You Should Expect the Unexpected

I guess it's good in a way that jerks write stupid comments about my books on Amazon or Goodreads; it gets me fired up to talk about something that isn't political because you know people don't like that.  (But they also don't like talking about writing, or TV, or movies, or comics, or action figures, or really anything.  Unless it's on their blog.  Then it's OK.)

Where was I?  Oh, yeah, someone posted this terse "review" of Bridal Shop Swap:

Besides being a huge spoiler, as in literally it spoils the end of the book, it's also another of those dumb things people say.  "was expecting..."  So because I, the author, didn't do what you, person I don't know, wanted months before you read the book, I'm somehow to blame for you not liking it.  Yeah, sure, that makes sense.

More to the point, though, is the issue of complaining because the end wasn't what you expect.  What would be the point of reading or watching TV/movies if everything ended the way we expected it?  The whole mystery genre would be pretty much kaput because the killer would always be who we expect.  M Night Shyamalan wouldn't have a career...so it's not all bad.

Still, the point is, it wouldn't be any fun if everything ended the way we wanted or expected.  The Empire Strikes Back would have sucked if it had ended Happily Ever After instead of the bad guys pretty much winning.  And there wouldn't have been that shocking twist about Vader being Luke's father.  What fun would that have been?

The thing is, it's not even like the two people broke up at the end.  He turns back into a guy but they agree to try it that way for a while and see how it works out.  They go off to have some coffee together.  So it's not even a sad ending or bummer ending or anything.  It's just not the Happily Ever After this person wanted.  2 stars seems really harsh for that but people don't think about things like that.  Or they use some bogus system like Andrew Leon.  Ugh.

Anyway, I've said before that I really hate this crap where people want everything to end Happily Ever After.  In this case it's taking it to an extreme because it has to be THEIR Happily Ever After, which I really have no way of knowing.  Conversely sometimes people want the person who swapped to change back at the end, even when, like with Girl Power, it doesn't really make sense.  That just muddles things further because how am I supposed to know which side is going to comment and/or rate the story?  I really have no way to know which randos will show up.

In the end I always just do what I want, which is what I think is best for the story.  Sometimes that has unfortunate consequences.  It really shouldn't but that's the world for you.

Looking at A Hero's Journey, I saw this review from 2014, which was kind of the same thing:

The thing is, I never promised you a bad guy "with freaky powers" or a good guy "with lots of tricks."  If I had promised those things and did not deliver then you'd have reason to complain.  Dinging my book because of things you wanted that were never promised is a dick move.  

By the same token, I never promised the other story was a lesbian romance.  It's not even filed under that category.  Why can't people just take the book for what it is?  If you want these other things, then here's an idea:  write your own fucking book!  That is advice that people give:  write the book you want to read.  You want a lesbian romance?  Go write one.  You want a bad guy with "freaky powers" and a good guy with "lots of tricks?"  Go write it!  And leave me and my books out of it.

Saving Cents Doesn't Always Make Sense

On the Rifftrax app there's an old short "educational" film called "The Grocery Witch."  I think it's from the early 70s and it involves a witch using magic to convince everyone to save money by doing things like putting sugar on corn flakes instead of buying pre-sweetened cereal, making your own pudding instead of buying cups, making your own oatmeal instead of instant, seasoning your own rice instead of buying pre-seasoned rice, and breading your own zucchini instead of buying frozen.  (No, I hadn't heard of breaded zucchini either before this.)

In theory those are great ideas to save a few bucks, but the reality is for most of us, we'd rather spend the little bit extra for the convenience of frozen or pre-packaged items.  As the riffers pointed out, making your own pudding is kind of annoying if you want to put some in your lunchbox for work or school.  Sure you can use a Tupperware-type container, but then you've got to make it the night before so it has time to set and put it in the container and wash both the container and the bowl and all the other stuff you used to make it with.  The time and mess and all that for most people isn't worth saving a few cents versus buying a pack of Jell-O cups or other cheaper brands.  Especially if you buy a generic brand in bulk the "savings" are pretty minimal.

I was reminded of this when I got an old-fashioned shaving brush/soap set from Amazon Vine.  It was free so it didn't cost me anything but really it seemed the cost outside of Vine and the time it takes to make the lather and such isn't really that great over just buying a can of cheap shaving cream from Walmart or a "dollar" store or whatever.  Especially since I don't shave a whole lot, basically once a week, so I've had the same can of shaving cream for a couple of years.

One time the stores were out of frozen French fries so I bought a bag of potatoes from Walmart and made my own in my air fryer.  If you slice a couple potatoes up fairly thin and put a little oil and salt on them, they taste pretty good--most of the time.  There is kind of a learning curve to how to cut them and how long to cook them and so on.  An obvious drawback is that potatoes will start getting eyes and stuff after a few days while frozen potatoes can sit in the freezer for a long time.

During the lockdown in 2020 when it was hard to get fresh groceries, I got a thing from Amazon Vine to make my own almond milk.  It worked but it was really slow and cumbersome.  Better are "milk bags" you can get from Amazon for like $6 for a pair of them.  Almonds and coconut I got in bulk from nuts.com so they weren't too expensive.  Still, it's a bit messy and time-consuming, so once I could easily pick up prepackaged milk again, I did so.

I do cold brew my own coffee when it's warm outside.  That's something else I got from Amazon Vine so no real cost to me except for the coffee grounds--and sometimes I get those from Vine too.  It can be a little messy with the grounds but usually it's a lot cheaper than buying cold brew from a supermarket or Starbucks or McDonald's

Recently I got a machine from Amazon Vine that makes egg bites like the kind you can get from Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks or Tim Horton's.  It is a little messy and time-consuming, but it's a lot cheaper than going to a coffee place or buying frozen biscuits like I had been doing.  Plus it's less carbs and stuff than biscuits or croissants or English muffins.

Anyway, the point being that a lot of the time while we can do things ourselves, the cost benefit is not usually worth it.  We'd rather pay a little more for the convenience.

When it comes to publishing books, some people would rather pay for the convenience of someone else doing the editing, formatting, cover, and marketing.  And more extreme people say you have to do that not even as a matter of convenience.  

