger figure.  A couple of times I've been close enough to making the big figure that I bought some figure I wouldn't otherwise want.  Also a couple of times I've bought just the part on eBay; it just depends which is a better deal.

These three categories create a mix of basic characters and more obscure ones.  It also means while I'm missing some figures I'd really like I also have some weird ones I've never even heard of.  Like the aforementioned Speed Demon or Grey Gargoyle I think his name is that I got for $4.50 from a Walmart in Fowlerville just for the hell of it.

The result looks sort of like this, though I have few Marvel Legends figures in other places.  Still, this is the bulk of them.  And since I made room I put some Star Wars, GI Joe, and DC ones on the shelf too.

Anyway, come back in April for more great content like that.  Or if you thought that was stupid, just come back in May.

Accuracy Isn't Always Necessary

 After my review of Eternals in January, it was kind of funny that I got two comments that were pretty similar.  First came Rusty Webb's comment on Goodreads

I mind deviations from the comics much less than you. And even when I was an avid marvel reader I couldn’t tell the Eternals apart from the Inhumans anyway.

And then Michael Offutt's comment on this blog:

Thanks for writing all of this. I have no knowledge of how far off the Eternals actually were to their versions in the comic books. I did enjoy the movie. However, your questions and criticisms are valid. In your context, it wasn't good. I guess I'm just glad I wasn't expecting much and was easily entertained. I do think that a stone Celestial sticking out of the ocean presents a great opportunity for a nice set piece in the future, either in a Disney Plus series or on the big screen.

It's pretty much the same sentiment:  I didn't read the comics so I thought it was fine, but you're not wrong.  Which, of course I'm not wrong.  I'm never wrong!  (I might be wrong about that.)

Anyway, I just want to say for the record that I am not the anal retentive type who has to have comic book movies be 100% faithful to the comics.  In many cases I haven't even read the comics a movie is based off of--or at least not many.  Like with Eternals I only read 3 different volumes.  I was just pointing out how the movie was different and in most cases how it was worse than what I read.

I wasn't saying that it was bad only because it wasn't like the comics; it was bad (to me) because it didn't improve on the comics.  Pretty much any of them, even the corny old Jack Kirby ones.  If you're a comic book company making a movie of one of your comics, maybe you should try to adapt it so it's as good or better than the source material?

And I'm not talking about that bullshit "woke" stuff some people whine about.  I mostly don't care about what race or gender the characters are.  Maybe if they tried to cast a blond white guy as Black Panther, I would have a problem with it, but mostly it doesn't matter.  Especially with something like Eternals where I wasn't even familiar with the source material until a few weeks before I saw it.

I don't want people coming away thinking I'm one of those jerks who goes around pointing out differences just to sound important.  One thing some people like to do is when talking about Star Wars or Star Trek or whatever to say how there's no sound in space so it's totally inaccurate!  My take on that issue is of course the filmmakers know there isn't sound in space!  Maybe George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry weren't actually rocket scientists, but they weren't morons either.  And going forward, the people who make the current shows/movies aren't stupid either.  The sounds exist for you, the audience.  I mean if you watched a big space battle and there was no sound it would be pretty fucking weird.  You might think you had lost your hearing or something.  You'd have a theater full of people loudly going, "Mawp!  Mawp!" like in Archer whenever a loud noise aggravates his tinnitus.  And as Michael Offutt pointed out about The Expanse TV show, a lot of the noises are those you might hear if you were on whatever ship more than if you were outside.

Take it from someone who has written plenty of bullshit pseudoscience (like Chance of a Lifetime):  you don't need to be 100% accurate with facts in fiction.  It's just it needs to be somewhat believable.  Readers can accept a bunch of technobabble about a drug that could turn a man into a woman, but if I suddenly had Stacey shooting lasers out of her eyes, that would probably be a step too far.  (Or would it...furiously scribbling notes now for Super Chance!)

