Please Don't Hack Me, Supreme Leader

I don't get why Kim Jong-Un finds these two morons so
threatening. I mean did he even see "This is the End?"

Sony Pictures has decided to cancel the release of The Interview with Seth Rogen and James Franco. This is the kind of thing I never thought would happen, (and obviously Rogen thought so as well considering it was only last Monday night that he was on Colbert plugging the movie.) There is something unsettling about this whole affair to me. Sony Pictures caved into terrorist demands almost immediately, basically capitulating to censorship sponsored by an enemy nation. There is going to be a lot of repercussions for this and I don't think they even realize it. Yet, I should give you a little background.

The Interview is Rogen's newest attempt at being funny. The plot centers around two journalists tasked by the CIA to kill Kim-Jong Un. When the movie was announced, North Korea did some cartoon-villain-like sabre rattling (because that's the only way they can really do anything.) No one paid it much mind, and the American government (rightly) said they would not step in and hinder the free speech of a private company. Fast forward to last week when Sony came under attack by hackers, with suspicions of North Korea being behind the attack. Then additional threats were made against theaters who had planned on showing the movie on its Christmas Day release date. After major theaters like AMC and Regal announced that they would not opt to show the movie in their theaters. Sony countered by announcing they would not release the movie at all, not in theaters, not on DVD, not on Netflix... not anywhere. Because why should the US government have to step in to censor artistic expression when corporations can do it for themselves.

Now before anyone gets all righteous about protecting innocents from terrorist attacks, there is one thing you should know. The hackers known as the GOP (not that GOP. That GOP has it's own unique way of hindering our country's progress.) The Guardians of Peace made violent threats against any theater that would screen The Interview on opening day (Christmas, which is one of the biggest opening movie days in the United States.) Those movie theaters that opted not open the Rogen film did not do so out of compassion and concern. After all, the premier of the movie was the GOP's main target and that had already happened in L.A. without so much as an anti-climatic fistfight between Franco and Toby McGuire. The rationale behind the theaters' decision was purely financial. They worried that the threats would keep people from going to the theaters on their most lucrative day of the year. (For theaters that day is like a special day... almost like a holiday where they receive lots of things they want... I can't think of a good metaphor... Let's call it their St. Patrick's Day.) So AMC, Regal, and all the rest made a decision to not take the risk and denied screening The Interview. In response, Sony decided to cancel the release entirely instead of risking taking a bigger hit on the movie's returns than they had to. You see, if Sony cancels a movie, completely, under these circumstance they can recoup some of their loses through insurance, but if they risk doing a release and the movie bombs they also risk making back even less of their profits. Sony opted for the safe choice, and canceled to collect on the insurance, but what does that mean for the rest of us and the entertainment industry as a whole?

Kim Jong-Un could only wish he would ever be this cool.

Well... before we jump into the long lasting implications, let's get one thing straight. This was a cyber attack made by a foreign country. The FBI confirmed that the hack came from North Korean agents, which honestly wasn't that hard to figure out. I mean just look at the attackers released statements: "We will clearly show it to you at the very time and places The Interview be shown, including the premiere, how bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to... We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time. (If your house is nearby, you’d better leave.)" I mean c'mon. Those statements were either made by North Koreans who only have the most basic grasp of English or they're the lyrics to Kayne West's next single. If you're going to make threats to America the least you can do is run them through one of those translators you captured. Even ISIS has that much courtesy. (Also what kind of jackass uses parenthetical statements when trying to make a point?)

Truthfully, I am just kind of impressed that there are agents in North Korea that know how to work an AOL account, (or DKRPOL account?) because from all reports, North Korea doesn't even have the Internet. Thus if there are a few trusted agents in North Korea that are allowed to access the world wide web, I'm just surprised... Not so much that they have the skills to accomplish their goal, but that they found the time between all the porn and kitten videos they must been splurging on. I mean can you imagine growing up in a country that has never had the Internet and then suddenly being allowed to play around in a world where you can find a video of a dramatic chipmunk. Hell, even while inserting that last link I had to watch that clip six times before I could get back to being productive, and I've seen it literally hundreds of times before. I'm surprised these North Korean hackers didn't go into some kind of future-shock-like masturbation comma from all the wonders they probably experienced for the first time while trying to stay focused on hacking Sony. Heck, I wouldn't have been shocked if you told me that those agents hacked Sony, started watching the Amazing Spider-Man 2, immediately started a judgey Internet blog so they could criticize how bad it was, and then just hacked Sony out of pure frustration. #TobyMcGuireIsMyDearLeader

And if you enjoyed that last paragraph, than you have a sense of humor. If you didn't enjoy it, than you probably have a better sense of humor than me, but that's not the point. The point is that in North Korea I would be shot for making those statements. My entire family down to three generations would be forced into labor camps or outright killed because of what I just said. Humor is what separates us from our enemies. The fact that we can not only laugh in the face of our enemies, (and ourselves) but have the institutional and personal freedoms to actively do so is incredibly precious. Stop and think about it for a moment. Not only do we NOT live in a country where people like Jon Stewart are dragged out into the street and shot by secret police, but we live in a country where Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are celebrated for their humor. We used to even live in a world where a major motion picture company was willing to shell out hundreds of millions dollars to Rogen and Franco to make a movie about making fun of a brutal dictator. Now we live in a world where that same corporation will impose its censorship out of fear and threats to their bottom-line.

"I know who to bwame...Bwing me the hwead of
Judd Apatowww'"

So what does this mean for the entertainment industry and the larger world as a whole? Well it means that people are going to start tip-toeing around their content. Already a planned Steve Carell movie has been canceled because the setting is North Korea. Maybe Comedy Central will start to worry about repercussions and hackers and start censoring Colbert (RIP,) Stewart, and South Park (this seems unlikely, but there is now a precedent.) As a writer who has insulted North Korea on (several) occasions, and who is currently working on a novel that portrays more than a few countries in a less than glowing light, I worry what this may mean for me. Will I have to start self censoring myself because I insulted Dr. Crazypants Kim Jong-Unhinged? What if I say something bad about Putin or the Chinese government? Will my book get published? Will my publishers get spooked or get hacked? Will they cancel that sweet sweet book tour I have been waiting for my entire life? (First stop Pyongyang Barnes and Nobles.)

The irony is that I'm not even a fan or Rogen and Franco. I was never big on drug humor and dick jokes, which seems to be their specialty. I wasn't even planning on seeing this movie, but now I feel as if it is my obligation to see it. In fact it was Mitt Romney, the humorless android who one day hope to be a real boy, that actually made the best suggest. Let's stream this movie online for free, and give people the option to donate $5.00 to combat the Ebola epidemic. Not only then would we be giving a huge middle finger to our enemies but we would be raising money for a good cause as well. Regardless, this has become an important movie, not despite its humor, but because of its humor.

The ability to laugh is extremely important to our society. It's not just about frivolity or getting a chuckle once in a while. It helps us to not take ourselves or the world too seriously. Lewis Black has a great rant about this subject where he says, "Patriotism and religion are only in balance when they have a sense of humor. When they don't, things go awry." When countries and people begin to lose their ability for silliness and parody you get extremism, much like in North Korea. I can't help but draw parallels between what is going on now and Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, where he lampooned Adolf Hitler at the height of his power. That movie was not only released but was nominated for five Oscars. Let's be honest Hitler was a lot more of a legitimate threat that Kim ever was, except Kim has proven a threat to Sony's quarterly reports and now it is the rest of us that are going to pay the price. Yet, the problem with extortion and terroristic threats is that they don't end. You give into one and (like feeding stray cats who are strapped with vests of C4) they keep coming back expecting more. This short-sighted and cowardly move could very well be the first step down a very slippery and very unfunny slope.

