Whether Weathermen Were Wrong...

There are few certain things in this world: the inevitability of bad hair days, the slow unrelenting march of age and time, and the death of a Sean Bean character. Yet, there is much more that is uncertain: stock prices, the number of socks that will emerge from the dryer, and, of course, the weather. Let's spend a few minutes dwelling on that last one, because despite the insistence of a certain doomed Sean Bean character, winter doesn't always come. That was proven on Tuesday when the New York area found itself bracing for a massive hurricane of icy death that never quite panned out.

Sure, we got a few inches, but growing up in the Northeast those are the kind of numbers you find yourself laughing at as your car skids slowly to work in the morning. What we were promised was a winter storm so impressive that it would bury us under feet and feet of snow. Curfews were enacted across New York and New Jersey. Trains, buses, and subways were shutdown. States of Emergencies were called. Government offices were closed, and grocery stores couldn't have been ransacked harder if there was a horde of ice zombies coming. I, personally, got up at 5:30 am to race the storm home from Maryland... Then it started snowing... Then it stopped and everyone emerged from their cocoons of blankets and Netflix to see that nothing had happened... Then a lot of people got mad.

Did you know that the 1977 revision of the Geneva Convention prohibits the weaponizing of weather? I know, it sounds like a plot cooked up by Cobra Commander, but did you also know that the United States of America successfully used weaponized weather during the Vietnam War? Operation Popeye used cloud seeding over Vietnam to increase the rainy season by thirty percent, in order to hinder troop and vehicle movements. Yet, seeding clouds is not the only way to use the weather as a weapon, and I have been hearing many people over the past few days call the false reporting of meteorologists, nothing short of criminal.

FYI, this is also against the Geneva Convention.

"Those weather-hacks misled us! The lied to us! We all put our trust in them and this time they used their power as a weapon to shutdown one of the world's largest and most densely populated metropolitan areas. New York City, New Jersey, and Philadelphia all came to a grinding halt because of the false promises of meteorologists and their scary, albeit colorful, maps of doom. They didn't even apologize, (except for the ones that did!) They told us falsehoods! They mildly inconvenienced us and damn them, they gave me a day off of work! Meteorologists may not be able to manipulate the weather, but they manipulate our feelings about the weather, and maybe its time we held them accountable.

"Under the Geneva Convention we should prosecute them as war criminals! Let's put them on trial in front of an international court. Let's send a message that we will not let our lives be dictated by people with names like Gretchen Storm and Sonny Day. I promise, no longer will the sadistic cackle of the dreaded Weatherman echo through the frozen halls of his Arctic Doppler Fortress. Huzzah! After all, what have they ever really done for us?"

...I mean aside from saving lives and preventing property damage. According to a 2013 World Bank Report, a fully staffed and equipped meteorological service saves an average of 23,000 lives a year and provides up to $30 billion a year in economic benefits. The real truth of this issue is that I think it is easy to hate on weathermen. Their jobs are based on speculation, and, in fairness, they are not right all the time. In fact, if you are looking for an interesting piece on the accuracy of weather forecasting I suggest you check out the Freakonomics site, which basically maps out the accuracy of weathermen in Kansas City over their seven day forecast. Spoiler: They are not 100% accurate, but that doesn't make what they do is any less difficult or valuable.

Granted, that even after the storm proved to be bust many stations kept their reporting up, as if we really were under attack by the love child of Elsa and Mr. Freeze, but that has more to do with the news stations than the actual meteorologists. If Fox News has taught us anything it is that scaring people is a surefire way to get good ratings, and maybe there were a few people out there who were more willing to fudge the numbers in one direction if it meant people would watch, but that was not the majority. If anyone is to blame, we are. Because, when you really think about it, meteorologists are a lot like the weather they report. We really don't pay attention to them till we need to, and even then its usually only in a negative way, Maybe that's part of the reason why sometimes they get a little overly excited about bad weather, in the same way firefighters get a little too excited about a structure fire. Only in catastrophe do they really get their chance to shine.

"I'm wearing camouflage, because... Did you see what
happened to that last dog?"

