Stuff I Watched February Edition

February is a couple of days shorter, so maybe there will be less stuff.  Maybe.

10 Items or Less:  Somewhat amusing series from the mid-2000s about a small grocery store.  Really could have used some better acting talent to elevate it to the level of workplace comedies like The Office or Parks and Recreation. (2/5)  (Fun Fact: Star Trek Enterprise's Jolene Blalock plays herself when the store hosts a Star Trok convention.)
10 Things I Hate About You:  Late 90s update of Taming of the Shrew where a bitchy girl (Julia Stiles) refuses to date boys but her sister can't go out with anyone unless she is so a couple of boys who like the sister bribe Heath Ledger to go out with her.  It's basically Clueless-lite.  Stiles, Ledger, and Joseph Gordon-Leavitt all went on to do better things. (2.5/5)
AI Artificial Intelligence:  Stephen Spielberg's creepy sci-fi take on Pinocchio.  (1/5)
All the King's Men:  With an all-star cast featuring Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo, James Gandolfini, and Anthony Hopkins, this 2005 movie set in the 50s tells the story of a politician who wanted to help the little people but was blocked by his legislature.  Sort of a mix of Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders.  There's too much focus on Jude Law's muckraker character and not enough on Penn's politician. (2.5/5)  (Fun Fact:  The way the end goes, you can imagine Rorshach killing the Hulk.  Now there's an awesome movie:  Watchmen v Avengers!)
The Art of More:  This Crackle series should be called The Art of Snore.  Dueling art auction houses try to make money and move smuggled goods.  I think Amazon friend Ethan Cooper would like it more. (1/5)
The Battered Bastards of Baseball:  A Netflix documentary on a sort of real-life Major League-type team made of misfits and cast-offs.  Perhaps most surprising is that the team was founded by Kurt Russell's father Bing; Kurt Russell actually played for the team and worked on the marketing.  When this indie team became too good and too popular, the major league establishment brought in ringers and then forced the team out of Portland with a legal loophole. (4/5)
Battle Creek:  This aired sometime last year on CBS but now it's on Netflix.  I was mildly interested because it takes place in Michigan and it's from the creator of Breaking Bad.  It's surprising then how conventional this cop show is.  It mostly follows the buddy cop formula, though the cops aren't exactly buddies.  One is a goody-goody FBI agent exiled to Battle Creek and the other is a cynical local detective.  It reminded me of Due South, another show that aired on CBS back in the mid-90s, only this doesn't have a deaf wolf sidekick or tasting mud to track criminals.  Anyway, it's the kind of show where all the cases are wrapped up in 45 minutes after a couple of red herrings. (2.5/5)  (Fun Facts:  In one episode there's a breakfast celebration.  On the table are Post cereals; Battle Creek is the home of Kellogg's.  One of the lead actors of Due South appears as a bad guy in one episode.)
Breaking In:  The first six episodes of this 2011 Fox comedy were really good.  It combined a workplace comedy with heist movies as it involves a company that gets paid to test security systems.  There are a number of quirky personalities dominated by the enigmatic Oz (Christian Slater) and the mandatory office romance.  It felt a lot like a live-action Archer with a dose of Community with all the geek references.  Unfortunately in season 2 they decided to retool the show.  They pretty much eliminated the capers and replaced two characters with new office drones, including an annoying new boss played by Megan Mulally.  They picked the wrong part of the show to focus on IMO.  So (4/5) for the first season and (1/5) for the second season.
Cleaner:  Samuel L Jackson is a former cop who cleans up crime scenes and gets involved in a conspiracy.  Usually I complain movies drag but this felt too simple, like they had truncated it.  Still an OK thriller with A-level talent. (2.5/5)
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid:  A 1992 movie that probably would work better with today's technology.  Basically Steve Martin plays a noir detective and Carl Reiner splices in these bits from other movies like The Big Sleep, White Heat, Notorious, and so forth with stars like Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, James Cagney, Veronica Lake, etc.  A lot of things feel forced then to make these clips work.  With today's technology it would be far easier to pull it off.  The rest of the gags in the movie were kind of lame too. (1/5)
Devil's Due:  Lame "found footage" movie about a woman hosting a demon baby. (1/5)
Don't Say a Word:  Generic 2000 thriller where Michael Douglas is a shrink whose daughter is kidnapped and he has to get some information from a patient or else.  And then mayhem ensues. (2/5)
Knuckleball!:  This documentary is about a couple of the last major league pitchers to still use the enigmatic knuckleball pitch. It was OK but I would have liked more history of the pitch and less following Tim Wakefield and RA Dickey around. (2.5/5)  (Fun Fact:  In the 2000s the Tigers had a knuckleball pitcher named Steve Sparks who gets zero mentions in this movie because I guess he didn't play in New York, Boston, or LA.)
The Late Shift:  Remember the first time NBC's late night programming was thrown into disarray because of Jay Leno?  This is ostensibly about the war between Leno and Letterman to get The Tonight Show.  Mostly it's a war between agents and TV executives.  It's an HBO film from the 90s that looks and feels cheap.  Leno and Letterman come off one-dimensional:  Leno is a nice wimp, Letterman is a talented neurotic.  Obviously NBC learned nothing as almost 20 years later they bungled negotiations with their late night lineup again. (2/5)
Parker Lewis Can't Lose:  Cheesy early 90s sitcom that unapologetically compares itself to Ferris Bueller. Probably the best part is all the early 90s references.  Like the video store his parents own selling laser discs, Atari Lynxes, and some old PC games I remember playing like Red Storm Rising.  But you have to give it props for being one of the few comedies from that era not to use a laugh track. (2/5)  (Fun Fact:  the pilot episode is the secret origin of Mila Jovovich, that girl from The Fifth Element and all those lame Resident Evil movies.)
Permanent Midnight:  Ben Stiller stars as a guy in LA who is ostensibly a screenwriter but mostly is just a junkie.  He finally hits rock bottom and tries to clean up.  Some of it's pretty fun, like the creepy Alf-type show he works on for a while.  It just kind of drags as you wait to see whether he'll finally clean up or not. (2.5/5)
Proof of Life:  The movie that destroyed Meg Ryan's career and marriage! (2/5)
Stretch:  A limo driver (Patrick Wilson) is in deep to the tune of $6000 so when he picks up a mysterious rich guy (Chris Pine, uncredited for some reason) he hopes he might get a huge tip to pay off his debt.  But then an Eyes Wide Shut-type party, FBI agents, and a rival limo firm employing a big Russian henchman all stand in the way.  This is from the director of Smokin Aces and it's kind of the same.  A lot of action and humor. (3/5)
Superstore:  Since I watched 10 Items or Less I thought I might as well watch this, which has a similar premise.  It's OK, but not great.  Probably the best store comedy I've experienced is an indie book called Sale Day at C-Mart.  Someone should turn that into a series or movie. (2.5/5)
Switched:  Blake Edwards of Pink Panther fame makes a gender swap movie.  For...reasons, a misogynist is killed by three women and goes to Purgatory.  The Devil convinces Heaven to send the guy back as a woman and if he can find one woman who liked him as a man he won't go to Hell.  A lot less racy than even most of my stories, but I guess this was 1991.  A lot of time is wasted on her wooing some other chick for a business deal and then the last half-hour rushes through a murder trial, pregnancy, and more. (2/5)
True Story:  Since it stars James Franco and Jonah Hill you might think this is a comedy but it's actually a rather dull story of a pathological liar (Franco) who murders his family and then uses the name of a reporter (Hill) who writes down his story only to find he's making most of it up.  Maybe they should have involved Seth Rogen. (2/5)
Two Days in April:  This 2006 documentary follows 4 NFL prospects through the arduous process of preparing for the NFL Draft.  It is a pretty awful process.  There are lots of workouts and then before the "Senior Bowl" everyone has to get measured and weighed in only their shorts while all these scouts watch and make notes.  It seriously looks like a slave auction--except those who get picked actually make millions of dollars.  The heart-wrenching part is when they're all sitting around while the draft is being televised.  It's like political candidates on election night.  They make sure to drag it on and on so you can really feel bad for them.  (Spoiler:  three of the four get drafted in the third round and make $2.3M/4 years while the fourth isn't drafted and doesn't make an NFL team.  None of these guys really become household names.)  Overall it's pretty interesting. (3/5)
The Voices:  Ryan Reynolds takes time off from promoting Deadpool to star as a mentally disturbed guy whose dog and cat talk to him.  Cats being jerks, it tells him to kill people.  Some of it's pretty funny but it gets darker and darker...until the big musical number at the end. (2.5/5)
The Wicker Man:  Lame Nic Cage remake of the 70s horror movie.  The best part is at the end they recruit James Franco to go to the island.  I'd pay money to watch James Franco roasted in a wicker man--for reals. (1/5)