A Contract and Back Again

This week marks the third and (thankfully) final installment of Peter Jackson's "ehh...pic" follow-up to Lord of the Rings. For most people this just marks a mediocre end to a drawn-out prequel of a much better trilogy. However, it holds a significant importance to yours truly, because it marks the end of the contract I signed with Peter Jackson. Now you may be thinking, "I don't remember seeing him in any of those films?" Well shows how much you know, Mr. Imaginary Skeptic, I was Orc #6.

I wish that was the case, and it reminds me of a story. When Peter Jackson was filming the first Lord of the Rings trilogy, and he needed extras for the Battle at Helm's Deep, (which took place in a rock quarry on the outskirts of Wellington, New Zealand,) he went to the local hostels in Wellington and basically hired all the international travelers and backpackers he could find to become orcs, humans, and elves during the big battle scene. In fact New Zealand was so committed to doing what Jackson told them to do, they basically temporarily waived all the fees and visa laws that said international travelers weren't allowed to work in New Zealand. So, had I been in the land of the Kiwi at the time of the first trilogy's filming I could have been Orc #6, or Elf #18, or Dirty Human #1 (it was the part I was born to play.) So, whenever you watch the Battle of Helms Deep, remember you are basically watching a bunch of illegally hired backpackers swinging swords at one another to earn enough money to subside for another day on ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches... but I digress.

You see, what I am really referrinto is the contract I was forced to sign before taking a tour of Hobbiton. Back in 2011, before the first Hobbit movie even came out, I basically agreed to not release any photos or stories to social media or the Internet in regards to what I heard/saw on the tour, which was hard for me. During my trip I was keeping a blog of all my experiences and had to leave one of the coolest things I did completely out of it, but now that contract has expired and I am free to spill everything... Ha ha ha, you have no power here, Jackson the Grey. (Because after six of these movies you have really aged.) That actually reminds me of another story.

So back in 2011 when I was spending my lost year journeying across Australia and New Zealand, I couldn't pass up the chance to take one (or three) Lord of the Rings' tours, one of which was my trip to the actual set of the Shire. Now, during most times of the year the filming location is not much more than an empty field with white cutouts representing where the hobbit holes had been built into the rolling landscape of a local sheep farm. However, I was lucky enough to arrive at a time when Peter Jackson had a stomach ulcer (because trilogy-stress) and filming for The Hobbit had to be postponed for an additional three months, but the Shire set had already been fully restored to its former movie-like glory. There was even a team of two people whose entire jobs were to live on the Shire set and maintain all the vegetation while filming was postponed. That means I was allowed to walk through the full and complete Hobbiton set. It was like walking through the actual Sauron-damned Shire. There were pumpkins growing in the pumpkin patch, Hobbit-sized road signs, even authentic English sheep roaming the grounds. It was like stepping another world.

I got all the stories about the set as we walked through it. Peter Jackson was so meticulous with how everything looked he went a million over budget just making (yes, constructed by hand) the tree that sits on top of Bag End. He flew in a flock of English sheep, even though he was on a sheep farm, but for Jackson New Zealand sheep weren't authentic to Tolkein's vision. Say what you will about the Hobbit movies, but if there is one thing Jackson nailed, it was Tolkein's vision. In all the tours I took I learned about a thousand little details you will never ever actually see in the movie, but are there because the guy who directed The Frighteners was obsessed with making every minute detail perfect. In so doing he put New Zealand on the map. Maybe that is why the government bent over backwards to do everything in its power to see Jackson succeed... Which reminds me of another story...

Remember how earlier I talked about the government of New Zealand basically nullifying their laws about international visa-work restrictions, well that wasn't one isolated case. The Kiwis did that sort of thing for Jackson, a lot. For the Shire set the government basically sent a company of army engineers to clear land, build roads, and create infrastructure for Jackson's production company so they could access their set on this remote sheep farm in the small town of Matamata. In fact, the government even assigned a company of combat soldiers to Jackson to use as orc extras for close-up shots, because they were all big burly men who knew how to actually fight. (Which also means that when you watch the Battle of Helms Deep, you are also watching those backpackers get their asses kicked in by actual New Zealand soldiers... who I assume are taught to fight with sword and shield as part of their boot camp training.).. but I'm digressing again.

The set of Hobbiton was located on a private farm belonging to the Alexander family on a small little dirt road named Buckland. (That was the roads actual name before anyone from Jackson's team even set foot on the farm.) After filming wrapped up and Old Farmer Alexander got his farm back from those weirdly dressed movie people, (he had never heard of Lord of the Rings before or JRR Tolkein... I guess sheep herding doesn't leave a lot of time for reading?) that was the last he had expected to hear of the whole damned thing. Unfortunately, then the tourists started showing up. People started finding his farm and banging on his front door asking if they could see the Shire. So eventually he started charging them for rides on his tractor to see where the filming had took place. Then more people and more people came and eventually he got a bus, then another, and hired a tour guide, and even built a hobbit-shaped cafe and souvenir shop. Farmer Alexander may have been old but he knew how to capitalize on a good thing when he saw it. By the end the Alexanders had negotiated with Jackson that for the filming of the Hobbit Trilogy, part of their agreement was that he build a Shire set that could last and endure the weathering for longer than a few months. Jackson agreed and after he was done filming this time he left the set intact, which means that if you go there today you will be able to see the full set, much like I did, and not just some white cut-outs left to represent the hobbit-holes.

Of course, the Alexanders had Peter Jackson over a barrel filled with dwarves. He could do nothing but agree to their terms, because Farmer Alexander's farm was the Shire. In fact, when Jackson was scouting locations for the first trilogy he had originally expected to film the Shire scenes at separate locations. When he scouted the Alexander farm he was only looking for a big tree (the party tree) beside a lake, which he found, but he also found so much more. He realized that he hadn't just stepped onto the location of the party tree but the entire Hobbiton set. There was no need to find other locations because every hill and field he needed was in one spot. The Green Dragon Pub sat across the lake, Bag End sat high atop a hill, and even the surrounding hills were so high as to block out the rest of the modern world. Walking onto the set was like being transported to Middle-Earth. The experience and transformation was so complete that the actors themselves didn't have to try very hard to get into character. 

There was a magical feel to the place, and for me, who was already on the journey of life-time, it felt as if I had stepped so far out of my own everyday world that I would not have been surprised to find myself face to face with a wizard or an elf. (Alas the only thing I came face to face with was a few Brits, some Irish, and the occasional Canadian.. which were all okay too.) Still it is an experience I will never be able to forget and now that I am free to talk about it, all I can really say is that, "You need to go." I don't just mean to take a trip to Buckland Road in Matamata, but a trip to New Zealand itself. 

The place was beyond description. I hiked beautiful parks, traversed snow-capped mountains, walked through thermal vents, canoed with seals, climbed a warm-weather glacier, learned about Maori culture, and did so much more. It is a place worth visiting and if you happen to be in the neighborhood, stop by Old Alexander's farm and take the tour. It even comes with a free sheep-shearing demonstration, which was both cute and education... but I am digressing again. Yet, maybe sometimes that is the point of a journey like mine. There isn't always one path, and sometimes the digressions can be more interesting than the straight road.