Unfortunately, this time their excitement led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars by state and local businesses who listened to the dire warnings of weathermen and weather-women as they gazed into their crystal balls, but I don't mean to sound flippant (that just usually happens naturally).  I have a lot of respect for the people entrusted to predict the movements of nature. Weather forecasting is a science, but it is not an exact one. There are still many mysteries on why weather behaves the way it does, and what we get as a forecast is usually the best possible data as interpreted by local and national meteorologists. That means they are using their models and scientific understanding of weather behavior to give us their best estimate as to where a storm system will be heading and what conditions will lead to one forming in the first place. It also doesn't help that the American National Weather Service is woefully underfunded and understaffed.

In the past five years the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) budget has stayed relatively flat, despite significant budgetary increases for other federal departments. Even worse the National Weather Service has suffered from some 200-odd labor shortages, finding themselves without the money to hire and retain key meteorologists, even in critical areas such as Tornado Alley where accurate weather predictions help to save thousands of lives annually. This is trouble for local weathermen who get their core data from the National Weather Service, which helps them make their predictions. This severe underfunding is also one of the main reasons why the European weather agency, (European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting) typically produces more accurate weather models than the US National Weather Service. They have better equipment with faster computing power

All of this leads back to the super storm of snow that was supposed to hit New York this past week. Many weather agencies went with the European model for the storm, due to its track record of better accuracy, and for whatever reason, this time the European model was wrong and the American model, (which predicted that the storm would miss the city,) was actually correct. That's how bad it has gotten for the US National Weather Service. Even when they're right, the local agencies don't believe them. It's like their the weathermen of weathermen.

On the plus side, the development of hover technology is
coming along in time for Marty McFly's arrival this year.

The United States needs an updated weather model, proper funding, modern equipment, and proper staffing. Maybe if the weather could be used as a weapon of war there would be more funding available, but right now it is a low priority on the national budget. Yet, it shouldn't be. The National Weather Service does more than tell us whether to take an umbrella or sunscreen. Poor and improper weather forecasts, whether negative or positive, affects millions of American and billions of dollars worth of industry and infrastructure. Everything from mass transit to national trucking industries are affected by the weather. 

So yes, this time the weathermen got it wrong, but that doesn't mean they are always wrong or that they are criminals. Human beings have a tendency to want to kill the messenger, but the general public needs to reevaluate how we think about the weather and those who report it. With changing climates, global warming, and a myriad of other factors, the job of meteorologists gets harder and more important every year. That's why they need our support. So maybe with a bit of work, a bit more money, and a little faith, next time it will be different, (yes, there will be a next time,) because the weather can be a weapon, but not one controlled by humans. Still, it is no less dangerous. Weathermen and weather-women are the ones trying to keep us safe and prepare us for what is to come, because if we aren't prepared then that would be the real crime.

Tropes: Stuffed in the Fridge

Tropes are all around us, on TV, in books, film, and video games. They  allow us to compartmentalize concepts so that our brains don't have to waste too much processing power over-thinking certain ideas, which is both good and bad. After all, when two guys show up with bad Italian/Brooklyn accents in nice suits, our brain tells us that they are gangsters and we don't have to over think it. The authors, directors, and character actors of the world would tell us this is a good thing. After all, these two goons will probably be killed off in the next scene by our hero and the audience doesn't need twelve minutes of back story to understand that Goon #2 joined the crime family after his mother's store was tragically lost in a fire and he had nowhere to turn for money but the crime boss that ran his old neighborhood, thus embroiling him in a life of crime that has caused part of his humanity to wear away even as he still regrets the terrible things that he has had to do, and all the while all he wanted to be was a baker. (Consequently, I think I also just wrote the biography of the Cake Boss.) See, even writing all that down in a semi-sarcastic manner took up more time and attention than might really be deserving of a character that will get a total of thirty seconds screen time. Tropes allow us to enjoy a story without getting bogged down in the minutia of what we are missing. Because otherwise, you get The Song of Ice and Fire, and we all know how long it takes George R.R. Martin to write one of those books.

