E. R. Torre is a writer/artist whose first major work, the mystery graphic novel The Dark Fringe, was optioned for motion picture production by Platinum Studios (Men In Black, Cowboys vs. Aliens). At DC Comics, his work appeared in role-playing game books and the 9-11 Tribute book. This later piece was eventually displayed, along with others from the 9-11 tribute books, at The Library of Congress. More recently he released Shadows at Dawn (a collection of short stories), Haze (a murder mystery novel with supernatural elements), and Cold Hemispheres (a mystery novel set in the world of The Dark Fringe). He is currently hard at work on his latest science fiction/suspense series, Corrosive Knights, which features the novels Mechanic, The Last Flight of the Argus, and Chameleon.
My wife and daughters are fans of the TV show Flip or Flop. The show features a married couple, Tarek and Christina El Moussa, who buy homes, fix them up, and then “flip” or sell them, hopefully for a profit.
This article originally published on September 10, 2013 and found on People magazine, tells the tale of what happened when Ryan Reed, a registered nurse, watched a marathon of the show and noticed something odd on Tarek El Moussa’s neck.
What Mr. Reed noticed may well have saved his life:
While its great that Mr. El Moussa received the message from Ms. Reed and acted on it, one hopes that anyone who reads this article takes it for the cautionary tale it is. As noted in the article, even before Ms. Reed contacted him Mr. El Moussa knew something was up with that lump in his neck yet was, until Mr. Reed contacted him, content with one Doctor’s opinion.
The moral of this story is if you feel there is something strange/wrong going on with your body, get it checked out and get a second opinion. Obviously not everyone has a TV show which allows others to see you and notice oddities which may turn out to be life threatening.
The conclusion to this particular story can be found in the link below. It features video of Tarek and Christina meeting up with Nurse Ryan on a TV show for the first time:
The illustrations presented are pretty absurd. Given all the technological advances made in the 20th Century, it would be startling if anyone from the late 1800’s (well, other than Jules Verne!) could conceive of what things might be like one hundred years later.
I particularly enjoyed this piece, showing us a future school:
Love the fact that in this far flung future you have books being dropped into some kind of grinder-like machine (and one of the students has to work that grinder!!!) and the information on the books is somehow transmitted to the students…how?
An auditory presentation? The books are read to the students or perhaps the implication is that the headphones transmit the information to the kid’s minds somehow?
If you like that piece, you should see some of the others!
So it appears Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank and the man most responsible for getting his daughter’s diary to the public, will now be listed as the “co-author” of the book.
The reason? So that the book retains its copyright status as Mr. Frank died in 1980 and European copyright for publications lasts for 70 years after an author’s death. By having Mr. Frank listed as a co-author, The Diary of Anne Frank can retain its copyright status until 2050 versus ending this year (Anne Frank died in 1945).
Want to read a little more about this? Check out the below link:
There are many in the commentary sections, along with the author of the piece, Rachel Vorona Cote for Jezebel.com, who decry this move (as if the headline for the article didn’t clue you in on this fact!).
As an author myself, I find myself more on the side of those who want to retain copyright of their fictional/nonfictional works. Sure, Anne Frank passed away a very long time ago and with the death of Otto Frank in 1980, all immediate family from that original time are gone. The beneficiaries of the continued copyright will be the Anne Frank Fonds, or the Anne Frank Foundation, which I understand contributes quite a bit of the profits made from selling the work to charity.
I’m also aware that copyright/patent laws can have a decidedly negative impact on society. In this case I’m referring to things outside of books, novels, and autobiographies. There are technologies that could advance tremendously if other companies were allowed to make their own version of certain items and then try to expand/improve upon them.
Elon Musk, for example, should be commended for allowing the schematics for his electronic systems be available for other car manufacturers to use. He did this because he knew that if the electronic systems were to take over for gas powered cars, he’d need all companies focused on what works and what does not. By allowing others access to material which he could well have kept to himself, he offers to share the technology.
With medicines, copyright/patents have also become a very sticky issue. A company can create and copyright/patent a medicine and are the sole company to release it. What’s to stop them from charging crazy fees for their medicines? Further, I suppose they may prevent other companies from modifying their medicines and making them more effective.
But with books and, especially, novels, we’re talking about an author’s creations. Unlike new technologies or medicines, I don’t see how the ownership by an author/authors or their offspring of their fictional/non-fictional work prevents society from advancing.