As for page-to-screen adaptations, sometimes cutting material or rewriting material ends up being a good thing.  I've talked about how in The Cider House Rules and Wonder Boys for instance cutting some of the material from the book was a good idea.  So it wasn't 100% accurate but it worked better for the big screen.  In the case of Eternals, I don't think what they changed worked better for the most part.  Other than liking a lot of fights and shit blowing up and spectacle stuff like that, I don't really know what people would like about it.  To me most of the characters had as much personality as a wet paper bag.  Maybe they'll fix that whenever they do a sequel...or probably not.

Anyway, I've probably just muddled the issue even further.

Who Has Time For Patreon? I Do?

Sometimes writing an entry helps you to talk through a problem.  So here's my original entry:

Anyway, I heard of Patreon a while back because people/brands like Rifftrax and Toy Galaxy use it.  Then I saw some other authors of gender swap stories use it too and so one night when I was bored, I decided I'd go there and see about setting up an account.

The thing is, I hadn't ever used Patreon before, so I had no idea at all what it actually does or how it works.  I thought it was sort of a Kickstarter thing where people give you money for projects and they maybe get some stuff in return.  For the right price maybe they even tell you what they want.  (I mean that is how it worked in the days of da Vinci and Mozart where a royal or rich guy--the patron--would "commission" an artist to do something.)  But it's not really like that.

Basically what you're supposed to do is set up rewards "tiers" for different prices.  Each tier gives the user something more.  Their suggestion for writers is that Tier 1 is an exclusive newsletter for $5/month.  And then Tier 2 is a Q&A and the newsletter for $9/month and Tier 3 is access to stories or notes or some shit along with the other two tiers for like $12/month.

My thought:  who in their right fucking mind would pay $5/month for a newsletter?  And what the fuck could I put in a newsletter every month that would make it worth $5?  I mean I'm a fiction writer, not a reporter; I don't have a lot of "news" except new releases and those go in my email newsletter and on my website.  Why would anyone pay for that?  And a Q&A?  Every month?  You'd probably get the same questions over and over and who would want that?

Yeah, so their suggestions are bullshit.  So I looked up some of the users I know of.  Rifftrax you can get increasing amounts of behind the scenes stuff and at the highest level a T-Shirt.  Toy Galaxy you can see episodes early and without ads and more behind the scenes type stuff.  Which doesn't really help me as an author because it's not like people want to watch me writing shit in my bedroom or car.

Looking up another author, what she does is have like exclusive stories and notes and stuff like that.  To which I'm thinking, "Shit, who has time for that?"  I mean I'm a pretty quick writer, especially compared to a snail like GRR Martin, but I generally do only 1-2 stories a month. If I do a thing like this other author I'd have to somehow churn out another 1-2 stories just for Patreon users.  It sounds exhausting just thinking about it.

For entertainment properties like Rifftrax and Toy Galaxy it seems easier, though still time-consuming.  It seems harder for authors like me because it's hard to do "behind-the scenes" stuff.  I don't do a lot of notes or outlining or second drafts so there's not a lot of bonus material.  

I was thinking of maybe letting people become part of the story, like one level you can name a character and another you can decide what kind of swap you want or something, but you couldn't really do that for hundreds of subscribers.  The thing with these Tiers is they have to be something universal or else you'd get overwhelmed.  It's hard enough to stay whelmed right now.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll poke around this a little more and maybe if I find more authors I can steal some good ideas that wouldn't take a ton of time to do.

After I wrote that, the old brain started thinking of things maybe I could do.  Like I said in the original entry, it has to be something pretty universal and not too time-consuming.  And then I got thinking that if I couldn't really let people suggest whole stories or whatever, I could maybe let them vote for things.  Like I could offer up a couple different story ideas and let people vote which one they want me to do next.  Or vote on whether it should end Happily Ever After or not.  I wouldn't want to do the whole thing by polls, but at least then people could feel like part of the process.  Maybe they'd want to pay a couple bucks a month for that.

I figure that would be the basic tier.  Then in a higher tier I could offer people the chance to get books early, in formats besides KDP and without that dreaded ad for the newsletter.  And maybe I could make like a "Welcome Kit" at the highest tier where they could choose a paperback to get autographed and maybe some other stuff like a bookmark or a print of another cover.

