Yet another mass shooting…

This time, near where I live, at the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward Country, perhaps a forty-fifty minute or so drive, depending on the traffic, from my home.

If you’re curious for more information and are able to stomach yet another tale of tragedy with the full awareness that there are plenty of politicians -sell-outs, in my opinion- beholden to the NRA once again expressing their empty “Hopes and Prayers” for the victims, here’s an article on the matter by Faith Karimi and Emanuella Grinberg and found on CNN:

Shooting suspect “always seemed like the unstable type”, ex-classmates say

I just don’t know what to say about this anymore.

I’m certainly not alone.

As I’ve noted before around these parts, I have absolutely no love for handguns, rifles, etc.  When I was much younger, there were times I participated in target practice with rifles, handguns, and shotguns.  I didn’t do this with any regularity, only when the opportunity was there and I never hunted nor ever, ever used such weapons to “protect” myself.

These few experiences filled me with neither awe nor interest, so after a while and when the “new” experience was no longer so new, I let the whole thing go.

Fast forward many years later.

Who would believe a country as mighty as this one could be in the grip of so many mass shootings?  And what will it take for politicians to finally, finally have the stones to provide proper regulation and -yes, Goddammit- make certain guns illegal to own?

I can understand you wanting to protect yourself with a small caliber handgun.  I can see a hunter wanting to have a rifle.

What  cannot see is the need for anyone to have an AK-47 type assault rifle.  I cannot see the need for anyone to have weapons that are best left in the army and/or used in times of war.

So what’s the solution?

Former Republican lawmaker David Jolly, from Florida, had an idea:

It’s time to vote Republicans out so we can get gun control

The above linked article, found on Huffingtonpost.com and written by Ed Mazza, notes the GOP lawmaker was on TV yesterday following the tragedy and offered that advice.

Yes, the bulk of Republican lawmakers are certainly beholden to the NRA and, yes, this should be one of many litmus tests to boot them out.

But let’s not completely forgive all the Democratic lawmakers.  There are several of them, though not quite as in lock-step as the Republicans are, that are also pro-NRA and pro-gun.

The elections are rapidly approaching and so much seems to be wrong with this country and I hope, I really really hope some of the more obnoxious people within government are finally given the boot.

And I hope I live to see the day when true gun control wins the day instead of us having to hear about another massacre.

Smashing Pumpkins reunion…?

Shortly before I officially lost it and became an “old man” no longer “hip” to the music you young ‘uns like, I was a big fan of the Smashing Pumpkins.

I know, I know, didn’t they disband like twenty years ago?!

Yikes.

They did, in 2000, and then Billy Corgan, the front man of the band, reunited the band with only himself and his drummer Jimmy Chamberlain and they released a bunch of stuff which wasn’t terrible by any stretch but neither did it approach, IMHO, the excellence of the band’s first run.  In fact, of the music they released “post-breakup”, I felt the best single song was Ma Belle, released as a bonus track in the “first” reunion album of 2007, Zeitgeist

Now, it appears Mr. Corgan has gotten the entire band back together… with one notable exception: Bassist D’arcy Wretzky.  Corgan and company claimed they made overtures to have her return but she wasn’t interested.  She’s saying that’s not the case and it looks like the band’s reunion still bears some big scars.

But at least it led to this amusing article by Steven Hyden for Uproxx, where he muses on the passive-aggressive relationship between the two…

The Smashing Pumpkins Reunion is Imploding – And Therefore Is Already a Great Success

Love his take on the texts D’arcy had supposedly released.  If you’re a fan of the group in spite of or even because of all the internecine wars, this article should give you a chuckle.

As for me?

I’m curious to hear whatever new material they’re about to release… when the band was good, they were damn good, easily among the best rockers of the 1990’s.

REQUIRED: Get off my lawn!

“Real” time travelers…?