It’s a dangerous business going out of your door. You step into the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no telling where you might be swept off to. -Bilbo Baggins

Restrospective: Muppets Christmas Carol

So I have a few holiday traditions that I follow every year. I start off the season by pulling out the small Christmas tree from a closet in my apartment and plugging that in (after I spend fifteen minutes looking for an extension cord.) I buy my presents and when they arrive I wrap them, poorly, and the one movie I watch every year is The Muppets' Christmas Carol. It is by far my favorite Muppet's movie (close second: Muppet's Treasure Island... because pirates,) and my favorite adaption of my favorite Christmas story. It is quite possibly my favorite Christmas movie of all time. I was watching it again the other night and I noticed more than a few things worth talking about.

The Muppet's Christmas Carol was the first Muppet's project that the studio undertook after the death of Jim Henson. It was headed by his son, (and all around awesome guy,) Brian Henson. It was also one of the first projects Muppet Studios did under the Disney brand. The idea was originally conceived by Jim Henson himself. The film had a meager box office showing of $27,281,507, as it found itself competing against Aladdin and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, but as time has passed it has proven itself to have the kind of staying power needed to become a seasonal and holiday classic.

Part of that is because the 1992 movie has held up so well in the past twenty-two years. Even when you watch it today, with all the CGI-dominated movies and TV shows out there, The Muppet's Christmas Carol, (as with most Muppet productions, is not only entertaining but still looks good.) This is in no small thanks to Henson's dedication to practical effects. Even the Ghost of Christmas Past, (who looks like CGI) is actually a practical effect with computer enhancements. A special Muppet character was  submerged in water to get an unearthly floating effect and then imposed on the screen and given a glow through the use of primitive 90's computers. However, special effects are only really a by-product, as the film not only an incredible cast but true heart.

Look at that Ghost. That is a small glowing child. It's
nightmare fuel and it's perfection. That was done in 1992,
when the most sophisticated CGI of the time was the T-1000
looking it was done with MS Paint.

Many people may be shocked to find out that The Muppets' Christmas Carol is actually one of the closest adaptations to Dickens' original novel to grace the screen. Henson not only followed the story almost to the letter, but much of the dialog and narration (as performed by The Great Gonzo as Charles Dickens) is lifted right from the author's own words. The movie also manages to find a good balance between its serious and dark subject matter and the more light-hearted fun you expect from a Muppet movie. A lot of the humor comes from Gonzo and Rizzo the Rat being allowed the break the fourth wall as narrators. It also means that the movie can take risks to be a bit darker because the pair is there to hand-hold younger views through the scarier parts of the movie (even though they chicken out and abandon the viewers during the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come segment.) However, a lot of the credit for the movie's balance of culture and fun has to go to Michael Caine who plays Scrooge, and solidifies his position in my heart as one of the greats. To watch him act you would have no idea he is directing most of his lines at pieces of felt with plastic eyeballs. He screams and cries real emotions, and unlike almost every Muppet actor Scrooge is never portrayed with silliness. He plays his part like a classically trained Victorian actor, and it is because of Caine's ability that the movie is kept on track to walks that thin line of serious and funny. Similarly, the three ghosts are not played by notable Muppets for much the same reason. They were specially designed for the roles, which helps keep the mood of the movie. Had they been played by Miss Piggy, Scooter, and Gonzo (as one of the earlier drafts had suggested) the seriousness of the subject matter would have been ruined, possibly along with the rest of the movie.

Rizzo: Boy, that's scary stuff! Should we be worried about
the kids in the audience?
Gonzo: Nah, it's all right. This is culture,

Also helping to keep the tone is the soundtrack. The songs sung by the actors are all serious ballads and overtures. There is nothing too wacky or zany in their lyrics or in their instrumentation. However they are tremendously memorable. Written by Miles Goodman, (who was nominated for an Academy Award for writing Rainbow Connection,) and Paul Williams, the score helps keep the movie's tone of dark ominousness. They did, ironically, cause some tension with Disney. The song, "When Love is Gone," sung by Scrooge's fiance before she decides to end her relationship with the young and greedy Ebenezer was cut by Disney, under the pretense that children would find the song boring. Brian Henson fought to keep the song in, citing that when it is taken out the transition of Clara's rejection of Ebenezer is jarring and lacking of proper emotion. Additionally, that song is meant to stand as a direct counter to the song "When Love is Found" that acts as the movie's final musical piece. Unfortunately, Disney got their way for the 1992 theatrical release, but the song has been added back in to all regular screen format home releases of the movie. (For some reason Disney still refuses to allow the song on the wide-screen DVD releases, HD versions, Blu-ray releases, and even the Netflix edition of the movie.)

I had no idea, as I only own the original regular-screen release of the move, so when I first saw the movie without that song I can't help by find myself agreeing with Mr. Henson. The transition is jarring and lacking in emotion. You get no context as for why Rizzo is left crying at the end of the sequence. Still even without the song The Muppets' Christmas Carol is a classic holiday movie. It has the right mixture of that special formula, which it seems like only the Henson family can produce. It is both dark and light, fun and serious, and seeing Kermit and the rest of the Muppets in their roles does little to take the viewer out of the world... at least not as much as if you were watching Tom Cruise play a part in a movie, (and he's more of a puppet than Kermit.) This is a Muppet movie, and a Christmas movie, at it's finest.

The Muppets seem to always be at their best when they are tackling literature, (A Christmas Carol, Treasure Island, etc) and I wouldn't mind seeing the next big Muppet film to follow in this trend. Yet, until such a time, I recommend everyone should pick up a copy (but only the regular-screen DVD releases, because seriously. That's a good song.) So during this crazy holiday of shopping and commercialism, remember to take some time to watch a movie or two and remember what the spirit of Christmas is really all about: friends, family, caring for one another, and Sam the Eagle forgetting that he is not playing an American in this movie.

Trolling the Trailers

I get he is the Big Bad Wolf, but does he also moonlight
at the Copacabana Club on the jazz cello.

So, if you have been paying attention than in the past two weeks you have seen trailers for Jurassic World, Cinderella, Into the Woods, Pan, and of course the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Because it must have fell asleep watching Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman pretend to be in love.) Most of these movies won't even be out for another year or two, and yet we are already getting hurried glimpses of them to whet our appetites... because money. A month ago, the Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer was dropped on us with similar pomp and circumstance, and with the kind of anticipation befitting the actual movie, instead of just a dolled-up commercial. Thanks to the Internet we no longer have to wait to see trailers in an actual theater anymore. We can now watch them on demand at anytime we like, and I am going to argue that takes the fun out of it, at least for me.

Now, do not mistake my tone. I very much enjoy watching trailers, (sometimes they are the best part of going to the movies,) but I am beginning to question the way in which we are starting to receive them. Studios have begun a trend of announcing trailer release dates like they do with movie release dates. I have so far refused to watch the new Star Wars trailer online, which has been hard considering it has dominated my Facebook feed for the past week. I want to see these trailers as they were intended to be seen, on a big screen. I still want that trailer experience when I sit down to watch a movie.

