All posts by ERTorre

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.
General

Incredible…

…and not in a terribly good way.

Ron Dicker wrote the following article, which appeared on huffingtonpost.com…

Banned Uber Attacker Says She’ll Take Lyft. Then Lyft Bans Her.

Not to spoil the entire article, but a few ladies took an Uber ride, apparently one of them refused to wear a mask and the driver insisted they all do, things got really heated and the driver decided he no longer wanted to take them anywhere.

Things escalated when he stopped somewhere to drop them off and they refused to leave the car until their subsequent ride appeared. They claimed it was a bad neighborhood and perhaps it was, and further than the driver told them if they didn’t leave he’d drop them off on the freeway.

The rider who didn’t have the mask then coughed on the driver and pulled his mask as took his cellphone. I’m assuming that was a quick thing and he got it back.

Anyway, the rider offered her version of the events and claimed she would never use Uber again and would use Lyft and Lyft… well, the article’s headline pretty much tells you what they think about these potential clients.

I’m often appalled by the way people act nowadays, though I suspect its something that’s always been the case but because of the proliferation of cellphones and the ability to film virtually anything at any time, we’re seeing examples of things that simply wouldn’t be known and/or forgotten quickly.

Instead, they’re filmed and posted online for posterity, and the people involved… well… they get to live their bad behavior for the rest of their lives.

What the riders did was appalling, there’s no two ways about it, and I have full sympathy with the Uber Driver and what he had to put up with.

Too many people out there are taking COVID-19 far to unseriously and, by doing so, they are risking the lives of others who are taking the virus seriously.

The Driver wasn’t asking the riders to do anything extraordinary. Simply wear your masks. That’s all.

But it was a bridge too far for at least one of them and something that should have been a minor matter blew up into sheer crazyness.

I wonder if somewhere down the road, when the passengers of that Uber ride are a little older, they will realize what they and the attention -negative, I imagine- was not worth it.

Take a breath, people. Think through your actions.

I suppose they’ll have to get around with Taxis or public buses from now on, unless they get their own cars.

Hell of a thing to do for something as simple as respecting your driver’s eminently reasonable request.

Music

The Rolling Stones… and David Bowie?

It seems someone on the inside in The Rolling Stones organization has released to the internet a number of “vault” songs created by the group but to date not released.

Included among them is the original demo of It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll (But I Like It) which features David Bowie…!

Interested in hearing this demo? Click here:

The Rolling Stones – It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll (But I Like It) Demo (feat. David Bowie)

I found out years ago that this song was originally something Mick Jagger and David Bowie worked on and that Jagger, and The Rolling Stones, wound up taking the song for themselves. I don’t believe it has a “co-written” by David Bowie credit nor, to be frank, do I know if indeed Bowie had that strong a hand on it.

However, the fact that a demo like this one exists where he’s doing some background singing does make the whole thing more intriguing.

Having said that…

David Bowie and Mick Jagger formally collaborated/co-sang on only one song, a remake of Dancing In The Street…

The song -and video- were created very quickly to be shown on Live Aid back in 1985 and the video, which at times has Bowie out of synch with the words, shows it. Plus there’s a sense of just filming them dancing around without seemingly giving much thought to what they were doing.

I point this out because though David Bowie in his career lent his voice to do some wonderful songs with other artists, including the excellent backgrounds to Lou Reed’s Satellite of Love…

…and Under Pressure, the beautiful duet he did with Queen…

…I felt like his sole (until that demo showed up) work with Mick Jagger showed that not all duets worked. The fact is that Mick Jagger’s voice is so in your face that Bowie’s singing/vocals seemed to be pushed far to the back and mostly obliterated. When the two sing together, all I seem to hear is Jagger!

So too it is with the demo of It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll (But I Like It). I don’t believe this version of the song was ever intended for release, at least not until now (I’m assuming this release wasn’t an illegal thing, but who knows), but I’m hard pressed to hear where exactly Bowie is in it.

Maybe I’m just getting deaf in my older age…!

Still, a fascinating relic of times past.

General

Coronavirus Diaries 29

Is it -possibly!- time to start getting… excited?