From Cheryl Eddy at i09.com, a fascinating article regarding…

5 Times That People Claimed to be Real-Life Time Travelers

Sadly, all the mentioned individuals sound like they’re scamming people and/or having a good laugh at others’ expense, which I suppose is to be expected.

Time Travel is one of my favorite fantasy genres.  So very many great stories have been built around the concept of Time Travel, from H. G. Welles The Time Machine to the excellent original Harlan Ellison penned (though he was angry with changes made in his script) Star Trek episode City on the Edge of Forever to (again with that Ellison fellow) Outer Limits episodes Demon With The Glass Hand and The Soldier to The Terminator films (which, btw, Ellison successful sued the studio behind the film claiming director/writer James Cameron took many elements from his Outer Limit episodes), to Groundhog Day (a clever variation on the concept of time travel and, as far as I’m aware, has nothing at all to do with Harlan Ellison!), to the romantic cult-favorite Somewhere In Time.

The concept of time travel is so powerful and has been pursued by so many authors that I distinctly recall the admonishment that as a writer one should avoid doing time travel stories, given that so many others have done them so very well.

Though probably good advice, I’ve ignored it.  One of my favorite short stories creations, Dreams Do Come True (found on my short story collection Shadows at Dawn), involves Time Travel and I’m very proud of that story.

Having said that, like many things involving the fantastic, I suspect time travel is pretty much impossible.

As someone else noted, the best evidence it doesn’t exist is the fact that to date we haven’t seen any time travelers.  Well, legitimate time travelers, people who can prove they have come from a future time and provide solid evidence to this fact.

Again, the people listed above don’t fall into that category.

Mind you, I’d love to be proven wrong here, so if there are any time travelers out there who’d like to take me on a quick journey to the far future or the distant past, I’m available! 😉

Corrosive Knights, a 2/12/18 update

Incredibly, its been one day over a month since my last update on book #7 of the Corrosive Knights series.

While I wish I could say I’m done with the latest draft, I’m not quite there yet.

However, I’m offering this update because last week I made it through almost everything and have only the conclusion of the book to revise before heading into the next draft.

Seems like not much of an update, no?

Actually, it is a big deal.

I don’t want to get into details as they would be nothing more than SPOILERS for a novel that I haven’t even hinted at what occurs in it, but before the conclusion there was a scene that I’d been thinking and worrying about for a very long time as to how effective it is.

I wrote the first draft of that scene a while back, did some minor revision, but now, as I’m on my current revision, I’m doing a top to bottom look and trying my best to make this one of the last drafts I do to focus on the plot and make sure all story elements are in place.  My hope is that when I’m done with the current draft, I’ll move from actual writing to mostly revision of grammatical/spelling issues rather than deal with the story proper… not an easy thing to do with all the plot threads I’m dealing with while hoping to conclude what is the finale of a seven book series that spans tens of thousands of years.

In this book, this one sequence is a linchpin, a point that required considerable buildup and, once presented, needed to have a maximum impact.

As it turned out, there was a character I created for this book in the early going that slowly, with each new iteration/revision, was relegated to erasure.  Though I had forgotten, this individual had, as it turned out, one final fairly big scene before the even bigger scene I was all worried about getting right and I completely forgot it was there.

At least until I arrived at that point in my revision.

That poor character’s scene, like the others, was destined to be removed but I realized much of the dialogue worked… just not with that character.  There was another character in the novel I wanted to expand on and suddenly all things fell beautifully into place.  I removed the character that I created for the book, inserted the one I wanted to have a bigger role, did some minor dialogue modifications, and… VOILA!… the scene worked, beautifully, and was an excellent primer/intro to the following, big scene that I needed to have work.

The “new” intro scene with the different character, as it turned out, did everything I needed to get us to that pivotal scene that followed and one strengthened the other.

Even better, the pivotal scene played out beautifully and I found myself not needing to do too terribly much in terms of revising it.

I know, I know, I’m being very cryptic here and anyone reading this has no freaking idea how important and exciting these two scenes worked for me.