As I've talked about before, though, those costs can really add up.  You can easily shell out $5-20,000 just to put a book out there.  The likelihood of making those costs back is slim to none.

My operation works well enough with very few costs.  Sometimes I buy a cover image but even that's just a couple of bucks since I buy the smallest size and usually buy in bulk.  I do my own editing, my own formatting, and my own marketing with a free newsletter.  The website hosting on Wordpress and 1and1 is really the most expensive part of my operation and probably fairly useless too.  I mean if you want to talk about convenience it is nice to have a web presence, but I can't really say how many people actually use it.  From the counter on the Planet 99 Publishing site, not that many, just about 2800 in however many years since I set the counter up.  The most valuable part of the web thing is so I can give books to newsletter subscribers, though even a lot of that is done through MailChimp and Prolific Works.

Anyway, the important thing is to consider whether you want to pay the cost for the convenience of something.  If it's something you can do yourself with little muss and fuss, then it's probably better to do it yourself than to pay someone.  But some people lack confidence about editing or covers, so they're much more comfortable paying someone to do it.  Those who say you HAVE to do it one way or another, though, are just idiots.

Don't Make the Meaningful Meaningless

 When I talked about the Snake-Eyes movie I mentioned that at the end of the movie the old ninja lady just gives him the iconic black suit with no setup or explanation.  It's just, "Here, take this."  It was kind of symbolic of what was wrong with that movie--the struggle for it to include the GI Joe stuff in any kind of satisfying way.

Snake-Eyes getting his black suit should have been a big deal, like whenever Bruce Wayne creates the Batsuit for the first time or Spider-Man creates his suit.  Or whoever.  It's supposed to be symbolic of taking on that identity.  Someone just dumping it in his arms at the end of the movie with no setup gives it no meaning at all.  And when you give your movie the clumsy title "GI Joe Origins" then maybe this final bit of his origin story should actually mean something.

Another example is for the ballyhooed "Snyder Cut" people were all stoked Superman was going to wear the black suit from the 90s comics after he came back from the dead--except that didn't have a cape.  The thing about that suit was it was supposed to help harness solar energy so he could recover.  But in the Snyder Cut he just walks onto the crashed ship and grabs it instead of the colored version.  There was absolutely no meaning or significance to it whatsoever.  And really no idea why he chose that one over the regular one.  It was utterly pointless--like most of the Snyder Cut.

A non-wardrobe example is an episode of The Orville called "The Mortality Paradox."  The ship finds a planet that's supposed to be abandoned but seems to have life.  So a bunch of people shuttle down and find a 21st Century high school--gee, what a cheap, accessible filming location--and the dumbass pilot almost gets eaten by a Rancor-looking thing.  Then they're suddenly on a 21st Century airliner--gee, another cheap, accessible filming location--and the dumbass captain hits his head or something.  Then they go to some thing for Bortas's people where dead bodies are stored and one comes to life to strangle him.  And then they're on a lake and there's a giant squid that almost kills the first officer.

Eventually a Tron-looking alien shows up and says that their race has advanced so far that they're pretty much immortal.  So they were trying to experience what death would feel like by putting the crew into these scenarios.  Which when I thought about it was sort of the same principle as the original Star Trek pilot, only they weren't just studying death.

Anyway, the problem when I thought about it is almost none of these scenarios (except maybe Bortas's) actually had any significance.  A 21st Century high school or airliner wouldn't have any meaning to people who are supposed to live in the 25th Century except as something they might have seen on their version of TV and movies.  It would have had far more impact--and helped build the characters--if the moments they experienced were things they had actually experienced.  As it was, almost 90% of the episode was just random stuff that didn't mean much.

The lesson then is that when you're writing a story, you want your big reveals to actually feel big.  They should have the dramatic importance that befits them.  Otherwise your audience isn't going to feel how important the important moment actually is.

Oh, by the way, I am your father.  (See how lame that is?)

Sometimes Normal Isn't Normal

 As a follow-up to Monday's entry, one thing people have complained about, like the person I mentioned on Monday with the Girl Power books, is that gender swapped characters don't act like "normal women."  They cry too much, they're not as strong as my daughter, and whatever.  Besides the review mentioned on Monday it's been brought up a few times with Chance of a Lifetime.

I don't really understand why people think that.  I mean, of course they don't act like "normal" women, because they aren't normal women!  In Chance of a Lifetime, Stacey spent 50 years (half a century!) as a man, so why would you expect him to instantly act like someone who's grown up as a woman?  Like I said about Robin in Girl Power, she just lost like 25% of her mass (most of it muscle) so why would she be able to do pushups like your daughter, who's been training for years?  

It's a really annoying criticism.  I'm sure it's mostly women who make this criticism because they see it as "misogynist."  But the other part of it is you have to give people the show.  Most people wouldn't like a gender swap story where the guy instantly becomes a "normal" well-adjusted woman.  I've gotten complaints, especially from "John Daniels," who fortunately stopped reading my books a long time ago, that the character adjusted too quickly.  A lot of people want the theater or pageantry of the guy stumbling around and learning how to dress and put on makeup and stuff like that.  For me the crying is part of that; with a guy like Steve Fischer who was a rugged cop, crying is something he hadn't done in years, so it helps to sell that he's changing.  And then of course you have the sexual discovery.  That's probably a lot easier and more satisfying than it is in real life.  Again, it's all part of the show.  

Often people claim to want something "realistic" until you actually give them realistic.  Then they whine and bitch about that and say it's boring or whatever.  

What is good is the person who reviewed the Girl Power series read Chance of a Lifetime and said:

Initially I was turned off by all the weepiness thinking it is not like girls I know, then I thought, 40 years of male hormones stopped instantly and replaced by high levels of females' hormones must be like instant cold turkey of one drug together with instant addiction to another - I guess I would get a little upset!

So at least she finally got it.  Or she was just humoring me.

The Hero's Journey Matters More Than Their Powers

 On Monday's entry I talked about someone's review of the whole Girl Power series.  Rereading the last book, GAIA:  Rogue State, I commented:

For reasons I can't really explain, my favorite characters in this series are the non-powered heroes like Melanie, Diane, Tonya, and Robin. Melanie especially is a favorite as she goes from a geeky fanboy in the first book to a female sidekick to de facto leader of Earth in the third book to Nick Fury on a shoestring budget in this book. If I hadn't found a lot more profit in writing gender swap fiction under another name after writing this, I probably would have written more adventures for Melanie and her discount spy agency.