In an article written by Jordan Williams and appearing on theHill.com, we find…

US picks up vaccination pace, averaging 2M doses per day

President Joe Biden promised that he would have 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days, a number that some scoffed at but, if this pace continues -or increases- and according to the above article, we could have that number of vaccinations a full month earlier!

My wife, who is a first responder, already has had her two Pfizer shots. My eldest daughter also received her first shot and my younger daughter is eligible to get a shot as well, given she too works for a first responder. I will be getting my first shot come Sunday. I’m guessing it will be the Moderna vaccine as the Pfizer vaccine tends to be administered in hospitals and my appointment is at a pharmacy.

Good news for us personally, but my good fortune is also everyone else’s. It means more and more vaccines are becoming available and the chances of getting one is increasing with each passing day.

Better yet, the infection numbers are lower, though it doesn’t mean one should let down their guard. Provided a COVID mutation doesn’t screw up the vaccine effectiveness, there is evidence of the so-called “herd immunity” starting to occur.

Ridiculously, two states, Texas and Mississippi, have decided that the worst is over and ended mask mandates and eased other COVID restrictions.

To this, President Joe Biden said…

While there’s plenty of reason to be hopeful given the good news of late, it’s also not the time, I would think, to let one’s guard down and it certainly isn’t the time to think its over.

It’s not.

We are close, but we aren’t there yet.

Even after I get the second shot of my vaccine, I intend to continue wearing masks at least until the infection rates truly become minimal and a good portion, perhaps up to 2/3rd, of the U.S. population has the vaccine.

Hopefully this will be the case by later in summer, give or take.

When that does happen, I can’t imagine what it’ll be like.

Euphoria, I’m sure…

It should be something!

Movies

Problematic films…

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s post about Dr. Seuss books whose printing will be discontinued due to questionable stereotypical caricatures (you can read that here), Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is set to host a new series in which they present, and explore, 18 classic films which, in this day and age, may be viewed as problematic in the way they depict certain events/people.

The New York Post offers a story regarding this, if you’re curious:

TCM examines “problematic” film classics in new series

The 18 films they will present are:

Gone With the Wind (1939)

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)

Rope (1948)

The Four Feathers (1939)

Woman of the Year (1942)

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

Gunga Din (1939)

Sinbad, the Sailor (1947)

The Jazz Singer (1927)

The Searchers (1956)

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

Swing Time (1936)

Stagecoach (1939)

Tarzan, the Ape Man (1959)

My Fair Lady (1964)

The Children’s Hour (1961)

Psycho (1960)

Dragon Seed (1944)

I’m familiar with almost all the films and have seen a number of them.

The ones that stick out, to me, are Gone With The Wind, a magnificent, epic film that nonetheless perpetuates the idea of a “noble” Confederacy in its Civil War loss. Its tough, especially these days, to view this bucolic vision and ignore the fact that the Civil War, and the Confederacy, were about keeping the hideous institution of slavery. Not to mention, in the novel -though they kept that from appearing in the movie- Rhett and several of the male characters within it were members of the KKK!

I noted before that when I went to High School I went to a boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida and was rather shocked to see trucks with Confederate Flag stickers on their bumpers or on the side of the cars.

This has changed over the years and my most recent excursions to Jacksonville, taken within the past year, have shown the city has moved on. I don’t recall seeing a single car with a Confederate flag on it.

Similarly, I remember in one of my first years in College attending a film appreciation/analysis class and we were offered different movies across different genres and for musicals we were given the Astaire/Rogers musical Swing Time.

When I saw the film, I recall it was an animated, rather typical musical and, truthfully, I didn’t think much of it afterwards, forgetting most of the story.

Many, many years later, it was on TCM and I wrote about my incredulous reaction to the blackface “Bojangles” number in the film.

Now, maybe close to twenty five years or so had passed since seeing Swing Time but it sure does show how with the passage of time opinions of things can change.

I don’t recall when I originally saw Swing Time in that class, likely in the mid to late 1980’s or very early 1990’s having any issues or even thoughts about the Bojangles number and the blackface employed. Mind you, it was wrong then and it remains wrong now -the use of “blackface” is deeply offensive- only back then I suppose I was so sheltered and/or oblivious that it didn’t register to me at that time.