Understand: Writing a book, as I’ve stated many times before, is work.

Hard work.

Over a long period of time (in my case a book takes between 1-2 years to complete) you incrementally create your story while revising and reworking scenes, sometimes re-arranging them like a weird jigsaw puzzle, until you take all those words and chapters and turn them into something that flows and, if you’ve done your work well, the result is something that really works.

Triumphs, at least for me, are often found in small things: A great phrase here, a great description there, a clever callback, a clever metaphor.  It isn’t until you’ve finished the final draft and are happy with what you’ve done that you finally feel a great sense of accomplishment and, hopefully, success.

It isn’t often when a sequence that’s been worrying you for a very long time seems to work almost like magic.  It’s even rarer that you realize with not too many changes two scenes work together to create this magic, and its especially delirious to feel this toward the conclusion of your book, when you want audiences to feel that same emotion.

That beautiful, wonderful feeling took me through Friday and gave me hope that what was left in the book’s conclusion would run fairly smoothly.

Today, that beautiful excitement is gone as I buckle down and revise the book’s end.

…then its on to the next draft! 😉

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) a (mildly) belated review

As I’ve made it abundantly clear before, I’m a big fan of -and have  even worked in- comic books.  I love many, many characters and can point out many stories, writers, and artists who have to this day inspired me with their works.

Among my favorite runs of comic books is the original Stan Lee and Steve Ditko take on Spider-Man, which started in the famous Amazing Fantasy #15…

Image result for spider-man first appearance

Steve Ditko would go on to co-plot and do the art for 38 issues of Spider-Man plus two Annuals, a very long run on the character, before parting ways with Marvel.  Sadly, from all accounts his departure was acrimonious, not unlike the departure a little later of Jack Kirby.  Spider-Man, the comic book, would do quite well after Mr. Ditko left.  John Romita would take over the art on the book and many people consider his run even better than the one Ditko produced.  I don’t share that opinion though I would quickly add that John Romita did some excellent work, though I still like the Ditko stuff better.

Spider-Man is easily Marvel’s biggest, best known character, on the par with legends such as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman (all DC characters who have existed for many years before the web-head’s first appearance) and thus it makes sense he’d show up -multiple times!- on the big screen.

Like many others, when comic book movies first began appearing with greater frequency, I was curious to see a live action Spider-Man film.  In 2002 audiences finally got a taste of a big-budgeted (as opposed to the cheesy -sorry, they were!- TV version) Spider-Man, via director Sam (Evil Dead) Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst.  They would go on to make three Spider-Man films, the second of which many consider one of the best super-hero films ever created before flaming out with Spider-Man 3, which many (including me) consider a misfire.

Only five years after the release of Spider-Man 3 and in 2012 a new, rebooted version of Spider-Man, named The Amazing Spider-Man and featuring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, was released to much acclaim.

And I really, really didn’t care.

As I said above, I’m a fan of comic books and I’m always on the lookout for a new (hopefully good) superhero film, but for whatever reason, after three Spider-Man films by Raimi, I felt I’d seen enough of the good ol’ web head on the big screen.

As the saying goes: “I’m good.”

I have yet to see The Amazing Spider-Man or its 2014 sequel The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which featured the same leads.  That later film didn’t connect well with audiences and Sony Pictures, the producers of the films, decided that run was done.

After negotiations with Marvel/Disney, a deal was reached where the Spider-Man movie property, which Sony had the rights to, would be allowed to appear in the very popular Marvel films.  Thus the “new” (now third) iteration of Spider-Man, this time played by actor Tom Holland and with Marisa Tomei playing the role of Aunt May, showed up briefly in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War and, last year, Spider-Man: Homecoming, the first feature film with Mr. Holland in the lead, appeared to much acclaim.

And I still didn’t really care.

Understand, I’m not trying to sound like some kind of grouch here.  As I said, I really like the Spider-Man character.  But unlike many other superheroes out there, for whatever reason seeing him on the big-screen no longer appeals to me.