However, tropes aren't always great either. After all, the Italian American League might have a problem with Goon #1 and Goon #2 being typical Tony Soprano-like figures. Not all Italians are in the mafia, after all. Similarly, not all women exist just to be tragically killed and left in household appliances... What am I talking about? I'm talking about the trope called "Stuffed in the Fridge," which is when a hero's loved one, usually a wife/girlfriend is killed in a gruesome manner and then left around for the hero to find and tragically cry over. This cliche than gives the hero something fight for and becomes an easy way for the audience to compartmentalize what drives the hero to do the extreme things he is forced to do. Now, technically this trope can apply to any family member: mother, father, brother, sister, wife, pet dog Skippy, etc. However the dead character is more likely to be a woman and the hero character is more likely to be a man. If you don't believe me, check out Gail Simone's website Women in Refrigerators for a complete list of women in comics that have been killed off for no other reason than to motivate the men in their lives to do something.

This is going to take a lot of boxes of baking soda.

The trope itself comes from a now famous Green Lantern comic, where the villain, Major Force, kills Kyle Rayner's girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt, and literally stuffs her into a refrigerator so that Kyle can find her mutilated body, like some two month old pastrami left in the back of the fridge. Like I said before, tropes have their places and they aren't all bad, but there is something particularly negative about this one. First off, it is lazy writing. If you want to motivate your characters than put a little more thought into the process that, "pissed-off over dead girlfriend." Secondly, it uses women characters as nothing more than cheap props who live and die at the whim of their male counterparts. Whenever a writer needs a quick motivating factor there always seems to be some vanilla girlfriend/wife character hanging around to kill off. I mean otherwise that character would just get in the hero's way, wanting him to settle down and be domesticated and all, because everyone knows that's all women want... right? (That was sarcasm folks) Basically the trope puts the female character at the beckon call of the male hero. She's not there to be a fully formed character, but a pretty face on a photograph that is clenched angrily in the righteous fist of our burly man-hero, as he wrestles with desire for vengeance and his guilt over not being able to save his bland, pretty, vaguely characterized love interest. This is a trope and a way of thinking that is all too, unfortunately, common, especially in comic books.

Maybe that's why I am enjoying the irony of Agent Carter. (Wait, did he just switch into doing a television review?) Peggy Carter, or Captain America's girlfriend, is proving very much that she will not be so quietly stuffed into some womanly appliance. The irony of the show is that it is the big strong hero, Captain America, who is in fact dead (well she thinks so anyway,) and it's his death that is one of the driving factors in Peggy's personal crusade. In this instance the hero is gone, (he may not be stuffed in a fridge but he is in a place that's plenty cold,) and it's the "unimportant," girlfriend character that is left to do the ass-kicking. It's a parallel that was made pretty stark in the last episode, "Bridge and Tunnel," where the entire show was interspersed with snippets of the fictionalized Captain America Adventure Hour radio serial, featuring a typical damsel in distress character that only exists so that the fictionalized fictionalized Captain America can save her from those 'damn Nazis.'

Carter even gets her own, "Refrigerator" moment, when she discovers her roommate dead in bed with a bullet straight through her temple. It was a pretty textbook example of the trope, as well. The gruesome yet pointless death of a person close to the hero, meant to serve as nothing more than a motivating factor to further that hero's guilt/anger and story, except that in this instance, the hero is a woman. Unfortunately the person who was "Stuffed in the Refrigerator" was also a woman.

Feminism

I will admit that, Agent Carter, isn't perfect. After all Peggy Carter is so busy being brilliant and infallible that she has almost no flaws to speak of as she outsmarts every sexist man in her office. She is not a hero like Tony Stark, who can be arrogant, or Peter Quill, who can be kind of an idiot at times. For better or worse, because she is Marvel's first leading lady, she has to be better than human, which is both commendable and a little sad. I mean, from a 2015 perspective it is pretty easy to be on Carter's side as she is faced with a brand of 1940's sexism that is so blatant it would make J. Jonah Jameson feel ashamed. After all, we may waggle our finger when Carter's boss makes her do filing work or get everyone a cup of coffee, but we still don't bat an eyelash when Black Widow is put in a skintight cat suit. Yet, it is hard for me to be too harsh on the morals of Agent Carter. After all, they may not be perfect but at least she isn't occupying space behind the milk carton in the back of Captain America's ice-box.

