Internet Commenters Demand Legislation Against Complex Sentences

September 15, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Meta, Misc. Media Tags: entertainment, Entertainment Weekly, humor, Internet, Lisa Schwarzbaum, movies, reviews, The Master, writing 2 Comments

Hello, readers. How are you? I am hunky-dory.

Today was a good day. I got to rest. I ate good food. I watched some DVD extras. One was a documentary. It was about A Night to Remember. That movie was about the Titanic. The documentary was not fun. The photos were okay. The narrators were all very old men. They talked a lot. Sometimes they talked for many minutes. They talked very slowly. Sometimes there were very long pauses. Then they talked some more. They were nice men. I felt like a great-grandchild. I did not see the last fifteen minutes. I stopped the DVD early. I was sleepy.

Then I got on the Internet. It has interesting pages. I wanted to read a movie review. It was about The Master. I have mentioned that movie before. Joaquin Phoenix is angry and confused. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is charming and maybe evil. Amy Adams is happy and unhappy. I may go see it. I have not decided. My city is not showing it yet. Maybe they will show it in October.

The review was written by a movie critic. Her name is Lisa Schwarzbaum. Her boss is named Entertainment Weekly. She has worked there for decades. She likes itty-bitty foreign films. She also likes movies about sexiness. Sometimes I do not agree with her. Sometimes I do. She uses big words and long sentences. I can usually understand her. Sometimes I also use big words and long sentences. Sometimes she mentions really weird movies. That does not bother me. Sometimes I also talk about weird things.

Ms. Schwarzbaum liked The Master very much. She gave it an A. Her review had big words and long sentences. This was the last sentence of her review:

The cubism of the concluding third of the picture allows a disoriented viewer to consider this singular movie not only as a character portrait, but also as a photographic travel diary, from the days before Instagram, by an important artist following the itinerary of Americans seeking salvation and prosperity when an exterior world war was over but interior psychological battles raged.

The word “cubism” threw me for a moment. I looked it up on the Internet. It has dictionaries and WikiPedia in it. I found Cubism in there. Now I understand the whole sentence. “Cubism” is a good word for a Paul Thomas Anderson film.

Some readers did not like her review. They really did not like her last sentence. A few readers said mean things about her. One reader said this direct quote:

…it is exhausting – why does she have to create super complex sentences with thesaurus worthy big words – it doesn’t impress me, it belittles me. and that last sentence, WTF? I’d hate to be stuck next to a cooler with her, attempting to carry on a conversation about the latest small town drama. Know your audience.

Her audience does not like long sentences or big words. “Entertainment” is a big word. Lisa’s words are mostly shorter than “entertainment”. They should rename the magazine Things Weekly. The audience would like them better.

Another unhappy reader said this direct quote:

“the cubism of the final third……….” this sentence is not only THE most pretentious piece of critical crap I’ve ever read, it also convinced me not see the probable load of “important” blarney that inspired it.

The Internet has many pretentious pieces of critical crap. I have read some of them. I usually do not rank them. Some reviews can be pretentious and not crap. Sometimes I like pretentiousness. That word is even bigger than “entertainment”. It does not scare me. I used to be an English major. Other English majors scared me. One time our class talked about “Murders in the Rue Morgue”. That is an old story about gross murders. One victim was stuffed inside a chimney. One classmate had a theory about the scene’s meaning. He used the phrase “return-to-the-womb motif”. I was very scared. I wanted to leave class immediately. Now I am older. I have conquered that fear.

Ms. Schwarzbaum probably writes how she wants. Maybe she even thinks that way. Her writing made other people sad. She should rewrite her last sentence. It should be many sentences. The sad people might like the new sentences. They could look like this:

The movie shows you things about each character. Some of those things are very different from each other. It takes place in the past. The old places tell one long story. It is better than random photos. The story comes after a war. People were not happy yet. They had a lot to think about. They tried to make money and be saved. The movie is very good. The director is neat.

Shorter sentences can be happier sentences. The biggest word in those sentences is “different”. That word should not be scary. I think Liza Schwarzbaum is a different writer. Maybe I am a very different reader.

Well, got to go. Have a nice day. I will see you all tomorrow. My next entry may have commas and more clauses in it because of pretentiousness. I hope you will not hate my important blarney. I promise I will not read it aloud to you with extra long pauses. That might make it worse.

The Fall 2012 TV Season: Which New Shows Can I Kill Just By Watching Them?