If I could figure out how to do these in more of a flash fiction style then I think that would be more plausible for one of the tiers.  I was thinking that another avenue would be to take old stories and do new endings as sort of a "What If" kind of thing.  Especially stories that I didn't end Happily Ever After, maybe I could find a way to write the ending that way.  Then I wouldn't have to do a whole book, just a couple of scenes.

What kind of rewards would you pay to get from an author on a monthly basis?  And how much would you be willing to pay?

Star Wars: The High Republic is Another Disney Dud

 

Since taking over the Star Wars franchise in 2012, Disney's track record has been pretty hit-or-miss.  Not so much in terms of money, but quality.  Rebels was good while Resistance, the extension of Clone Wars, and The Bad Batch were pretty meh.  The sequel trilogy was a dumpster fire, Solo was blah, and Rogue One was mostly good for the ending.  The Mandalorian has been good while the Boba Fett show was meh. 

The comics have similarly been a mixed bag, though I haven't read anything close to all of them.  One of the primary writers, Charles Soule, was part of the group of writers tasked with creating a new series called The High Republic that focuses on the Old Republic in its heyday.  The series would feature regular books, kids books, comics, video games, and probably some other stuff too.

Soule wrote the opening novel Light of the Jedi, which I finally read in January of 2022, months after I got it on sale.  It was, as the title says, another dud for Disney Star Wars.  The book was painfully dull with a bunch of even duller Mary Sue characters I could not tell apart even if you put a lightsaber to my throat.

The biggest problem is something that reminded me of Star Trek TNG when Roddenberry first created it.  Roddenberry's directive was that the Federation should be totally at peace and everyone is good and happy and well-fed and there's nothing wrong whatsoever.  To which the writers were like, "So...what the fuck do we write about then?"  If you can't have conflict, how do you have any stories?

This High Republic era features a similar problem.  The Jedi have already defeated the Sith, so you don't have Sith Lords.  It's too early for the Empire since Palpatine hasn't even been born yet.  The Republic is totally at peace and everyone is good and happy and there's nothing wrong whatsoever.  So...what the fuck do you write about then?

The answer:  pirates.  Arr!  The bad guys are a bunch of pirates called the Nihil (as in nihilists, ugh, so obvious) who use an old lady in a bacta tank to find hidden paths through hyperspace to attack ships.  One ship they attack breaks up in hyperspace and the chunks come out of hyperspace at various times in various places.  The first third of the book pretty much focuses on one system as the first chunks start showing up.  As planets there face annihilation, the Jedi show up to help.

Jedi like, um, some chick who floats around listening to the Force as a song.  And some dude who likes to experiment with the Force so everyone thinks he's weird.  And some kid and his master who are like a less interesting Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan.  And...probably some others I didn't care enough to remember even vaguely.

It got to the point where I wondered if maybe the whole freaking book might just be this disaster.  Unfortunately it wasn't.  The Jedi start trying to find the source of the problem while one of the Nihil tries to extort a planet for money and winds up killing a bunch of people.  And another group of Nihil takes some random family hostage just because.

At the heart of it all is some guy named something Ro who was a strategist for the Nihil but then starts to consolidate his power.  Ro is like a Wish version of Grand Admiral Thrawn.

I'm not sure that any writer could have polished this turd of a story, but the problem here is until this point, Soule has only done comics.  Early in the 2010s he did some work for DC and some indie work but then he got an exclusive contract with Marvel and along with Kieren Gillen has been a main writer of their Star Wars comics.  To launch a new series, maybe it would have been better to get someone more experienced at novels like Timothy Zahn or Michael Stackpole or Alan Dean Foster.  You have a story that isn't much of a story and then you have it written by someone probably doing his first real novel--it's not a winning combination.

Not that Soule's writing is bad.  It's adequate.  I'm just saying that someone more experienced might have been able to wring out some conflict and compelling characters.  But let's face it, the point here wasn't to make a great book.  It was just to set up all this other stuff.  Which is the problem with Disney Star Wars most of the time; just about all of it only exists to sell shit.  Having fucked up the sequels, I suppose this was a way to create a new series that wouldn't be affected by all their other poor decisions.