I suppose that's mostly true about comics in general.  I mostly like heroes who don't have really powerful superpowers like Batman, Batgirl, or Azrael.  I also like Captain America, Spider-Man, Superman, and Wonder Woman but maybe not as much.

When it comes to Greek mythology I always liked Theseus more than Perseus or Herakles.  Theseus was more the Batman type who had to rely on his own skill and gifts whereas Perseus was given a bunch of shit by the gods so he was more like Wonder Woman and Herakles had all that strength like Superman.

I guess I like it better when it's more of a challenge.  Though really in the Scarlet Knight series she is more of a Perseus, given magic armor and a magic sword.  But for heroes like that, I think what you have to do is focus more on the characters than the powers.  I always tried to focus more on Emma than the Scarlet Knight aspect.  Part of that is until the last book, Emma doesn't really get any new powers and that was only because she made a new suit so she fixed some defects the old one had.

By the same token what was great about Al Ewing's Immortal Hulk was how it focused on Banner--and the various parts of his persona--versus focusing on the Hulk smashing stuff.  The best Superman comics are the ones that focus on his humanity, not him lifting shit to throw it into space.

Getting back to my original comment, what I really liked about Melanie is how she developed as a character.  In the first book Melvin is a nerd getting beat up in high school until Robin Holloway--formerly Midnight Spectre--comes along to save him.  And then Melvin finds Robin's lair and becomes a de facto sidekick before getting changed into a girl while saving the world.  She continues growing and maturing, especially in the third book where the other heroes are all eliminated one way or another, leaving her as the only one left and so she has to step up to find a way to save the world.

Except for the gender swapping part it kind of parallels the development of Dick Grayson over the years as he goes from a sidekick to a hero in his own right--and even Batman a couple of times.  Or you could even compare it to Ahsoka Tano in Star Wars as she goes from an annoying sidekick to basically a Jedi.  What makes the characters so great and memorable is how they grow.

I'd like to think people would see that with Melanie or Emma Earl.  But maybe not.  I mean, first people have to actually read the books.

Fun Fact:  Recently I found some old notes for GAIA Rogue State in a notebook.  They do pretty well fit the finished story:

It Really Is Hard to Write Superman Stories

 A couple months ago I noticed this fairly rude and ill-informed review of Girl Power on Goodreads:

This is a 2½ Star book rounded up to 2 as Goodreads does not allow half stars. The main characters are Superman, Batman, Aquaman and the Flash straight from DC comics with only the names changed.

What was good - the author, as several other reviewers have remarked, has gotten that silver Age of Comics down well. Unfortunately, now as then this comes with large doses of homophobia and misogynism..

What was bad, Batman/Midnite Specter - no-one with an attitude like this could even communicate with another member of the human race never mind run a successful major company (the same applies to Apex Girl's first boss), the feminazis were really cringeworthy and the whole female experience thing, hormones, weeping and so on was worthy of Jane Austin. Did the author go to an all boy school? Has he not got a daughter? Has he never had any female friends? Midnite Specter could not even do one push-up when he became a 12 yo girl, really? My 12 yo daughter can do 20 military style non-stop.

For some reason I have bought the omnibus 4 pack so I will see where the next one goes before giving up. Hopefully in the time between #1 and #2 the author has read a few Supergirl comics

I was pretty cheesed off about some of that.  I mean, really, why would you think that to be successful in business you have to be nice?  Hello, Donald Trump?  Elon Musk?  George Steinbrenner?  And so on.  Successful businesspeople are frequently successful because they're assholes.  And most of Midnight's homophobia is internalized; she only calls the gay guy a "pansy" one time.

But really Midnight Specter, aka the Batman character, isn't the same as businessman Robin Holloway as he is as Midnight Specter.  In his normal person disguise he's really a womanizing dumbass, which is mentioned when it talks about how easily people believe Holloway disappeared to "go find himself" IN Nepal and that he has an illegitimate teenage daughter.  "A womanizing flake" is how he's described.

And when Robin becomes a girl, she's 17, not 12.  It says the exact age when she's given a new identity.  The push-up thing was like after a couple of weeks after she became a girl, losing probably a good 20-25% of her mass--a lot of that muscle.  Your 12-year-old daughter has spent years training, so it's not the same thing at all.  It really irritates me when people get things so badly wrong that I assume it must be on purpose.

It was good that she bought the omnibus because she liked the other two books.

I was hard on the first book in the series as it really was not very good, This book is so much better,

The relationship between Robin and Melanie if you sit down and think about it is complicated in so many ways but the author makes it totally believable (and they make a really great couple) great characters. Starla is a disappointment in this book and I find Elise hard to relate to outside the action sequences. As for Alison, don't want to say too much to spoil things but the relationship gets interesting.

Storyline is not wonderful but I suspect the author is getting his pieces in position for the next book - that and letting us see more of the heroes characters

And:

The 4 stars I have given is for the trilogy as a whole as well as this volume. Loved Robin and Melanie, hated Starla, neutral to dislike for Alison and neutral towards Queen Neptune or whatever she is calling herself.

Action sequences were good and the Silver age feel was there but the series could and should have been so much better. The author's attitude to women and girls tells me he has not got a daughter because real world girls and women behave nothing like the girls in this book.

Disappointing but hope the author takes on board criticism and continues writing about the girls 

And the short stories:

Really just a period at the end of the "Girl Power" trilogy to show that around a year after the events all the girls are still girls and moving on with their lives. A little extra detail about some of them. Ion girl and Hitter are interesting and Starla is boring as usual. Really a bridge between the original trilogy and possible future novels.

Could just as easily been fitted in to the end of Girl Power #3.

 Hope the series continues

Obviously since it's been about 9 years I have no plans to continue writing the series.  Maybe if people actually bought it, I would, but at this point I'm long past it. 