30 for 30 Documentaries:

Netflix acquired ESPN's 30 for 30 series of documentaries, which by now I wonder if it has to be more than 30.  I mean they've been doing these since 2009.  I thought I'd separate them since I watched a number of them, especially on Super Bowl Sunday because it was a better alternative than 12 hours of pregame.

Bad Boys:  For people not from Michigan in the late 80s this is probably not that interesting.  I wasn't really a big basketball fan, but still I knew of the "Bad Boys" Pistons teams of 1988-1990.  They were the anti-heroes of the NBA who went up against powerhouses in Boston and LA and probably forged the Michael Jordan dynasty.  For the most part I enjoyed it but really couldn't they have found a better narrator than Kid Rock?  I mean, seriously.  Also it would have been nice if they'd mentioned what happened to the players after the Bad Boys era.  I think most people know about Dennis Rodman, but it would have been nice to mention that Joe Dumars won another Pistons title as the GM in 2004 or Isaiah Thomas destroyed the Continental Basketball Association and the New York Knicks or Bill Laimbeer won coaching titles...in the WNBA, which seems kind of ironic since he was such a tough guy.  It would have been nice to know what happened to some of the lesser players too.  I'm just saying. (3.5/5)
The Band That Wouldn't Die:  In 1984 the Baltimore Colts snuck out of town to Indianapolis under cover of darkness.  They left behind the Baltimore Colts marching band.  As a quirk of fate would have it, the band's uniforms were at the cleaners that day; the cleaner then gave the uniforms to the band, who temporarily hid them in a mausoleum.  Eventually the band started playing local events, NFL games, and for a brief time was the official band of the CFL Baltimore Colts.  (Canadian football in the US?  It happened.)  Ironically the band finally got another NFL gig when Cleveland's team moved to Baltimore.  Ethically they probably should have refused since they knew what it was like for a team to move and break the hearts of its fans.  Anyway, this was directed by Barry Levinson, so the production values and such are better than some of these.  It was decent, though not exactly essential viewing. (3/5) 
Big Shot:  The story of how a Texas businessman duped the NHL to buy the New York Islanders in 1996.  It involved a lot of fake documents and financial sleight-of-hand.  He actually got to the point of owning the team in name even though he never had the money to pay for it.  An entertaining story even for how horrible it was.  The only nitpick is that Kevin Connolly of Entourage fame who directed the movie doesn't really have the gravitas for a narrator. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  The doofus NHL commissioner who approved this sale is still running the league into the ground and recently got an extension to stick around.  Nice work if you can get it.)
The Day the Series Stopped:  As Game 3 of the 1989 World Series in San Francisco started, there was an earthquake that devastated the Bay Area.  This documentary talks with those who lived through it. (2.5/5) 