However, when I watched the film again for the first time since then back in 2020, that scene totally shocked me and, worse, I couldn’t believe how it didn’t do so back then.

Anyway, there you have it. If you’re interested in seeing any of these classic films with problematic elements and want to hear interesting analysis about these elements, TCM is the place to go!

Books/Literature, General, Movies

Dr. Seuss in the (negative) spotlight…

Over on CNN.com I found this article by Amanda Watts and Leah Asmelash concerning…

6 Dr. Seuss books won’t be published anymore because they portray people in ‘hurtful and wrong’ ways

Basically, these six books feature stereotypes, particularly of Asian and Black people, which sadly were somewhat the norm in caricatures back then but which are now looked upon quite negatively.

The books in question, taken from the above link, are:

  • And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
  • If I Ran the Zoo
  • McElligot’s Pool
  • On Beyond Zebra!
  • Scrambled Eggs Super!
  • The Cat’s Quizzer

I’m quite familiar with Dr. Seuss’ most famous books, like Green Eggs and Ham, and of the six titles they’re not going to print anymore I’m only familiar with And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street and McElligot’s Pool.

The others I’m unfamiliar with.

As I mentioned before, this sort of problem has reared its head with other works of the 20th Century: They present caricatured stereotypes which by today’s standards are very hard to take.

I recall plenty of Warner Brothers cartoons featuring questionable depictions of Black people. And who can forget that Walt Disney won’t release Song of the South, the film which features one of their most recognizable songs –Zip A Dee Doo Dah– because the entire film features a depiction of the antebellum South that is, to say the least, extremely out of date -and that’s being kind!

I suppose this is a sign that as a society we’re growing and coming to understand how hurtful some of the stereotypical depictions of people can be.

We can’t change the past, certainly, but we can work to make things a bit better today and tomorrow.

General

CPAC 2021

As if things couldn’t get more crazy with this year’s Conservative Political Action Convention (CPAC), some eagle-eyed observers noted their stage seemed to have a hidden Nazi symbol on it…

Of course the people who were behind the display deny they meant for any sort of Nazi insignia and, truthfully, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt… but even so, I don’t know what to think.

If they did intend to put in, and hide, such a vulgar symbol on the stage, it would be… pretty disgusting, truthfully, and it seems a hard thing to think someone would dare to hide a symbol like that in such an event.

On the other hand, we are talking about Trump and what’s left of the Republican party, which for the past four years have uttered countless dog whistles of encouragement to the far right fringe and this could well be another example of just that.

It’s sad that we’ve gotten to the point where its hard to give people the benefit of the doubt in cases like that.

General

Where has the time gone…?

Friday, February 26th.

The last Friday of February and, in a few days, we’re into March.

Third month of the year and one year since the U.S. truly understood COVID-19 was here. Mind you, it was here already.

As I’ve mentioned before, my Father tested positive for COVID anti-bodies and the last time he was sick -and he was quite sick for a little bit of time but thankfully not so sick he needed hospitalization- was last year late January early February.

I’m quite sure he -and quite possibly several other people in our sphere, including myself- caught COVID back then and simply didn’t realize it.

Moving to today, we have reached the point where some 50 million people have gotten vaccines for COVID here in the U.S. Today the FDA is meeting to see if they will approve the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which requires only one shot.

If its greenlit today, we’ll have three vaccines available in the U.S., Pfizer and Moderna and now the Johnson & Johnson.

Because the J & J vaccine only requires one shot and doesn’t need the extreme cold storage, that could be a big game changer and allow many more people to get their vaccine.

Hopefully we’ll hear the good news a little later today.

Oh, and everyone out there: Have a great weekend! Stay safe!

General

Stan Lee, Redux

A few days back I posted (you can read it here) about the biographical novel True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abraham Reisman, which was released and has been promoted quite a bit.

This biography has opened up some old debates on just how much Stan Lee did with regard to the books/characters released through Marvel Comics and which have become these days a multi-billion dollar mega-juggernaut what with the success of the various Marvel movies… all of which, until Stan Lee’s passing, featuring amusing cameo appearances by him.