Finally, when I mentioned the sort-of spin-off novella GAIA: Rogue State, she bought that and reviewed it too:

After reading the original 3 novels and short stories I left what in hindsight was an unfairly harsh review and the author was good enough to take the time for a few back and forth comments in which he mentioned "Besides the 3 novels and short stories there's also the novella GAIA Rogue State that mostly involves Melanie and Hitter and someone who would have become like the Green Lantern of Earth" and I am really glad he did. This novella is a coming of age of the series so to speak in which the girls are at peace with their new identities and moving onwards.

If no more are to be written this is a fitting conclusion to the series containing my favorite heroes from the series. I can also understand why the author is going to leave the series here.
Recommended to "girl power" fans and those on the fence about it. 

So at least one person besides me read the whole series.

Anyway, her reaction to Starla, aka the Kryptonian character, is not entirely unwarranted.  Of the four characters in the first book, I'll admit Starla's story is the thinnest.  Stan Shaw was a reporter with somewhat similar powers to Superman (flight, super strength, invulnerability, but also flame breath and infrared vision instead of heat vision and X-ray vision) and then got changed into a young woman named Starla who has the same powers.  Most of Starla's story is dealing with a sexist boss and forming a friendship with the Lois Lane-type character, Kate King.  At the end she realizes Kate doesn't really have time for her and makes friends with the Jimmy Olsen character and his friends.

Acknowledging that Starla's story was the weakest, I gave her a meatier story in the second one that took its cues from Superman II.  After Starla thinks a bunch of innocent soldiers are killed because of her, she goes to her frozen lair and gives up her powers.  As a normal young woman she meets the Jimmy Olsen character and they start dating.  Meanwhile a clone of Starla's male self has taken her place and is dating Kate, but inevitably the clone turns evil and Starla winds up getting her powers back to kill the clone by luring him into the sun.

I thought it was a better story but I guess this person thought otherwise.  

In the third story Starla gets married and on her honeymoon is arrested and taken halfway across the galaxy by the Galactic Peacekeepers, a Green Lantern-type organization.  She's again powerless and imprisoned, until Kila, an alien Peacekeeper, finds proof she's innocent of the crimes she's accused of and helps her escape.  Then she returns to Earth to destroy the Galactus-type monster about to destroy Earth.

Her short story in the collection is about revisiting her home planet, where she finds a recording of her mother, whom she never really met before.  Again, I thought it was a pretty good story but this person thought it was boring.

So, I don't know, I guess it's hard to write good Superman stories.  I mean because the character is so powerful, you usually end up having to somehow take away his power. That was the whole reason they came up with "Kryptonite" in the first place.  If you don't take away his power then you have to come up with a villain who can compete on his level, which is why they came up with Doomsday.

In the Girl Power universe, gamma radiation was like Kryptonite, which was mostly used in the first book to pacify him/her.  And similarly a red sun would also take away her powers just like with Superman.

But I thought in the second book and the short story especially there was a good focus on the human parts of the character.  I suppose some people would still find that boring.  Which really begs the question of what the writer is supposed to do with Superman--or Apex Girl.

I'm not really sure.  I doubt this person would like the Gender Swap Heroes series by Eric Filler much better.  The Kryptonian-type character in that would probably be boring too.  Most of the first story she gets a swelled head by becoming the most popular girl in high school and a really popular superhero too.  After that she doesn't do a whole lot in the rest of the series.  She basically moves back to Nebraska or wherever with her adopted parents and only shows up when needed.  Maybe it's better to keep her in more of a support role and focus on other heroes.

I guess I can appreciate the problems DC has had in recent years of making the character relevant to modern audiences.  People get mad if you try to make him gritty and violent.  But if you don't then it's boring.  I'm not sure where the balance is.

Something to think about if I ever did try to continue either series of stories.

The Effect of Bogus Causes

 A couple months ago on Hulu I watched this really awful "anti-documentary" called You Can't Kill Meme.  When it said it was about "meme magick" I thought it meant "magic" in a non-literal way.  You know, like the "Magic" Eraser or things like that.  So I thought it was about making memes and how they spread and shit like that.

But it turns out this was dedicated to supposed "real" magic using memes and shit on 4chan and whatever other bullshit.  Yes, there are right-wingers who think they used actual fucking magic to make Trump president in 2016.  (I guess that magic was limited to winning the Electoral College.)  They even think they caused Hillary Clinton to stumble that one time she had the flu.  It wasn't that she had the flu or it was hot or she was exhausted or whatever; nope it was that some dorks on the Internet put a hex on her.

One of the people the "filmmaker" talks to is this crackpot in Nevada who thinks her cat was acting weird because of a "vortex;" not just because it's a cat.  And this one time her husband kicked some scroll of hers with his left foot.  Weeks later he was playing real-life Frogger on a busy Las Vegas street and got hit on his left side.  So clearly this was cosmic payback, right?

That's an example of a big problem in this "film" and a lot of other nutty conspiracy theories and the like.  People take two things and assign one as cause and one as effect.  Cause:  He kicked my scroll with his left foot.  Effect:  He was hit on his left side by a car.  In reality, the two events are a coincidence.  But logically it's not surprising that a ragey douchebag who would kick a woman's scroll would also be trying to weave through traffic on a busy street and thus get hit by a car.  It really has nothing to do with magic or karma or whatever so much as the guy is an asshole.

The same thing is true with this idea that they somehow used magic to make Trump president.  Cause:  We cast this spell with memes or whatever.  Effect:  Trump "won."  In reality there are a variety of reasons Trump won, including appealing to wackos who cast "magic" spells.

Something that pops up (probably thanks to bots and trolls) is this phrase like "Going Woke = Going Broke."  It comes up on Twitter and such any time a streaming service like Netflix, HBO Max, or Disney+ has any kind of setback.  Whatever service it is and whatever happened, it's all because of "wokeness" to these people/bots.  Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers in a quarter?  Woke = Broke!  Some show on HBO Max didn't perform as well as people thought it should?  Woke = Broke!  Ms. Marvel has the worst audience rating of any Marvel show on Disney+?  Woke = Broke!

Which is pretty ridiculous.  I mean, there's no way that 200,000 people quit Netflix because of "wokeness."  But it's the kind of cause and effect that's pretty much impossible to prove or disprove.  Common sense says that "wokeness" is probably a small, if nonexistent, cause of things, but you can't really get any hard data to say whether it's true or not.  So if you're the kind of person inclined to believe that, it's easy to say that's the cause of whatever happens.