Yesterday, however, the movie premiered on the Starz channel.  It was the purest of luck that I happened to be watching TV a few minutes before it came on (Starz was showing the Michael Mann directed movie version of Miami Vice, a movie I really didn’t like when I originally saw it in theaters but, now catching it again, I’m finding more fascinating… though still flawed).

Anyway, so I see that Spider-Man: Homecoming is coming on next and I say: “Why not?”

The movie starts and we get an intro to Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton, damn good in the role) who I knew would be the movie’s villain The Vulture.  Here’s how the character looked in his first appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man #2, with art by the amazing Steve Ditko:

Spider-Man Vulture

It’s sorta/kinda interesting but I’m not totally there.  Then the movie shifts to a few years later and we get a brief rundown, from Peter Parker’s point of view, of what happened in Captain America: Civil War.

Ok stuff, but I’m still not feeling it.

We then move to post Civil War and awkward high school Peter Parker and… I dunno.  I’m still not feeling it.

After some twenty/thirty minutes of watching, I’m seriously thinking of turning the whole thing off and giving up.

And then, the movie finally starts to click.  The story of Parker/Spider-Man and the Vulture slowly begins to come together and all the elements begin to work and I’m having myself a pretty good time.

It’s not the best superhero stuff I’ve ever seen and though the opening act nearly ruined it for me, I’ll be damned if I didn’t find the second and final act of the film worth checking out.

Thus, I recommend the film.

However, and this is one really, really BIG “but”… do yourself a favor and don’t think too hard about what you’ve seen because the story flaws are plenty and can be very bothersome.

For example: What’s with Tony Stark?  Not to put too fine a point on it, but how is what Spider-Man did which got Stark mad at him halfway through the film different from the destruction and near death he caused at the movie’s end, which earned him kudos?  Granted in one case Tony had to clean up a mess that Spidey made but it would seem the person in the wrong in both cases IS Tony for ignoring Spidey and/or not communicating well with him as to what he was doing and what was going on.

In other words: Tony Stark sure was written as a big jerk here.

Further, the surprise reveal of who Toomes was, while suspenseful in the movie proper, seems awfully –too– convenient story-wise, as does the way he discovers -too conveniently, again- who Parker is.

Also, how exactly did Toomes’ henchman arrive so quickly at the Homecoming party?  Is he always hanging out with Toomes?

Also, what happened to Peter Parker’s “Spider-sense”?  In the books it allows him to sense danger around him yet is completely absent in this movie (it is presented in the trailer to the new Avengers film, by the way), which allows not one but two people to surprise him while he’s in costume.

At this rate, he won’t have to do a news conference like Tony Stark to announce who he is… everyone will know.

Finally: I liked most of the “blue” jokes, but there’s this one bit where a group of high school girls are engaged in the game of “fuck, marry, or kill” with the various Avengers aaaaaaannnnnddd

I know, I know, girls that age no doubt say and do far worse but we’re talking about a movie where Peter Parker (and thus, I imagine the girls in this film which are going to school with him) are like 14-15 years or so old and maybe that joke should have been left out.

Yeah yeah, get off my fucking lawn already.

Anyway, I don’t think these story problems are as big as, say, those present in Star Trek: Into Darkness, a film I also enjoyed when I watched it but almost immediately afterwards realized the story quite literally fell apart and have since grown to dislike the damn film.

Again, I don’t think I’ll grow to “hate” Spider-Man: Homecoming like I did that film yet I’d be lying if I said it is anything more than a cute, fun time-killer.  At the very least, it is far better than the other Stan Lee/Steve Ditko creation made for the big screen, Doctor Strange.

As for it making me want to see more of this version of Spider-Man on the big screen?  Well, maybe it has made me a little curious, and that’s saying a lot.