You see, I agree that trailers are amazing awesome things that help get us get excited about movies we all want to see. Good trailers can give me goosebumps. Part of that was that when I went to see a movie I always sat with a sort of wonder at what trailer I would see next and what it would show me. I liked sitting in front of that giant screen and feeling the anticipation. Would it be Lord of the Rings? Would it be a Batman trailer? Now that trailers are online and being pushed through social media like mini-must-see-movies I can't help but feel like my movie going experience has become just a little blander. Now I sit in in front of a giant screen and when I see a trailer start I know exactly what it is, what it will show, and feel as if just a little bit of that old magic has been lost.

Of everything I have read, this offends me the least.

But if you don't want to watch the trailers online, than just don't. No one is forcing you to... That is true, six-year old hypothetical annoying child. However, they are hard to avoid. I cannot even begin to number how many people have asked if I have seen this trailer or that trailer yet. (Again these are only trailers, not the actual movies.) Now that we have hyped up trailers to such a degree, if you don't intermediately view them the day they become available you find yourself being left out of conversations. That's not even the worst of it. Remember how I said I am refusing to watch the Star Wars trailer till I see it on the big screen? (You should, because I said it like two paragraphs ago... There will be a test on this.) Well, as much as I have been trying to avoid it, I have found that to be impossible. Because even though I have not watched the entire trailer, I have accidentally seen enough still-shots, two second clips, and come across enough analyses that I feel like I have seen it. Except instead of getting to watch it with fresh eyes in awe and wonder, it has now been given to me, piece-meal, through the lens of popular culture and controversy. (Apparently people don't like that lightsaber, which I am calling a broadsaber [patent pending].)

So whose fault is this?... Well, like global warming and Kathy Griffin's career, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We like hype. We like to get obsessive about our favorite movies and we like that feeling of anticipation. The Internet now allows us instant access to that feeling and movie studios are capitalizing on it in a big way. I am also going to put a little blame on Marvel, (lower your pitchforks and hear me out.) The comic movie giant has gone ahead and told us the release date for every single Odin-be-damned movie in their slate until almost 2020. That means all the guess work, all the anticipation, and all the unknown possibilities are gone. I'm not saying that I am disappointed with any of their movie announcements (far from it,) but I do think that what they did shows a trend in how movie executives are thinking. 

"Is that man leading a pack of raptors on a motorcycle?"
"You think that's weird? Have you seen that new lightsaber."

Marvel (and DC) released their movie dates and names to create hype, however, in doing so they also put themselves under the gun. We now expect these movies, and worst yet they have to find a way to keep us excited about these movies. They have done away with the rumor mill that used to churn about what movies were being announced, or shot, or cast, which sort of helped build public hype naturally. We now know what is coming years in advance, and we even know a lot of the actors that will be in those movies. So now studios need new ways to create hype, and thus they have gone back to the tried and true trailer. Only now they are setting release dates for them, building new anticipation, essentially hyping the very things they use to hype their movies. They keep the images we see in those trailers vaguely out of context, yet tantalizing: broadsabers (TM), and Hulkbuster armor, and Chris Pratt led raptor packs. They are feeding us breadcrumbs, but it's only making us hungrier than some hippos I once knew. So we dissect the trailers. We break them down, frame by frame, because we are always looking for that next big hype.

I'm not going to sit here and say any of this is really a bad thing. Hell, I'm as guilty of it as anyone else. I freely admit that. I watched that Avengers 2 trailer, several hundred times in a row, but when I got to the movie theater to see Interstellar, and the second to last trailer showed a molten metal hand rising up on a dark screen, I knew exactly what the trailer was. I had memorized it at that point, shot for shot, and you know what? I sat in that theater feeling a little empty watching it again. My normal feeling of goosebumps and nervous excitement was dulled. Yes it was on a bigger screen (IMAX in fact,) and had better sound than can be produced by my PC speakers, but something was gone. It felt different. I know that this trend of hyped up trailers and their "release dates" isn't going to wane anytime soon. If anything it will only increase from here on out, but I can't help lament at what we are losing. The experience of going to the theater will be just a little less magical. At least that's my opinion.

It's a Trope: Morse Code

There is even a version of Morse in the (now dead)
Star Wars Expanded Universe called Mon
Calamarian Blink Code. Leia is better at it than Han.

Welcome to the first installment of a new series I am going to be doing involving noticeable tropes in TV, movies, and books that have always bugged me. I want to explore them, where they came from, and how based in reality they actually are. To start off this series, I decided to tackle one thorn that has really been sticking in my side since childhood, Morse Code.

I was once again alerted to the trope of Morse Code while watching Interstellar, a movie which I have already said enough about, but there is one thing that I left out of my review. The crux of the plot revolves around Matthew McConaughey communicating with his daughter via Morse Code, and seeing as how the move takes place at least sixty years in the future in a world that has been almost desolated by climate change, and has no standing army and barely any government, I have to wonder how many people in that future actually know Morse Code? Yet for the purposes of Interstellar, the Morse Code usage is one of the more believable aspects, as the message is actually being sent by an artificially intelligent robot, via McConaughey, which I can (at least) believe has a program from Morse Code translation somewhere in its databanks. It is also being received as one long continuous and repeating message, which means McConaughey's daughter has the time to open an old Morse Code book and translate every dot and dash there is. However, the use of Morse Code in other media, especially when we talk about science fiction always seemed less plausible to me.

For official purposes, Morse Code was retired as an International Standard of Communication in 1999, and in 2007 the FCC even dropped their Morse Code proficiency standards for amateur radio operators (which was the last group that seemed truly enthusiastic about actually using it.) Some navies, including the United States Navy, occasionally uses the code for signal lights, but learning it is not required for most US military personnel. Obviously the language peeked with the invention of the telegraph, but I can't imagine its ever going to experience such a time of popularity again. Thus, when Captain Kirk uses Morse to communicate with Scotty, I find it a little hard to believe that, in the 23rd century, they are both fluent enough in what is, essentially, a dead language to be able to relay any meaningful message to each other.

"It's seems as if we're getting a message for the Americans in old Morse Code"
"Aren't we in the Iraq Desert under siege by technologically superior aliens?
Where did we get an old telegraph from? And what is the likelihood that any
of our survivors would have the technical proficiency with Morse Code to
even understand the American's complex battle plan as relayed by dots
and bloody dashes. That's just absurd."

Even worse, when TV shows and movies do show people using Morse Code, anyone (in real-life) who actually knows Morse Code usually notes that the actors are usually just randomly tapping at a speed that is much faster than most users could interpret. It gets even less believable when the receiver begins reading the message as fast as he/she is receiving it. The fastest operator could send about 35 words per minute, and anyone who was masterfully fluent in Morse could decode a message in their head at up to 40 words per minute. Bear in mind that those records were set back in 1942, at the height of Morse Code usage. So it is completely unlikely that most people, (especially modern or future users) whom we assume only have basic training in Morse Code could even send more than 10 words per minute, let alone decode them on the fly.

Subversions of the Morse Code trope often come in forms of comedy. Most notably on The Simpsons during the episode Mountains of Madness, when Homer and Mr. Burns are trapped in a cabin together. Mr. Burns tries typing out a distress signal on an old telegraph machine, but the audience learns that the other end is connected to a telegraph machine in a museum. No one gets the message. Another notable subversion comes from the The Office (US) when Jim and Pam admit to attending a Morse Code class just to use the obscure knowledge to mess with Dwight in the episode, The Cover Up. In fact, (in my opinion,) the trope is often best employed as a subversion. A character takes time to tap out a long message and the receivers all stand around looking one another because nobody  knows what the hell it means.