Especially in these times of social media and memes and all that bullshit, it's easier than ever to spread bogus theories.  And a lot of these theories are based on this bullshit of taking two things and making one the cause and the other the effect, when they probably are not really related.  It's important to actually consider whether the "cause" and "effect" actually do follow a logical pattern or it's just two things that someone is jamming together because they conveniently make a point.

Something that happened a couple months ago is one day Elon Musk declared that he was going to vote Republican and Democrats were going to take shots at him.  Almost three days later, this article about him harassing and then paying off a stewardess came out.  People on the right were then, "See, he was right!  The Left (or Elites or New World Order or whatever) is out to get him!"  They thought  his Tweet about being Republican was the Cause and the article the Effect. 

In reality it's most likely the other way around.  Musk knew the article was coming and so sandbagged by making himself seem like a political victim.  The idea that this article was thrown together in just a couple of days is pretty bogus.  A potentially libelous article like that is not going to be thrown together and put out into the world like a Chive list of the 20 Greatest Marvel Movies.  I'm sure it had to be approved by editors and legal staff far in advance so they wouldn't be open to a lawsuit.  Though probably Musk would threaten to sue them and then quietly wait for no one to be paying attention to drop it.

That the article dropped on Friday--the worst weekday to drop news--is actually a blow to Trumpers thinking the "haters" were out to get Musk.  If the haters or Left or Elite or Mainstream Media or New World Order were really out to get him, wouldn't they want to position this at a more opportune time?  That's the kind of thinking a lot of people just don't do.

In writing you should also make sure that if you have a cause and effect they actually flow in a logical way.  Things that just don't make sense are always really annoying in a story--at least to me.  It really spoils the magic of the story--see what I did there?

Ironically this "film" actually debunks itself.  It quotes this one guy who considers himself some kind of magician and goes around painting his face up like The Crow for some stupid reason.  He says that magic is like science:  if you can do a spell and get the same result over-and-over then it's real magic.  Well, guess what?  Yeah, these assholes who claim they used "magic" to win the 2016 election could not do it again.  Thus their "magic" is clearly not real.  Of course they would use some bullshit excuse like "the Left is doing magic now too!"  Or "not as many people believed in Trump in 2018 or 2020."  The point is if they really could do magic then they could have done it more than once.

A couple more random thoughts about this "film":  this guy who literally wrote the book on meme magick looks exactly the way you would expect a conspiracy nut to look:  flabby, pale, balding, glasses.  I mean if you were casting a real movie for a weird guy to be promoting some oddball theory, he would be perfect.  And also I really wish the "filmmaker" had not done the narration herself, because it sounded like MTV's Daria Morgendorffer.

Anyway, I suppose if any of those people read this they might put a hex on me.  Or whatever.  So if I "magically" disappear you'll know the cause of that effect--see what I did there too?

You Literally Can't Fix Stupid

A couple of months ago, I read this Atlantic article on "The Big Lie" about how you literally can't convince Trump supporters the election isn't rigged.  Because the more you try to explain it, the harder they'll resist.  And sadly they resist the truth based on nothing except personal feelings and what their fuhrer and propaganda network tell them.  Even after millions of dollars and months of "audits" in red states, sponsored and conducted by Republicans even, there's no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could have changed the election.  And yet most of these people won't budge from thinking it was "rigged."

Unfortunately, this kind of pigheaded gullibility isn't anything new.  During the A to Z Challenge, I read this blog about various conspiracy theories.  You see a lot of the same stuff as "the Big Lie":  the overly complicated stories, the weak evidence that can easily be explained away, the elaborate and utterly impractical coverups necessary, and a stubborn clinging to these lies no matter what.  This applies to "flat Earthers," "the moon landing was fake," various "Oswald didn't kill JFK" theories, and various UFO/alien-related theories.

The worst part is that you simply can NOT get through to these people that it's not true.  Like with "the Big Lie," the more you explain it to them, the more tightly they cling to it.  Which usually isn't a big deal.  I mean, those other theories are mostly harmless.  But the problem is when you get something like January 6th, where a whole bunch of these people try to overthrow the government because of this lie.  Or all the lies about Covid that have caused thousands of people to die, most of them avoidably.

Recent interactions with Tony Laplume have been similar to this.  He airs some grievance and I say I didn't realize that was a problem and apologize.  And then after weeks of silence I get back that he doesn't believe me and I'm only apologizing to get on his good side.  Sigh.  And then he brings up other grievances I don't ever remember happening and of course won't explain when or where they did happen.  Another sigh.  It's really frustrating dealing with people like that because there just seems no way to win.

You can deprogram people who have been part of a cult, but it's a very tricky, time-consuming proposition.  And the problem is it's not really something you can do with thousands of people at a time.  Though they'd probably be gullible enough to believe the government has some secret mass hypnosis ray that can make 81 million of us vote against Trump.  Because it couldn't possibly be that he's terrible, right? [eye roll]

And like with racists saying, "No, you're racist!" these people (many of whom are also probably racists) will say, "I'm not gullible, you're gullible!"  The irony is the "fuck your feelings" crowd clings to these ideas almost entirely because of feelings.  "That election didn't smell right to me."  And I suppose the basic narcissism that there's no way over 80 million people could disagree with you and your god-king Trump.  

Reading about some of these other theories, you can see the lengths people will go to justify their irrational beliefs.  People basically twist their brains into pretzels because for whatever reason this belief becomes like a religion to them.  It's often the opposite of Occam's Razor, where the simplest explanation is usually the right one; for these people the most convoluted explanation is the right one.

I wish I had a conspiracy theory to explain all the conspiracy theories, but I really don't.  Why are some people so susceptible to these?  Why can't they let go of these theories?

You can provide your own theories in the comments if you wish.

Unintentionally Stupid is Better Than Intentionally Stupid

A couple of months ago I watched Revenge of the Samurai Cop, which was a 2017 crowdfunded sequel to a 1991 movie that had become infamous as one of those "so bad it's funny" sort of movies featured on MST3K and Rifftrax and so forth.  The sequel, on the other hand, was just so bad it's really, really bad.  Really I think the director, writers, and performers were trying too hard to make it bad.  Because people liked the first one for being bad, so we should make this really, really bad, right?