The question is:  why this era?  It's boring.  Maybe they want to sell it as this is where the Jedi start going downhill, but it's still centuries before anything else.  Why not focus on the beginning of the Republic or the Jedi war with the Sith?  That would actually have some excitement, even if we know the inevitable outcome.  I mean this isn't even really Star Wars; this is more like Star Skirmishes.  There's an OK space battle at the end but there's really not even the potential for any awesome lightsaber fights or anything like that.

So in the end I would definitely say not to waste time on this in any form.

Dear Hollywood: Where is My Gritty Due South Reboot/Revival?

Since my sister Melissa died on March 5th, 2017, every year around that day I try to watch something we both enjoyed.  In 2018 I watched Titanic but that really is too emotional.  I watched Daria in 2019, I forget what in 2020, and The Simpsons in 2021.  

In 2022 I watched Due South, which aired on CBS from 1994-1996 and had a third season air on Canadian TV from 1997-1998.  This was easily my favorite drama of the 90s and probably my favorite cop show of all time.

The premise follows the "buddy cop" model like the Lethal Weapon movies.  In this case a Canadian Mountie named Benton Fraser comes to Chicago after his father is murdered.  He meets Detective Ray Vecchio of the Chicago PD and they start to investigate the crime.  In the end of the pilot episode there's a shootout at Fraser's cabin in the Northwest Territories.  Fraser's father was set up by a friend in the Mounties and it's sort of a black eye for the service.  Fraser is made a pariah and returns to Chicago to work at the consulate there.

From there Fraser and Ray solve crimes on a weekly basis.  Some are more dramatic like encounters with the Mob and the two-part episode where a woman Fraser loved comes to town to frame him for a robbery and murder.  And then other episodes are more comical like a screwball comedy where Fraser has to deliver a reception invitation to ditzy woman's fiancé.  Most walk a balance between drama and comedy so it's usually a fun time without being stupid.

The first season was especially good but towards the end of the second season it started to get a bit more farcical.  The series was cancelled on American TV after a shorter second season but continued in Canada on one of their networks.  A major change was that Ray Vecchio was replaced by Stanley Kowalski, who went by his middle name of Ray.  I never really liked this season as Fraser became more of a Dudley Doright character.  The final episode had Ray Vecchio return and along with Fraser and the other Ray they took down some criminals, after which Ray went to Florida to open a bowling alley for...reasons and Fraser and the other Ray went in search of some mythical treasure for...reasons.  As far as endings go it wasn't great.

Anyway, with all of Hollywood's IP mining of reboots and revivals, why has no one revived or rebooted this yet?  It's a pretty easy concept to reboot and I don't think any of the major actors are dead in real life if you wanted to do a revival.

Given how long it's been, I think a reboot would probably be better.  Or a sort of soft reboot where Fraser could have a son (or daughter) who goes to Chicago to team up with a cop there and the whole thing starts again. One major change since the mid-90s is a section of the Northwest Territories was carved out to be the province of Nunavut.  It would make sense if the new Fraser would come from there and be half or all Inuit so you have some diversity and you can use Inuit stories without whining about "cultural appropriation."

Actually, I already came up with some revival or reboot ideas way back in 1999--just in case you thought I only started doing that kind of spitballing on this blog.  I actually had a page called "Red, White, and Due" with pretty much 0 readers but I just put it out there because I loved the show.  Here's what I came up with back then:

Fans of any show always want it to come back. One time I got a message from a group that was trying to bring back the show "Prey" on ABC (it was some kind of sci-fi series), even though the show had hardly even had one season on ABC. Whenever there is a show that people like, there are always diehards who want to bring it back.

I don’t usually think about bringing shows back on TV, because the chances are usually so small that it’s next to impossible. In the case of Due South, the chance is remote, but better than "Prey". The reason is that the show had two seasons on a major American network and another two on Canadian television. Moreover, the show is now being shown on TNT, so it has the might of Ted Turner on its side. TNT has already taken one existing show and produced a season of it as well as several TV movies and a spin-off. That show was "Babylon 5", which for years was mired in the depths of syndication. When it was picked up by TNT, they produced the final fifth season and launched the spin-off series "Crusade"(although the run was limited to thirteen episodes when contract negotiations went due south). TNT also made the regrettable CHiPs reunion TV movie "CHiPs 99". So given those two cases, how hard would it be for the network to reunite the cast of Due South for a few TV movies or a new series? When that thought struck me I began to wonder about the kinds of stories that could be used to launch the Due South comeback. I meditated upon this for a while and came up with several ideas for two-hour TV movies that would reunite our heroes Fraser and Ray.

