Stuff I Watched 9/18/15

Here's more stuff I watched:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You know you like this better!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Writing Wednesday: Do You Need to Write Good?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Embiggen to see the typo.

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

See, I'm not lying.

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

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

Laboring Day

Labor Day, like 4th of July, Memorial Day, etc. is a pretty meaningless holiday if you're a single unemployed person.  Oooh, you get a 3-day weekend!  I have a 7-day weekend.  So what?  All it means to me is that Panera Bread or Biggby Coffee might have shortened hours and parks will probably have more people.  Actually Labor Day has even less meaning because at least there's an actual purpose behind 4th of July (independence) and Memorial Day (fallen soldier) while what good is a holiday honoring labor when you're unemployed?

Anyway, I've been disappointed in that I haven't taken my one job--writing--as seriously as maybe I should.  I set my alarm to go off at 9am every morning Monday-Friday but 90% of the time I'll just turn it off and go back to sleep.  That usually means I don't get much done before lunch, so then in the end I work maybe 4-5 hours on a story.  Which is a lot to you people but you people have real jobs to take up 8+ hours of your day.

The whole reason I set the alarm to 9am was so I'd actually get my fat ass out of bed and do some writing in the morning, eat lunch, then do some writing in the afternoon.  You know, do like 7-8 hours of it.  It just hasn't worked out that way.  I guess because like dieting and exercise my willpower sucks.  If I can just blow the alarm off then I mostly likely will.  Because I hate getting up "early" which is like before 11am.  If I have a job interview or doctor's appointment or something pretty much mandatory then I'll make myself get up.  Otherwise, about the only way to do it is to offer myself a carrot (not quite literally) by saying like I have to get up and out the door to get breakfast at McDonald's before 10:30.  And starting in October I don't even have to worry about that anymore.

There you go; I'm probably the laziest most prolific writer ever.

In honor of Labor Day, I decided to make my Eric Filler book My Mistress Changed Me Into a Pregnant Girl free today.  Labor Day...pregnancy...get it?  So you can go do that.  I always say if you're not going to read it just download it and help bump my bestseller number.  And ignore that stupid 1-star review saying it's the wrong book.  That problem was fixed about two hours later but of course Amazon won't delete that.  If you wanted to do me a big, humongous favor that costs you nothing you could post a counter 5-star review saying it's the right book.  No pressure.

Grumpy Bulldog Does America: One Year Later

The actual anniversary date of my epic road trip was September 2, 2014, but that would have been Wednesday, so we'll ignore that.  It was the day after Labor Day because I didn't feel like traveling during Labor Day weekend like everyone else.  And you get better motel rates then.  An interesting fact is I was sort of squatting in my apartment the last two days I was there.  Technically my lease was up August 31st but the next day was a Sunday and then Labor Day so the office didn't re-open until Tuesday and so I figured, hey, why bother going to a motel?  It's not like anyone was going to know, or care.  And no one did.

Anyway, I spent a couple of days still in Michigan, so at this point last year I think I was leaving Michigan to the northern Chicago suburbs, stopping at a Best Buy to pick up the new Counting Crows on CD and then getting a crappy lunch at a Chinese buffet.

On Google Maps I made a map to show all the places I went, which I recently updated to add all the places on my way back to Michigan.

Black line = Original Route, Purple line = Return Home

Wyoming looks kind of lonely there, doesn't it?  I mean it's like I went to every state except it.  Though I did nick the corner of Wyoming.  Recently I was bummed to realize I was probably only 30-40 miles from Devils Tower where that famous scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind takes place.  If I had known that I might have detoured to at least get a picture or two.  Stupid GPS not alerting me to that.  Idaho was the other western state I only nicked without really stopping.

Then you can see I never went to most of the heartland or North Dakota.  Yeah, not missing North Dakota.  Other than Kansas City ribs I'm not sure what I'd be missing there.  The Gateway Arch in St. Louis too I suppose.  Iowa I'd only go to because I set a lot of Where You Belong there.  And then I missed most of Texas, the Deep South, and the whole east coast.  Maybe that could be Part 2.

Or I suppose next I could do Grumpy Bulldog Does Canada, but things never seem to go well for me in Canada.  My trip to Toronto was kind of crappy 5 years ago, except I did write some good Scarlet Knight scenes there, so that was something.  But I wouldn't want to go there for 2-3 months.  And Grumpy Bulldog Does Mexico would probably end with my body lying in a desert to be picked at by vultures.

If you ever want to go back through my pictures and diaries, you can always find them with the label GBDA.  If it wouldn't be such a hassle for little real benefit I'd make a coffee table book.  Maybe a coffee table book with legs so it can be a table! (Old Seinfeld reference.)