Elway to Marino:  documentary about the 1983 NFL draft, which was really the first draft where it started to become a circus.  The title comes from that John Elway was the first guy picked and Marino the last quarterback, though both had a turbulent draft.  Elway didn't want to play for the Colts and wound up getting traded to Denver while Marino went far lower than he should have.  Not all that insightful but interesting. (2.5/5)  (Fun Fact:  Six quarterbacks were taken in the draft:  three Hall of Famers, two mediocre, and one bust.  And of course the Lions took some mediocre running back, because Lions.)
Fernando Nation:  In 1981, Fernando Valenzuela went from a small town in Mexico to a star for the LA Dodgers.  This documentary notes the irony that he was starring for a team that 30 years earlier had expelled Mexican-Americans from their homes to build Dodger Stadium.  A decent documentary but probably would have been better if it were longer than 51 minutes. (3/5)
Gospel According to Mac:  Dreary account of Bill McCartney, the ultra-religious coach of Colorado's football team who after winning the national championship went on to found the Promise Keepers.  Of course like every ultra-religious preacher man, he had some skeletons in the closet like an affair and a daughter who had a baby out of wedlock with his starting quarterback. (1/5)
House of Steinbrenner:  This documentary was about...um, I'm not really sure.  It's just a hodge-podge of footage and interviews involving George Steinbrenner, the Yankees, the closing of the old Yankee Stadium, and building of the new one.  It never really seem to focus on any particular point.  As a Tigers fan I do have to admire how the Yankees handled their stadium situation.  They didn't let the House that Ruth Built rot away for a decade before tearing it down.  That should be another ESPN documentary. (1/5)
I Hate Christian Laettner:  There are always great athletes people love to hate from Ty Cobb to Cam Newton.  Christian Laettner is probably the best example from college basketball.  Love him or hate him (or just don't give a shit in my case) this is a pretty entertaining documentary. (3/5)
Jordan Rides the Bus:  Remember that year that Michael Jordan played basketball in 1994?  There are plenty of conspiracy theories now thanks to the Internet but the documentary reminds us that a chief influence on Michael Jordan's decision was probably his father's murder in the summer of 93.  Honestly this would have been a lot better if Michael Jordan had actually agreed to be interviewed for the film. (2/5)
June 17, 1994:  Uninspired scrapbook of sports events that happened on the eponymous date.  The OJ car chase was the headline event but also the New York Rangers celebrated their Stanley Cup win, the World Cup started in Chicago, Arnold Palmer played his last hole of golf before joining the senior tour, and the Knicks and Rockets faced off in an NBA finals game.  Plus there was baseball. (2/5)
King's Ransom:  The darkest day in Canadian history was in 1988 when Wayne Gretzky was traded to the Los Angeles Kings.  This documentary gives a slight bit more insight into what went down.  Mostly after winning 4 Stanley Cups Gretzky wanted to get paid and Edmonton's owner knew he couldn't pay enough so he opted to trade Gretzky for cash and draft picks rather than keep him for a year and lose him. That's a pretty common enough story in sports.  Only the scale of this was so much larger, though not quite as awkward as when LeBron James jumped ship in Cleveland to go to Miami.  At least they talked to Gretzky for this--on a golf course.  Because I guess that was the only time he was available? (2.5/5)
On Miracles and Men:  Most people know about the "Miracle on Ice" when the US hockey team beat the USSR in the 1980 Olympics.  No one really thinks much about the Soviets.  This documentary focuses on the Soviet team before, during, and after the game.  None of the Soviet players were killed or sent to the gulag after losing, though a couple were forced to retire.  A few like Slava Fetisov were eventually allowed to play in the NHL starting in the early 90s.  It was really interesting and well-done.  The funniest part is they ask the Soviet team captain if he's seen Miracle and he explodes "Why would I watch that?  Why wouldn't I watch a movie where I win!" Touche. (4/5)
Playing for the Mob:  If you watched Goodfellas you might already know this story.  Basically some gangsters coerced a couple of Boston College players to "shave" points, which is to win the game but enough so that it's under the spread the gambling people set for the game.  It's really not that sexy but it's an entertaining enough story of mobsters, money, and sports. (4/5)
Requiem for the Big East:  Kind of a misnomer as there is still a Big East, which now includes Butler University, home of my beloved avatar Butler Blue.  Anyway, in the early 80s a bunch of schools on the east coast formed the Big East and almost immediately found success by winning NCAA tournaments.  Bitter rivalries formed and fueled it to even greater heights.  They got a lot of exposure in the early days by teaming with a little-known cable channel called ESPN, which at the time was basically a trailer out in a cow pasture in rural Connecticut.  But of course money took over and schools like Syracuse bolted for other conferences.  A well-made documentary that is maybe a little too long but still interesting. (3.5/5)
Sole Man:  documentary about Sonny Vaccarro, the guy who really created the sneaker endorsement.  And possibly the sneaker as we know it.  While he started out with good intentions, it has really opened a Pandora's box.  The animation used at times undermines some of the seriousness of the documentary. (2.5/5)
Survive and Advance:  The story of the 1983 North Carolina State basketball team, which had numerous comeback wins on its way to the title.  Their smart-aleck coach later died of cancer and now has a research foundation sponsored by ESPN.  The problem was they kept mixing these two events together, flash-forwarding and flashing back, which seemed unnecessary. (3.5/5)
The U Pt 1:  In the late 70s the University of Miami (FL)'s football team was pretty much in the toilet.  Then they brought in a new coach who over 5 years turned it around and eventually they became "the team of the 80s" with like 3 championships.  Through a quirk of fate they managed to play their championship bowl game at home twice.  But there was a price to all this success...
The U Pt 2:  Miami did win a championship in 2001 but mostly this sequel filmed 5 years later mostly focuses on the program's fall from grace.  There was a lot of players taking "improper benefits" from boosters.  And the university head honchos let a Ponzi schemer have unfettered access to just about everything for a few years.  I really don't think this subject needed two movies each  nearly 2 hours long.  It's just not that interesting unless you're a huge Miami fan. (2.5)  (Fun Fact:  It's funny between the two movies to see how the people they interview in both movies change over 5 years.  The first one it was all Ed Hardy T-shirts and all that, so mostly the changes in the second movie were for the better.)
Winning Time:  Reggie Miller was one of those guys you'd probably hate unless he played for your team.  In 1994-1995 he and the Pacers had an epic rivalry with the New York Knicks in the NBA playoffs.  A lot of it centered around Miller and movie director Spike Lee.  An irony is that while it's called "Winning Time" neither the Pacers or Knicks have won an NBA title since 1973.  This documentary is fun, not taking itself really seriously. (3/5)  (Fun Fact:  Reggie Miller's older sister Cheryl was the greatest female basketball player of her era and often beat her brother when they played at home.  But who do you think got way more money and endorsements, eh?)
Without Bias:  Trite documentary on the death of college basketball star Lenny Bias in 1986.  It failed to provide much of anything definitive on his life or death in large part because it just strings together a bunch of interviews and news footage. (1/5)
You Don't Know Bo:  Entertaining documentary about Bo Jackson, who from 1987-1991 played in the NFL and MLB.  Other athletes have played two sports professionally but no one else played them as well.   If nothing else you might remember the famous "Bo Knows" Nike campaign from the late 80s. (4/5)  (Fun Fact:  Bo Jackson could be the real life Green Arrow since apparently he can shoot bull's eyes with his toes.)

Man in the High Castle Leaves Us Wondering Is This Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy?

I originally watched the pilot to Amazon's adaptation of Man in the High Castle, an alternate history based on Philip K Dick's novel about a world where the US lost WWII and Germany and Japan have divided the US between them.  I was glad it got picked up for a full series that was released a couple of months ago.  You might remember the PR stunt that backfired where they wrapped New York subway cars in Nazi and Japanese empire symbols.  Yeah, that didn't go well but any publicity is good publicity, right?

Anyway, the show takes place in an alternate 1962 where Hitler is on his last legs (seemingly) and his lieutenants are jockeying for power and to take down their ally in Japan.  Since Germany has nukes and Japan doesn't, they would seem to have an advantage.

Meanwhile, a young guy in New York named Joe Blake joins up with "the resistance" and is tasked to carry a very special film called Heavy Lies the Grasshopper to "the Man in the High Castle" somewhere in the Rockies.  At the same time, a woman in San Francisco named Juliana is contacted by her sister and also given a copy of Heavy Lies the Grasshopper.  Then her sister is gunned down and Juliana decided to take the copy to the Man in the High Castle in the Rockies.  The pilot has Joe and Juliana meeting but then duh-duh-duh we find out Joe is an undercover Nazi agent!

The scope of the show begins to widen after that.  The Japanese Trade Minister in America is working with a disgruntled Nazi to sneak nuclear secrets to the Japanese Empire during the visit of the Crown Prince.  And Juliana's boyfriend Frank goes nuts and brings a gun to assassinate the Crown Prince, but someone beats him to the punch.  Not before he's identified and becomes a fugitive.  At the same time the head of the SS in America (Obergrubbenfuhrer Smith--easy for you to say) is nearly assassinated--possibly by those closest to him.