Quintet (1979) a (ridiculously) belated review

The late director Robert Altman (1925-2006) had an incredibly long and fruitful career, working on many different genres both in TV and in film.  Some of the output highlights include MASH (the original movie starring Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland), McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, The Player, and the delightfully quirky pseudo-Agatha Christie mystery/comedy Gosford Park.

Of all the films and TV shows he was involved in, it is fair to say that many of his fans consider Quintet, Altman’s -and star Paul Newman’s- sole 1979 foray into sci-fi his most divisive work.  And that’s being kind.

Here’s the movie’s trailer:

Quintet involves a world on the verge of apocalypse that has entered a new ice-age (the cause of this is not explained, though one could presume this might be the result of a nuclear winter).  Paul Newman plays Essex, a seal hunter from the south who, along with his pregnant companion Vivia (Brigitte Fosse), traveled to one of the last remaining “cities”, another frozen hell-hole.  Seals no longer exist and Essex needs to find another means of survival along with his companion.  They go to this city in search of Essex’s brother and, once they arrive, we realize that Vivia is, unlike the other city inhabitants, quite young.  This is surprising to Essex’s brother and people living with him.

We also find that the citizens of this city are into Quintet (who’da guessed?!), a dice/board game which figures into the movie’s plot.

The people of the city, apart from being older in age, share a seeming malaise.  Packs of dogs roam this frozen city and chow down on anyone who dies while, true to form, very few care.  Indeed, the viewer soon realizes the citizens feel more than just malaise: They’ve given up.  There’s little left to do but play Quintet and wait for the end.

As you know, I’m loathe to give away too much of a movie’s plot but I’ll proceed to one more element, which puts the story in motion.  However, given it happens some thirty minutes plus into the movie, it is a SPOILER…

Still there?

Ok, Essex finds his brother and, after introducing himself and Vivia to everyone, leaves them in their apartment home and heads out, looking for work.

While away and while Essex’s brother, Vivia, and the others are busy playing Quintet, a mysterious stranger silently opens the apartment door and rolls a bomb into their living room.  It explodes, killing everyone, including Vivia, in the blast.

Essex hears the blast and rushes back to the apartment and finds everyone dead.  He also sees the man responsible for the killings and gives chase.  However, before he gets to him, the man is attacked by another and his throat slashed.  Essex finds the killer’s still very warm corpse and searches through his belongings.  He finds a list of people’s names along with Quintet game trinkets.

Essex takes these items and assumes the man’s identity, his goal being figuring out why the man a) killed his brother and Vivia and b) why he himself was killed.

Soon enough, Essex comes to realize the game of Quintet extends well beyond the board.

I’ll stop withe movies SPOILERS here and turn to my feelings regarding the movie:

In some ways I found Quintet a fascinating work while in others I felt the people who made the film, those both in front of and behind the camera, failed… at times quite spectacularly.

The first big failure, and it pains me to say it, is hiring Paul Newman for the movie’s lead.  Please understand: I usually love Paul Newman’s work as an actor but in this case… it just felt like he was the wrong choice for the role.  This is most apparent in the sequences right after he finds Vivia’s dead body.  Paul Newman’s reaction is curiously muted and almost a non reaction.  This, to me, was a big problem.  Newman’s playing Essex as a far too unemotional individual and this, sadly, works against us caring for him, his tragedy, and subsequent need for revenge.

The next big problem the film has is director Robert Altman’s decision to film the entire movie with Vaseline around the edges of the frame.  Let me repeat: THE ENTIRE MOVIE features blurry images along all four sides of the screen and, while in theory one could view that as an interesting choice to further emphasize the “cold” nature of the scenery around us, its distracting and silly.  Yeah, Altman and company tried to do something different but in this case it just didn’t work.

Another problem: The sets at times don’t look all that good.  There are more than a few moments where you feel like you’re watching some kind of cheap and overwrought play in a local (frozen) park.

Which leads me to one final big problem: Paul Newman is surrounded with a cast whose native tongue, for the most part, is not English.  This becomes a big problem in scenes which feature plenty of dialogue infused with the movie’s philosophical ideas.