Quite the contrary, I’m bothered when modern authors use past author’s famous creations to make -and benefit financially- with “new” works. These modern authors might take on famous characters like Sherlock Holmes or Tarzan or any other character which has slipped outside copyright control and make money off these past author’s works while the family (distant though they may be by that point) may not make a cent from these “new” works or the printing by others of their relative’s past works.
My hope is always that someone, even if it is a distant relative of the original author, is compensated for the work, even if they themselves had little or nothing to do with it.
Why?
Because as an author I’m painfully aware of the great effort I put into writing novels. Each work takes so much from me and it is my hope that when I’m gone they will serve as my legacy for future generations of my family.
There’s not guarantee this will happen, of course. There are literally tons of novels published each year and only a precious few achieve some kind of popularity/longevity. Even those that do may do so very temporarily and not stand the “test of time”.
But if my works somehow beat the odds and prove popular to future generations, it is my hope my relatives can benefit from my hard work when I’m gone.
It’s difficult to write about what happened over the past weekend in France.
I mean, what is there for someone like me to add?
The situation is all manners of horrifying and enraging and sad and words are insufficient to lay out the depth of feelings I, and I’m sure many others, have regarding what happened.
It takes me back to 9/11, to turning on the television and seeing the news of a fire (that’s what I thought it was at first) at the World Trade Center and then hearing a plane crash was the cause of the fire.
No sooner did I find that out when the second plane hit the other tower and the network talking heads knew we were well past a possible tragic accident.
But the very worst feeling, when I struggled not to throw up, was when the first of the two towers fell. I believe Peter Jennings was talking at that moment about the planes hitting and somesuch and he wasn’t aware of what was happening on screen at that very moment as the first of the two towers fell.
That day was shocking, but so too was what came afterwards.
I was never a fan of then President George W. Bush and his administration’s drumbeat to invade Iraq, which began right after the events of 9/11, struck me as strange given those responsible for that atrocity were, the experts said, in Afghanistan.
I sorry, I don’t mean to go off on a tangent, though like dominoes one could argue one event lead into another and another and another.
What happened on 9/11 was horrific and so too was what happened in France. I just hope the nations of the world and their leaders go after and get those who were responsible first and foremost and we break this deadly chain.
This is something one doesn’t say that often regarding a would be summer action blockbuster: Terminator Genisys’ biggest failing (though there are others I’ll get into) is that, story-wise, it was overly ambitious.
Seriously.
I know what follows is going to sound like a litany of what’s wrong with the film and you’ll be forgiven for thinking I absolutely hated it. But it isn’t the case. In spite of the fact that so much went wrong, I’d give the film a thumbs up. A mild thumbs up, I grant you, but a thumb’s up nonetheless.
The biggest draw of Terminator Genisys, of course, is the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his most famous role as a robotic killer from the future come back to the “present” to either kill or protect (he’s done both) someone whose life has a great bearing on an apocalyptic future. Upon its initial release, Terminator Genisys (TG from now on) received mediocre reviews from audiences (58% positive) and generally poor reviews from critics (28% positive) over on Rotten Tomatoes. Further, the film, which was originally planned to be the first of a new trilogy of Terminator films, also didn’t do as well in the U. S. box-office. My understanding is that it made good money overseas and therefore likely earned a decent profit for the studios. However, I’ve heard the profit was not enough to continue the series as originally planned and therefore we will likely not see a TG 2 and 3..
When I heard this film was conceived as the first part of a trilogy, I was very worried. Would this film deliver enough of a story on its own or would we have all kinds of cliff-hangers/plot points left behind to resolve in future films? And if there is no next film, as it appears at this moment (this could, of course, change), will audiences be left frustrated and angry?
To allay that worry, let me say this: TG presents a for the most part very complete story. There is at least one major plot issue left unresolved (and it is a big one) but its unresolved nature doesn’t destroy what you see here. (I’ll reveal that point after the trailer below)
Now that I’ve finished my preamble, let’s get to the movie itself…
While it pains me to give away much of the movie’s plot, I give tremendous credit to the screenwriters of TG. Instead of giving us a by the numbers sequel, they presented a story that doubled back in time and created a fascinating alternate 1984 universe.