Besides the alternate history there's some sci-fi involved with the films.  The first ones that are shown depict the history we all know from textbooks, the one where the US and its allies won the war and Germany and Japan were defeated.  So you have to wonder where those came from and what they mean.  Of course we don't really find that out.  And then at the end the show throws a curveball when the Japanese Trade Minister goes to a park bench and in sort of Somewhere in Time fashion concentrates real hard while holding a heart-shaped locket and wakes up in our 1962. Obviously then that brings up a lot of questions.  Are there parallel Earths like The Flash or Sliders?  Or is it something crazier than that, like maybe the whole world of the show is a dream or mass delusion and the films by "the Man in the High Castle" are subconscious reminders of how things are supposed to be, sort of like cues trying to alert people.

Just who is the Man in the High Castle?  It could be none other than the Fuhrer himself, Adolf Hitler!  In the last episode an assassin goes to the castle where Hitler is staying (which is a real thing, BTW) and Hitler has a whole library of these films that he watches every day.  So maybe he's using "the resistance" to gather and turn over these films to some intermediary who back-channels them to him.  And if the SS catches the resistance with them, they come to him anyway.  It's kind of an Emperor Palpatine thing to do.  (Seriously the plot of the Star Wars Force Unleashed video game had Palpatine essentially creating the Rebellion to flush out traitors, though then it kind of backfired on him.)

The thing is, I've read the book and I'm not sure it's much help.  I read it a few years ago but after watching the show I went back and looked up the end.  Basically in the book instead of film canisters there's a book that Juliana finds.  She takes it to Wyoming, where "the Man in the High Castle" turns out to be some ordinary guy who used sort of a Magic 8 Ball to create this "alternate universe," aka ours.  Juliana tries to convince him that maybe if they all believe hard enough that universe will become reality, but even that guy doesn't buy it.  That's where my dream/mass hypnosis sorta-4th wall theory comes from.

Just to throw a spanner into the works a bit more, near the end there's another film that instead of showing our universe seems to show the future, where Germany has obliterated San Francisco (governed by Japan) with a nuclear bomb and Joe Blake is a Nazi agent who executes Juliana's boyfriend and some others.  So how does all that fit into it?

Anyway, I know you probably haven't seen the show yet.  You can watch it through Amazon Instant Video, which is free with Amazon Prime.  I really liked the show.  It's kind of slow compared to network shows as they don't just wrap things up in 45 minutes.  In a way it's like Game of Thrones in that you have a bunch of characters and plotlines, though unlike that show they aren't spread so far apart and most of contact with each other during the course of the season.  That's better than Game of Thrones where after five seasons Khaleesi still hasn't got to King's Landing and that the Stark kids have been running around in the wastelands for like four years.  Of course it helps when you have a more contemporary setting where characters can use telephones or hop on rocket planes (basically Concordes) to travel the globe.

Something else I liked is it doesn't fall into the pitfalls of some alternate history in that we don't really see any political figures or celebrities from our timeline in the alternate universe.  It's not like they go to a filling station and Elvis is pumping the gas or something inane like that.  And you don't have Nixon working for the Nazi government or Reagan for the Japanese government or anything like that.  Which really I think is for the best because if it is an alternate timeline then things should be alternate, you know?  Not like say CSA:  The Confederate States of America where somehow in 1960 JFK was elected leader of the Confederacy.  That part of the movie never made sense to me.  I mean, a New England liberal running the Confederacy?  I couldn't buy into it.  I know it was a mockumentary, but really.  It just seems lazy when they do stuff like that.

The stand-out character for me was Obergrubbenfuhrer Smith, who's played by Rufus Sewell, whom you might remember from movies like the underrated Dark City.  He's kind of a combination of Christoph Waltz from Inglorious Bastards and Don Draper of Mad Men in that his day job is basically torturing and killing people but then at the end of the day he goes home to this totally normal house with this totally normal Leave It To Beaver-type family.  It's definitely kind of creepy.  His perfect bliss actually gets shattered when he finds out his son has some terminal disease, which in Nazi America means instant death.  So far he has covered that up but eventually he'll have to do something about the problem.

The Trade Minister is pretty interesting as well, especially now that he has this whole Sliders thing going on.  He tries to be all traditional and Zen and engineers the scheme to steal nuclear bomb plans in the hope that it'll even the playing field and create nuclear deterrence.  Only to his horror he realizes too late that it's actually just starting up a Cold War between the two superpowers.

Anyway, I'd definitely be interested in a season 2 and hope it's being worked on right now.

Divide and Conquer

A couple of years ago, Electronic Arts created their own little online portal thing called Origin that's sort of like Steam only for EA games.  I really had no interest in it but you have to have it to play with the Sims 3 and Sims 4 so I eventually had to adopt it.

Sometimes they give away old games for free for a limited time.  I got one called Zulu's Revenge where you play as a frog that shoots colored balls to destroyed chains of other colored balls.  That was better than those Candy Crush type games because you didn't need any in-game purchases.  Recently I got Need for Speed:  Most Wanted free, which has been kind of fun driving all the different cars--including a Ford Focus!  I already beat all the other "most wanted" drivers to be the #1 driver.  Bwahahahahaha.

Another one they offered was Command and Conquer:  Red Alert 2.  I vaguely remembered the game when it came out about 15 years ago but I'd never played it.  So I thought I might as well download it since it was free.

The game takes place in some kind of alternate universe where I guess the USSR never broke up.  You can play either as the Soviets and their allies or the Americans and their allies.  The idea is you build a base and an army and try to destroy the other player(s).  For me it was like playing Age of Empires or Star Wars Rebellion, a couple of my favorite strategy games from the late 90s.  The expansion pack was included, so over a couple of months I played the various campaigns and just "skirmished" against the computer in different scenarios.

Around Black Friday Origin had a package with all 17 Command and Conquer games on sale for like $10, which seemed like a good deal.  I mean that's less than $1 a game!  Although about half of the 17 are expansion packs, which don't have as long of campaigns as the full games.  Still, it has provided plenty of entertainment--and anguish.

As fun as the games can be, sometimes they're just really, really frustrating too.  A lot of the campaign missions are the same thing:  here's no troops and hardly any money; go build an army and destroy the other side--oh, and build your army in about two minutes before the enemy shows up to start beating the shit out of you.  How freaking implausible is that?  I mean it's not like in real life a general has to actually build his fucking army in the field on a shoestring budget.  It makes a lot more sense in Age of Empires when you're dealing with primitive cultures, but it's not like you can build advanced war machines in the field.  So it seems kind of ridiculous at times.  And makes me cuss and swear a lot.

