Tag Archives: This N’ That

General, TV

Just wanted to say…

…sorry for the dearth of posts of late.

It’s been a very busy week for me and, frankly, so many things are going on of late and so many deadlines and problems to face that it’s gotten me down.

But, I’m hoping, the worst of it may be nearly over and I will hopefully get back on track with the regular grind.

I know I’ve mentioned it before, perhaps too many times, but it’s been a rough year to say the least. In large part it’s been the tragedy of Champlain Towers South’s collapse and the loss of my parents and all the events that have followed that one. I’ve also been working hard on my latest novel and dealing with issues regarding a home fix up which have driven me to the brink of insanity.

There was a time I enjoyed watching all those HGTV shows about how they rehabilitate a home and everything seems to go so very, very well and how the biggest problem winds up being our hosts butting heads about which subway tile to use in their renovated bathroom.

These shows, and most “reality” shows, alas, present viewers with a condensed, easily digestible version of what is real.

The other day a comic book artist friend of mine presented me this video from the (yes) reality show Shark Tank and said the people presenting their book got really lucky…

After watching this piece, however, I was left with a lot of questions and some really strong doubts about the overall legitimacy of this presentation.

To begin with, it seemed not one of the panelists actually opened and looked at any of the books they were supposedly there to invest in. Further, the sales figures the creators were citing sounded rather… incredible, frankly. I’m not saying it’s impossible to achieve these lofty sales numbers, but as someone with more than a cursory interest in the comic book field, it’s strange I haven’t heard about these people at all and especially given their very strong sales numbers.

Their promo video was ok, I thought, but not all that spectacular (this is, of course, a matter of personal taste and nothing more… I found the promo reel only ok) and yet based on those very few minutes these people presented their ideas they get offered $500,000?!?!

Again, at least in the above clip it seemed no one opened even one of the books. No one read any of the material within any of the books. Yet based on a sizzle promo reel and sales figures which, again, I wonder about, they were willing to drop a half a million dollars on their venture?

I dunno.

I told my friend that I suspected there was more to this story than was presented here. That the hosts had to have been more aware of what this company was doing and, at the least, someone had to have read these books.

Thus, I told my friend, it wouldn’t surprise me if this segment was totally staged, that Kevin Hart and company already had a much more solid idea of what these publishers and their books were like and this segment was more fiction than reality, that a deal was already probably made and this was a summation for the cameras of that deal.

The “story” presented in this segment is a very positive one and one always roots for creators to have success in their ventures, but like too many reality shows, I wonder where the reality actually is.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll be back ’round these parts a little bit more in the following days!

General

Sorry for the dearth of posts…

…but it’s Spring Break and that means I get to work even harder than usual while simultaneously dealing with more family members (the later being not an unpleasant task at all!).

Still, it does rob me of time I might otherwise use to fill up this page.

A couple of random thoughts:

In light of the news from New Zealand, I wonder how much more evidence is needed to show that White Nationalism is a plague which very much needs to be addressed. I don’t hold Donald Trump to blame for feelings many of these people have, he sure does bear responsibility for being so damn passive to the point of giving them a *wink* *wink* attitude.

Captain Marvel is flying high (pun intended) at the box office though its second week box office falloff was quite steep. It wasn’t catastrophically steep, far from it, and it will most certainly prove to be another big hit for Marvel, yet I still get the impression -and I may be super-wrong here- that this is a “lesser” Marvel feature, one that’s perhaps on the level of a Dr. Strange or Thor 2. Currently over at Rottentomatoes.com, the critical reaction stands at an OK 79% positive while the audience reaction is a slightly cooler 62% positive. Good, certainly, but not too terribly higher than average.

James Gunn was re-hired by Disney to direct/write Guardians of the Galaxy 3. I’ve noted before I really, really hated the original Guardians of the Galaxy and realize I’m in a small minority as it seems almost everyone went head over heels for that film. While the reaction to Guardians of the Galaxy 2 wasn’t quite as positive, I absolutely want people who liked the two films -and there are many of you!- to see a third film delivered by Mr. Gunn and felt it was a shame when Disney -too hurriedly IMHO- fired him.

You see, while I may not like the first GOTG film and skipped the second (and doubt I’ll see it), I absolutely felt Mr. Gunn was screwed by the alt-right (them again) people who dug up his admittedly stupid old twitter posts and weaponized them to get him fired.

Some on the right have noted that Mr. Gunn is getting better treatment than, say, Roseanne Barr, but the fact of the matter is that Mr. Gunn wrote those stupid tweets a while back -quite a while before he directed the first GOTG- and has bent over backwards to apologize for them and acknowledge they were attempts at humor that now look like nothing more than the poorest of poor taste. Roseanne Barr, on the other hand, has been writing questionable tweets, including tweets that are borderline -or right across the line- into racism and she hasn’t, to my knowledge, offered a sincere acknowledgement of sorrow.

I suppose if you feel the two situations are comparable I’d be the last person to convince you otherwise.

Finally, I have to once again thank everyone out there reading my books. The pace of reading them hasn’t slowed and I’m delighted to see there is an interest in those books.

I’m writing the next novel and of late I’ve been delighted with the direction the book is going in.

I’ll offer some information on that soon enough!

Comic Books/Graphic Novels, General

This ‘n that…

Couple of interesting articles worth reading, both found on io9:

First up, Remembering the Mysterious “Vela Incident” 36 Years Later.

I must have missed this intriguing news when it originally came out, but the “Vela Incident” involves a U.S. satellite back in 1979 detecting an explosion in the southern Indian Ocean which may have been a secret test of a nuclear weapon.  If this was the case, which nation tested the nuclear device?  Was it a nuclear device?

The mystery continues!

Next up, Appeals Court Rules the Batmobile is Copyright Protected.

The article linked to above, written by James Whitbrook, concerns DC Comic’s lawsuit against Mark Towle, a man who ran the “Gotham Garage” and specialized in making replicas of cars from movies and TV but who specialty, according to the article, were replicas of the 1966 Batman TV show Batmobile…

…as well as the 1989 Tim Burton directed Batman movie Batmobile…

In a decision that didn’t surprise me all that much, the court asserted that DC Comics does indeed have a copyright over the Batmobile and Mr. Towle was violating that copyright by producing -and making money off of- these vehicles.

I urge you to read the article if only to read the legal wording justifying why DC Comics is entitled to claim the copyright on the vehicle despite the fact that there have been many varieties of Batmobiles over the years.

Interesting stuff!

General

This n’ that…

Found a few interesting things this morning.

First up, want to see what Lady Gaga’s “meat dress” looks like five years later?  Sure you do:

http://jezebel.com/heres-what-lady-gagas-meat-dress-looks-like-five-years-1728266149

Apparently the dress is now on display at Cleveland’s Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame.  The video, presented in the above link, for those who don’t want to go to the website:

Tasty!

Next up, something that I suppose was bound to eventually happen:

Job Seeker Accidentally Sends Nude Selfies to HR Manager

No, the individual did not get the job.

Finally, a most eerie microscopic zoom…

A seemingly never ending microscopic zoom reveals the gross tiny germs

What the heck is this?  Why its a…

Microscopic zoom-in on a bacterium on a diatom on an amphipod

Now you know.