Along those lines it could also be argued that when ever a character uses S-O-S, that they are actually not conforming to the trope. As S-O-S is the most common and well known use of Morse Code, with it being only three dots, three dashes, three dots (. . . - - - . . .) However, S-O-S has a lot of misnomers attached to it. For instance, it does not stand for "Save Our Ship," or "Save Our Souls," or anything. S-O-S was picked because it was determined to be the easiest code to use as a distress transmission, so easy that even a layman would be able to do it. Additionally, it is not really S-O-S, but actually S-O-S-O-S-O-S, etc... You were expected to send out the code alternating between three dots and three dashes as long as you were able. Thus, maybe you can make an argument that many TV shows and movies use it incorrectly, but it is still hard to consider it a trope, as it can be argued that S-O-S is more vernacular than any other Morse Code transmission, at least for modern humans.

Pointing a finger at Star Trek when talking about this code is easy. Even though Starfleet is a military-like organization it is still unreasonable to believe that Starfleet Academy teaches classes in a code language that is over 300+ years old, and based upon an alphabet of one language of one planet when a Federation that has thousands of member worlds and species. One could argue that, "maybe they are using an updated code," and that, "there are still some people in the US military today who still know Morse," even if they are a rare breed. The franchise does sometimes attempt to explain it away, most notably because Uhura is a communications specialist, or because two characters know the language from playing in an holographic program based on the 1930's. Regardless, Star Trek is not the first and not the last to perpetrate this sin.

Interstellar is just the latest incarnation of this trope, but I am sure there will be more. Whenever a ship loses communication or someone has to send a warning without talking it doesn't take much effort on the part of the writers to have their character drum on some pipes, wrap their fingers on a table, or blink in rapid succession. Tropes, by their very nature are a sort of "easy-out"for writers and audience members. Despite not knowing the code, most book readers, TV watchers, and movie goers understand what it is and what it is about. Morse Code, like other tropes, is a short-hand that writers and audience members agree upon, even if it is not always believable.

If McConaughey or Captain Kirk, or Mr. Burns want to communicate via dots and dashes, we will buy into it, especially in terms of our heroes. We want to believe that the heroic characters are better than us, smarter than us, have knowledge we don't have. After all, that's why their heroes. Besides what writer or audience member wants to sit through a five minute explanation of how two character developed their own language of knocking and scratching sounds from that time they spent together back in summer camp when they were both in grade school. Sometimes it's just easier to say... "Yeah, okay... Morse Code," because ITS A TROPE.

The Signs of Interstellar

"They should have sent a poet."

Today is my birthday. I'm turning the big 3-1, which is great and all, but it really starts to make a man think about what he will be leaving behind. When you are just about a quarter of the way through your life, it starts to make you wonder what the future will hold, and what your legacy will be. Along those lines I found myself in the movie theater preparing for the three-hour journey that was Christopher Nolan's newest odyssey into loud noises, Interstellar.

Now I want to start this article by saying that I actually "kinda" liked this movie and I would recommend it. I also want to put it out there that I am not going to censor my thoughts on it, so SPOILERS AHEAD. Go watch the movie and come back and read this article.

I think above all, I appreciate the sentiment the most. Nolan hits us pretty heavy with the metaphors. A dying world, a population literally regulated to toiling in the dirt, the understanding that we have lost our spirit of exploration, all very appropriate for today's world, where all we send into space anymore are robots and Richard Branson. It is certainly a movie that tries to capture the thrill of those early Apollo missions, (among other things) and it nearly succeeds. It is for this reason I want to really really like this movie. Instead I find myself only "just" liking it, because for me it all starts with the science.

Everyone from Michio Kaku to Neil DeGrasse Tyson seems to have nothing but praise for this movie, because of its realistic portrayals of time dilation, black holes, and even a visually accurate representation of a wormhole, and I can't argue with that, (because I have never seen a wormhole.) Theoretical physicist, Kip Throne, was one of the producers of the movie, and aside from a few of the more minor nit-picky details, (such as the fact that McConaughey's ship would have been flash fried and irradiated by the black hole's accretion disk before he ever got close enough to fall into it,) the movie holds close to ideas found in Einstein's theory of relativity. Even if those concepts are so basic (such as the relationship between time and gravity) they can literally be found in any Physics 101 textbook (well maybe not in Missouri.) Really, it's once we enter the black hole that thing start to break down... for me.

If only that answer could give us some Signs.

The movie goes to great lengths to tell us that we cannot observe what happens inside a black hole, and that is completely right. Once you enter a black hole all known laws of physics start to break down, and so does the movie's artistic license (in my opinion,) because that is really when we see the movie make the jump from the realm of science to the realm of convenient plot device. You see, it's not really the science I have the problem with. Instead, it is Nolan's inability to decide what kind of movie he wants to make. Is Interstellar meant to be a call for a re-invigoration of human exploration? Is it a homage to Kubric? Is it a story about the how love conquers all? Or is a Deus Ex M. Night Shyamalan-esque concoction of events that are trying to lead us up to some big "ah-ha" moment?

First of all, the "twist," of who Murphy's Ghost is, is pretty evident from about five-minutes into the movie, and the fact that Nolan hits us on the head with bread crumb after bread crumb feels a bit ham-fisted, especially for him. Even worse, for a movie that wants to claim to be true to science, the plot is ultimately resolved not by hard-facts and calculations, but by "the unknowable power of love," and it was at the point of Anne Hathaway's "love transcends time and space," speech that the movie took a real turn for me. If Nolan had dropped all the puzzle pieces and just made a movie actually based around exploration and science and not some contrived "twist" ending, the whole thing would have been tremendously improved, in my opinion.

I didn't make that past M. Night Shyamalan comparison lightly. The way the movie sets up the ending felt a lot like Signs, with seemingly unconnected incidents coming together for some kind of cathartic payoff, and ultimately, it is Shyamlan I feel bad for. After all, Nolan is pulling off the exact same thing that poor M. Night gets crap for, every single time. Now I am not comparing their directorial styles, because Nolan is the better director by far, but more and more it seems he is trying to rely on this convoluted plot-device where you shove everything into a convenient little box by the end so that the audience can go "Ohhhhh, I get it." (Except for the solar-powered UAV scene. That went nowhere.) Regardless it is beginning to feel forced. I mean at least in Signs we were told to accept it because of "God," but in Interstellar we accept it because of what? "God-like beings who are possibly future versions of humans?" I'm not even going to get into the Fry-like grandfather paradox that whole scenario creates, because it will make your head spin.

"I did do the nasty in the pasty, with wormholes."
-5th Dimensional Future Humans

Now, I am a person that is pretty good at suspending his disbelief. You want to have me accept all the technology in Guardians of the Galaxy? That's fine. It's a fun movie and I don't care if Starlords' ship conforms with all Newtonian and Einsteinian laws of physics, because the movie isn't billing itself as being a science conformist. What irks me about Interstellar is that the advanced alien/future-us-beings that placed the wormhole near Earth, and basically transported Matthew McConaughey across time and space at the end of the movie, could have just as used their 5th dimensional powers to send an email to Michael Caine with the secrets of the math formula he was working on. Why did they have to engage in a convoluted plan to get McConaughey sucked into a black hole so he could communicate complex mathematical ideas to his daughter via morse-code-watch? Yet, even that is not the worst sin in my opinion.