Roy Thomas, a Stan Lee protege who started working at a very young age at Marvel in 1965, was there for a little over half of Stan Lee’s tenure as editor/writer of the material (he left the position in 1972) pushes back against the biography and some of its conclusions. He argues the biography is a little too quick to take the word of Jack Kirby over Stan Lee and diminishes his work there. You can read the article for yourself at this link to thehollywoodreporter.com and is written by Mr. Thomas himself:

Roy Thomas, Former Marvel Editor, Pushes Back on New Stan Lee Biography

In my last posting, I noted that many years have now passed since that epoch, which lasted a little less than 10 years in total, basically from 1960 to roughly 1970.

Further, over the years since that point it was clear that memories were hazy, not just for Stan Lee, but for Jack Kirby as well, something that Mr. Thomas notes when stating the biography seems to come down harder on Mr. Lee’s fuzzy memory versus Jack Kirby’s.

If true (I haven’t read the book), that’s a fair point to make.

Further, Mr. Thomas does provide some solid written proof in the form of a couple of early plot drafts by Stan Lee which survive to this day and do indeed suggest/prove he did have a hand in plotting the first, and another earlier, Fantastic Four story.

Mr. Thomas provides this fascinating bit, taken from that column (I highlighted the part I thought was the most fascinating):

That Stan Lee was the co-creator, and not the sole creator, of the key Marvel heroes from the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man through Daredevil and the Silver Surfer can hardly be in dispute at this late stage. I myself, back in the ’80s when I wasn’t working for him, had a friendly argument with him on that score over lunch. I soon realized that, as much as he respected the talents and contributions of artists (Riesman would say “artist/writers” and he’s right, at least in one sense) such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to the characters introduced in the 1960s, he could never really bring himself, in his own mind, to think of them as “co-creators.” The two of us had to agree to disagree, and I never saw any use in bringing it up again.

This, to me, is the crux of the argument many have with/against Stan Lee: He took credit for the “creation” of all these characters and one can’t help but wonder how much he subsequently felt he was the sole writer of the stories as well.

I don’t doubt that in the early going of Marvel Comics Stan Lee had a much more involved hand in writing/plotting the stories. There may well be several stories, including some of the earliest ones, that Stan Lee had a big hand on.

But based on the voluminous photocopies of pages released in more recent times, one gets the feeling that Jack Kirby at least and perhaps a little later on, was doing most of the actual story plotting via drawing the actual pages and putting notes on the sides as to what’s going on. Stan Lee would then write in his dialogue/captions (and, to be extremely fair, they were often dynamite!) but to say that Stan Lee was the “sole” creator of these works, especially after the first few years, feels like taking a glory that wasn’t entirely his.

Interestingly, Mark Evanier, who one could look at as a protege of Jack Kirby (he was around/working with him following his leaving Marvel Comics), was interviewed for the biography but had no opinion about it because he hadn’t read it yet. Nonetheless, he had this to say about the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby creative relationship (the full post which I took this excerpt from can be found on his website, News From ME – Mark Evanier’s blog):

But my conclusion is that the comics we know to be created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, not necessarily as 50-50 efforts and certainly not with Jack supplying only the visuals. I think Jack did a lot more than Stan — at least on the pages — and until fairly recently, got a lot less credit; likewise, Stan and Steve Ditko, Stan and Don Heck, Stan and Bill Everett, etc. The disparity in financial reward was even greater.

But that doesn’t mean Stan did nothing or did nothing well. I have witnessed way too many Stan/Jack debates in my life and I think all are dead wrong if they lead to the conclusion that either contributed zero. This view has occasionally made me feel unwelcome on Stan Lee forums and in Jack Kirby chat groups. And just as I reject that notion, I reject the argument that neither would have amounted to anything post-1961 without the other. They were two men of extraordinary skills…just not the same skills.

A lot of folks don’t want to hear about the battles and the quarrels and the screwings. They just want to enjoy the body of work…and I sometimes wish I could stop there. Instead, I think I’ll stop here…for now.

Perhaps that’s the best summary of these extraordinary men and their extraordinary place in entertainment history.

General

First color photograph of a car…?

Articles like the one I’m about to link below absolutely fascinate me.