Insecure Writer: The Hypocrite

In some ways I'm glad I haven't had cable since mid-March.  It's meant I've had an excuse not to watch all that Caitlyn Jenner stuff on TV.  Sure there's the Internet, but that's pretty easy to avoid since I don't read celebrity gossip shit.

As someone who frequently has books on Amazon's transgender lists, is it really hypocritical for me to not give a shit about Bruce Caitlyn Jenner?  It probably is and yet I still can't muster any enthusiasm for it.  No "You go girl [or whatever]!"  I just don't care.

Part of it is because the whole thing is connected to the Kardashian clan, the people who turned a big ass and a sex tape into a multimedia empire, despite not having any talent or decency.  They're just such attention whores that I guess this just seems like another publicity stunt to keep them in the spotlight and selling clothes and perfume and whatever other bullshit.

But deeper than that is I'm just pretty old-fashioned about the issue.  I mean I was raised in rural Michigan, so it's not like it was a really diverse place.  If anyone was gay or bi or transgender or anything like that I didn't know, nor did I ever have any interest in finding out.  You can put on dresses in your own house, but just don't do it when I'm around.

I remember reading an article someone wrote on Yahoo or Mashable or one of those things that pops up on my Facebook about a guy who likes to go out dressed like a woman.  The part I totally disagreed with was where he said that if he's lazy and decides not to shave before going out in a dress, we should all still treat him like a woman.  Sorry, dude, but I can't buy that.  Just because you're wearing a dress doesn't mean I'm instantly going to treat you like a woman, not if you're looking like the bearded lady.  It's like I can put on a Superman costume but that doesn't mean I can stop bullets or leap tall buildings in a single bound.  Just because you dress like something does not mean you are that something.

I do feel bad when I read stories like this and some of the problems transgender kids have.  And then in one of those weird coincidences yesterday one of my Facebook "friends" came out as starting treatments to transition from a woman to a man.  As the shrinks would say, "How does that make you feel?"  Just a little awkward considering this post, but if that's what she wants to do it's not really my business to give her crap about it.  Everyone should have the freedom to be who they want to be, so long as that someone isn't causing any harm to anyone else.  We shouldn't force kids into the street because they don't feel comfortable with who they are.

Still, I'm not as open-minded on the issue as I probably should be.  Not to say I don't try to do that in my books.  Most of the time the gender swap is complete, but recently I tried a couple where you get a chick with a dick or something like that.  Baby steps, I suppose. 

Sometimes though it seems like me writing gender swap erotica is as hypocritical as if Michael Offutt tried to write Harlequin romances or Tony Laplume tried to write books for normal humans.  Or maybe in some weird way that makes me the perfect person to do it.  You know, as the outsider who might see things differently than someone on the inside.  Like Nixon going to China and shit.  That's a good justification, right?  Right?  [crickets]

Leader of the Band: An Ode to John Williams

It was a couple of years ago for the heck of it I bought a John Williams Greatest Hits collection off Amazon.  It covered his most popular movie themes and such from the late 60s-1999 with The Phantom Menace.  Which is pretty much his whole career since in the 21st Century I don't think he has done nearly as much, mostly just Spielberg and Lucas movies.

Anyway, it had a lot of really great themes from classic movies:  Jaws, Star Wars, Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, ET, Jurassic Park, etc.  And I can't help thinking, geez, how did one guy make just about every great movie theme song for the last 50 years?  Yeah, sure there are other good movie theme songs from that time period but Williams is like the New York Yankees of movie composers.  Plus there's the Olympics theme song you hear every couple of years for Summer or Winter Games.

Listening to the album a few times I finally got what really makes his themes work:  the hook.  It's the same thing that separates the Beatles from lesser songwriters.  You've got to have a catchy, memorable hook.

The thing about the themes Williams composed for all those movies above is that you can hum or whistle them pretty easily after a couple of listens.  That's what allows them to stick in our heads and thus become memorable.  Of course you can't hum or whistle the whole thing, but there's always that one part that hooks you.

In the 21st Century Hans Zimmer has pretty much picked up the mantle with Gladiator, the Nolan Batman movies, Inception, Man of Steel, and even The Simpsons Movie.  Then there are Zimmer imitators like the guy who did the music for the Transformers movies.  Anyway, I own Zimmer's scores to the Batman movies and Man of Steel, but while I like them, they're just something to listen to in the background.  I mean I've listened to them probably a hundred times while I'm writing or editing (right now for instance) but if pressed I couldn't hum a single goddamned note.  Whereas you ask me to hum Star Wars or Superman and boom, I can do it just like that.

That is the difference.  The thing is, as Williams has gotten older, he hasn't really produced at the same level of quality or quantity.  Don't get me wrong, I like "Duel of the Fates" from The Phantom Menace, but like a Hans Zimmer score you can't hum or whistle that.  Does anyone (except maybe Tony Laplume) remember the scores to the other two prequel movies?  I think he did at least some of the Harry Potter ones so maybe there was something from those but having not watched those I wouldn't know.

