Bloggy B Bloggington III, DDS
Woo, boy... I thought I'd try to experiment with something new for this blog entry. I'll display how it's important to live with errors in your early writing...
And I really did it.
Anyway, here's a blog entry I wrote entirely with my IBM Selectric. How did we ever blog before we had computers?
*Oh, man. I was in pretty big trouble, like, ten words into this thing.
Coming up with blog subjects can be a bit of a chore. Luckily, one of my friends from Nevermore Edits has been similarly searching for blog subjects, and was advised by people-in-the-know that creating a list of 100 things you love is a great way to send a jolt through your entries. Naturally, when she shared this with us, it became a free-for-all to finish our own lists. Here's mine, in some particular order. Some will notice that my wife, Lora is listed first, but Batman comes in a close second. That seems fair, although I have loved Batman for far longer...
Some of these have already been blog posts, others may yet become posts. Some are absurd, but probably more truthful than I would like to admit (I'm looking in your direction, freshly starched shirts...).
1. Lora
2. Batman
3. Wrath of Khan
4. The West Wing
5. Buffy
6. Nicholas Meyer
7. The Twilight Zone
8. Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman
9. 30 Rock
10. Not being in Law School
11. Not being in middle management (This has been on my mind quite profoundly as of late, see my argument with myself from a few weeks back to see how that discussion has been going nowhere)
12. Black and white monster movies (If James Whale made it, assume I love it)
13. Pretzels
14. Tea
15. Pepsi?
16. Community
17. Chicken (fried)
18. The Reuben at Margaret's
19. Rick and Morty
20. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
21. Unbreakable
22. Schmidt (From New Girl. Really, all three of the guys on that show feel like parts of me split up into the cast of a sitcom, but the echo was far more important than anything else. Sorry, Nick Miller.)
23. Woody Allen movies... (I know...)
24. Sherlock Holmes
25. James Bond
26. Cheers
27. Wheel of Fortune (I'm not kidding... I'm developing a real problem. Happy to report my Vannamania is still under control. For the moment. Although, my next great creative undertaking may be an audition video to be a contestant on the show.)
28. Movie scores
29. Fountain pens
30. Typewriters
31. Fargo
32. Don Draper (take that to mean what you will)
33. Orson Welles
34. Charlie Chaplin
35. Time Travel (it's a living...)
36. DVDs
37. Writing
38. Writing group
39. Michael Keaton
40. Ice cubes
41. Jon Stewart
42. Billy Joel's "The Stranger"
43. Ron Funches
44. Drive-in movie theaters
45. Pinball
46. Star Wars (all of it? The prequels are often a drag, but the larger tableau of the Skywalker clan has always been and will always be quite strong)
47. Productive days
48. Comic books
49. CJ the Labradane
50. Really Good Man
51. That feeling after a final exam/publishing a book
52. Scarves on ladies (is that my kink?)
53. Journey
54. ...Enya
55. The Simpsons
56. David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian
57. Pinky and the Brain
58. Mark Twain
59. Primary Colors (the book and the concept)
60. Doctor Who
61. Adele (I'd ask you not to judge me, but if you don't love Adele, I judge you)
62. Breaking Bad
63. The Rancher's Club in Stillwater
64. House of Greek
65. My writing room
66. Sushi
67. Fish eggs
68. Used book sales/flea markets
69. The Marx Brothers
70. Boobs (I could try to be a little more evolved, but that would be pretty disingenuous)
71. Stephen King
72. A freshly starched shirt
73. Johnny Carson
74. Walter Mondale
75. Dill pickles
76. Breakfast foods
77. Ribs
78. House of Cards
79. When my co-workers have interests outside of work (Just hearing about the singers, football players, and rodeo queens with whom I work makes the world make a little bit more sense)
80. Alfred Hitchcock
81. The Universal logo they started using in Back to the Future III and stopped using with the Lost World
82. Back scratches
83. Naps (or as I like to call it, leisure time)
84. Reading
85. Bacon
86. The random feature on the FXNOW app's "The Simpsons" section (Netflix, get with the times!)
87. Cinnamon things
88. Beer
89. Wine
90. The Apollo program
91. Pop vinyls (I tripped over a rare bloody variant Leatherface this weekend. It's like hitting the jackpot on a slot machine)
92. Lego
93. Kisses (I'm not without my romantic notions)
94. Murphy Brown (start releasing those DVDs already, Warner Bros., will ya?)
95. Murder, She Wrote
96. Playing lizard people in RPGs
97. Politics
98. Being released by surgeons (95, 97, and 98 paint a decidedly geriatric picture of me)
99. GPS (it's saved me from having to learn how streets work)
100. Die Hard
A couple of other items have occurred to me since putting the list together on Wednesday night. I really love not accepting as important what other people would insist are important. That feeds into a lot of the other items on the list, but it is often the overriding motivation for the big decisions in my life.
Also, I really like selling a book to somebody. It only happens every once in a while (although it is, thankfully, happening more and more often) but the little money I get from those efforts are far more important than the rather good living I make from my day job.
Got a list of your own? Share it in the comments! Or, better yet, blog about it yourself and link to it in the comments.
I've written at length in this blog about the magnificent turns my writing career has taken since I've stumbled upon the group of people making up both A Murder of Storytellers and Nevermore Edits. For this third entry in my series of "Books Written by Friends," I thought I would venture into the beginning of their work. Thankfully, the book I read isn't the end of their work. If it were, the ending might not be a happy one at all.
The endings in Happy Days, Sweetheart are all designed to be unhappy, but this--the first anthology from Murder--proves to be a thrilling beginning to a creative output that has already lit the local writing landscape on fire and shows no sign of stopping there.
While Murder is primarily a horror imprint, the stories in Happy Days... keep to the macabre by virtue of their theme, but do have some variance in genre:
"Finding Annie" by Shannon Iwanski starts off matters in a darkly comic tone.
Iwanski and C.J. Miles IV eventually steer matters into the abjectly tragic with "Good Morning Mr. C" and "Repeat After Me," respectively.
Kaz Kirkpatrick offers a quick sharp, detour into the subversive with the aptly titled "Repelzul."
Jack Burgos and editor Adrean Messmer finish the proceedings with "Bloody Lizzy" and "Left and Leaving." Fair warning about the final stories in this volume: they are not for the faint of stomach.
The book is short and a breezy read, despite its heavy subject matter. The editing is polished* and indicates a level of professionalism that always challenges me to do better in my own work.
I highly recommend Happy Days, Sweetheart. You can acquire an eBook or paper copy for yourself via Amazon. Alternately, you can acquire a signed copy of Happy Days... and all of the other Murder books at the Hastings in Bartlesville this Satruday, April 30th from 1-5 PM. The authors will be there to sign copies.
Oh, also, I will be there. I have books as well. Maybe I should review one of them in this blog? No. As we all learned last week, I tend to not to get along with myself.
* There are very few typos that I found. Most of them might be attributable to me reading the book on a progressively antiquated Kindle Fire. Those that I did find were almost entirely found in Jack's stories. This is the part where Jack goes quite mad and starts searching all of his stories for bugs. Ha! I'll never tell where they are! Mainly because I can't remember where they are, and those few errors did not interfere with the proceedings in the slightest.
"The Enemy Within" is a truly great episode of the original Star Trek, and one I've been thinking about a lot lately. In fact, it's one of the first episodes where the show became the truly special thing that I won't shut up about to this day. It's a bonkers premise -- Kirk is split into two halves, one "good," the other "evil." Experiments on space poodles, arch camera angles to tell the different Kirks apart, and some truly horrendous gender politics* ensue before we realize that neither the ineffectually compassionate Kirk, nor his power-hungry beast of a brother can survive on their own.
If you've never seen it, Netflix it now. I'd put it ahead of "City on the Edge of Forever" as a showcase for young Shatner at his Shatneriest. It's written by Richard Matheson, who is second only to Rod Serling in my pantheon of truly great science fiction television writers. He also wrote "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," which, speaking of Shatner... Just go Netflix it.