The other thing is that no matter which version of the game you play, your units are so fucking stupid.  It's like your army is made of a bunch of special ed students.  What drives me crazy is I'll have a bunch of tanks and stuff just sitting around as the enemy blows up our base.  Or they'll just sit there as one unit gets blown up.  Like they're on their fucking coffee break or something.  "It's not my job!"  Or you tell them to go somewhere and they won't bother to defend themselves even when enemy units start shooting at them, because you told them to go to a particular spot, not to defend themselves!  So you end up doing a lot of micromanaging.  It gets to be annoying.  And in the 15 years or so that these games span, you think they might have figured out how to fix some of these problems to make your guys just a little bit smarter.  Nah.

I have played most of the games by now, though the older ones not as much.  The first few are from the 90s and the graphics look like something from the Atari 2600.  They got better around 2000.  They also started using professional actors in their cut scenes like George Takei, Billy Dee Williams, Tim Curry, Michael Ironside, Malcolm McDowell, Ray Wise, and so forth.  So that's kind of fun and maybe it was a good paycheck for them.

Command & Conquer:  Renegade is the only one that's not a strategy game.  It's a first-person shooter set in the same universe.  That was kind of a nice departure from the other games.  There was one point in a level where I got so stuck I had to watch someone's walkthrough on YouTube to find this stupid elevator leading to a hidden lab where I had to kill a bunch of bad guys.

Besides Red Alert 2, I really liked the Command & Conquer:  Generals game.  In that one you get to play the USA, China, or "GLA" which is like al-Qaeda or ISIS or something.  You get more realistic units like Hummers and M1 tanks and stuff, which was a little more fun.  One mission for the Chinese campaign I was really stuck until I found out China has "hackers" who can literally sit around and download money from the Internet.  They get like $5-$10 per second which isn't a lot but if you have a bunch of them it starts to add up.  If only I could get them working for me in real life.

One problem with all these games is EA doesn't really give you the manuals or anything so unless you want to go find them yourself online, you kind of have to learn by trial-and-error.  Which leads to moments like above where I find out by accident how to use a particular unit to my advantage.  And then I usually lament how I wish I'd known that from the start.

Anyway, I know you have no interest in such games, but I just wanted to get all that off my chest.  Happy Friday.

All Apologists: Gods of Egypt and Hollywood's Continued Casting Laziness

It was a week or two ago when on Facebook Comic Book Resources posted something about Gods of Egypt and asked if you were excited about it and I replied something like, "Why would I be excited to see another whitewashed piece of crap?"  I mean look at the cast list on IMDB:  you have Chadwick Boseman who's black and Elodie Yung who's half-Asian but other than that it's all white people in the starring roles.  The freaking movie is Gods of EGYPT and there's no one even vaguely Egyptian or even Middle Eastern/African.  How fucking lame is that?

Maybe because I had the first comment I got all these apologists popping up to defend the casting of the movie.  One guy thought he was really clever by saying, "Oh yeah, well name an Egyptian actor!"  Well OK, here's a page from Wikipedia.  That literally took me 30 seconds.  Second, I'm not a Hollywood casting agent.

The subtext here seemed to be that "Gosh, there's just no way we can find actors from Egypt (or the surrounding region) so let's just cast a Scottish guy and a Dane and have them get a suntan."  Seriously?  Are you fucking kidding me?  It's 2016!  We're 16% into the 21st Century with all this social media and instant communication and you want me to believe that casting agents just can't find actors from that part of the world?  Hey pull the other one, it has bells on it.

No the real problem is kind of a Catch-22:  you can't find KNOWN actors from that area and yet if you never cast anyone from that region, how can they ever get known?  Despite that star power consistently has proven to be all but useless in this century (Hail Caesar being the most recent example of a star-studded film falling pretty flat) Hollywood still clings to this notion that you have to have known quantities in the leading roles.  That makes it difficult for non-white actors to get roles unless the film specifically calls for it like a movie about slavery or Jesse Owens or Black Panther, though there's probably still some dumb studio exec who'd want to cast Matt Damon as Black Panther.

The sports world has long had this same problem too.  When a big NFL, NBA, MLB, or college team goes to hire a coach, they usually want someone known to the public so they can "make a splash."  That's why you get dipshit coaches who have failed 2 or even 3 times as head coaches get another chance while non-white/non-male candidates get left behind.  The NFL had to actually create the "Rooney Rule" to require teams to interview minority candidates, but teams have often circumvented this rule by giving a token interview to a minority assistant.

There has been a lot of controversy over the Oscars this year because the leading candidates are all white.  I think a lot of that is just a function of what I'm talking about.  There's also the myopia of the selection process.  I mean if you think about it scientifically, do you really think there wasn't a single black, Asian, Middle Eastern, Latino, Indian (both kinds) actor or actress in the whole freaking world who was worthy of a nomination?  But the selection process is mostly focused on movies from the US/UK where because of what I've been talking about it's so hard for non-whites to get decent roles.  If the Academy included "foreign" movies, then I'm sure you'd see more minorities nominated.  But part of that's probably laziness.  I mean if you're an Academy judge do you want to sit through 300 movies, probably half of those subtitled?  It's so much easier to just nominate Leonardo DiCaprio or Meryl Streep again and be done with it.

So what's the solution?  Well in a perfect world we wouldn't need a solution because it would all be based on merit.  But we're not in a perfect world--obviously.  I really don't want any kind of affirmative action for the Oscars where we have to force at least one candidate to be black.  I honestly don't think that's doing anyone any favors because even if that person wins it will seem a hollow victory, like he or she is only winning so the Academy can do some damage control.

What we need is some common freaking sense.  If you're making a movie called Gods of EGYPT, find some freaking Egyptians!  Or at least people from that area.  When The Mummy cast Arnold Vosloo as the mummy they still had a white guy but as a South African at least he was from the right freaking continent.  So that was somewhat closer.  If you're making a Biblical movie like Exodus, again, hire some people who are from that freaking area!  If you're going to care so little for verisimilitude, why not just have Set or Moses whip out an iPhone?

Another apologist said, "Well Charlton Heston played Moses."  That was back in the goddamned 1950s!  You might as well bring up Birth of a Nation or any of those old movies where white guys went around in blackface.  Again I don't think there's anything wrong with expecting some freaking progress in 60 years.  Which it's funny isn't it because Hollywood likes to act all liberal and yet it's still like a country club with a good-old-boys network hard at work.

Just as a final point, there was another apologist who really got silly.  He raved that if I wasn't against casting Michael B Jordan as Human Torch too then I was a HYPOCRITE and a RACIST!  (I'm sure he has a Trump bumper sticker on his pick-up truck.)  Sure Johnny Storm had traditionally been a white, blond guy but so what?  It's a freaking comic book character!  You know, the comic books where characters get killed, replaced, and resurrected every other month.  They play so fast-and-loose with reality that having a black guy play the character seems like a pretty minor change.  Plus, there's nothing tying Johnny Storm to any particular race or nationality.  Now if Johnny Storm were the Egyptian god of fire or whatever then there'd be a problem.