If you want, you can tie this into writing.  I mean there are memorable stories and sentences and then there are those we forget almost the instant we finish reading them.  If you're lucky you can craft something memorable, though most of us never will.

Stuff I Watched 8/28/15

Here's some stuff I watched in the last week or so:

Dumb & Dumber To:  I wouldn't have paid to watch this, but it was on HBO so what the hell.  The plot is similar to the first one where two idiots go on a road trip to find a hot girl.  Only this time they're going to El Paso to find the daughter of Harry (Jeff Daniels) in order to ask her for a kidney.  Her adopted father is a famous scientist whose wife is trying to poison him so she sends a guy along to kill Harry and Lloyd.  And of course mayhem ensues.  There were some decent gags though obviously it's not as good as the first one.  At the beginning is a meta joke where Harry says, "Wouldn't this have been just as funny 10 years ago?" which is a reference to it taking 20 years to make the movie.  There's another reference to that after the credits.  Do you suppose since Jeff Daniels has had a more consistently good career in the last 20 years that's why it seems in this like Jim Carrey is more his sidekick?  Ponder the mystery. (2/5)

Blunt Talk:  This is a new show on Starz produced by Seth MacFarlane and starring Patrick Stewart.  The first couple of episodes were free on demand, so I could actually watch them.  It was OK.  Stewart's character is a talk show host who is in decline thanks to too many drinks, drugs, and ex-wives.  In the first episode he gets busted with a tranny hooker.  As a penance he interviews himself on air.  The second episode he misses a flight to Texas to cover a hurricane and tries to green screen it from a porn studio.  Overall the show is OK but really I think the humor is based on this character is the complete opposite of how we think of Patrick Stewart, though actually it's pretty mild compared to his character on American Dad.  I'd probably watch more if it weren't on Starz but maybe at some point I'll get a chance to watch future episodes. A couple of interesting factoids:  Brent Spiner (Mr. Data) has a cameo in the first episode and both episodes are directed by Tristam Shapeero, who also directed a bunch of Community episodes I've watched recently.  (2.5/5)

Wing Commander:  Netflix said I might like this movie.  Um, no, not really.  I never played the video games so I had no idea what was going on.  There are bad aliens and a Confederation and "Pilgrims" and stuff about jumping quasars...I have no fucking idea.  The space fighters looked like crap.  This is supposed to be the 27th Century so why do they look like 1950s airplanes?  And why do they put oxygen masks on at times when they're flying?  You're in space, so wouldn't you need the oxygen mask all the time?  We can ignore the sounds in space because of Star Wars.  As you might expect for 1999 the CGI was not great.  The aliens especially looked like shit.  Anyway, further proof that video game movies suck. (1/5)

The Theory of Everything:  It basically felt like a far more boring version of A Beautiful Mind. (2/5)

Let's Be Cops:  Amusing though overly long farce about two idiots who get mistaken for cops and end up taking on police corruption and drug dealers. (2.5/5)

Writing Wednesday: If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say...Say Lots of It!

The Monday before last I wrote reviews of "Ant-Man" and "Fantastic Four" and you might have noticed that the review of the latter was a lot longer.  Why is that?  Because I didn't like it as much.  That seems to be what happens, doesn't it?  If you don't like something, you have a lot more to say about it than if you do like something.

Another example is someone on Goodreads read and rated the whole Scarlet Knight series.  The five books he liked, he just gave 4 or 5 stars without saying anything.  The three books he didn't like, those he could actually write something about.

I'm not really complaining because I do it too.  In the case of the movies I reviewed, as I said about "Ant-Man" is another good-not-great Marvel movie.  If I had written one I could have taken a review of "Thor 2" or "Iron Man 3" and swapped the names.  Seriously you can do Mad Libs on most Marvel movies by now.  Whereas with "Fantastic Four" people had been talking so much crap about it there was a lot meatier stuff to discuss.

You know what they say:  conflict is essence of drama.  Which is probably why things we don't like bring out our words a lot more than things we do like.  Plus there's that need to vent, which is really what got me started posting customer reviews on Amazon.

And yet as an author it's nice to hear what someone does like about a book.  I mean I know I'm not the only writer who's horribly insecure and needy about that stuff.  You like me?  WHY do you like me?  Was it this?  Was it that?  TELL ME!!!  (And then the person thinks you're a weirdo and no longer likes you.)

Of course I don't feel bad just giving a rating if for instance it's a really old book and the author is dead.  I mean, it's not like Shakespeare probably gives a shit if I liked Hamlet or not.  Or if it's someone really famous because again why does Stephen King give a shit if I liked The Green Mile?  He's busy counting his money and ripping off Simpsons plots.

But with authors who are alive and not famous (like me for instance) it's nice to provide a few words at least.  It's not the least you can do, but it's pretty close.