Why bring this up now? Good question. I've always had a bit of an "Enemy Within" thing going on. For more on that we go to Gary. Say "hi" to the readers, Gary.
"Hi" to the readers, Gary.
What did we talk about it? I do the jokes around here.
Fine. My name is Gary M. Boyle. I was named for my father, and for once, we'll hear a little bit from me. I figured I'm entitled. I write all the checks, and Mac couldn't get a social security card if he tried. I've seen to that much.
We are all two people on some level, I suppose. Clichéd storytelling might call one half "dark" and the other "light." Just as in Mac's example from that space ship show with the guy from Boston Legal, "good" and "evil" doesn't cover the whole truth. I don't have a goatee. Well, any time I have had a goatee, Mac had one too, but that's beside the point. We're not separate people. Of this much, I can assure you. In truth, Mac and I are just better at different, albeit sometimes conflicting, things. We just happened to have the odd fortune of having one legal name, and another nickname. We've had both since birth. I should probably stop using that "we" pronoun, lest we--damn it--alarm some of you.
I'm more analytical; Mac is more creative. My greatest weakness is my ambition will sometimes blind me to the most prudent path. Mac's tragic qualities come from a desire to screw up on purpose, purely in the interest of creating a better anecdote for later on. Mac thinks he is the funnier one--
Hey!
--and he's probably right.
Mac was the one who wanted to do a story about Orson Welles and Charlie Chaplin fighting demons. I suggested that it be a larger metaphor for the McCarthy era and that it state unequivocally that there are far worse things in the world to be than a communist. The book landed somewhere in the middle.
It was my idea to go to law school way back when.
And I put a pretty effective stop to that, if I do say so myself.
To be fair, I needed to have a better reason--or any reason, really--to be there. Also, my brief flirtation with a political career was all me.
And I've learned to forgive you for both of those indiscretions. Without them, I never would have found the basis for that first novel.
And, yes. Thank you so much for basing the villain of that book on me.
Ronald Reagan?
You know what I mean...
Are you saying you didn't deserve it?
I'm saying that you'd have a hard time finding someone at the age of 22 who isn't the villain of their own story.
Fair point.
But I digress. The problem has always been that for one of us to feel as if we are pursuing our best selves, the other has to be on the decline. The moment I've been slightly open to career advancement--
...
--advancing the career at which we actually make money, that is--you tend to freak out.
My freaking out is directly proportional to the degree to which I think you're selling out.
And every time you are able to tune the whole world out and focus on the dream we both had since we were young...
I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
And I secretly wonder if we're not living up to our potential. Actually, I wonder if we both need to grow up and join the larger world.
It's not much of a secret. You won't shut up about it.
Look, this sniping at each other is going nowhere. You really want to finish this blog post and go to bed. Here's the truth: I really don't know if I'm ever going to consistently help you be a better writer.
And the odds against me helping you be more traditionally successful are pretty long indeed.
But if either of those things are ever going to happen, I'm pretty sure we're going to have to start working together, so...
Truce?
...
Mac?
I'm thinking! Fine, truce.
For the moment.
I was just about to say the same thing. Struggle with your other half? Tell me, or us about it in the comments.
*Evil Kirk's sexual assault of Yeoman Rand, even before they figure out that strange things are afoot. I fully intend to expound on it later, but by all honest accounts, Gene Roddenberry was a terrible person. He stole brazenly from other writers (when he was even actively involved in the show that gave him his legacy), was absolutely brutish to a slew of women, and basically drank and snorted his way through the last ten to fifteen years of his life. I think this makes him a far more fascinating figure than the saintly pop-philosopher that we remember, and I--we?--want to write that book someday.
Ours is a difficult business, writing. If it weren't for a more-than-healthy dose of compulsion, I would imagine most of us (read: me) would default to engaging in some more obviously lucaritive endeavor. Blockbuster Video franchisee comes to mind.
Therefore, when you're having a good week, it is probably worth taking a break and enjoying the fruits of your labors. I won 1st place in the Tulsa Library Writing Contest, and the awards ceremony was today. It's a win, and I intend to enjoy it as much as I can.
Hence, another cheat week here on the blog. Stay tuned here in the next few weeks for a brief study of unhappy endings, my attempts to re-kindle my romance with my typewriters, and if the stars do truly align, some thoughts on returning to the directors chair for the first time in nearly fifteen years.
In the meantime, enjoy your wins where they may come. I know I will.
A piece of news more than a month ago lifted my spirits immensely. As CBS' All Access prepares to go into production on the sixth live-action* Star Trek TV Series, showrunner Bryan Fuller is assembling his team. While Fuller is the mind behind many recent TV triumphs, including Pushing Daisies and most-especially Hannibal, he made his bones in the Final Frontier during the famine years towards the end of Star Trek: Voyager. Mild concern, I'm sure, but Fuller completely nullified any concerns I had when he made the best hire since Jimmy Smits appointed Alan Alda his Secretary of State**.
He hired Nicholas Meyer as a writer and consulting producer.
This is like Johnny Carson hosting The Tonight Show again, or Michael Jordan finding the fountain of youth just in time to re-sign with the Bulls, or even Michael Keaton playing Batman just one more time. This is an absolute master of a particular field returning to contribute once again. I couldn't be more excited for this new series.
I know. You're asking, "Who?"
For shame. Nicholas Meyer wroter and directed The Wrath of Khan (1982)*** and The Undiscovered Country (1991). He also co-wrote The Voyage Home (1986). In essence, when people say the even-numbered Star Trek movies are the good ones, he is the constant factor.
His influence goes beyond those three films for which he may be most likely be known. Many moments from modern blockbusters are stolen directly from Khan. In The Dark Knight Rises (2012), when Commissioner Gordon quotes from A Tale of Two Cities at Bruce Wayne's graveside, I can't help but think of Kirk speaking similarly as he watches the Genesis Planet form beyond. When, in Batman v Superman (2016****) the funeral of (REDACTED) is filled with the sound of Bagpipes belting out "Amazing Grace," maybe that's just a thing that people do at funeral,s but I can't help but think of Scotty in a kilt and photon torpedo caskets. At the end of X2 (2003), as we are exposed to just hint that the recently departed may not be permanently gone, just as the opening narration is echoed by the deceased, I would bet anything I have that Bryan Singer was thinking of Nicholas Meyer's masterwork. Had Singer been given the chance to follow up his Superman Returns (2006), he would tell anyone who would listen that his first order of business was to, quote, "get all Wrath of Khan on it." Meyer is everywhere, even if hasn't directed a film since Vendetta (1999) for HBO.
All too often, the imitators in Meyer's wake are just, to borrow a line from Star Trek IV that he didn't write, mimicking the sounds, but not the language. When the sequel needs a big bad from the past, or the current political climate is a thin inspiration for the action, or even when a beloved character is only mostly dead as the final credits roll, I can't help but think some people are just trying to imitate what happened before*****. Don't even get me started on Star Trek Into Darkness.
But there are several less-remembered works from the maestro that you should check out:
Sherlock Holmes meets Sigmund Freud. Correction, Sherlock Holmes desperately needs the help of Sigmund Freud. If the popular conception of Holmes is as a deeply troubled, it entered the popular zeitgeist by way of Meyer's typewriter.
The novel that first brought Meyer notoriety made a terrific film starring Nicol Williamson and Robert Duvall. I'd write more about it, but it’s a deeply fun story with a lot of surprises. You should go watch it now. The Seven-Per-Cent Solution also received a recent graphic novel adaptation, which is definitely worth a look.
H.G. Wells chases Jack the Ripper through time. Not enough of an argument for Meyer's directorial debut? Malcom McDowell plays against type, making the author of War of the Worlds into a sprightly nerd for the ages. Anything else you need? David Warner is in it. If that's enough for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, then it should be enough for you too.
Tom Hanks is a complete, unrepentant asshole. It's a rare thing, but also a glory to behold in this movie, bridging the gap between Meyer's Trek gigs. In an age when it was thought Tom Hanks and John Candy were thought of as a new Hope and Crosby, Meyer produced his most obviously commercial film outside of the Star Trek milieu. Despite all of this, it also manages to be one of both Hanks' and Meyer's strangest movies, somehow managing to mix The Bridge on the River Kwai and a Marx Brothers movie. It also sports a score by James Horner in his bombastic prime, and that is something that will be in tragically short supply from here on.