The problem is, intentionally bad is not as good as unintentionally bad.  At least I assume the first Samurai Cop was unintentionally bad.  The lame plot, cheap sets, bad acting, dubbing that changed an actor's voice in the same scene, clearly substituted stunt performers, and logical gaffes like someone in a helicopter conversing with people on the ground who don't have radios could not have been intentional for anyone trying to make a decent movie.  I mean, come on, who would be that bad on purpose?

By contrast, I think the second they tried to make it bad because they thought that's what people wanted.  Exhibit A:  they hired Tommy Wiseau, the "star" of The Room and subject of The Disaster Artist.  And then they gave him these long soliloquies or they just let him make them up himself.  Either way it was pretty fucking awful.  Exhibit B:  they also hired Bai Ling, who's been in real Hollywood movies like The Crow and Red Corner or whatever with Richard Gere.  She's not a hack and yet she seemed to be in a competition with Wiseau about about who could chew more scenery.  It did not make sense.  The only other reason could be maybe she didn't read the script beforehand and was trying to get fired.  Exhibit C:  they kept bringing back the flamboyant gay waiter from the first movie.  He had a small part in the first movie but people thought it was funny, so they brought him back a couple of times in this one, but the shtick didn't really work.  I mean the first movie it was funny just how over-the-top flaming this guy acted.  There was really no purpose to bringing him back, because he had nowhere to go; when you've already cranked it up and broke the knob off, there's no higher setting left.  Exhibit D:  Along with Wiseau, they also brought in Joe Estevez, the brother of Martin Sheen (and uncle to Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez), who has starred in bad movies like Soultaker, Rollergator, Baby Ghost, and San Franpsycho.  They even brought in the cheese puff cooking lady from A Talking Cat!? for a small role.  All they needed were Joe Don Baker and Reb Brown to have an All-Star Team of MST3K/Rifftrax movie actors.

So there, I rest my case.  If you still don't believe, just watch the stupid thing.

The problem is, it's not really funny if they're in on the joke, because it's not real.  It feels artificial, like "reality" TV, where ironically no one acts like real people.  Instead of funny, it's just painful to watch.

BTW, this wasn't the first time I experienced this.  I felt the same way watching Birdemic 2:  The Resurrection.  It was the sequel to Birdemic, a 2008 disasterpiece by wanna-be Hitchcock James Nguyen.  The first one was just so hilariously bad for the godawful effects, acting, and story.  But the second one five years later didn't show any signs of improvement.  If anything, Nguyen's "skills" had deteriorated even more.  I couldn't help thinking that was intentional.  People laughed at the first one so why not make the second one even worse, right?

But again, it just doesn't work.  When the subject of the joke becomes aware that you're making fun of him/her and starts trying to solicit your laughter, it becomes more sad than funny.  At least the first time they maybe had some dignity in their own mind; pandering to people shows an utter lack of respect for yourself.  At least to me.  It's much funnier (maybe in a mean way) when someone is being unintentionally stupid because they aren't in on it.  It lets me (and others) feel superior in a way I can't when I know you're trying to be awful.

Another sorta example is the Sharknado movies.  But just by the title I think Sharknado was never trying to be all that good.  It was always intended to be pretty dumb, but it succeeded even beyond its creators hopes thanks again to terrible low-budget effects, bad acting, and a lack of plot logic.  So then the sequels intentionally kept amping things up, kind of raising the stakes of how dumb they could be.  But eventually I think even Syfy's audience reached their limit.  That or the filmmakers reached their limit on just how dumb they could get with the concept of a tornado full of sharks.  And at least for me it was diminishing returns, though I stopped at three of them.    

To put it in a literary context, most of my stories are not really intended to be "literature."  But I do try to not make them too stupid, though like Sharknado, the overall premise might be fairly ridiculous.  Still, I try to have a story that makes sense, some character development, competent grammar, and sex scenes that aren't completely implausible.  But what if I found out that someone had a popular site dedicated to making fun of my books?  And so I decided to cater to that crowd by making the story really ridiculous, using really purple prose, and completely unrealistic sex acts.  Would people who laughed before enjoy that as much?  I would say not, because I'm trying too hard now.  Before, when I was trying to be somewhat good, it was funny because I was failing.  If I'm trying to fail, then what fun is that?

I'm just saying, sometimes it's easier to be funny when you're not trying than when you are.  For stand-up comedians the delivery of the joke is as important as the joke itself.  With bad movies it's kind of the same thing; the delivery matters as much as the joke.

Anyway, maybe you can think of examples of movies that tried too hard to be bad and so were worse.

The Hypocrisy of Grumpy Bulldog

Not surprisingly, Tony Laplume was not happy about my July 4th post.  Actually it's a little surprising because he noticed it like immediately after it posted so I wonder if he has a Google alert on his name or something?  Anyway, there was something he pointed out that I had not realized before.

At the end of 2013, I closed down this blog for a little while.  In 2014 I did a few guest posts on his Comics Reader blog.  And then I read his terrible book Pale Moonlight and said it was terrible on Goodreads and Amazon.  Then out of spite he kicked me off his blog.  I mentioned it in this article.

As he pointed out on July 4th, this was pretty much the same thing that happened with the Andrew Leon Debacle(patent pending) only I was the Andrew Leon in this case.  Oh the irony!  The shame!  The hypocrisy!

Or to put a more positive spin on it, this was why, perhaps unconsciously, I had such a visceral reaction when Andrew Leon did it, because I had done it myself and knew how destructive it was.  To a certain type of person, something like that can feel like a betrayal and cause a lot of hurt feelings that linger to this very day.

(Though in the case of the Andrew Leon Debacle(trademark pending) Sandra Almazan never really gave a shit nor was she involved while I fought a futile proxy war.  It was basically like if the Trojan War had been fought with Western civilization tearing itself apart while Helen of Troy were on a beach sipping mai tais somewhere.  It was stupid and pointless--but I won't say I was wrong, only that I was wrong to bother with it.)

Part of being a grown up (a part most people seem to have forgotten) is owning up to mistakes.  And it was a mistake to do that to Tony, as the Andrew Leon Debacle(copyright 2015 by me) later proved.  I shouldn't have done it and I'm sorry.  As acts of contrition, I pulled the negative review of Pale Moonlight from Amazon and changed it to 5 stars on Goodreads because I don't know how to delete it there.