Presented on jalopnik.com and written by Jason Torchinsky, he believes he has found…

The very first color photograph of a car

I’ll spoil the article a bit but I think Mr. Torchinsky is probably right.

This is assuming, as he does, no other photographs are found from before that time taken by the same gentleman (I don’t want to SPOIL the whole article, but the person who took the photograph is indeed one of the giants of that sort of stuff).

One more SPOILER, the photograph in question. From way back in 1906…

Absolutely fascinating stuff!

General

Frantic days…

How does the saying go?

If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.

My wife’s last week, in a nutshell.

On Thursday, February 11, my eldest daughter and she flew off to Austin, Texas. She was simply accompanying my daughter back to her home after spending a good deal of time here with us and, we hoped, well after any COVID-19 craziness with the traveling during Christman/New Years.

The flight there was fine. My wife, who has already gotten both Pfizer vaccines, accompanied her on the flight, got to Austin, and all was fine.

The trip was meant to be very brief. She would fly back home on Monday, February 15. One week ago today.

Mother nature, alas, had other plans.

For those who’ve been in a cave the last week, an icy blast hit the middle of the country starting on Sunday February the 14th. Snow fell, the roads iced up, and Texas was quickly exposed as a state that, thanks to deregulation, had an electric grid that simply wasn’t up to the chill.

Worse, for many water pipes froze and burst and roads were undriveable. Austin -and it seems the entirety of Texas as well- doesn’t have a good snow clearing and/or salting system. As someone who lived in Canada, what I saw on the news and heard from my wife about the situation there was something which would not have caused a problem for people in my (very) old stomping grounds.

But in Texas, it proved paralyzing.

The flight scheduled for Monday was cancelled. She rescheduled for Wednesday but, as the situation played out, it was clear Wednesday wouldn’t work either. The roads remained incredibly dangerous to drive on -there was absolutely no chance they would risk driving to the airport and even the Super Shuttle service was not going- but it didn’t matter: The airports were essentially closed and all flights were cancelled.

Thursday, we hoped, she would finally be able to travel home but the weather reports were grim, along with the general news. People were losing their power and water and the weather was bitterly cold.

Anticipating losing water, they collected snow in my daughter’s bathtub to use for the toilet. Eventually, their water was turned off.

But Thursday the 18th, the third scheduled day for my wife to fly back, was cancelled out and, while outside getting more snow for the bathtub, my wife slipped on some ice, fell, and broke her arm in two places.

Yeah.

Luckily, by Thursday the roads were better to drive on versus even the day before, and my daughter and wife were able to go to an emergency clinic. My wife thought maybe she didn’t break her arm but an X-Ray quickly proved she had. Luckily, again, she didn’t break her wrist but a little below it, which meant she likely didn’t need surgery.

A temporary cast was made to keep her arm stable but a more permanent cast couldn’t be put on until the swelling went down, three or four days later.

By this point, my wife had her flight scheduled, for the fourth time, for Saturday the 20th.

By then the cold snap was in the process of going away and the flight took off on time and she arrived home a little early, though it was quite late at night when we finally got her home.

We spent Sunday relaxing as best we could and, this morning, headed to a Hospital which had an Orthopedics department and were able to see us.

She got herself another set of X-Rays and -finally, good news!- the break was relatively stable and didn’t require any surgery.

In a little over one hour, she was back outside ready for me to pick her up, sporting a nice blue cast over her right arm.

Meanwhile in Austin, my daughter’s water was back Sunday night and its looking like things are somewhat getting back to normal in that beautiful city. Better yet, she was able to gas up her car today (she was getting very low) and it looks like some of the grocery stores are filling up with foods.

Meanwhile, horror stories about Texas are still coming in, from the incredibly inept Governor and Senator Ted Cruz’s idiotic attempt to flee the state for Cancun. There are heartbreaking stories of people who froze to death, including an 11 year old boy, and one can’t help but shake one’s head at all of this.

In light of these tragedies, my wife breaking her arm and my daughter’s inconvenience is a small thing indeed versus the suffering others have faced.

It shouldn’t have happened yet it did.

I really, really hope that the voters of Texas remember this the next time elections roll around.