I could go on and on about his work, but that would take away time from your own discovery of his work. He is far and beyond the number one influence on my work. Who's the bedrock of your output? Let me know in the comments.
*Yeah, there's an animated series. It's on Netflix. All of the original series cast (save Chekov) are back from the proceedings. It isn't the worst thing in the world.
**That's an entirely different blog entry, one I'm sure I'll get to soon enough. In the mean time, kids, ask your parents.
***The screenplay for Khan is credited to Jack B. Sowards, but every source who would be in a position to know indicated that Meyer took the disparate parts from the development of the first sequel (a large share of which were from the Sowards draft) and over twelve days gave them life in a new draft where the film finally took shape.
****Man, the conventions of writing about film seem silly sometimes, don’t they?
*****Myself included. At its core, Orson Welles of Mars is a Nicholas Meyer mixtape. My only hope is that I understand the language and the sounds more than most. Small ambitions get more work done, if you ask me.
EXT. GOTHAM POLICE HEADQUARTERS - ROOF - NIGHT
In the light of the bat-signal, BATMAN and SUPERMAN are trying to punch each other for some reason.
BATMAN
YOU ARE DANGEROUS!
SUPERMAN
I'm trying the best I can...
BATMAN
YOU ARE--
(beat)
Wait, are you trying to say you aren't
the bad guy?
SUPERMAN
Yes! But no one will listen...
BATMAN
ARE WE BEST FRIENDS NOW?
SUPERMAN
(nods)
Yay!
The two heroes frolic into the sunset together, even though I previously established that this was taking place at night. Somehow, Doomsday is also involved.
TITLE: Justice League Coming Soon.
FADE TO BLACK
<<<<<>>>>>
Okay, so I won't go see Batman v* Superman: Dawn of Justice: Part One of the Justice League Trilogy: Man of Steel Part Two: The Movie until later today, but I feel like the above scene needs to be in there. Superman and Batman are supposedly two conflicting sides of the same coin. The film sells itself on the false premise that the two characters simply can't exist in one film, and that one of them must "win."
I'm not entirely sure why we think the world isn't big enough for both The Dark Knight and The Man of Steel, but the idea sure as hell propels a movie to undeniable box office in defiance of lukewarm reviews. I shouldn't be terribly surprised. So much of our collective rationalization is absolutely dependent on the idea that when two seemingly conflicting ideas present themselves, one of them has to be wrong, and the other right.
Isn't there enough room for nuance in the universe to allow some conflicting things to be true?
Objectivists put the advancement of self-interest as the only truly moral consideration. Altruists believe that the only avenue for humanity to better itself is through service to others. Why can't we individually attain the best versions of ourselves through service to others? Why can't it be both?
Some Republicans say that Donald Trump isn't truly one of them, and that his putsch-like march on Washington is nothing more than opportunism. Others are pretty sure he is a Fascist and an ominous omen** of dark days ahead. Can't he be both?
Some people like ham sandwiches. Others like chicken sandwiches. Some people like both, but at different times. The fine people at Arby's know what's up. They offer the Chicken Cordon Bleu sandwich, and it's... Well, it's fine, but it is certainly both of those things. Only less intelligent creatures than we insist on choosing in instances like this.
In the end, isn't there enough room for both Batman and Superman in theaters and on the shelves of comic book stores? I don't want to spoil the ending of a movie I haven't seen yet, but I tend to imagine that there is plenty of room for the two.
So, dear reader, if you ask me, the easiest way to tell when someone is pulling a fast one on you is if they try to make a binary choice out of a complex decision, whether it is your vote, the type of person you are going to be, what movie to see this weekend, or what type of meat you're willing to entrust to an Arby's employee. Go for the third option; go for the answer that mixes the best of the available information you have in front of you. The world is a much more interesting place when seemingly conflicting things can both be true.
*The actual title of the movie is still 712 pages long. Would the extra "s" to make "vs." have made that much of a difference? I don't get the movies made for the kids these days. And when did they stop making movies about things other than explosions? Also, I remember food tasting better twenty years ago. I'm old and tired.
**I can't get away with that kind of alliteration, can I?
I watched one episode of "Fuller House." All right, I watched an episode and a half of "Fuller House." Cut it out* with the third degree. I remember watching the original show when it aired, but it held no particular special place in my childhood memories. Rather quickly on its course from Friday Night ABC staple to perennial Nick-at-Nite favorite, the show struck me as the same sort of crass, commercial calculation that comes about when TV executives come to the conclusion that kids will watch just about anything.
But when Netflix released their new original movie "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday?" I watched the thing within 24 hours after release. The man who was once the boy who claimed he wanted to be P.W. when he grew up** would not let a whole day pass without seeing his latest exploits. It was terrific! It was funny! It was... almost exactly like the much more anarchic "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" from thirty years earlier.
Before you point out the hypocrisy of my Pee-Wee fandom coupled with my desire to never hear Dave Coulier speak again, I get it. The nostalgia marketplace is big enough to include people who seriously wondered what Fred Savage's little brother is up to these days, and the people who suddenly realized they had the capacity for human emotions only when they saw Han and Chewie on the Millennium Falcon once again. The Venn diagram between those two groups may have a larger overlap than I originally thought.
Between "The Gilmore Girls" and "The X-Files," we as a society may have developed the cure to the scourge of cancellation. There are even a few unrealized avenues for nineties nostalgia. Amazon can't shell out the duckets to get us a few more episodes of "Animaniacs?" I might be in the minority, but if Crackle were to foot the bill for 6 more episodes of "Murphy Brown***," I'm liable to take the day off of my day job to binge watch. DC Comics recently rejected a pitch for a series that would have depicted the ongoing adventures of the Caped Crusader as portrayed by Michael Keaton. I'm not sure why DC would be against a money printing machine, aside from their desire to hurt me personally, but there it is.
What's behind the appeal for nostalgic things? If the nineties last forever, do we never age? It seems like a dumb reason, but if there is another motivation, I don't know what it is. I want to resist the glut of 90s nostalgia. I want the world to be weird and wondrous, but then again I also voted for Hillary Clinton, so I may be a big old pile of contradictions. If you have a problem with that, feel free to cancel me. I'll only come back more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Maybe the solution is to embrace that weird and wondrous in our own work. Big companies will be happy to make the same old thing we've already seen, and we'll be happy to pay for it to keep the sense of time passing at bay. But I can resist the temptation to make my stuff like what came before. That is, of course, unless the current rights holders of Short Circuit are reading this. I have a pitch for a third movie. You know where to find me. #johnnyfiveisstillalive
*My wife suggested I put periods after those last three words, a la Coulier, but I just won't do it. #teamalanis #yououghtaknow
**My pre-pubescent ambition made for an awkward conversation after Paul Reubens infamous arrest for indecent exposure in 1991.
DAD
Pee-Wee was arrested.
ME
What did he do?
A silence transpires, long enough to fill the Alamo basement.
DAD
...he stole things.
ME
But what did he steal?
DAD
He...he stole things.
***Remember what that lady did to Dan Quayle back in the day? No? Well, kids, ask your parents. Then imagine what she could do with the current crop of self-righteous used car salesmen (all right, and women... Contradictions!) that we have running for President today.
Stop me if you've heard this one. After all the clack-clack-clacking of drafting, and the excruciating bleeding of editing, you have written a book. It's done*. Your work isn't just a pdf file floating out in the information superhighway**, but an actual, physical copy of a book. It smells of glue, and paper, and one day it may smell like the shelf it sat upon for years on end. You can touch it; it has mass. It is a thing that, were it not for you, would not exist in this world. You are filled with a quiet gladness that you had more resolve than you might have previously thought. I can't imagine the experience is anything like having a child. If the child smells like wood pulp and Elmer's, something else is likely wrong. But another key difference lies beyond the elation of the creation:
You have to sell the damned thing.