I'm sure he will cynically believe this is just me trying to get on his good side.  But really I violated my own standards by doing that and so I should own up to that and try to correct it.  You know what they say:  if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. 

Some Myths Refuse to Be Busted

A couple of months ago, Facebook brought up one of my old posts.  It was about all the players the Red Wings had drafted from 2000 to about 2018 when I wrote the post.  The "experts" were always touting how great the Red Wings were at scouting and drafting because they had a few players drafted in lower rounds become stars, most notably Tomas Holmstrom, Pavel Datsyuk, and Henrik Zetterberg.  

Buuuuuut, when I actually started drilling into the data, what did I find?  Not much actual drafting success in this millennium.  They had a handful of guys who played in the league for a little while.  One, Johan Franzen, had a great playoff series in 2008 when they last won the Cup and seemed poised to be a big star--they even gave him a lifetime deal that was so popular then as a way to skirt salary cap rules.  But then injuries took him out of the game.  Jimmy Howard was a decent goalie for them in the 2010s.  Dylan Larkin, their current captain, is a good player, though not really elite.  He'd probably be on the second or third line on a really good team.  A couple others drafted in 2000-2001 contributed to the 2008 Cup like Niklas Kronwall, Jiri Hudler, and Valteri Filppula.  Kronwall was decent but injuries kept him from ever being that dominant, Norris Trophy-caliber guy people hoped for.  Hudler and Filppula were OK and hung around for a while, though neither was ever really a top-six guy.  A couple others like Justin Abdelkader or Darren Helm were nice "energy guys" on the third or fourth lines but not star players.

Mostly when I looked at their drafts, the Red Wings drafted guys who never played in the NHL or only played a few games before disappearing.  So really this whole idea that they were so great at drafting was built on a couple of success stories.  It was based on anecdotal evidence, not factual evidence.  That was something I talked about before in relation to the pandemic.

If you mention this to any fans, they'd say, "Most teams don't draft that many superstars!"  Well, yeah, exactly.  Most teams don't and neither did the Red Wings.  So their record isn't really any better than other teams.

Another sports myth that's bandied about whenever the Packers make the playoffs is how good they are at home in the playoffs.  Buuuut, when you look at the data, not really so much anymore.  It's true that in the 90s Brett Favre was pretty much unbeatable at home in the playoffs.  (Though even that should have an asterisk as a few of those games were against the Lions.)  As the new millennium dawned though, their record became pretty average.  In the Aaron Rodgers era, they're pretty beatable in the playoffs at home--like this year.

Like the Red Wings drafting "success," this was based off some early success and the media just doesn't want to retire the myth.  And why should they?  It's such a romantic image of the Packers in their frozen fortress like the Night's Watch in Game of Thrones.  Let's not let the facts interfere with a good story.

Another myth is that Donald Trump is a good businessman.  People on the right continue buying into this myth despite that it's patently untrue.  I mean he's gone bankrupt 4 times!  He has a whole string of business failures, Truth Social being the latest one.  But like a lot of good con men, he still projects the image that he's rich and successful and so people keep on believing it.

There are other probable myths that have been around a while in Washington.  John McCain was a "maverick" who went against his party...probably not that often.  Just in a few high-profile instances.  Anthony Kennedy was the "swing vote" on the Supreme Court...again, probably not that often.  Just a few high-profile instances.  Orrin Hatch "worked across the aisle"...probably not that often.  In most cases, though, they just went along with the others on the right.

In all these cases, a few high-profile examples create the story and then the story keeps getting repeated and people are too dumb or lazy to actually check whether the story is still true.  Or if it ever even was true.  And in some cases, the story is too good and/or too useful for most people to want to retire it.  It's good for Red Wings management if people think they're good at drafting when they're really pretty mediocre.  It's good for the NFL (and gambling sites) if people think the Packers have a home field advantage because it will up the drama for games.  It's good for Trump (not the general public) if people continue to think he's a good businessman despite that he never really was.  It was probably good for McCain and Kennedy that people thought they were more moderate than they actually were.

Basically it seems to me that these myths aren't busted because they're useful lies.  But is that another myth?  Hurm...

(Fun Fact: Last year's Red Wings draft pick won the Calder Trophy for Rookie of the Year, so I guess they're getting better--also because they have much higher picks than in the 2000s.)

Is It Genius or Crazy? You're Free to Decide on Independence Day!

 I'm not sure if my frenemy Tony Laplume's anti-social approach to book marketing is crazy or if it's genius.  I think it's pretty stupid but then I think of the old South Park where Eric Cartman buys a theme park and closes it to everyone except himself.  Then everyone wants to go to the park because they can't.

My lunch at Red Lobster that symbolizes...absolutely nothing.

So maybe by only offering stories in expensive and unpopular Kindle Vella and paperback formats, and maybe by using perhaps the ugliest cover I've ever seen:

(I mean seriously, all I see is the armpit hair and man boob and then it just grosses me right out.)

Maybe it's the kind of counter-intuitive thinking other people should try.  Or maybe it's something to avoid like the plague.  I don't know.  It's 4th of July, so whatever.  I doubt anyone will even notice.

I whipped up a new cover for him to use, but I'm sure he won't because he's stubborn like an ass.  This isn't great but it's the best I could do in like 20 minutes without spending any money.  (The titles are a little off-center because in paperbacks you can't have text near the edges.)

Anyway, there's no way in hell I would put a book cover as hideous as the original on my shelf, but maybe that's just me.  Maybe others would see it as a brilliant lampooning of publishing norms or something.  (I would just see it as a shitty template picture and font.)  Maybe they'd whip it out at parties to show people as a conversation starter.

Between that and using formats people don't really buy as much, maybe it's like Cartman bragging that no one can go to his park.  Or maybe it's Laplume's way to insulate himself because God knows he can't stand it if anyone criticizes him.  He has to be the smartest guy in the room and the only way to guarantee that is to be the only guy in the room.  I mean if I'm in any way critical of him on his blog he shuts down comments, because of course conservative types love talking about free speech...until you say something they don't like.