The obvious problem is the final episode "Call of the Wild", where Fraser and Fake Ray run off into the wilderness and Ray heads with Stella Kowalski (Fake Ray’s ex-wife) to Florida to start a bowling alley. How can we possibly launch a comeback with that kind of an ending? Actually, it’s really easy based on two assumptions: 1) Fake Ray and Fraser split ways with Fraser remaining in the Northwest Territories and Fake Ray going back to America and 2)Ray and Stella’s relationship falls apart and Ray comes back to Chicago and rejoins the Chicago Police Department. How to make this assumption work doesn’t take any long flashbacks or time-consuming farewell scenes. It only takes two characters and as little as three lines. The two characters are of course Fraser and Ray and here are the basic three lines:

[Setting: Ideally in the Riv, but it can be anywhere]

Fraser: I thought you and...

Ray [Interrupting]: Nah, it didn’t work out. [Pause] I thought you and...

Fraser [Interrupting]: Oh no, he decided he preferred the climate of Chicago to the Territories.

These lines could be used the first time the characters meet, or we could set up a running gag where Fraser and Ray are about to ask each other about Fake Ray and Stella when they keep get interrupted. Finally, at the end, they are able to spit it out. I think that would be funnier, but it doesn’t matter. The reason I said "as little as three lines" is because the characters could of course expound on things, but they don’t really need to. The reason I have them interrupting each other isn’t out of some kind of grudge against Fake Ray or Stella that I don’t want their names mentioned, but because I think that with the chemistry between Ray and Fraser, they already know who the other is referring to.

As to what would happen to Fake Ray and Stella, it doesn’t really matter. They could show up for cameos or not be shown at all. I’d like to avoid the situation in "Call of the Wild" with two Rays running around, so I wouldn’t include Fake Ray. As for Francesca, Huey, Dewey, Thatcher, and other characters it again doesn’t matter. Their parts are not essential, so if they aren’t included it won’t hurt things terribly much. The only ones really vital are Fraser, Ray, and Dief. It would, of course, be easy to work Lieutenant Welch in since he didn’t go anywhere or have any life-changing events happen at the end of "Call of the Wild". Ideally, though, I like it if we could get all of the original producers, directors, etc. to do this comeback special.

Some people I’ve talked to would like to just forget the Canadian seasons, but when I was thinking about this I decided to be realistic. There are probably more Canadian viewers than any other country, so we can’t just disregard those seasons, although it would have made this easier. Besides, I wouldn’t want to do the "Dallas" thing where Fraser, Dief, or someone else would wake up and the Canadian seasons had been a dream or anything stupid like that. That would hurt the credibility of the show, anger some viewers, and just seem pretty cheesy to new viewers.

Now that I’ve effectively set things up, here are the ideas I’ve come up with. Each one has a "working title" to separate it from the others and all take into account the two assumptions made earlier. So to reiterate, Fraser is a Mountie in the Northwest Territories and Ray is a detective with the Chicago Police Department. All of these ideas are intended for a two-hour block of time and as separate movies.