Online engagement and posts -- like this one -- have their place in the process, but something else will elevate those sales. Face-to-face contact is key. Have you ever tried to sit at a table on your own, peddling your wares to an indifferent public? The first book even I went to after I finished Right - A Novel of Politics went about as well as you'd expect. I sold one book in four hours, to a very nice lady who was far too polite to admit that she thought I was someone else. She may have taken pity. Either way, I hope she enjoyed the book.
The Murder folks faced similar disappointment when they previously went to the Underground Monster Carnival they collectively only sold one copy from their catalog during the entire event.
Writing is lonely work. It's part of the reason I live for it. The quiet battle with the blank page is as close to a meditative trance as I'm likely to achieve. I believed for so long that making the case for your book should be a similarly long and lonely road. I was certain that going it alone was the only path to success.
I was wrong. There's so much out there to consume. Individually, our work is only a small drop in a churning, ever-expanding ocean of content.
Last weekend, the Nevermore Edits group*** had a huge weekend in sales. I sold plenty of books. Others sold plenty of books. The important thing is that we sold a lot of books. A rising tide lifted all boats, and we all quenched a little bit of our thirst for success in a field that is content to knock us down at every turn. I admire the hell out of these people, and while publishing success may prove tricky for anyone, I would much rather fail with the gang I belong to now, than fail on my own.
*Yes, I know "done" is a relative term. I've only abandoned books when I've published them.
**Apparently, I'm writing this blog entry in 1997. Time travel is hard, folks.
***Made up of myself, the aforementioned Murder folks, and more than a few other brilliant writers working in common purpose.
A writer who I tangentially know recently lamented* the pigeonholing of writers into genres. Authors are expected to be innovative and create new things, while at the same time fitting into an easily identifiable market. They are often conflicting goals. Where the nameless author I mentioned before felt the only solution was a poorly considered rallying cry to break free of the shackles of genre, I think the solution is far simpler. Just write out of your genre. While it's not done that often, it's not that difficult to do. Mainstream success through writing is so elusive, I reject the argument that building your brand should be the chief concern of budding writers.
Need more encouragement? Perhaps I can recommend an author that has already built a catalog of titles that refuse to be placed in one single category. Shannon Iwanski has written dystopian science fiction, and contributed horror titles to a number of anthologies. This list doesn't even begin to cover the long list of work he has published under various pen names, which truly explore the farthest reaches of every genre possible.
Iwanski's second novel A Body to Die For, brings the authors talents to the Cozy Mystery genre, but surrenders none of the courage and biting wit that he consistently brings to his other works. Max runs a gym in a Tulsa strip mall. As he returns from a Barbados vacation, he finds that his ex has hired Skylar to work in the gym. Skylar's sketchy past would make this unwelcome news enough, but it doesn't take a huge leap in deductive reasoning to realize that Skylar is the new man in his ex's life.
Max will have to use far more deductive skills to put his life back together, keep his customers happy, and most importantly, solve the murder that happened in his place of business. When I told Shannon that I was halfway through his book, he got a stricken expression on his face and asked if I had already figured out who did it. I hadn't, and I can honestly say I hadn't figured it out, even as Max reveals the truth. A Body to Die For will keep you guessing until the very end. The characters are likeable, and the story moves along at a brisk pace. It is perfect beach reading. What's more, Iwanski deftly weaves his own experiences into the character's background stories, making Max and friends leap from the page in a pointedly real way.
A Body to Die For is available in both eBook and paperback via Amazon. I highly recommend it. In the annals of artists who regularly transcend genre, like J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, and my personal hero Nicholas Meyer, Shannon Iwanski emerges as a talent to be envied, who already has a body of work to die for. Go find his work now; you won't regret it.
*In the most moronic way possible, but I'll leave that for other people to pick apart. Let's just say the writer in question was champing at the bit for Black History Month to end before he could make his point.
I started this blog entry wanting to explore the various writing spaces of both myself and others. I love my writing space. It's where I make all of my most embarrassing mistakes. The sun room has research materials*. All of my grandmother's writing is here, too. It has a typewriter, and pens, and paper. It needs little else. It also has plenty of windows to distract me from what I am supposed to be doing. Why is that cricket staring at me? What does he** know that I don't?
Where was I? Ah, yes. Writing spaces. I wanted to celebrate them, and hopefully keep my New Year's resolution at bay for another week.
But something happened along the way. It became several different posts, and the thesis got a little lost in the shuffle. I could go into the wide array of personal studios, from the crowded nests of Mark Twain and Roald Dahl to the austere rooms and simple tables of people like Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf, but you can find a plethora of pictures of such spaces. They're everywhere.
Virginia Woolf's writing space.
Virgina Woolf kept coming back into my mind. Her essay "A Room of One's Own" brings to mind images of a sacred space (beyond one's own mind) used for the sole purpose of exercising the creative spark.
Except, that isn't what "A Room of One's Own" is about. Not one little bit.
One of the plethora of blog posts I looked at as I tried to cull a list of writing spaces to feature called me out on a problem. You can read it for yourself here, but I am exactly the type of person that the author describes who thought they knew what Woolf was talking about, but had never actually read the piece in question.
So then I read it. You should do so as well here.
Woolf's essay isn't about longing for the magical space that will unleash your imagination's potential. That's the easy part. It's about society's refusal to allow women to unleash that potential.
Which is something we've most certainly fixed in the twenty-first century. Right?
Why is that damned cricket making such a damned racket all of a sudden?
If we've made any progress in female empowerment in the last 100 years, it certainly isn't in leaps and bounds, but in incremental measurements, and most of it has been cosmetic***. It stinks, and there aren't likely to be a lot of large-scale societal ways to make things better anytime soon.
Writing is hard enough on its own. I want to stop blogging right now, curl up into a ball, and watch monster movies until I slip into a coma. For those of us trying to carve out a career with our words, our work is like trying to craft magnificent sculptures using only water erosion. It's functionally impossible, even for the insanely talented. To try and persevere without a disturbing amount of privilege in your corner must make the process beyond impossible. But many do stagger onward, and so did my grandmother. She submitted pieces to magazines up until the week she passed away, and didn't get her final rejection letter until several months later.
I can't make it easier, and I can't remove the problem. If I could, I'd be mansplaining anyway. In fact, I won't try to tell you to do anything. If you're trying to write, or do anything along those lines, you don't need me to tell you what to do. You already know.
*A dictionary, a thesaurus, a style guide I never look at, and the largest collection of Orson Welles biographies in my cul-de-sac.
**Or her. Jesus. I'm starting out with the privilege. Doesn't bode well.
***Has this blog post turned into an endorsement of Hillary? I think, in this moment, it has. Who knew? She's smart and knows what she's doing. Bernie's fine, but I voted for Mrs. Clinton in 2008, and I can't really come up with something she has done to lose my vote. I'm for Hillary. Bernie's great, too. If that isn't enough ideological purity for you, I can accept that. I still think you're terrific.
I started this year with the goal of blogging at least once per week. Blogging is real hard, folks. In the past several weeks, trying to maintain the pace of the blog has taken precious time away from producing the novels that I first built this site to promote. So, I'm revising the initial promise I only previously made to myself. Every eight weeks I'm going to give myself a cheat week, kind of like people trying to diet*.
So next week I'll be back. Some of the blog entries I'm working on for the next few weeks include an ode to famous writing spaces (and the inherent misogyny of such a concept), a new book review (someone's been up to murder in a strip mall, and I for one would only trust Shannon Iwanski to guide us through the mystery), and a study of nerd blind spots**.
As I'm letting myself off light, I think you should do the same. If you're putting in your time with whatever it is you do, don't be afraid to give yourself a break every now and then. Your blog will always be there tomorrow.
What's that? In the process of avoiding a blog entry this week, I've somehow managed to make a blog entry? What are you, the blogging police?
*Diet. Ha. I know, right?
**Spoiler alert: That entry will be spent largely complaining about a certain TV show I prefer to think of as "Two Dim-Witted Gap Models try to figure out the Devil."