The first part of TG takes place in the apocalyptic future we’ve come to know from the previous Terminator films. We witness the defeat of Skynet at the hands of John Connor (Jason Clarke) and Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney taking over for Michael Biehn) before moving back to this alternate original Terminator timeline.
In this vastly different 1984 we meet up with Sarah Connor (the role made famous by Linda Hamilton is played by Game of Thrones‘ Emilia Clarke this time around) who is far from the meek waitress presented in that film and more like the battle ready version in Terminator 2.
Those opening scenes, which confound our expectations, are among the movie’s best but, unfortunately, this is also when the film starts to go off the rails.
As clever as this twisty-turny alternate timeline concept is, the screenwriters lamentably decided the dialogue between Sarah Connors and Kyle Reese should be “cute” and “humorous” and, for the most part, it is neither. Worse, when all is said and done there wasn’t all that much chemistry between these two actors versus the originals.
Still, the concept of this new alternate timeline kept me interested in the goings on. We’re given an “older” Schwarzenegger Terminator and this aging is explained quite well. We’re also offered some more surprises in the movie’s second half but, unfortunately, several of the movie’s trailers gave at least one of the biggest surprises away (Why would they do that?! Why?!). The international trailer I’ve embedded below, thankfully, keeps the surprises to a minimal.
As I mentioned above, the movie suffers from being too ambitious and I’ll get to that now.
To begin, the film introduces us to waaaay too many characters. For example, we get a great actor like J. K. Simmons in a smallish role that, while interesting enough, could nonetheless have been eliminated entirely from the film with absolutely no ill effects. We’re also introduced to several law enforcement/homeland security types, along with the a couple of high-tech scientists/industrialists, who have a few short scenes which also could have been eliminated or trimmed significantly. Then there’s ex-Doctor Who Matt Smith’s role. While important to this story, it amounts to (I kid you not) maybe two or three scenes for no more than 3 minutes of screen time in total. Did he take the role because it would be more prominent in the theoretical second and third TG movies? One wonders.
In fact, there’s so much storytelling and introduction of characters going on that at times the movie’s main draw, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, fades into the background. Sadly, his function in this film is to be involved in the action sequences and, when things are slow, provide yet more “humor” bits, many of which are forced and/or not all that funny to begin with.
Clocking in at a little over 2 hours, its clear that as clever a concept as TG presents, the film’s script could have used another pass to tighten it up but, of course, that was not to be.
In sum, Terminator Genesys is a decent though very flawed action film whose greatest triumph is in the way it cleverly reworks the previous Terminator films’ well-worn concepts and therefore tries to give audiences something surprising and new.
Sadly, because of bloat, I can only offer a mild recommendation. It’s a decent enough film but it could have been –should have been- great.
Ok, now about that plot point that is left dangling…
SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!
You Were Warned!
Still there? Ok, here goes…
So in this alternate 1984 we have a Sarah Connors who is fully aware of Skynet and her role in the revolution (ie, as the mother of John Connors and with an awareness that his father, Kyle Reese, is about to appear from the future).
She came to this realization, we find, because when she was a young child her parents were killed and this Schwarzenegger Terminator appeared and, apparently, rescued her and became her surrogate father. He was the one that subsequently trained her to become the warrior she was and prepared her for the arrival of Kyle Reese and the other (bad guy) Terminator in 1984.
But these bits of the past are presented in a very nebulous way within TG. and we’re never told who sent this now older Schwarzenegger Terminator to “save” Sarah Connors when she was a child.
Note how I put the word save in quotations. I do so because as a viewer I was left wondering if he actually did save her or, perhaps, was the one who killed Sarah Connors’ parents so that he could then raise her?
We never see who attacks and kills Sarah Connors’ parents when she was a child, only that the Schwarzenegger Terminator subsequently appears and takes her away. Did he kill Sarah Connors’ parents because this allowed whoever sent him back to create this alternate timeline or did he fight off other Terminators? If he did, who sent them back?
Alas, there are no answers provided within the movie itself and the older Schwarzenegger Terminator states that his memory of who sent him back was wiped out, presumably to keep the information away from Skynet.
This upcoming election, at least on the Republican side, has looked not so much like the road to a nomination but rather a circus event. The two leading candidates for the Republican nomination, at this moment, are Donald Trump and Ben Carson.