The message of the movie is not that humans are explorers, or the indomitability of the human spirit, or the necessity of space travel, or even that science is cool. The message of the movie is that "the power of love conquers all, (including physics,)" which I am pretty sure was the same message as those Twilight movies. Nolan setup a movie that was supposed to be one of the most realistic science fiction movies ever made and then solved everything because "love is a thing." You can't always make an apple pie from scratch and then eat it too. You have to make a decision between being a movie about hard science and being a movie that asks the audience to wish really hard so that they can save Tinkerbell. You can't try to adhere to science and then say that "love is a greater force than gravity," especially when the only justification given is: that we are capable of loving someone who has died. I also hate a lot of people who have died too. Could McConaughey have saved the world through hatred, because the same principles apply?

Still, even that might have been salved for me if the movie had tried to end more realistically. McConaughey should have been killed (or even trapped) by the black hole. Fine, you can give him his communication of love with his duaghter through that M.C. Escher black hole, but then he has to die. Nothing escapes a black hole. Then you can end it by seeing Anne Hathaway's character arrive at her planet, and because of the time dilation she experienced while using the black hole to slingshot her there, she finds a thriving human colony. Those colonist could then tell her the story of how humanity was saved. Hell, you could even name the settlement Cooperstown or something like that, with a statue and everything, (if you really wanted to go for the gusto.) but they didn't do any of that. When the movie chose to save McConaughey from the black hole by 5th dimensional space magic, that is when Nolan shows his true colors of what he thinks is more important, science or happy endings.

"Nothing, not even light itself, can escape the forces of
a black hole... except Matthew McConaughey." -Carl Sagan

Science, and in particular space exploration, are the keys to humanity's future. I have always believed that and will continue to believe that even after they shoot my cold dead corpse out into space inside a proton torpedo casing while Scotty plays the bagpipes. Yet, I feel as if lately we have begun to move away from our pioneering roots. In that regard I was moved by this movie and its illustration of that plight. I want us to start going out among the stars again: space stations, moon colonies, Mars colonies, the works. We are quickly approaching the point in our history where we will have the technology to accomplish these amazing feats. In fact, tomorrow, the European Space Agency will be making the first ever soft-landing on a comet. That is amazing, but most people nowadays are barely aware it is even happening. I worry that even if the technology becomes viable for extended man space travel, will humanity still choose to to turn a blind eye to the stars. We need more movies like Interstellar to show us the necessity of space exploration, and the potential of humanity's future.

I will wrap this up, as this article is going almost as long as a Nolan movie. The truth is I did actually like the movie. Unfortunately, much like Inception I found Interstellar to be an enjoyable movie experience but not something I feel the need to repeat or even purchase when the inevitable blu-ray arrives on store shelves. The one thing Nolan was able to do was put a lot of quotable sound-bites in this movie, and as cliche as some of them are, they are also very true. So on this day, my 31st birthday, I will end by quoting Nolan, "Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here." If I can have one legacy for myself and the people of my generation, it is the hope that humanity will take that idea to heart, and embrace all the possibilities that accompany it.

GamerGate: Rated I for Immature

I don't want to talk about this. I fucking don't. I want to spend my time dissecting the Avengers 2 trailer, or talking about how mistaken I was about Gotham, or pondering over the DC/Marvel movie announcements, but I can't do any of that. (I mean I can, but the truth is there is a shitty elephant in the room that can't be ignored.) So I won't talk about any of the fun stuff, the stuff most of us really just want to obsess over. Instead, because there are a few dickheads out there, we have to talk about GamerGate. I was hoping this would go away, like that sharp pain I have in the back of my mouth. I was hoping if I ignored it long enough it would pass and we could all go on with our lives, but also like that sharp pain in the back of my mouth it seems as if the whole thing has become worse. Now we all have a compacted molar that requires some kind of drastic and terrible surgery.

I would ask if the douche-bags out there harassing women on video games realize that it is almost 2015 and not 1015, but that would be a stupid question, because gaming back in the 11th century required a greased pig and someone stupid enough to try and wrestle it. As opposed to nowadays when it seems that all is required is a gaming device and someone stupid enough to think that harassing women should be acceptable in any goddamn situation. I have talked before about the harassment women have faced in the nerd community, but that was a well-reasoned and sensible argument. My mistake was thinking that a level-headed plea for congeniality would ever reach the kind of bastards that perpetrate this pigheaded crap, especially in the gaming communities.

So sit back and open wide jerk-off's because I am going to frag your ass then teabag your open gullets till you learn to shut your fucking mouths.

For the record, I know its not all gamers. In fact, I believe the vast majority of gamers are good and decent people who want to do the right thing, but the culture of gaming is being driven by outdated assumptions and a few assholes who have a very special place in hell reserved for them, the level reserved for serial murders and people who chew with their mouths open. It's these jerk-offs who are driving this shitstorm of embarrassment and harassment.

For anyone who is still not sure what GamerGate is, it all started during the summer when a female game designer, (whose name I will not say, because the poor woman has taken enough crap and I don't want to add to it,) was publicly accused by an ex-boyfriend of having a romantic relationship with a journalist from the gaming/nerdy review site, Kotatku. This led to a campaign of moronic fuckheads bombarding her with so many disrespectful comments and threats that she had to flee her home. Supporters of GamerGate will tell you that the controversy is about journalistic integrity in video games, but that's utter bullshit.

Then again maybe gamer journalism may
also be part of a larger problem...

If there is corruption in video game journalism, it's not because of some Indie game designer and her woman parts. If this was really about integrity you would be directing your hateful comments at the large magazines and video game companies. Do you know how much it makes to produce a Grand Theft Auto, a Destiny, or an Assassin's Creed? Millions and millions of dollars. It is a larger time and income investment than creating a movie. So studios, of course, want to make sure they make their money back. That means they need to create hype, which means sending advanced (read: free) copies of their games and equipment to reviewers and magazines (I would assume along with a generous gift basket.) If I'm a reviewer and I am getting free games from Sony or EA, maybe I might start considering that if I keep slamming their products I may one day stop getting free brand-new games, which the rest of us have to shell out sixty or seventy bucks for. So maybe I would start easing off on the criticism, giving an extra star here and there, and basically ensure that my free video game train keeps pulling into my goddamn motherfucking station.

So maybe all you assholes out there should start threatening the lives the people over at Gamer Magazine or Nintendo. Maybe you should start hacking them and releasing their personal information onto the web. Oh, wait... You won't, because you're cowards, and because this has never really been about journalistic integrity. It's because there is a small group of cheeseheads (Fuck you, I'm not really good at cursing,) in our gaming culture that thinks its alright to harass women even though 48% of gamers are women. That means 48% of people out there are too afraid to talk in voice chat or reveal in anyway they are women. God forbid you let the other people on Call of Duty know you're of the opposite gender, because prepare to spend the rest of the match hearing nothing but catcalls, sexual remarks, sexual threats, and probably a few instances of the words "whore," "slut," "bitch," or maybe even a colorful remix of all three put together (like a kaleidoscope of hatred.) Who the hell would want to deal with that?

Even worse, the culture of gaming says this is okay. Video games themselves portray women as objects to be rescued or eye-candy to be ogled. Maybe that's why when women try to speak out about their delegated roles in both videos games and in the gaming culture they find themselves immediately shamed and threatened in the worst possible way for doing so. Recently, Felicia Day, spoke out about GamerGate, and within an hour (60 fucking minutes) hackers released her home address. Video game critic, Anita Sarkeesian, had an entire college campus threatened with a school shooting if they allowed her to speak. Even Robin Williams' daughter, Zelda Williams, had a bunch of fucking asshats send her graphic Photoshopped pictures of her father's dead body (May he rest in peace) right after his death. She had to shut down her twitter account because of the harassment.