Last week, I did a brief analysis of trilogy-enders that in some cases didn't live up to their series, and in some cases diminished the movies that preceded them*. I stand by the movies I included, even if George Lucas has been sending me the most vulgar text messages, and I'm pretty sure the dead horse head in a UPS package was a special delivery from the Coppola winery.
I don't want to trash on things in this blog, though. It's much more fun to like things than to dump on things. Unfortunately, the good trilogy capper is a hard thing to find. It took me an extra week just to find the three that I list here.
The final moments of Toy Story 2 (1999) allude to a grim fate that--despite Buzz (Tim Allen) and Woody's (Tom Hanks) adventures in the film--still awaits them. Andy will still grow up. That day is coming, and no manner of madcap antics in an airport baggage area can save them from their ultimate fate.
Early discussions regarding the third trip to Andy's (John Morris) toy box revolved around a massive Buzz Lightyear recall. In this version, Pixar would not be involved. It's not a bad idea for an inciting incident to propel Woody and company into another adventure, but I can't imagine that version of the movie wouldn't have been a let down from the first two entries.
Eventually, Pixar and Disney merged in a way never thought before possible, and the real house of ideas was once again back in the helm of the franchise. Pixar's answer to the story problems was simple, but also bold for a children's film. Make that sad hypothetical fate a pointedly present reality.
Andy leaves for college, and the toys are fresh out of future. It seems the only thing left for them is the furnace at the end of a landfill (Max von Sydow**). Just as we are thinking Pixar is actually going to kill off everyone, the film manages to find its way past the doom that hung over the previous movie and give the characters a new lease on life. If your story can make you face your own mortality and make you fine with that eventuality, you've done something miraculous, regardless of whether or not it is a part one or part three.
The lesson: Don't be afraid to bring your characters not only to their doom, but to the very brink of their worst nightmares, and then retrieve them from that brink. Also, Michael Keaton (Michael Keaton) always helps. I'm looking right at you, Batman Forever.
The film that defines the western for so money is actually the capper of a trilogy that started with A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and continuing through For a Few Dollars More (1965). Beyond Clint Eastwood's Man-With-No-Name, there is little to connect the three films. This may be part of the virtue of The Good... Few watch Eastwood's gunslinger and not have to say, "Yeah, that was all right... but Fistful is way better." Pure standalone films may be the secret to getting over the trilogy curse.
The lesson: You can be a lot freer to take liberties with your trilogy if the three parts are only loosely connected and your protagonist has no name. Not trying for a trilogy at all can't hurt the third and final part of your story. Ennio Morricone will make up any lost ground, too.
Yes, I know it's a part four, but when you really consider the storytelling at play in TOS-based Star Trek movies, the death and resurrection of Spock (Leonard Nimoy) forms a loose trilogy opening with The Wrath of Khan*** and concluding with this movie.
The virtues of the 80s Trek movies are on full display here. Genre hopping within a series is a virtue. While Wrath of Khan is a submarine movie in the stars, and The Search for Spock is a competent, if more by-the-numbers adventure story, The Voyage Home complete upends the status quo and offers us an environmental fable masquerading as a fish-out-of-water comedy. From the debate about Italian food that should be more at home within an Abbott and Costello**** film, to the madcap chase through a San Francisco hospital, the film actually works. It shouldn't, but by the end of the movie, the franchise has new life in the shape of a brand-new Starship Enterprise, and the "even-numbered movies are better" theory is solidified, until Nemesis shit the shuttle sixteen years later.
The lesson: It doesn't hurt that the conclusion of your trilogy isn't actually your third story. Actually, it is far more useful to genre hop in your series if you want to keep things lively. Also, when in doubt, just have Nicholas Meyer write it*****.
What "part three” worked for you? Which ones did I leave off of this or last week's list? Did the Evil Dead series perfect itself with Army of Darkness? Do you prefer your Bourne movies to be Jeremy Renner-less? Did you watch Ocean's Eleven and think the movie could use 100% less Julia Roberts and 100% more Al Pacino? Leave me some feedback in the comments so I can know what not to avoid, or in the alternative, approach my doom with eyes wide open.
*I didn't even get to The Matrix Revolutions, a movie that is getting off light in this series. It can thank Reloaded for its clemency.
**Look it up. No. Don't do that; come back. Come back.
***If you're not okay with people referring to Wrath of Khan, then we're going to have a difficult time being friends. Seriously, it’s entirely possible that I really loathe Star Trek as a whole, but that I love TWOK so much that I forgive anything that even resembles it. Seriously seriously, 97 out of 100 times when my wife wistfully asks me "What are you thinking about right now?" I'm thinking about the Genesis Device and Ceti Eels.
****I was about to say I would watch the shiiiiiiiiiiiit out of Abbott and Costello join Starfleet, but then I remembered Abbott and Costello go to Mars. Withdrawn. Wow. Those guys did do everything, didn't they?
*****I'd be so on board with a movie starring Michael Keaton (Michael Keaton), scored by Ennio Morricone and written by Nicholas Meyer. I'd see it five times opening weekend.
I've spent most of the last year and a half feeling an odd sympathy for George Lucas. I mentioned it in the acknowledgments of Orson Welles of Mars, but prequels are hard business. Trying to conjure real stakes out of the ether while the fate of your characters has long since been written is not a simple thing. I think I did okay with the challenge. If you start ignoring the rules of the space-time continuum, you can kill anybody with impunity. Multiple times*. Don't take my word for it. Find out for yourself here.
Unfortunately, I never knew how easy I had it.
Prequels are hard, but there is another type of story that has repeatedly made mincemeat out of storytellers great and small. The trilogy finale is the waterloo for so many. As I continue work on the third book in the Orson series I can't help but wonder if I am typing my way into my own private quagmire. Here are just a few examples of objectively great movie series that ended up leaving a funny aftertaste.
I know writing unkind words about the Original Trilogy these days is sacculturous**, but before my buddy George unleashed The Phantom Menace, many considered Episode VI the nadir of the series. Ewoks were often marched around as a chief sign of the film's uneven qualities. Had the great bearded and flannelled one stopped there, we might have viewed Jedi as the dull thud of a great film series. As it stood, it was only a portent of things to come. This, of course, was all before Lucas replaced the unbridled joy of the celebration song with a Gungan refrain and a cameo from Hayden Christensen.
What's the lesson to be found in Jedi for other trilogies? Don't give in to your worst instincts.
There are only two absolute truths in the Indiana Jones series. First, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) is nearly perfect. Yes, Indiana Jones has nothing to do with the progress of the plot, but if that ruins the movie for you, then you're broken. Deal with it. Second, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) is significantly less than perfect. If you disagree with that assessment, well... I don't know what to do with you anymore.
Some might say that Temple of Doom (1984) is the inferior of the pre-Labeouf entries. Mrs. Spielberg is shrill. The thugee cult isn't...super culturually sensitive. Monkey brains. I get it. However, Temple of Doom is a shamelessly different movie than Raiders. Aside from the reversal of Indy's shooting of the swordsmen, there is not one beat that is similar between the two films. Temple starts, not with a giant rolling boulder, but a musical number. "Anything Goes," indeed.
Last Crusade , aside from Sean Connery relishing playing the greatest nerd of the twentieth century, is merely a house built on the greatness of Raiders. Nazis. Marcus Brody. That moment when there's a painting of the Ark of the Covenant in the Venetian catacombs. I'm really sorry, George. Things were getting out of control for you far before you met Ewan McGregor.
What's the lesson in Last Crusade ? Don't go back to the well.
An aggressive letdown from the superlative second entry in the Nolan trilogy, Rises suffers from several problems that aren't necessarily the fault of the filmmakers. For my money, Heath Ledger's Joker is left alive at the end of The Dark Knight (2008) with an intention to bring him back for the inevitable sequel. Imagine Cillian Murphy's cameo as the Scarecrow if it had been played by one of the most iconic screen villains of all time. In that case, one could even have imagined the role expanded to introduce some much needed terror and chaos into Bane's lawless Gotham.