But anyway, maybe his approach is so crazy that it's genius.  What do you think?  I promise I, unlike someone else, will not shut down your comments unless it's obviously spam.  Not that I expect there to be comments.

Whatever.  Happy Independence Day! (I think at this point I would welcome an alien invasion blowing up most of the world's cities.)

"The Teen Agers" is a Time Capsule of a Period of History No One Probably Cares About

 Happy Canada Day!  I'm sure a lot of people are taking today off for a 4-day 4th of July weekend.  I would probably not be one of them.  So anyway, I'm just going to talk about something no one cares about since no one will probably even notice.

Back in 2019-2020 the Rifftrax B-team of Bridget Nelson and Mary Jo Pehl (who both were also writers/performers on MST3K) did four movies in this old B-movie series called "the Teen Agers" by an outfit called Monogram Films that I'm 99% sure no longer exists.  Doing very little research, there are actually 8 movies in the series that ran from like 1946-1948.

So as I said, it's a time capsule to a period of history that no one really gives a shit about because it's sandwiched between more interesting periods of history.  If you think about it, the "kids" in these movies are the ones who were too young to have fought in WWII like "the Greatest Generation" but getting too long in the tooth to have really been on the front lines in Vietnam like the Boomers.  They did have Korea, but except for M*A*S*H no one really gave a shit about that.

Anyway, it is safe to say these movies are not really very good, nor were they really intended to be.  Mostly they seemed to be intended as a showcase for various swing or big band acts and the high crooning voice of Freddie Stewart, who was the central figure in most of these.  A combination of lame musical numbers, bland stories, and really lame comedic bits make these pretty bad and yet I'm oddly fascinated by them.  I don't necessarily go out of my way to watch them, but if they're on Pluto TV or Xumo TV then I probably won't turn the channel.

The first of the 4 they show is called Junior Prom and the thin story is about a rich guy threatening to withhold donations for the school's football team unless his son is named class president.  Freddie runs against him and with the help of his friends and singing on a truck, he manages to win.  And there's a school dance too.  Of course the rich guy gives the school the money anyway.

The next one is Freddie Steps Out where there's a supposedly comedic mishap where Freddie is confused for famous singer Frankie Troy, who wouldn't you know looks exactly like him?  Weirdly though this is a high school, there are dorms where Freddie and his friend live and somehow Frankie Troy's infant daughter ends up with them and then being passed around.  Hilarious!  Eventually everything is sorted out and Freddie and Frankie do a musical number together, which really stressed low-budget special effects of 1947.

The third one they show is High School Hero about the woeful football team the school is fielding.  That is until Freddie's girlfriend Dodie takes the field in place of Freddie's annoying friend Lee.  She helps them win a game or two but is discovered before the big game.  But then she devises a clever strategy so they're able to win the big game.  Hooray!

The fourth one is called Vacation Days and I really only watched it once on Amazon.  One of the teachers at the school inexplicably has a ranch and even though the teens are all graduated, they go with her to do stuff.  Singing and supposedly hilarious things happen. 

For all my virtue signaling friends, of course these movies do not deal with heavy issues like segregation or homosexuals having to live in the closet and so on.  In fact, they don't really deal with any real issues at all.  No one drinks and even though it's the late 40s I don't think anyone smokes either.  You can give them props that Betty Rogers is the editor of the school paper; score one for female empowerment!  The "issues" were mostly about dating, popularity, and too much homework.  Maybe it was even controversial back then to suggest kids didn't like doing homework.  They of course didn't have to worry about school shootings or online bullying or stuff like that in our supposedly "better" modern world.

Though only one of my parents was even born when these came out, I'm pretty sure they were not an accurate depiction of teen life in the late 40s.  It's maybe how some people wish life had been like back then.  I guess in these times with Covid, war, climate change, and so on these rather bland little movies are kind of comforting to watch.  They definitely won't make you think or really challenge your ideals.  If you can tolerate the music then it's easy to tune out for about 75-80 minutes.

I did very little "research" on Wikipedia and it was kind of sad that after these movies not much happened for the nominal star Freddie Stewart.  He had a club for a little while in Miami or something but that went out of business.  Between changing tastes in music (like the advent of rock n roll) and that he was kind of short and wimpy, he could never really be a big star in music or movies.  It's kind of sad that these movies were pretty much the peak of his career; that's like someone whose athletic career peaked in middle school.

Actually the one who probably had the best career was Noel Neill who played Betty Rogers, the aforementioned school paper editor.  That wound up being a good warm-up for her role as Lois Lane in the Superman TV series.  She also appeared in cameos in a couple of the later Superman films.  She's actually my favorite character in this series of movies because she's the nerd who wears glasses and reads books but of course in Hollywood fashion she's not ugly and/or fat like nerds in real life.

An interesting fact is in the credits of Junior Prom it says she appears courtesy of Paramount, which is a reminder of how movies worked back then.  In those days an actor was basically property of whichever studio signed them.  To work for another studio, the actor (or his/her agent) would have to work out a deal with the studio who had their contract.  It wasn't until the 70s that actors became free agents and the old "studio system" was broken.

Historical stuff like that is probably also what interests me about these.  A couple little historical tidbits:  in Junior Prom the annoying Lee (seriously, he is so annoying) while they're waiting for election results mentions how tight Woodrow Wilson's election was back in 1918 because the movie was a year or two before the famous "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline that until 2000 was the most famous example of a presidential election "too close to call."  In Freddie Steps Out, Freddie brings in a fancy new jukebox that shows movies with the music; essentially these were early music videos like what became popular on MTV in the 80s.

There you go, a trip down a cul-de-sac of Memory Lane that no one really cares about.

Fun Fact:  Watching the 1952 "movie" (about 75% of it is just stock footage) Invasion USA, both Lois Lanes from the Superman TV show appear in it.  Noel Neill and Phyllis Crowley appear in I think just one scene as airport clerks.  I'm not sure if having both of them was a coincidence or maybe the casting agent worked for that show or whatever.  One of the MST3K sketches during the movie then mentions this.  I don't think any other main cast members really did much, though the riffers point out that Frankie Troy's manager in Freddie Steps Out was a director in Singin' In the Rain.  That's not nothing, I guess.