That does help to show another big part of the problem, which is all these idiots out there who want to make excuses for being racist.  They're all pretty flimsy excuses too.  We really all need to just try harder to do the right thing.

(I wrote this and then like the next night on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver there was a segment on this titled, "This Shit Still Happens in 2016?!"  It echoed a lot of what I said.  There was even a quote from Ridley Scott about Exodus where he said he couldn't get the movie financed unless he had a known actor in the lead.  Because I guess Joel Edgerton is really well known?)

The Not-So-Secret Identity Trope

Something I didn't like about both series of Spider-Man movies was how Peter Parker always seemed to let anyone and everyone know he was Spider-Man.  Sometimes I'd shake my head and say, "Why don't you just hand out business cards reading, 'Peter Parker, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man?!'"  I mean it got to be pretty ridiculous when he reveals himself to a whole train full of people.

The superhero TV shows I've seen aren't much better.  When "Arrow" started it was just Oliver Queen.  Then it was Oliver and his bodyguard Diggle.  Then it was Oliver, Diggle, and computer nerd Felicity.  And now it's Oliver, Diggle, Felicity, Oliver's sister, his ex-girlfriend Laurel, her police captain father, Ra's al Guhl Malcom Merlin, and probably a few other people.  "The Flash" is the same way.  The first episode of "Supergirl" I think a half-dozen people knew her "secret" identity and then they've added a few more since then.

The thing is, the whole "someone learning the hero's true identity" is not only trite and cliche, but it loses impact each time you do it.  Until like the Spider-Man movies it's just tedious and unbelievable that the whole freaking city doesn't know who he is.

Secret identity that's secret! Whoa!

I got trying to think how many people Emma Earl told her identity to in the Scarlet Knight books.  In the first book she tells her best friend Becky; "tell" in the sense she's driven crazy by a bad guy and assaults Becky.  There are two witches and the Sewer Rat who also know, though she never had to tell them because the witches have magic and the Sewer Rat has a super-sniffer.  After that...really I don't think there was anyone except her daughter.  The guy she crushed on in the first four books never finds out in the whole series.  The cop she often worked with as the Scarlet Knight literally went to her grave not knowing.  A couple of other friends she makes in the fifth book never find out.  So, yeah, Emma's secret identity was actually pretty secret.  What a concept!

I didn't go to that well too often in the Girl Power books either.  In the first book the Batmangirl character is found out by a boy who becomes her sidekick.  The Flash character gets drunk and goes to see her wife and kid and is then found out by the wife.  In the second book the Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane characters find out Supermangirl's identity when a clone shows up.  The best one was in the third book when the Robin character's mother finds out and starts critiquing her costume and choice of names.  And in the book of short stories there's one where the Flash character's daughter finds out when she gains superspeed too.  So really I guess I averaged about one reveal per book.  The Aquamanwoman character was a little more complicated.  She didn't want her people to find out she used to be the king of Atlantis Pacifica because women weren't supposed to hold power, so while she could appear as a superhero, she had to come up with a secret identity as a peasant girl, so it was kind of opposite from other superheroes.  And then in the second book she gets an upgrade and basically comes back to decree herself the queen and if anyone's got a problem, they can try to take power from her--no one does.  That's not really the same thing, though, as what superhero shows and movies do.

Anyway, I guess the point is the whole "someone learning the hero's true identity" thing can really be overdone, as can any trope.  So tread carefully.

The Epic Comics Post

I'm not sure when was the last time I even talked about comics I've read.  I think back in September or something.  I haven't read a lot, but I still pick up a few on sale every now and then.