Beyond this minor quibble, the film is overcrowded. In its nearly three hour run-time, Nolan tried to distill several notable comic storylines into one movie. Elements from Year One, Knightfall, No Man's Land, and The Dark Knight Returns all make appearances. Trouble is that is two and a half years’ worth of comics jammed into one movie. None of the storylines are able to breathe, and many conflict with one another. Batman has to quit being Batman twice during the course of the movie in order for any of the events to approach cogency. It also doesn't help matters that the entire third act hinges on Batman trying to get rid of a particularly pesky bomb. It all sounds so familiar...
What's the lesson to learn from Rises? Don't try to jam everything into your finale. Make sure the basic plot of the story doesn't need anything more than thirty back issues to explain it.
Yes. I know. In the past, if someone suggested to me that any part of Robert Zemeckis' time travel epic was anything less than perfection, I would activate hissy fit mode. The only thing that would calm me down? A viewing of Back to the Future Part III.
Here's the confession part of the blog: I get it. The western motif is largely out of left field. The whole "nobody calls me chicken" runner through the sequels isn't really character development. It's a character trait that disappears when it stands in the way of a happy ending.
Then there is the Jules Verne Train. That's its name. Look it up. Throughout the whole series, one of the main struggles Doc Brown and Marty McFly have is keeping the DeLorean time machine in working order. No "easily" accessible plutonium in the 1950's. No combustion engine in 1885. However, when the happy ending demands it, Doc Brown is able to make a fully-functioning, steam-powered time machine off screen. I always thought the final minutes of Part III would have worked better if Joe Flaherty showed up at the wreck of the DeLorean**** with another Western Union telegram from the distant past. Doc Brown could have given the same message with the same soaring score, and every rule established in those movies didn't have to fly out the window. I guess if they had done that, then people would have wondered what happened to Doc Brown's dog, Einstein. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I suppose.
I feel so dirty admitting all of that.
What's the lesson from Back to the Future Part III? Sometimes you absolutely stick the landing! No... Time to cut loose from the denial. The real lesson is: Don't ignore the rules of your world, even if you feel like that is the only way your saga can have a happy ending.
Just...
Just...
Just don't.
The lesson: Just don't.
I try to make a rule of not being negative in these blog posts. I would even venture to say that I like the above examples, but can acknowledge their pitfalls. Except for Godfather III... I mean, come on Coppola, even if you got Winona Ryder to play Pacino's daughter, it still would have been three hours of muddled Vatican intrigue punctuated by Michael Corleone dying out of nowhere years after the movie took place*****.
But what about those good part three's out there? I had to comb the depths of IMDB just to find a few examples.
Those will come next week. In the meantime, what trilogy cappers fell on their face for you? Which ones even managed to tarnish the memories of the preceding movies? Let me know in the comments.
*Now there's a pair of sentences only a writer can get away with.
**A word I just created fusing sacrilegious and cultural. I’m not terribly fond of it.
***Sorry again, George.
****Spoiler alert?
*****Spoiler alert?
Quick. Name the top five masters of horror. If Bram Stoker and John Carpenter didn’t find their way onto your list, go make another list. Are Stoker and Carpenter on the list now? Good. Now the conceit of this blog post can work.
Your list will still need a new entry: E.P. Ferguson. Her debut novel Of Noble Blood has been called the horror version of Downton Abbey, but that hardly does justice to the craft on display. Ferguson has wildly succeeded in merging some of the trappings that make Downton so engaging, with a pulpy horror influence that sucks readers in from the first page. I wouldn’t pitch the novel as “the horror version of Downton,” I’d ask the reader to imagine if the creature from John Carpenter’s The Thing was uncovered not in Arctic, but in the Earl of Grantham’s library.
This isn’t like the obvious genre mashups—Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter—that flood the market. It’s savvy. It’s subtle. You’ll be hooked within the first few pages.
Ferguson also understands the key to profoundly effecting horror. She’s used the tools that Stoker used in Dracula to enhance the verisimilitude of the awful events that bring her characters to the brink. The horror within isn’t described, you live it.
Of Noble Blood is currently available in both paperback and eBook editions from Amazon. Get it now. When she has usurped Stephen King as the undisputed monarch of horror, you can tell your friends that you read a first edition of the book that started it all. You won’t regret it.
This is the first in a series on this blog. If you would like to be featured on the blog, be my friend! I'll get to you soon enough.
In the age of Donald Trump*, it might do to re-visit our definition of success.
Is the easy definition money? One need not look to Trump alone to drift to this conclusion. It's simple; it's quantifiable. It's kind of a dumb definition, right? To quote Mr. Bernstein in Citizen Kane, "It's no trick to make a lot of money, if all you want to do is make a lot of money.**" There's got to be some better definition.
Committing one's soul to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?
Nah... Had you going with that one, didn't I?
A full life, filled with love, laughter, friends, work that excites you, and repeated viewings of Paul Verhoeven's Robocop?
Sure, that'll do just fine.
But how can I measure those intangibles? How can I make a simpler, better form of success as undeniable as the riches that somehow make
Here's the best way I can come up with:
Imagine yourself at the age of 10. Now, describe your current life to the child-you. Don't skip over anything, but really try to sell the experience of you in the present, despite the fact that your mark has no choice but to eventually buy the product.
How about that last episode of Next Gen? Yeah. Twenty-two years later, it still holds up***.
Who am I? I'm you. I'm from a little over twenty years in the future. Yes, you can travel through time, but it’s more of an intellectual exercise. Little disappointments are a part of life.
What's the world of the twenty-ten's like? It's... It's fine. No, there isn't commonplace space travel. Truth be told, the US doesn't even have its own spacecraft anymore. I'd say "Thanks, Obama," but the irony wouldn't play at this point in the space-time continuum.
What do I do in the future? Well, that's a complica-- No. It's not that complicated. I'm a writer. You're going to be a writer. As I write this blog, you have four books behind you, with another one on the way. Things will only grow from there. Are you rich? Are you famous? Well, the publishing industry works a little bit differently in the future...
I know you're a fearful kid. I'm not quite sure what it is about you that makes you think one mistake will ruin your life forever. I blame that time you stayed up late and caught a stray episode of the Freddy Krueger TV Series. The thirty seconds you watched of Stephen King's IT in 1990 didn't help either. While the world can be a scary place, there is a lot less to be afraid of than you think.
Life has plenty of good in it. There are many friends. Each has a connection to various points in your life. You'll get to keep up with all of them through the wonder of Facebook. What's Facebook? It's-- No. I'm not going to tell you. I wouldn't want to ruin all the... fun?
A TV show essentially about Doc Brown and Marty McFly, except Doc Brown has a profound drinking problem. The Melodica cover of the Jurassic Park theme. The former Governor of Alaska. There will be plenty to laugh at in the future.
Wally Hickel, 2nd Governor of Alaska. One look at this face, and one cannot help but laugh... Who did you think I was talking about?
At the time of this writing, it's Saturday night. You're watching Babylon 5 on DVD****. You're sitting with your wife. You've been married four years. She gets you. That's as rare as you already suspect. You're pretty sure you get her, too.
You lucked out.
And what's more? You can watch Robocop any time you want. Seriously, DVDs are great.
So, what do you think, kid? You okay with becoming me?
Here's hoping.
*With all due prayers to Krom that such an era ends soon.
**Yep. I can quote Citizen Kane without looking it up. You'll get used to it in this blog, my books, and when I talk in my sleep.
***It was the only cultural milestone from 1994 that I could remember. Had to find some sort of ice breaker for the old boy.
****I really should have warned him about the advent of DVD. I could have saved a fortune.
As of February 1st, Netflix is dropping Doctor Who from its lineup. So many people--your faithful blogger included--stumbled upon the show through their watch instantly service, that I wonder if the growth and continued popularity of the show might suffer in the years to come.
It led me to think of other shows that are trapped in the wasteland of shows not on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Yahoo! Screen (R.I.P.), etc. It used to be such a pleasure to find box sets of beloved shows at DVD stores* and borrowing discs to previously unknown shows. How would any of us have ever watched Arrested Development without DVDs?