The Dream Walker

It's been a long week back at work and I am admittedly out of my usual clever and witty ideas for writing. So for your enjoyment I thought it would be fun if I reproduce a supplemental story I wrote for a role-playing campaign I am running for my friends. Enjoy.

Dreams are born,
Dreams are bred,
Dreams are thorns,
Dreams to dread.

The scent is like fire in my nostrils. It is not smell in the sense most mortals or men understand it, but something deeper. It comes to me through the world of dreams, the world of my reality. The place where the heavens bear themselves open to me, unbound by the mortal flesh, where I rule, where I walk, and where I hunt.

The trail is fresh and I have been following it for leagues now. It had eluded me for a time, but there is no limit to the dream. Distance is but an insignificant speck among the vastness of eternity to one such as me, but even so, I knew I was now close, in both body and soul. The cursed one believes himself safe from me, shielded by his monstrous master and her deceptions. No one is safe, for I hunt on the most dangerous field of all.

Only one of ten men pay me any mind as I pass through the massive stone gates and with a touch they soon forget what they saw. They always forget, or they die screaming in their sleep. Either way they do not trouble me further.

Most people abhor my methods, but they have not seen what I have seen. My own kin and kind banished me from their borders for the words I spoke, the actions I have taken, the distances I am willing to go. Evil is a word bound in the dreamless world, just a bit of wind carried by the voice of a mortal. It has no distinction in my holy mission. There is only one who guides my actions and she has granted me this quest. There is a beast that will consume us all and it is my sacred duty to put it to rest. I do not have the luxury of bending to the moral judgments of the lesser.

This dreamless world is a strange place to me, full of anger and hatred, men in suits of metal, and men in suits of delusion. I walk by them all, a ghost on the wind, a shade at the tip of remembering and dismissed the next moment as if never existing. Only did I find one who could stand up to me.

He tried to lock me away in a collar of metal and mechanics. I consumed his dreams, I stole his nightmares, and I devoured his soul. Now he lives in me, a small part, but enough. I added him to my collection of voices and now he whispers to me, telling me things I would not normally know, a useful voice in this world devoid of dreams and magic. Strange words like “steam,” “shroud,” and “Ministry” swim up through the void to fill my mind.

The forest around me is sweet. It smells clean and pure with a hint of the sea. I allow myself to drift from the path, unmissed by the steady river of travelers who move down the road around me. I am a whisper, blown away by the breeze. I put my hand to the tree and feel its life below my skin. A tree does not dream as a mortal, but it dreams its own dreams, it exists in both the dreamless world and on the great plains of vision and mind. It is a comforting anchor, a creature not unlike myself, who walks in both. I am reminded of home and its tall wide trees, a place of paradise where the dream and the dreamer could truly be one.

Mortals and men are blind to what lays around them, consumed by their dreamless worries. They cannot walk in both as I can. When I gaze upon them, mulling past me on the road, like ants marching in their lines, I see what they cannot. I see their flesh and their faces with my own mortal sense, but I also see their spirits, the worlds that spin around them like the hands on a clock, worlds they can only glimpse as they lay in their beds.

An ugly farmer, with a boil for a noise, swims in a world where he is beautiful. A small boy of no more than nine summers walks in a suit of armor, the small dog beside him a mighty warsteed. Another woman, fat with child, has dreams of her son. In them she sees him growing up strong and doing great deeds, while the child in her womb dreams only of warmth and comfort and a soft voice without face. Behind her a man, her husband, with a straight spine, but a crooked bent in his soul dreams of her death. His mind is full of women, wine, coin, and the one murder he has already committed. It was self-defense, but he liked the taste of it on his lips and hands. He craves more and desires less family.

I peer harder and see their future. I see her broken body, and the cry of an abandoned child. I see the sorrow that will consume them all and for a moment I want to reach out and stop it. It would only take a touch and the man would fall screaming, his blood thirst cut short before the dream can come to pass, and the road before them all would be sweeter for it. Yet I stop myself. It is not my mission, not my place. The lives of mortals are their own in this dreamless world. So I let them pass down the road, the path to their futures set.