When women speak up for themselves an element of gamers start to feel threatened, yet when male gamers speak out against GamerGate like Dan Golding or BuzzFeeds' Joe Bernstein they receive almost no blow-back, and certainly not on a level with the kind of death threats and hacking scandals that get targeted at women. It's because the shitbag cowards out there that perpetrate this crap don't care so much about defending their point as shaming women. I am not going to go into the more complex psychological underpinnings of that kind of attitude, whether it stems from early social awkwardness, early damage caused by an overbearing female figure, or just having too small of a dick, I can't say. I'm not a psychiatrist.

Life can be dark and unfair, to balance that: here is a
picture of a puppy and kitten napping together.

Regardless, if there is one thing I can't stand it is people that get their perverse kicks from making others feel worse about themselves. So I'm done being rational. The fuckholes out there who do this to women are the worst kind of people. They are driven by their own fears and insecurities, and they spit hatred for the same reason that when you were in kindergarten you pulled that girl's hair, because you were too socially undeveloped and awkward to fully articulate or realize your own short-comings. In a six-year old it's cute. In an online gamer its sad and dangerous. In fact it is that unawareness and those fears that drive these morons to do everything they do. It's easy to make threats and be a douche-bag when you're sitting safely behind the anonymity of an unoriginal reddit handle. It's easy to catcall and slut-shame when you are nothing but a digital voice standing behind a pixelated gun-barrel. It's easy to be afraid when you realize that a culture and something you have built your identity on is not really what you thought it was. (You may not be well liked by women, you may have a small dick, but at least you can win at Halo... oh wait a woman beat you... Your world must be crashing down around you)... too fucking bad. 

Do you realize that with 48% of gamers being women, if all women stopped gaming that very expensive gaming industry, which I was talking about earlier, would completely collapse. Maybe it is easy to forget that the people on the other end of the Internet are actual human beings with hopes and fears and loves and dreams. Maybe that is the dangerous by-product of an industry and a culture that for so long has seen women as nothing more than a pair of boobs in an impractical suit of armor, or a blog of pink pixels which you need to rescue by defeating a lizard monster. Then again, maybe some people are just assholes for no other reason than that they are. For whatever reason I am sick to fucking death of this kind of vitriol and sadistic treatment of women. 

So suck it up, accept it, because eventually every kindergartener need to grow up and learn to play in the sandbox nicely with the girls. (I promise they won't give you fucking cooties.) Just because you play games set in the dark ages doesn't mean it's okay to act like it.

I would say being a woman gamer is a lot like this...
but really it just seems that being a woman in general is "a lot like this.".

Blog My Hell

There has been a minor craze going around YouTube in honor of the upcoming Halloween holiday called Draw My Hell. It was started by Mark Douglas of Barely Political, and the idea is to draw and narrate what your own personal hell would be like. Well I suck at drawing, so instead I am taking this concept and turning it toward my talents and I'm calling it "Blog My Hell." If anyone else is interested in doing this or the Draw My Hell challenge please feel free to share. I am always interested in seeing the inner torments of other people who aren't me.

In my Hell it is always a Tuesday, in early March. I hate Tuesdays, and early March is that time when you are sick of winter but you still have to endure for at least another six weeks until you get even a hint of spring warmth, and there isn't another day off from work in sight for at least four weeks. The dress code for Hell is a buttoned up shirt that never wants to stay tucked into my one-size too small pants and a tie that is always a little too tight, but for some reason won't hang straight down my shirt. My hair is always at that length right before I get a hair cut, where it just gets hot and itchy all the time.

I wake up every Tuesday morning and I have to shave, even though I don't need to. (It's just one of those things in Hell.) The water pressure in the shower is always too low to be refreshing, and there is no sweet spot between the hot and cold. Breakfast is a banana that you aren't quite sure whether or not it's still good to eat. I mean it tastes banana-ish, but it's kind of mushy and the dark spots I see on the peel give me pause.

Driving to work takes two hours and there is nothing on the radio but every Britney Spears and Ke$ha songs I've heard ten thousands times before, the kind that get stuck in your head and sit there on repeat for the rest of the day. For just a little extra discomfort, there is also a sampling of the kind Country songs that make me feel slightly uncomfortable to be a white man. All the while I sit in traffic raging at the cars that are too stupid to understand how to make a left hand turn at an intersection. (Pull into the middle of the lane so other hellspawn can pass you on the right! Damnit!)

I am always three minutes late when I get to work. I then spend the rest of my day never finishing any of my projects because I am constantly being interrupted by people with stupid questions or are too lazy to do something themselves. "What does it mean when it tells me to left-click?" "What does this error message mean?" "How do you do a mail-merge?" "How do you type the word 'six-six-six?'" I then spend the rest of my day explaining to old women how to download pictures from their email. Everyday I have to work through lunch, and the only snacks left to eat all contain pecans, raisins, and coconut. So that I am forced to look at the snacks and get hungrier and hungrier, but am unable to eat them.

It takes four hours to get back home through traffic and idiots. When I do finally get to eat, my dinner is always unsatisfying. My one roommate is an over weight forty-year old man who always makes me watch bad movies with him and then spends the majority of the time talking through the movies and explaining things I didn't care to know in the first place. In his spare time he collects pieces of toenails and uses them to construct scale models of historical turn-of the-last-century factories from the British Industrial Revolution. He has the coolest and hottest girlfriend who seems like she might be in to me, but of course neither of us will ever try anything because we both value the commitment she made to her toenail obsessed boyfriend. My other roommate is a nineteen-year old girl who "totes speaks like this so much, that I can't even..." and for no reason feels the need to claim everything even when it was clearly labeled with my name on it. She has no respect for boundaries and at night she stays up till 2 am blasting Britney Spears and Ke$ha songs while talking on the phone about how much her friends are basic bitches and who she hooked up with last night at the club. She spends her free time tanning and likes to have a beer and talk about how "totes wasted" she is. When I try to have a reasonable discussion with her she just screams really loudly till I start bleeding from the ears.

For the few precious hours of alone time I have, I sit in front of my half-finished novel, and alternate between starting at a blank page and pacing the room as I suffer from the worst case of writer's block imaginable. Sometimes I'll try to do something else but will get frustrated and go back to staring at the blank page as my mind fumbles for something (ANYTHING) to write down. Even worse, throughout my day, I will periodically come up with the most brilliant ideas for stories, novels, blogs, etc, (Like award winning, Harry Potter-level, ideas,) but the minute I sit down in front of my computer or take out a piece of paper to write it down, the idea will completely vanish and I'll be left with nothing but more writer's block. There is nothing to read in Hell, except 50 Shades of Gray and other trashy and grammatically incorrect fan-fiction that have made millions of dollars for authors who are way less talented than me.

In Hell, all my jokes are unfunny and poorly timed. In fact, whenever I say anything people just look at me like I have no idea what I am talking about. No one uses the oxford comma. My cell phone never has service and I am constantly missing important phone calls from friends and family whom I never get to see. I also miss calls from that better job I applied for, that girl I had a crush on back in high school, and the one that warns me to be in work the next day a half-hour earlier because I have an important meeting with an old woman who needs me to show her how to "do the Google." After a week of 86-straight Tuesdays, Satan allows us to have one Sunday, (Ironic, I know) but the day starts at 7 pm, and I have no time to do anything but grocery shop at Wal-Mart. After 348 days, any small amount of progress I have made on my projects at work or my personal writing gets reset and I start it all over again.