Let's take a look into the Party Now, Apocalypse Later vault** for some examples of not-streaming, and partly forgotten TV series.
Serialized storytelling in televised genre entertainment was completely unheard of in the mid-nineties. It's common place now, and depending on whom you ask, J. Michael Straczynski's outer space epic was first on the scene.
Despite the animosity alluded to between this production and the behemoth (at that time) Star Trek machine, Babylon 5 was a flavor all of its own. Yes, the rough similarities between this show and middle-child Deep Space Nine led some to whisper of Paramount stealing the concept of the show for their own purposes. However, its depiction of an epic battle against sometimes good and often evil, political propaganda, and frank depiction of alcoholism and drug abuse could never be touched upon in Roddenberryland.
It's definitely a product of the time in which it was produced. The special effects--especially in the early seasons--could be reproduced now with MS Paint***. Bugs still had to be worked out in the practicality of long-form storytelling. An-ever shifting cast--especially the sudden departure of the lead actor after season one--proved disorienting. Also, the very real possibility of cancellation at the end of season four forced Straczynski and company to wrap up most of their continuing stories at the end of that year. The ensuing fifth season lacks focus as a result.
Still, the disappearance of the show from the eye of modern fandom is a bit of mystery, if it weren't for the fact that it is nowhere to be found in cyberspace. Amazon and iTunes will charge you $1.99 an episode, but the DVD sets can be found at about $15.00 a pop. I've been re-watching it recently, and beyond the mere trip down memory lane, I recommend it immensely!
Why this show isn't being offered a second life on either Hulu or Netlfix is beyond me. It received such glowing love from the Emmys when it aired that its disappearance is perhaps the most perplexing of all the shows included on this list. For those of you who have made The Blacklist such a hit, everything you love about James Spader was perfected on this show. William Shatner plays what I can only hope is himself with a few extra eccentricities added for good measure.
It's a show about the importance of friendship, the issues of the day, and Rene Auberjonois has a recurring role! Its sister shows that premiered in the 2004-2005 season LOST and Grey's Anatomy (still on the air?) can easily be found in an instant, Boston Legal can only be found on disc. Find it now!
I'd lend you my copy of season 2, but it’s signed by William Shatner****. You can look, but don't touch.
Do you like Castle? Still? Well, the show that made Bruce Willis a household name offered equal doses of murder-of-the-week and will-they-won't-they tension and managed to be much weirder in the process.
An entire black-and-white Rashomon-inspired episode features an opening hosted by none other than Orson Welles, in one of his last screen appearances. The second season finale devolves into a chase sequence while the production crew of the show tries to shut down the show for the year. Castle may be the wrong comparison. With its often misbehaving cast and casual relationship to the fourth wall, Moonlighting was Community before Community.
As with all other items on this list, discs are available for those intrepid enough to go hunting. I would recommend bowing out around the third season. When David and Maddie finally "will they", the show is infinitely less interesting, despite its occasional flights of fancy.
The other entries on this list have been available on DVD and/or Blu Ray for a number of years. Until recently, the show that made onomatopoeia a valid editing choice, tried to kill Cesar Romero's mustache (but failed), and canonically established the Dark Knight's favorite drink as milk couldn't even be found on DVD.
Your only option in recent years to find Adam West and Burt Ward was to hope a cable channel started airing them in the wee hours of the morning. These airings were always in standard definition, grainy as the day they aired. Although not on streaming, the entire series is now available in a crystal-clear Blu Ray set. It's almost as if you can reach out touch the obscured whiskers on the Joker's face.
Post Burton and Nolan, the 1960's version of the Dynamic Duo has occasionally gotten a bad rap. The accusations of campy have ignored that at its height the show was the funniest thing on TV. The movie made between their first and second seasons for my money is one of the funniest movies of all time. Taken for its actual intent, and not for what we've now come to expect from Batman, the show is the best.
What other shows have disappeared from the internet, but still hold a place in your hearts and on your bookshelves? Any shows you keep physical copies of, just in case Netflix loses its mind and gets rid of them?
*Kids, ask your parents.
**Really, just a series of plywood bookshelves near my kitchen.
***Believe me, I've tried.
****After a day of signing an endless sea of mint-condition-still-in-the-box Captain Kirk action figures, the once and future TJ Hooker looked at me with a bemused and borderline thankful expression when I came around with such an unusual item.
I've thought a lot about B-movies lately.
The resurgence of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" likely had something to do with it. My continued march through my DVD "Universal Monsters" collection also played a part. Above all else, I'm thrilled that my short story "Murder in the Third" has been accepted for publication in Theater B. It will be a fantastic compendium of stories celebrating the movies you might have stumbled upon in the far-off aisles of the video store, or long treks into the wilderness of late night cable. Follow/like the publisher, A Murder of Storytellers, and keep looking back here for more information on a release date and purchase details soon.
But just what does the "B" in B-movies stand for? You might think "bad", right?
Not so.
They tend to have lower budgets, and with those restrictions, a greater freedom in subject matter. They can be weirder than the A-movies that in days past would have led off the weekend double feature.
Some of the greatest movies ever are steeped in the tradition of the "B." Raiders of the Lost Ark was the B-movie brought to life on an A-budget. Alfred Hitchcock shot Psycho with the same crew and budget as an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan used stock footage and re-purposed sets.
The B-movie is often better than A-movie, for my money. Anybody want to say that Cleopatra used its 300 million-plus budget* to be a better movie than Psycho? Anybody want to say Episode I would be as bad if George Lucas had the same budget restrictions and hostile studio that he had on the original Star Wars?
"Bad" B-movies aren't even objectively bad, either. Here's a list of just a few B-movies that I genuinely, unironically love. Let's jump right in.
The Citizen Kane of bad movies**. But, have you seen it? I mean, have you really seen it? I don't mean to ask have you seen the third act of Tim Burton's Ed Wood. Have you actually been able to stand the full 80 minutes of shocking facts about grave robbers from outer space?
If you have not, you have not seen Shakespeare the way it was meant to be seen. Yeah, Shakespeare was all about stock footage and lost footage of Bela Lugosi. Look it up.
This isn't worthy of hate-watching. Within its Zen-like disinterest in continuity and 100% more Criswell than any of the Transformers movies, beats a purely joyful heart. It's better than most best picture winners. There I've said it.
And honestly, when you break the film down to its component parts, isn't the pitch for this movie kind of awesome on its face? Aliens invade Earth by bringing the dead back to life.
Why hasn't Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes remade this movie already? Probably because Criswell's dead. They could try to re-cast his role with another chronically incorrect prognosticator, but they're all running for President at the moment.
Yep. Spanish for Hands: The Hands of Fate. Where Plan 9 left off with the B-movie (all right... z-movie), Manos: The Hands of Fate continued and may have broken the art of cinema for all time. Shot by an El Paso fertilizer salesman on cameras that did not record sound and could only record 32 seconds of film at a time. And it shows!
Lurching through its interminable 69-minute run time is an endurance test. Manos is a film difficult to love.
Until you meet Torgo.
Played by John Reynolds, what would have been a satyr-like creature meant to strike fear into the hearts of moviegoers everywhere ended up as a bow-legged mumbler that contributed a good twenty minutes to the proceedings.
Reynolds committed suicide shortly before the movie's release. For years, urban legends sprang up indicating that many if not all of those associated with Manos took their own life after seeing the film. Not so. Reynolds never saw the film, and no other suicides were noted in the cast and crew. According to those that knew him, Reynolds suffered for some time with a combination of mental illness and drug addiction, and that condition proved fatal. His end wasn't a reaction to a film that forgot to edit the clapboard out of a scene.
He spent his young life trying to make it as an actor in a place that was never going to give him a living in such a vocation. Now, for better or worse, he is immortalized in a film role that is far more memorable than nearly every A-movie that ever was or will be.
In his first movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger (credited as Arnold Strong***) has a fist-fight in Central Park with a man in a bear costume. If you need anything else to watch this movie yesterday, I don't know what to do with you anymore.
Oh? You want more? I'll give you more. An unknown actor dubs over Arnold's voice. It's trippier than the last 45 minutes of 2001.