All-Star Batman & Robin:  I hated this on every level.  Well the art was OK, but the story by Frank Miller of Dark Knight Returns fame is wretched.  The gist is that Dick Grayson's parents are killed and so Batman (who has been stalking the kid for years to evaluate his talents...um, gross) kidnaps him and forces him into becoming Robin.  I mean the kid's like 10 so that's a great fucking idea.  Besides the stupidity and creepiness, there's a hearty helping of misogyny as well.  Hooray? If you've ever thought, Gee, Batman should be more of a prick, this is your comic book series!  (1/5)
Aquaman:  Throne of Atlantis:  This was an animated movie last year and the plot is somewhat the same.  Aquaman has a brother who's fully Atlantean and is running the show in Atlantis, but is manipulated into attacking the surface world, which puts Aquaman in a tough spot.  In one of those "bad comic book fights," somehow the entire Justice League except Aquaman, Cyborg, and of course Batman are incapacitated until they can be rescued.  Yeah, sure.  It was OK but not great. (2.5/5)
Astro City, Vol 1:  This was the original 1995 miniseries that focuses not so much on superheroics but more down-to-Earth stuff in the lives of superheroes and the people of Astro City.  The covers by Alex Ross are gorgeous while the interior art is not quite as good. (3/5)
Batman:  The Cult:  A miniseries where Batman is captured, brainwashed by an evil reverend, and then escapes to come back as the reverend's minions take over the city.  It got a little silly when he and Robin drive into town in a specially-designed tank to shoot brainwashed people with sedatives.  Not really essential reading but the evil reverend makes an appearance in the next item. (2/5)
Batman Eternal:  This was a 52-week series that I thought would not be in continuity, but it actually was.  A series of villains (Carmine Falcone, Hush, Scarecrow, and ultimately Bruce Wayne's maybe-brother Thomas) basically turn Gotham City into a Hell on Earth, starting by framing Commissioner Gordon for murder.  It's good Batman at this point has like 42 costumed allies in the city (and picks up a couple more in the series run) to help him handle all the crap that goes down.  There was one largely pointless subplot involving Arkham Asylum and demons and crap.  It was funny too how during the year-long run Batgirl's costume changed from one issue to another thanks to her series' soft reboot last year.  Otherwise it was an engrossing story that worked in just about everyone in Batman's history. (3/5)
Batman: Noel:  As you might expect, this is a Christmas-themed graphic novel.  While set in the modern day it does A Christmas Carol thing where Batman is Scrooge and Bob Cratchitt is a henchman of the Joker who narrates the story to his kid.  Batman as Scrooge? you might wonder, but the author does a good job in utilizing Batman's history to contrast today's "gritty" Batman with the campier Adam West-type Batman and put it all together into a coherent story.  Think of it as the Adam West-Batman is like young Scrooge and the gritty Batman is like old Scrooge.  Instead of losing a fiancee, it's losing Robin that largely triggers the change.  The art is also really good for the most part, using a more realistic style, which I always enjoy. (3.5/5)
Batman:  Heart of Hush:  "Hush" is an old friend of Bruce Wayne's, as revealed in an earlier series of comics.  This story goes more in-depth about his past and his jealousy of Bruce Wayne for being orphaned instead of having a controlling, obnoxious mother.  The title of the story comes from that Hush captures Catwoman and literally takes her heart out and installs some wacky life support system that will give out in a certain amount of time unless Batman saves her.  Does he?  Duh.  Not as good as the original Hush story. (2.5/5)
Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe:  It is exactly what is promised in the title:  Deadpool's brain is stabilized by "the Psycho Man" and he becomes a killing machine who destroys every hero and villain in the Marvel universe.  The problem is a lot of them are killed off-page or in passing and none of the fights are epic at all.  I mean most of the Avengers like Captain America and Iron Man are blown up in an explosion.  Yawn. I guess it is good fan service for the nut jobs who sit around wondering how to kill this hero or that villain.  (2/5)
Deadpool Killustrated:  So after killing the Marvel universe, Deadpool realizes that to really erase superheroes from existence, he needs to wipe out the source material:  literature!  Instead of killing superheroes, he kills the likes of Moby-Dick, Tom Sawyer, Don Quixote, Captain Nemo, and Dracula.  Meanwhile Sherlock Holmes assembles kind of a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to stop him.  While the fights were again not that epic, I thought this was a better series with a little deeper meaning.  Sometimes in a panel it would go from showing a literature character to the superhero they would correlate to like Magneto as Captain Nemo, General Ross/Red Hulk as Ahab, or Namor the Sub-Mariner as the Little Mermaid.  It also kind of reminded me of the Futurama where Fry battles a giant brain by jumping inside books. (3.5/5)
Deadpool Kills Deadpool:  The conclusion of the Deadpool "Killology" this is kind of a step back.  The Deadpool of the "real" Marvel universe comes under attack by the minions of that other Deadpool and unites with other Deadpools to kill more Deadpools.  Um, yeah.  There are Deadpools based on different eras or others that are like Deadpool versions of different heroes or villains (even Galactus) and one that's a giant panda! It's amusing but not really all that great unless you really hate Deadpool and like watching him die over and over again. (2.5/5)
Night of the Living Deadpool:  The setup is like 28 Days Later or The Walking Dead:  Deadpool wakes up after gorging on chimichangas to find zombies running amok.  He bands together with a couple of survivors and they cruise by locations from zombie movies/TV shows like a farmhouse, prison, and amusement park.  Eventually there's a little town that seems safe--until Deadpool turns undead.  But then he turns back and with the help of a scientist who created the thing tries to find a cure.  Kind of fun if you like zombie stuff and actually in some ways better than Kirkman's Marvel Zombies story. (3/5)
Fastastic Four 1234:  The title really should be 1,2,3,4 because that's the meaning behind it.  It's not like 1234 AD or anything.  One of those weirder Grant Morrison comics, though not necessarily full weird Morrison.  The usual stuff about Dr. Doom trying to kill the Fantastic Four only this time by designing a trap for each one, though he kind of does a 2-for-1 with Namor and the Atlanteans (not the same ones as Aquaman) going after Sue and Johnny Storm.  If I knew more Fantastic Four history I'd like it better. (2/5)
Grayson: Volume 1:  So after Dick Grayson's superhero identity was exposed to the whole world he joined a spy outfit called SPYRAL.  And then stuff happens.  It was OK but the whole look of the character made me think of Sterling Archer, only this wasn't as funny. (2.5/5)
Thor, Vol 1: Goddess of Thunder:  If it had been me, this would be about Thor being turned into a girl.  But actually (spoiler) it's just his sometimes girlfriend Jane Foster, Natalie Portman in the movies.  These five issues don't go into any of that but I read the solution to the "mystery" some time ago.  Apparently in a previous Marvel event Thor no longer became worthy of the hammer so it was left on the moon like the sword in the stone.  Until Jane Foster somehow shows up and lifts it and becomes the female Thor to take on frost giants invading the Earth.  In another bad comic book fight, the Avengers are frozen off-page so that only lady Thor can save them.  Yeah, sure.  The last issue was just a throw away with Thor moping about losing his hammer and Odin all pissed that some woman has the thing. Since the author withholds the new Thor's identity in these issues it makes it hard to really care about the character. (2/5)
X-Men: Gifted:  This was from the Joss Whedon run on the title.  It was yet another soft reboot of the X-Men series where they assembled a new team (pretty much the same as the old team) and have to investigate a supposed mutant "cure."  The cure thing was used in the 2006 movie, The Last Stand, though the comics and movie bear little actual resemblance. (2.5/5)

Sticking It Out

This is kind of a sequel to my "Great Art Takes Time" post.  In that one I mentioned that my business model is generally writing a story pretty quick, giving it an editing pass, and then putting it out there.  It's about quantity more than the quality, though I like to think there's some quality too.

Sometimes though I get annoyed with myself when I find a story stretching past the 70-page mark with no end in sight.  I mean a lot of people in this market write a "book" that's only 20-30 pages--and some even less.  Yet I haven't really been able to do that too much.  I think this one is the shortest one I've done and that's 30 pages.

A lot of times when a story's running long I think, "Can't we just get this over already?  We need to move on to the next thing!"  But then that other voice says, "No, you have to think of the story.  It'll go as long as it needs to."  That voice kind of sucks but I usually listen to it.  I guess at heart I'm still too much of an artiste.  Ha.

That doesn't mean I'm adverse to finding a shortcut.  A few times I've seen a quicker way to wrap up a story and run with it.  It isn't really how I imagined the story would go, but as long as it still seems like a good idea, then I'll do it.

Though that voice saying to just end things usually says, "Come on, it's not like people really care!"  Those are the times when it would be nice to get more fan mail or positive reviews.  It's a lot easier to take time to craft stories when you know people actually like them.  Even perverts need positivity!

The Not-So-Secret Secret to Reviews

If you've read my blog for a while, you know that I frequently complain about not getting enough good reviews.  So when I saw someone hocking a book called Book Reviews That Sell for a paltry 99 cents, I thought I might as well give it a try.  Maybe I'd actually learn some great secret to getting book reviews.

Reading it reminded me of this time I watched this 30 minute web video that promised to tell me some great secret to more job interviews.  The first like 27 minutes of the video was this guy just saying the same generic crap over and over again in slightly different ways.  After 27 minutes of vamping he finally got to the big "secret," which was:  I don't really remember.  Some stupid thing you put in the PS of a cover letter.  Then I just had to shake my head for getting taken, not that it cost me anything and actually after about 10 minutes of the dude's vamping I put the video in another tab and played around on Facebook or something.

I also remember reading an article about all those "One Weird Trick" videos you see advertised around the Internet.  Apparently the ones the author watched used a similar tactic of just vamping for most of a half hour and then giving you a "secret" that wasn't really much of a secret.  Like if you watch "One Weird Trick" to losing a bunch of weight it might after a half hour of bullshitting tell you to take some Vitamin D pills or something like that.