While one can laugh at some/many/most/all of Donald Trump’s statements (he’s made mincemeat, IMHO, of “serious” candidates like Jeb! Bush), the fact is he’s a carnival barker and a reality TV star. Sure he has a real estate empire and knows more than a thing or two about the business world, but what exactly does he offer as president? Stripping away most of his very heated talk, his most “serious” proposal is to deport millions of illegal immigrants (humanely!) and build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. He’s made some vague statements regarding international trade and China, but they’re too vague to glean any action he intends to take. Given his volcanic nature, I’d be really frightened to give him the keys to the kingdom and, especially, the “button.”
Likewise, Ben Carson really scares me as well. While he is clearly a brilliant surgeon, he otherwise appears to be a man who lives in some kind of alternate reality. I need not repeat some of his more odd pronouncements (like his idea of what the Pyramids are all about), but every time he does speak I seriously wonder what color the sky is in his world. As the famous Mark Twain saying goes:
It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.
The idea of someone so…detached…from the real world leading us in the real world is therefore beyond scary.
But those two individuals are nonetheless at the top of the polls for the Republican party, much to the chagrin of the “old guard” and now, some are wondering…
The above article, written by Phillip Rucker and Robert Costa for The Washington Post, notes that while there is still quite a bit of time before the general election (a little less than a year at this point), we’re rapidly running out of time regarding the presidential nominations.
In fact, we’re less than three months from the Iowa Caucuses which begin the nominating process and, to date, Trump and Carson not only have but also maintain a strong lead over all the other candidates.
According to the article, many donors are withholding their money and its understandable. Why would you donate to a Jeb! Bush or a John Kasich, two candidates viewed as far more electable in a general election, when they so far haven’t come close to either Trump or Carson in the polls and therefore don’t appear to have a chance -at least so far- of getting the Republican nomination?
Many thought this nomination cycle would be like the last. In the previous election, there were a bunch of really far-out candidates for the Republican nomination. Each of them had their moment in the sun (and polls) only to melt under its harsh lights. Eventually Mitt Romney, the “safe” candidate, was nominated while all the others were long gone.
Not so this time around.
I’ll be honest here: I’m liberal. I like change and feel we should always be looking for ways to improve society rather than try to strip away people’s rights and/or return to some kind of non-existent “rosy” past.
You would think someone like me would therefore be gleefully taking in the circus that is the Republican party and relishing the fact that the “old guard” is dealing with the seeds they’ve sown (and make no mistake about it, the “old guard” is every bit as responsible for this mess as they are chagrined by its results).
But I’m not gleeful.
Why? Because of this chilling line found in the article. It is provided by an anonymous Republican strategist and puts all this nonsense into perspective (I’ve highlighted the most chilling part):
“We’re potentially careening down this road of nominating somebody who frankly isn’t fit to be president in terms of the basic ability and temperament to do the job,” this strategist said. “It’s not just that it could be somebody Hillary could destroy electorally, but what if Hillary hits a banana peel and this person becomes president?”
There’s another saying, attributed to Woody Allen, that bears repeating here:
I’m noticing that more and more sporting events have players dressed in all kinds of odd combinations/colors. For example I thought the three most prominent Miami Heat uniforms were:
Then came the variations. Some were playful, like the “Miami Vice” look…
Or the military look…
There are plenty of others and, in the last few games the players, in what is likely a nod toward Veteran’s Day/the Military, have worn this:
Of course, the alternate dress is not limited to basketball. Football has its “throwback” jerseys and sometimes you get to see hideous things like this, featuring the Pittsburgh Steelers…
…whose more traditional garb looks like this:
Why all the different clothing? I suppose its pretty obvious: Money. Fans who have already bought the “normal” jerseys and their variations may be tempted to purchase the variations. Conversely, a fan who until now hasn’t bought any of the standard jerseys may be tempted to get one of the many variants.
Which brings us to the topic I wanted to get at: Sometimes, these clothing choices can go terribly, terribly wrong.
Last night, the Buffalo Bills and the New York Jets played on Thursday Night Football and they wore specially designed Nike costumes for the event. Costumes that had the players dressing in all green and all red…
The problem? For color blind people, it was impossible to tell the difference between the jerseys! Read on…
What’s really cool is that in the link/story above they provide a clip of the game and desaturate the colors so that people who are not colorblind can see what colorblind people saw -or rather couldn’t- in this game.