1. The Cover-Up:  In a remote village, an Inuit chief turns up dead and Fraser is called in to investigate. The chief was an outspoken critic of the Canadian government. The trail of the killer leads Fraser back to Chicago where he and Ray team up to solve the case. Ultimately the killer is found, but a wider evil is unearthed as our heroes discover an insidious plot by key Canadian officials to silence the chief.
2. Victoria’s Legacy:  At his cabin in the Territories, Fraser receives a strange letter supposedly from Victoria the criminal he loved, but who fled after trying to frame him for theft, murder, and other crimes. The letter says that she wants to meet him in Chicago to start a new life together. (The reason for the Chicago meeting is more than a convenient way to work Ray back into it. It’s a site both would be acquainted with and much easier for a criminal to hide in than a town in the Northwest Territories.) Torn between love and suspicion, Fraser travels back to Chicago. Instead of his former lover, he finds a trap set for him. After narrowly escaping death, Fraser and Ray track the criminal only to find that it has nothing to do with Victoria, but instead is a trap set by someone Fraser and Ray put in jail.
3. Trail of Blood:  A local guide is killed in the Territories, but even as Fraser begins to investigate, a hunting party is found dead in the forest. The common bond is that both the guide and hunting party were killed with American machine guns. A short distance away is the body of a man carrying that same type of weapon, mortally wounded by one of the hunters. The man is part of a militant group of Quebec separatists bent on violently upheaving the current government in Quebec. The mystery of why Quebec separatists would be in the Territories is solved when Fraser traces the guns back to Chicago, where he and Ray find out that the separatists are purchasing weapons in Chicago and smuggling them into Canada to a remote training camp in the Territories. (This seems a little extreme for a Due South episode, but that’s the glory of brainstorming.)
4. Strange Bedfellows:  A Canadian diplomat is visiting Chicago and Fraser is assigned to the security detail for his experience in the city. Ray is also assigned as part of the local security team and our heroes are thus reunited. However, the diplomat is soon assassinated and Fraser and Ray must work quickly to find the killer before an international incident starts. They soon find that the killer is part of a notorious Chicago crime family (part of the Mafia) paid by the diplomat’s spouse so that they may assume the diplomat’s power (the diplomat can be male or female, thus the mastermind could be a wife or husband depending on casting).
5. Meeting of the Minds:  An international economic conference is being held in Chicago and Fraser and Ray are assigned as part of the security detail. As numerous threats are received, Fraser and Ray must stop a group of terrorists before they blow up the unsuspecting economists and incite worldwide terror.

OK, some of these ideas are better than others, but they all follow a sort of pattern. That is, Fraser and Ray team up once again and have to solve a murder. I chose a murder because if we’re talking a comeback then we want something that is more intense than stealing chickens. As well, it compares to the way the series began. Finally, I’ve got one really wacky, off-the-wall idea if the original cast couldn’t be had whether because of age or unwillingness.

6. Due South: The Next Generation

This would be set in a futuristic dystopia many years after the original show. In the Northwest Province, a Mountie’s father is killed. The Mountie tracks the killer to the city of Chicago, which is full of corruption and where crime operates in the open. The Mountie enlists the aid of a streetwise Chicago cop and they hunt down the killer, but incur the wrath of the criminals in charge of Chicago and corrupt Canadian officials. Ultimately the Mountie and cop survive and thus begins a new series where our heroes take on the evils in Chicago and prove that one man can make a difference.

I think most of my ideas could easily be adapted into a reboot pilot and they're still pretty plausible to do in 2022.  You could have some of the original actors appear but new actors for Fraser and Ray.

I'm just saying, they've done almost everything else, why not a beloved cult classic on both sides of the border?

Fun Facts:  Due South was created by Paul Haggis, who won an Oscar for Crash in 2005.  The show featured before-they-were-star appearances by Mark Ruffalo, Carrie Anne Moss, Ryan Philippe, Maria Bello, and the guy who played Mike in Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul.  I occasionally see actors from the show in other things like when David Marciano, who played Ray Vecchio played a cop in an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  I've seen Daniel Kash, who played the detective Louis Gardino, in a few things.  But probably the one I see the most is Callum Keith Rennie, who played Stanley "Ray" Kowalski, who's popped up in movies like Memento and shows like Man in the High Castle.  Since I watched the Candadian Robocop TV series and TV miniseries a few months earlier, I recognized the guy who plays Robocop in the miniseries is a bad guy in the pilot episode who continues briefly appearing in footage used in the credits.  This was one of the first shows I remember watching that used popular music in the show's soundtrack like Sarah McLachlan and The Guess Who along with acts that were probably more popular north of the border.