Tell me in the comments. A bright shiny donkey to the first one that makes me reply with "Ooh! That's a good one; I don't care what anyone says!"
*In 2016 dollars.
**Mainly because I'm going to spend 6 years of my life detailing Ed Wood's long forgotten odyssey against the dread Beowulf.
***Confusingly coupled with a sidekick played by character actor Arnold Stang. Strong and Stang. They were this close to being the new Laurel and Hardy. This. Close.
2015 is over. I have a feeling it was a malevolent little beast, content to make things more difficult. I'd go on, but it’s 2016 now and we should look to the future. Not Back to the Future Part II's future, mind you. That's the past. I know. It's hard to keep up.
I will say some positive things about my recently departed year. I finished another novel (Buy it on Amazon!) and got the first draft of another novel done. I met and befriended a wonderful writing group. I met the world's best dog, even if she isn't joining us for 2016. There's also a good Rocky and Star Wars movie in theaters. It’s been a while since that's happened at the same time.
I also, against all odds, made my reading goals. Over the last several years, I have steadily increased my reading challenge on Goodreads. This year the number was 58. Until December, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that I wasn't going to make it. As it turned out, I hit 59 of 58 books. I also managed to get all of Popsugar's 2015 reading challenge done as well. They have a similar 2016 challenge. It is a far more flexible list than 2015’s. Find my 2015 entries below.
Now let us go on to 2016. I'm going to try to finish another book. I'm going to try all sorts of new things too. Sushi with Eel. It's going to happen. I think. I'll write something under a pen name. You'll never know. Some of you will know. Why am I even putting this here?
I hope you will also conquer 2016. We need to let these years know that we are the boss. Go on some adventures. Get some stuff done. Try some new stuff. I'm going to up my reading goal to an even 60. Join me, won't you?
Mac's Annotated 2015 Reading List
1. A book with more than 500 pages: Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America by Peter Biskind
2. A classic romance: From Russia With Love(1) by Ian Fleming
3. A book that became a movie: For Your Eyes Only(2) by Ian Fleming
4. A book published this year: Born with Teeth by Kate Mulgrew
5. A book with a number in the title: 2030 by Albert Brooks
6. A book written by someone under 30: I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb
7. A book with nonhuman characters: Star Wars: Darth Plagueis by James Luceno
8. A funny book: This Way to Spaceship by Rhys Darby
9. A book by a female author: A Fighting Chance by Sen. Elizabeth Warren
10. A mystery or thriller: Moonraker(3) by Ian Fleming
11. A book with a one-word title: Armada by Ernest Cline
12. A book of short stories: The Twilight Zone: 50th Anniversary Edited by Carol Serling
13. A book set in a different country: Thunderball(4) by Ian Fleming
14. A nonfiction book: Serling: The Rise and Twilight of TV's Last Angry Man by Gordon F. Sander
15. A popular author's first book: Casino Royale(5) by Ian Fleming
16. A book from an author you love that you haven't read yet: Dr. No(6) by Ian Fleming
17. A book a friend recommended: A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeline L'Engle
18. A Pulitzer Prize-winning book: Orwell(7) by Michael Shelden
19. A book based on a true story: Gene Roddenberry: The Man and the Myth behind Star Trek by: Joel Engel
20. A book at the bottom of your to-read list: Star Trek: Voyager: Homecoming by Christie Golden
21. A book your mom loves: Still Foolin' Them by Billy Crystal
22. A book that scares you: Four Past Midnight(8) by Stephen King
23. A book more than 100 years old: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
24. A book based entirely on its cover: Redshirts by John Scalzi
25. A book you were supposed to read in school by didn't: Animal Farm by George Orwell
26. A memoir: Let's Just Say it wasn't Pretty by Diane Keaton
27. A book you can finish in a day: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future by Michael J. Fox
28. A book with antonyms in the title: Live and Let Die(9) by Ian Fleming
29. A book set somewhere you've always wanted to visit: Star Trek DS9: Demons of Air and Darkness10 by: Keith R.A. DeCandido
30. A book that came out the year you were born: Doctor Who: The Aztecs by: John Lucarotti
31. A book with bad reviews: Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart
32-34. A trilogy: The Phantom of Menace, The Clone Army Attacketh, and The Tragedy of the Sith's Revenge by: Ian Doescher
35. A book from your childhood: Pure Drivel by Steve Martin
36. A book with a love triangle: Side Effects by Woody Allen
37. A book set in the future: Warped: An Engaging Guide to the Never-Aired 8th Season by Mike McMahan
38. A book set in high school: Running with Scissors by: Augusten Burroughs
39. A book with a color in the title: Goldfinger(11) by Ian Fleming
40. A book that made you cry: Orson Welles of Mars(12) by Mac Boyle
41. A book with magic: Choose Your Own Autobiography by Neil Patrick Harris
42. A graphic novel: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 1(13) by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill
43. A book by an author you've never read before: The City on the Edge of Forever by Harlan Ellison
44. A book you own but have never read: Silver Screen Fiend by Patton Oswalt
45. A book that takes place in your hometown: The Outsiders(14) by S.E. Hinton
46. A book that was originally written in a different language: Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
47. A book set during Christmas: On Her Majesty's Secret Service(15) by Ian Fleming
48. A book written by an author with your same initials: Rosewater by Maziar Bahari
49. A play: Requiem for a Heavyweight by Rod Serling
50. A banned book: The Spy Who Loved Me16 by Ian Fleming
51. A book based on or turned into a TV show: Star Trek DS9: Section 31: Abyss by David Weddle and Jeffrey Lang
52. A book you started but never finished: Diamonds are Forever(17) by Ian Fleming
Honorable mentions (books that never qualified under the categories from the list)
1. Star Wars: Kenobi by John Jackson Miller
2. Without Feathers by Woody Allen
3. Getting Even by Woody Allen
4. Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen
5. This Island Earth by Woody All-- er, Raymond F. Jones
6. Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr.
7. Lovelife by Rob Lowe
8. My Happy Days in Hollywood by Garry Marshall
(1) Love is right there in the title. Sue me.
(2) I use both the term "become", "movie", and for that matter "book" somewhat loosely.
(3) The biggest mystery is how anyone would be thrilled by this. Man, Fleming is taking a beating in this list. Also, they never go to space. Rare example of the movie being better than the source material? No, actually. No.
(4) Due to ongoing litigation, this comment about the work of Ian Fleming will be similar, but legally distinct from any intellectual property appearing in previous comments.
(5) He sure is popular on this list...
(6) Yes. I love him. He's a misogynist. He's a Hall of Fame Racist. If I ever again hear the term "Chinese Negro" I'm going to scream. But he can sure put together a thriller better than anybody before or since.
(7) Yes. I know. Orwell was only a Pulitzer nominated book. I cheated. Ian Fleming said I could.
(8) Mainly scary because you realize Bronson Pinchot plays the villain in the "The Langoliers." Insert your own Ian Fleming remark here.
(9) Hey! This Ian Fleming thing is finally paying off!
(10) The Bajoran System. Terok Nor. The Alpha and Delta Quadrants. All on my bucket list. In 2016, I plan on visiting them all. Also, Ian Fleming makes the locations Bond travels to feel like Atticus Finch's deepest, darkest thoughts.
(11) Seriously, guys. For the 2016 list, you can do a lot worse on weird titles than everyone's favorite drunken bigot, Donal Ian Fleming.
(12) Cry and scream and laugh and lose sleep and wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life and wondering why I spent all year reading James Bond novels. Buy it on Amazon now!
(13) Not counted in my total books read, mainly because it’s a graphic novel, but also because James Bond doesn't show up until The Black Dossier.
(14) If you can find another book set in Tulsa, I'd like to hear about it. I don't think Bond ever made it out here.
(15) Imagine if you will my delight when Bond sobers up long enough to realize its Christmastime.
(16) Ireland was appropriately mortified by the Bond books from the get-go. Fleming's attempt to write a Bond story from the woman's perspective is as horrifying as you'd imagine.
(17) And boy, am I glad I finally did.