While I’m not usually one to enjoy pranks (I find phony phone calls, for example, to be a bore), I had great fun with this prank. The article regarding the prank, written by Chris Moody for CNN.com, made me laugh quite a bit:
Please click on the link above and read the full story…it is worth it.
I’ll provide a summary below, but, again, you should read the whole thing and check out the video as well.
So here’s what happened: Vic Berger, a freelance video editor “with a sharp eye for absurd humor”, took a Jeb! Bush video on YouTube where the candidate talks about his love of Apple products, edits it to highlight Jeb!’s cringe factor, and got a lot of views of it…including from Jeb! Bush’s staff.
Realizing the Jeb! campaign was looking at his work, Mr. Berger communicated with them and stated he would get a Jeb! tattoo if his post hit a million views. The Jeb! campaign, thinking this was great promotion, aided him in getting those views and Mr. Berger then did (not really) what he promised: He took a video of his visit to a tattoo parlor to get a terrible (and very large) “Jeb4Prez” tattoo on his neck.
And this is where the ingenious/hilarious elements of this prank kicked in.
Though I really wish you’d read the full article, this single paragraph notes what happened next and had me laughing out loud. I present it in full:
Back on Twitter, an account claiming to be run by Berger’s father started sending messages to Bush and his campaign staff telling them that they had made a terrible mistake encouraging him (to get the tattoo). The man claimed that Berger had “undiagnosed issues” and that by pushing him to go through with it, he had lost his job and that his life was ruined. Berger himself began telling reporters that he no longer wanted to talk because he was repairing relations with his family after the episode.
You can imagine what happened next. Those “encouraging” Jeb! texts/tweets suddenly disappear and the Jeb! campaign goes silent regarding the issue, thinking they’d just destroyed -or at the very least harmed- a mentally fragile man.
Read the entire article and see the absurd tattoo for yourself!
Here you go: Crazy man climbing around the Eiffel Tower.
While the video stars at night-time (the man filming himself was obviously not given permission to do this climb and therefore had to enter the structure unseen), a minute or two into the video the sun comes out and we see his climb in all its vertigo-inducing glory.
As those who frequent this blog must know by now, I’m fascinated with what I predict is the future regarding cars: They will all be self-driving. In fact, I predict that in the very near future people will no longer own cars at all. We will use our smart-phone and a Uber-like app to to call in a self-driving car and it will take us to our destination for a very low fee and, when we’re done at our destination and need to go somewhere else we again whip out our smartphone and viola! call in another vehicle to take us.
It wouldn’t surprise me if my daughters’ children (or, if there’s a delay, their children) wind up being the first generation of people who never bothered to learn to drive at all.
(A random thought here: How will movies deal with the idea of driverless cars? Will that action staple, the car chase, eventually disappear from films?)
Having said all this, we’re still a few years off from having that fleet of driverless vehicles at our disposal. In the meantime, Tesla has released a new model of their car and it features driverless functionality, though the auto maker is clear that this should be used as an aid to driving and the driver should not take their hands off the wheel even in the driverless mode.
Will Oremus over at Slate.com offers an interesting look at the current state of driverless vehicles and, specifically, the Tesla models and I encourage anyone who, like me, is interested in this topic read his thoughts:
What Mr. Oremus gets at is the thought in some quarters that if you’re making a self-driving vehicle, you should probably go all the way toward it, like Google is doing (ie eliminating the steering wheel from the driverless car and anticipating a future where all the cars on the road are driverless and therefore human error is completely eliminated).
Mr. Oremus points out that an “assisted” driverless feature like the one the Tesla may create bad habits in drivers. They may, for example, check whatever is going on with their smartphone more while driving using the feature, which Tesla clearly doesn’t want them to do.
But people are people and it isn’t surprising they indulge in stupid things they shouldn’t, such as…
To say the least, seeing the above article/video made my blood freeze. Yes, I’m all in favor of driverless cars but Tesla has made it clear their driverless feature is NOT meant to be used like this.
Regardless, we most certainly are living in interesting times regarding cars. The driverless car is coming (if not already here) and, with technological advances regarding battery power, I suspect we’ll see the end of gasoline use as well.
An exciting -and, after seeing hte above video, scary!- time for sure.