Uncertainty is not the right word, but it is hard for me to express emotions to those that do not fully experience the places I walk. Words are dry husks of something more. They are dead leaves carried about by whim, giving only the most passing impression of the true world. Still, I feel the need to reaffirm my quest, to reach out and find the nightmare I have been chasing.

The beast is so close I can almost taste his foulness. It repulses me to touch him, but I must. I calm myself, reaching both inward and outward. I cannot falter in my holy mission, not when I am so close to witnessing its completion. Soon I will face my fate as all must.

The first mind I find is basic yet brave and loyal. I know the sensation well: a wolf, still a babe as it bends its will to his master. The master is also a youth, but just as brave and of keen mind. There is barely a hair on his chin, but he swirls with secrets and half-glimpsed futures. There are paths to destiny on his road, if he does not fall among the brambles.

Another mind reaches out to grab me, like some giant fish jumping at a fly skittering across the stream. It is not a conscious effort on the part of this man, only a reflex he has long forgotten. He is a man of my own kin, the people of the forest, and in a way we are all bound together in dream and spirit. He is old, much older than the last, and his mind is littered with squalor. There are dark corners to his nightmares, those he has suffered, and even worse those he has inflicted upon himself. He has a buried heart, but even among the dark swamp of his mind it still beats, softly, but steadily.

The next man’s mind is like a fire. It burns to touch, yet I cannot seem to pull myself away, for there is warmth there. Words like responsibility and strength echo the halls of the castles he builds in his dreams. He is resolute in his convictions, straight as elven steel and twice as strong. Yet, it is a sword that cuts both ways in both victory and failure. It is a mind that can break bonds or break bones.

Simple, is not the proper word to use for the next mind I find. He is far from simple. Perhaps, uncomplicated or earnest are more precise. There is a stoicism there that lights every dream, and even his wrath and anger feel somehow clean. It is rare to find a creature without duplicity or malice, but even rarer to find one who has suffered as he has. I watch his pain among a cauldron of broiling memories, and yet they never bubble over.

These are the allies of the demon I seek, the men I must surely cut through to reach him, like a surgeon cutting away skin and bone to reach an infected organ. They are bound to the beast as he is bound to them in strange links of fidelity and shared experience. They are killers all, but not wicked. They are both good and bad, but I am beyond such distinctions. They protect the greatest evil, the beast which will lay siege to the lands. Their lack of foreknowledge is no excuse, in fact it will make them all the more dangerous.

Finally, my dreams reach out and I find the great evil. It is so close that I almost feel myself wither before it, but I cannot yield, nor do I dare touch its mind fully. I will not alert it to what is to come. The creature's mind is a vault, sealed off with locks of twisted magic and utter vileness. To even approach the door would be to close it forever and lose my chance to end the coming horror before it is unleashed.

I stand up, but I have no memory of ever sitting. The body has a mind of its own, and it is not a mind even I can control. Still my legs are sore and the dreamless part of me wonders if I have been still for moments or moon-turns. It is always such when I go seeking in the plains of dreams and visions. Yet the power that my great goddess has granted me is not without limits, for I only know the generalities of my target’s location. I will need to hunt him in more mundane ways if I truly wish to succeed, but he will not be able to conceal himself forever.

Finally, I turn my weary legs back toward the road. The voice of the man, who tried to bind me in steam and steel, floats up to me unbidden. I gaze upon the magnificent walls and soaring towers of the land that lay in the distance, the land upon which my feet now points. Words like “Long Neck” and “Kitehawk” swirl like vague memories in my mind. I pull them to me, learning all I can from the soul that now lives inside me. I will need this knowledge in the time ahead.

A small part of me regrets the things I may have to do, but I salve such wounds with the reminder that a few deaths are a small sacrifice to stop the coming horror, where corpses will be heaped upon themselves like logs on a fire. I look again to the city in the distance and I wonder if anyone there senses what is among them. I doubt it. To me the beast stands naked in all his true horror, but to them he is nothing more than a stranger.

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.