In the same way the first 2/3 of this "book" is mostly the author going on and on about Amazon's Terms of Service, which you could read for yourself if you felt like it.  And also that review swaps are bad.  You should never, ever promise to trade reviews with someone.  Sure.  I got that the first five times he mentioned it, but just to make the book seem more like a real book he said it five more times.  (Slight exaggeration.)

Ironically in the same way as that video or book, I've been vamping before giving you the big "secret," albeit not as long.  Here's the "secret":  Find books like yours, make a list of Amazon reviewers of those books who have email information, and then send them an email to ask if they'll review your book.

I think I literally started to laugh.  I mean really, that's it?  That's the secret?  Since this would actually take hundreds of hours to do on your own, he suggests hiring someone on Fiverr or something to help you track down leads in exchange for a few bucks.  Then you put them into an Excel sheet and go to work.  Chances are you'll send out hundreds of Emails and get only a few positives--and then even fewer who actually go through with it in a reasonable amount of time.

Basically it operates under the junk mail principle:  you send out a hundred thousand postcards or Emails and if even 2% of those buy your product or service--or give you their bank information in the case of those Nigerian prince email scams--then you've turned a profit.  Though in this case the profit is in terms of reviews.

Ordinarily I might try this because what the hell?  I mean, I tried that Reader Magnets thing, which didn't really pay off for me.  However, I'm in kind of an ethical dilemma because I am an Amazon reviewer and I have had people pitch me free copies of their books if I'll review it.  I did accept one or two, but then I gave up because it was annoying and taking time I could be reading books I actually wanted to read.  So sure I can go find some other people who have reviewed gender swap fiction and ask them if they'll review one of my books, but having been on the other side of it, I'd feel like kind of an idiot.  Also I don't want to waste money trying to hire a minion on Fiverr or whatever.

BTW, here's another "secret" for you from the book:  how to deal with bad reviews.  Basically you get a "street team" of other people who have Amazon accounts and you post comments on the bad review and vote it "not helpful" and hope the reviewer changes his/her mind or at the least it will seem to other people like it's not a good review.  (In a similar fashion Jay Greenstein goes to everyone who posts a bad review of his books to scream that they have a grudge against him because of his nefarious message board activities.)  If you're the author, you can promise to change things the reviewer pointed out in the hope the reviewer will decide to alter the review.

What's funny is after I posted the review to Amazon, the next day the author made one of those comments and had a couple of his "street team" making comments and voting it down.  They didn't seem to realize the reviewer has a nuclear option:  copy the review, delete it on Amazon, and then repost it.  I did that a few times with a review of a Sufjan Stevens album that for some reason really irked people.  I didn't get death threats, but close.  There was a Michael Chabon book too with a similar situation, to the point I finally changed the title of the review to:  I Don't Care What You Think, I'm Not Changing the Review!  So really the author of the review doesn't have to take bullying like that.  Right now it's actually at 5 of 7 helpful votes and just one "street team" commenter, so for the moment I can live with it.

Anyway, you can try this system if you want.  I'm sure other Amazon reviewers are a lot more forgiving than I am.

PS:  If the author of the book and his street team show up, this is my blog so if you try any of your tricks I'll go full Andrew Leon and make your comments mysteriously disappear.  And there's no "not helpful" button for you to press.

Evil Prevails

Sunday is Valentine's Day so the timing of this seems apt.  Haha.

Anyway, I mentioned I watched the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.  In the movie, they bring up an experiment done back in the early 20th Century.  Basically a shrink had an actor go in a little booth to pretend to be a random person and then brought in subjects, who were commanded by a scientist to keep shocking the person in the booth with increasing amounts of electricity.  For the most part, people would question the scientist but then deliver the shocks as ordered, no matter how much the actor in the booth scream or carried on.

The gist of the study was that ordinary, seemingly non-evil, non-sadistic people were capable of doing horrible things to someone else so long as they were commanded by someone in authority.  The movie doesn't mention it, but we saw real-world examples of this at Nuremberg and other war crime trials where someone would say, "I was only following orders."  Most of us would probably say that if we were conscripted into the Nazi army we wouldn't kill a bunch of Jews and other people, but would we really not do that?  If it came between you being killed or all those people, would you really not do it?  Or would you rationalize by saying you're following orders?

For the most part I think that's the kind of evil we have to worry about more than supervillains like in comic books or James Bond movies.  Most people are capable of doing terrible things because either they're "following orders" or they think they're doing the right thing.  That's why it's so hard to eliminate evil in the world.  First it's hard for all of us to agree on a definition and second, we're all fragile and fallible. 

There you go, depressing thoughts for your weekend of love and chocolate.

"New" Book Releases!

I recently released three books, none of which are gender swap erotica.  And actually two of them are kind of the same concept.

First there's this:

The zombie apocalypse takes to the sky in this thrilling new series! Major Hunter Hawking was an ace Air Force pilot, but two years after a zombie outbreak and global war have destroyed civilization, he's fighting only to stay alive. Then his old commander calls him back to an island near Seattle where society is trying to rebuild. After a series of successful strikes to root out zombies and criminal elements, Hunter thinks he might finally have a home.

Then a new enemy emerges with an air force of high-tech fighters and a devastating new weapon: tamed zombies that are dropped from the skies. When his new home is killed, Hunter is on his own to track down this enemy and stop them from deploying it again. Along the way he explores the shattered remains of America, bringing hope to those who remain as the Sky Ghost.

I put it up on Kindle Scout but of course it didn't get enough support to be published by Amazon.  I thought of querying it but then decided I don't want to wait a year to never for it to come out.  I kinda need money now, you know?

Buy it for $3.99 from Amazon in Kindle format and from Draft2Digital for other formats! 

Then there's this, which might seem familiar:

For two years, Casey and her father have survived the zombie apocalypse on a small Michigan island. When they fly off the island to look for supplies, they're saved by the folk hero known as the Sky Shadow. When Casey witnesses a shadowy organization dropping zombies from the air, Casey has to enlist the Sky Shadow's help to stop them before her home ends up next on the list.

If it seems sort of the same as the first one, it's because this was the first draft.  They are completely different stories, but the same concept.  I just threw this cover together in like 15 minutes.

Buy it for $2.99 from Amazon or get it FREE for Kindle Unlimited!

Finally, there's this:

From the pages of the Girl Power superhero series! After a devastating alien attack has left the world in shambles, what's needed more than ever is a global intelligence agency. Enter the Global Autonomous Intelligence Agency, run by Melanie Amis, once the superhero sidekick the Outcast. When one of Melanie's agents goes missing in Africa, it begins to unravel a conspiracy that could throw the world right back into chaos.

I wrote this early in 2014 but I thought I might rewrite it at some point because it's only like 45,000 words.  Now that it has been about 2 years, it seems kind of unlikely I'm going to do a rewrite, so I might as well just publish it.  The only gender swapping in this is a girl who was a guy gets changed back into a guy--and then back into a girl.  Yeah.

Buy it for $2.99 from Amazon or get it FREE for Kindle Unlimited!