Less Fun Fact:  As far as I know this isn't really streaming anywhere.  Google said 5 years ago the first season was on YouTube but it might not still be there.  The DVDs I bought in Canada like 17 years ago weren't working a few years ago so I bought a really cheapo set from Amazon where instead of listing episodes individually it strangely groups them together in clumps of 2-4, which is kind of annoying for a show with episodes of about 45 minutes.  The transfer quality is not great either, but like I said it doesn't seem to be streaming so that's really the best alternative at this point.  I think a lot of the problem with it on streaming is that it was a Canadian/American show so there are probably rights issues tangling it up, which might also be why there hasn't been a reboot/revival yet.

Don't Try to Explain Me to Me

Since most of my PT Dilloway books have been out for a while, I don't really check on them on Goodreads as often as Eric Filler ones.  But when I noticed the sidebar on this blog said Second Chance had 5 reviews, it seemed like that was different than usual, so I went to check and found this gem:

There's just so much wrong about this.  People who haven't done this stuff literally hundreds of times like I have don't really understand the underlying issues involved.  You can't really just "continue the story" in a gender swap series.  If there's no swap then what's your hook?  "Hey, read this book because more stuff happens...like Stacey goes to college and tries dating and gets stage fright singing."  There's really no hook to that.

This is supposed to be a thriller-type series, so you can't have the story just be Stacey adjusting to life as a girl.  In the first book she (and Jake) killed all the bad guys (except Jake) so there wasn't really any unfinished business as far as that goes.  She was a police detective so she could open a detective agency, but who wants to hire an 18-year-old girl?  I suppose she could just happen into cases, like some classmate runs into trouble and she investigates, but I wasn't wanting to turn this into Nancy Drew or Veronica Mars.

So if you want my actual motivation and not some silly bastard's dumb thoughts, something needed to happen to Stacey.  And when Steve turned into Stacey, she was a grown adult.  So this gives Stacey a chance to experience childhood, most notably her crush on a classmate that when she grows up again helps her to reconcile her feelings for Dr. Mac.  And by having Madison go through the change with her, it gave their relationship a new depth.  Those things help to "resolve the story" later on.

It was different and probably "wacko" but it wasn't a prank and it wasn't desperation or anything like that.  These are the kind of complaints of someone who probably doesn't write books--or certainly not books like these.  Along the lines of what a comedian might tell a heckler:  I don't tell you how to do your job; don't tell me how to do mine.

The funniest comment is probably:

It feels like they didn't want to keep writing this, but they had to, so they just fully jumped the shark and wrote something totally ridiculous that had nothing to do with the themes of the first book and did not deliver on any of what you might be expecting from a continuation of the story.

Um, it's a self-published book and I didn't release the first one for almost 18 months.  So if I didn't want to write the sequel, why the hell would I?  In actuality I already had a lot of Second Chance outlined by the time I finished Chance of a Lifetime and I was pretty fucking fired up to write it.  The first draft was nearly 110,000 words; does that sound like someone who didn't really want to write it?

As for it being a "slightly racist James Bond plot" I don't really get that.  It's racist because the company that kidnaps them is Chinese?  The same Chinese company that was introduced in the first book you loved so much?  Was that "racist" then?  Really in the first book I made it a Chinese company because I wanted it to be a big rival company to the original makers of the formula and China has lots big corporations now.  If it was a company in France or Germany or Australia would it still be "racist?"  I doubt it.

Anyway, you can probably get away with speculating on the motivations of some big important author like Stephen King or JK Rowling or John Irving--I've done it--but don't try that shit with a small-time author with too much time on his hands.  You don't know me or what I do or what I've done, person who hides behind a fake name and no picture.  Go fuck yourself.

I looked it up and this person gave the first book a 4-star rating with no words and the last book a 1-star rating with  no words.  The latter I'm surprised they didn't write another screed about me not telling the story they wanted.  Which would be hard considering I wrote the first drafts of these 10 1/2 years ago and obviously I don't know this person.  Someone did something similar with my Children of Eternity series, bitching because the sequels didn't follow the story they imagined it should be.  And how could it?  

I suppose we all do that to some extent, but I think what's more important isn't so much whether the story is what we imagined it should be but whether it's a good story on its own.  The problem with the Star Wars sequels (and prequels) or things like that aren't that they aren't the scenarios I drew up on this blog, but that they're rife with plot holes and stupidity.  That's the difference really.