So those are the movie’s minuses, and they are considerable.

Yet after pointing these problems out, as the movie played I nonetheless found myself curious as to where the story was going.  Where it went, in its conclusion, was particularly strong, at least in my opinion.

Despite the strong ending, I simply can’t recommend the film to a “regular” audience.  However, if you’re willing to take a ride that’s far from the ordinary and ignore the problems I listed above, you may find yourself intrigued by this film.  At least intrigued enough to not feel like you just wasted two hours of your life.

Tesla… in spaaaaaaaceeeee…!!!!

By now you’ve seen it, Elon Musk launched his Tesla car into space and we got to see the pictures…

Just… wow.

Then there came news, the very next day, that Tesla lost more than expected.

What’s going to stick with you, those numbers or that image above?

Btw, you’re not fooling anyone, Mr. Musk.  I know what inspired you here, from the 1981 film Heavy Metal:

Been a couple of days but… thoughts on the Superbowl…

…for what it’s worth, of course.

Look, I’m a Dolphin fan.  Can’t help it.  First got into Football the year Dan Marino became quarterback.  It was quite a wild ride following his career.  He was easily one of the best, perhaps THE best quarterback ever… certainly the best to not win a SuperBowl (which, alas, is the way so many judge a football player’s legacy).

And he was great in a time when the rules weren’t quite as nice toward receivers.

Year after year the Dolphins were SuperBowl contenders, though unfortunately they only would go with Marino to one SuperBowl and lose it to Montana and the 49ers.

Still, each year was nonetheless a thrill and there was never a doubt we’d make it to the playoffs and would always feel there was a chance to make it to the big game.

Since Marino’s retirement, the Dolphins have sunk into what is essentially a frustrating mediocrity.  With a one year exception (that I can recall), they’re never outright horrible yet have not been good enough to consider a strong post season/playoff team.  Sure they’ve made it to the playoffs here and there, but any realistic fan knew they would be lucky to make it out of the first round of the playoffs and into the second, much less beyond that.

We’ve had so many seasons ending with between 6 and 9 wins and not all that much more, and a big part of their failure is in finding a quarterback who is anywhere near as skilled as Marino was.

Which, in a way, brings us to the latest SuperBowl, wherein New England QB, and quite possibly the best QB ever, Tom Brady, played one hell of a game and had the best stats of any QB in any SuperBowl ever… and yet his team lost to the Eagles.

Nonetheless, New England under Tom Brady have won 5 SuperBowls and made it to several others which they lost.

And its looking like perhaps we’re seeing the end of that run.

Why?

Coaches are leaving the team.  Several free agents are about to leave.  Some may retire.  There are rumors the team’s coach, Bill Belichick, and Tom Brady aren’t quite seeing eye to eye.  That perhaps there’s further pressure going on with the team’s owner, Robert Kraft.

Further, Tom Brady, as brilliant as his performance was in this SuperBowl, is going to be a year older.  He’s 40 now, which is a very old age for a football player.  Sadly, there have been excellent players who, suddenly, no longer are as good as they were.  Their speed, their endurance, whatever, drops just a little, but its enough to turn them from an excellent player to one that no longer is good enough to continue on the team.

I’m not saying this is the case with Brady.  He may come back and do fine.

But what about the rest of the team?

In Dolphin coach Don Shula’s last year, he was given carte blanche to make a SuperBowl run.  He loaded the team up with previous first round picks and the team… didn’t do all that well.  Afterwards, the players spread out to the winds and the team began its drop, hastened by Marino leaving.

While New England didn’t go the route of Don Shula’s last year, I get vibes from that NE team that they’re in a similar situation.  As I said above, coaches are leaving.  Players are leaving.  Perhaps the coach might be leaving.

NE has had a fairy tale ride these past many years, having a team that has excelled more than any other.

That ride may be reaching its end and, like my Dolphins, hard times may be around the corner.