And that is my personal Hell.

Comics, Cosplay, and Coville

I don't usually like to delve into my personal life on this blog, after all, it's none of your damn business, (and it's never really that interesting,) but sufficed to say I have been having a rough couple of months. Yet, no cloud is so dark as to not let a little light through, (Well maybe a mushroom cloud, but then you have to hide in a refrigerator, and then people get upset...) anyway, the ray of light on my dark days has always been the anticipated arrival of New York Comic Con. This year marked a lot of firsts for me. It was the first time I went to the convention solo and the first time I tried my hand at cosplay... yes I made a costume.

I've never cosplayed before, but it has always been something I have been interested in, mostly the creative aspect of it. Maybe that is why I decided to go with designing a Sith Lord costume as opposed to any sort of recognizable pop culture figure. I was more intrigued with the process of imagination and creation than the process of trying to replicate something that was already out there... Also I got to build a lightsaber.

It all started for me when I got a chance to get colored contact lenses for free and I decided to get red and gold lens, like a Dark Jedi. At that moment in time I had some vague ideas of making a Sith costume, but for the most part I forgot about it and moved on with my life. The idea resurfaced in August, while I was going through some personal problems, as a way to give myself new focus. It seemed like the right kind of ambitious and creative project that could help get my mind off my own issues and build excitement for Comic Con. So I set to work researching techniques on the internet, running material tests, and eventually settling on a design for myself that I thought would be both challenging and manageable.

Various pieces, including contacts.

I won't go into to too much detail of my process, but I will tell you that there were a few times I thought I had bit off more than I could chew, and more than a few false starts. Yet, I kept going and with each new piece my apartment became more cluttered but my vision began to take shape, and it was exciting. I made the costume mostly of craft foam and fabric I bought at local stores. I hand-cut, hand-sewed, hand-dremeled, painted, glued, glossed, weathered, stitched, pinned, etc everything myself. (I was also advised to highlight that I made pouches for my belt, as they turned out to be very useful later on for holding my phone, money, and extra safety-pins.) Regardless, the creation process was a lot of fun, of course after I was done with all of that there is a cold hard realization waiting for me at the end... I had to actually put it on and wear the damn thing through the streets of New York.

So be it, and on that Saturday of Comic Con I woke early, stitched myself into my costume (which took a few hours.) Next I applied the colored contact lenses, (which also took a good hour of crying and cursing.) Finally, I put on a bit of make-up to pale my skin and darken my eyes and I was off to the show.

Perhaps the most surreal experience was riding on the train, a mask half covering my face, wondering what the transit police were thinking. At least I looked pretty fearsome, which worked out pretty well when opening a spot to stand on the crowded train. I don't think I really relaxed until I found myself walking through the streets of New York, my cloak blowing out behind me, lightsaber in hand, and a bus load of scared tourists scrambling to get out of my way. I felt fierce. You couldn't seem my mouth under my balaclava, but I was smiling. Once I made it to the Javits Center I was wholly unremarkable, just one in a crowd of costumed thousands.

Jedi and Sith were not "in" this year, so at least I stood out in that respect and I had a few people who wanted a picture with the newest Darth in town. I saw a lot of Ghostbusters, Batmen, Attack on Titan and other Anime that I have no idea about. (It's not really my thing.) Mostly, though, I was excited for the panels, and although I never got to see Bill Nye, (That damn line was packed,) I did get more than a few surprises. I got to listen to Ron Perlman talk, and I got to learn Dothraki from the guy who created the language for Game of Thrones. I also attended an awesome panel on writing and gaming (and got a few free books for my troubles.) One of the most interesting panels was the Max Brooks' panel where he talked about World War Z and explained how the movie went so horribly wrong from his book. On a whim I sat in on the American Dad panel, (because my feet were tired and I wanted to watch a cartoon,) and though Seth Macfarlane was no where to be seen the panel did get a surprise guest in the guise of Sir Patrick Stewart. I sat ten feet away from the man himself.

Full Costume

However, the best surprise and the moment that is going to stick with me for a long long time was when I sat in on the Sci-Fi Authors Quiz show. The only reason I went in there was because I was trying to get a seat for the panel after that one, and watching four unknown science fiction authors try to answer obscure science fiction trivia was entertaining enough to keep my interest for forty-five minutes. I had assumed it would be a minor distraction and a chance to sit down, at least until they announced the names of the four authors and I found myself staring at Bruce Coville.

If the name sounds vaguely familiar its because you probably picked up one of his books as a kid at those school-run book fairs, Aliens Ate My Homework, My Teacher is an Alien, Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher, etc. I am not lying when I say that this man was my first (and my most formative) favorite author. I used to read all of his books, and a few more than a few times. I had to buy Aliens Ate My Homework twice because I wore out the first copy. Suddenly sitting before me was the man who taught me that it was okay to be weird and to enjoy reading. Bruce Coville was the man that first inspired me to write, and without warning there he was, right in front of me.

After the panel ended and people were mulling about waiting for the next one to begin I found myself debating if I should risk losing my seat to try and talk with him as he was leaving the room. I didn't want to be that guy, and I had a pretty good seat. Very quickly though I ended that debate with a mental slap. "When was I ever going to get the chance again?" Coville wasn't even supposed to be at the convention. He was never listed as a guest. So I scrambled nervously over to him, which must have been a site to see. Considering I was more than a foot taller and dressed as a Lord of the Sith, I must have looked completely out of place as I meekly reached out and shook his hand.

Also Sgt. Slaughter was there... looking a little less "Yo Joe,"
and a little more like "Yo... let me catch my breath... Joe"

It amazed me that there weren't more people crowding around him to say hello. Instead, I found that I had him completely to myself for a good five minutes. During that time I gushed more than I meant to, apologized for my imposing appearance, and basically told him how much his books had influenced my life. To Coville's credit he smiled and seemed genuinely interested and touched by what I was saying. He even gave me advice, writer to writer. "Never give up." He told me the story of how one of his more popular series sat on his shelf for fifteen years, unpublished. Then he shook my hand and thanked me saying, "You write books and you wonder if anyone will remember them. It's good to hear that someone has." He smiled one more time, we said good-bye, and he walked off. I resumed my seat and for the first time in a while, I smiled myself. I don't believe in signs, but if I did... that was a pretty good one.

Of course there were plenty of other highlights I am glossing over. I got some good deals on shirts and figurines. I got a few free comic books and the usual assortment of other free promotional crap. I got to catch up with Kirby Krackle, (whom I told you about last week,) and see some awesome Nerd Rock at Rock Comic Con, (where I helped carry a stage-diving lead singer of Daenerys and the Targaryens.) I also got to catch up with my friends Sam and Adam, and eat a burger at a dinner dressed as a Sith Lord.

I had been nervous about cosplaying and going to the convention alone, but once again New York Comic Con did not fail to deliver on the surprises, the goodies, and the fun. Even better I got to go home on Saturday and strip myself out of my costume (which also took an hour,) and shed the skin of a Dark Jedi, because I am done with darkness for now. It's time to step back into the light, and my future is looking a little brighter these days.