September 15, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: Arrow, cancellation predictions, Elementary, entertainment, fall season, Go On, Last Resort, Matthew Perry, new shows, one-season wonders, Revolution, television, tv, TV cancellations 6 Comments

The Flash. Brimstone. Clerks. Firefly. Threshold. FlashForward. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Persons Unknown. Outsourced. Terra Nova. I watched these shows, I grew attached to them for various reasons, and they each lasted one season or less. This has happened to me often enough that I refuse to write it off as coincidence or horrible taste.

I am not simply unlucky in leisure. I am more than a mere jinx. I am the destroyer of new network programming.

Even as far back as my childhood, incidents occurred. Does anyone else remember the McLean Stevenson vehicle Condo? Its truncated run wasn’t another example of his own curse in action. That was me. When Isaac Asimov co-created Probe, I was there to ensure he failed in at least one creative venture in his entire life. What had two thumbs and watched the American version of Cracker? This young adult viewer, that’s who.

By comparison, consider a few of the shows I didn’t watch: Lost, Heroes, The Big Bang Theory, 99% of all reality shows — all of which I didn’t follow, all of which may have lived longer than they should have. Sometimes I’ve even saved the life of a show by walking away from it. I gave up on Grimm after several episodes about a cop with a greater destiny who insisted on remaining a boring old cop; lo and behold, without me around, the cop and his world of were-critters live on. If a bad time slot and the CBS site’s horrid streaming browser hadn’t caused me to lose track of Person of Interest halfway through its decently rated first season, surely something awful would’ve happened to it or its cast, guaranteed.

(Never mind examples that dispute my hypothesis. Once Upon a Time was either a magical fluke, or will nosedive in quality this season and join the small Two-Season Miracle Club alongside Pushing Daisies, Dollhouse, and Who Wants to Be a Super-Hero? You heard it here first.)

The 2012 fall season is now upon us, and I’m about to kill again. I can’t help myself. Sometimes I just like watching new things on TV. At the moment I’m considering trying several different shows this season. I apologize in advance for the livelihoods I may ruin and any budding fandom that will be crushed because of my attempted participation.

The death march consists of the following shows. I may watch a few others if I hear great things, or if I’m in need of more writing fodder.

Last Resort — A heavily armed submarine crew disobeys a direct order to begin nuking things and finds itself a Gilligan’s Lost Island on which to stand its ground, declare nationhood, and get to the bottom of a vast government conspiracy back in their former homeland. The unusual Tom Clancy-esque premise is bolstered with a cast that blatantly delves into the my mental catalog — Homicide‘s Andre Braugher, Dollhouse‘s Dichen Lachman, Robert Patrick the original T-1000, Persons Unknown‘s Daisy Betts, Karen from Falling Skies, and TV’s Scott Speedman (whom I’ve watched in almost nothing, but he seems to get around anyway). I’ve not seen any other shows from creator Shawn Ryan (The Shield, The Unit), but the buzz from them alone sounded out-of-the-ordinary, and he receives bonus points for having worked on one season of Angel.

Revolution — To be honest, I hate the premise of the show. Earth has all its electricity permanently turned off after a mysterious event, of the kind that made such winners out of FlashForward and The Event. Fifteen years later, the show picks up with the remnants of humanity making the best of a situation where apparently all generators and Duracells were instantly ruined and never reinvented. I’ve never been a fan of shows with primitive settings. I’m hardly a JJ Abrams completist. The cast is largely unknown to me, except for the never-boring Giancarlo Esposito and Elizabeth Mitchell from the new V…but part of me wants to know how they plan to patch this together into a viable series. Also, the pilot was directed by Iron Man auteur Jon Favreau. Whatever happens, at least that episode shouldn’t be boring.

Arrow — May Justin Hartley forgive me, but as a comic book reader, I feel it my duty to try at least one episode of the colorless Green Arrow series, even though it more closely resembles the morose Mike Grell post-Crisis reboot of the late ’80s than the dashing Smallville bright spot. When it comes to comic adaptations that the general public may not get, it can’t possibly be as bland as Sable, which I also helped bury in my youth after a handful of airings. Sorry, First Comics. My fault.

Elementary — My wife and I still have one more episode of Sherlock to watch before we’re caught up with the rest of the world. After that finale undoubtedly blows us away, maybe then I’ll be in a position to ask what in the world CBS is thinking. I thought the preview I posted a while back had potential. Then I began watching Sherlock. Now? I really hope Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu, and the Star Trek: Voyager writer who developed this version know what they’re doing.

Go On — I’ve already seen the first two episodes. So far, it hasn’t been canceled yet. Knock on wood, I suppose. In his role as a sportscaster grieving for the loss of his wife who died while texting and driving, Matthew Perry balances snark and pathos better here than he did on Studio 60, where he was still trying to shake the “Chandler” label. Enough time has passed, and enough hair has grayed, that I didn’t think of Friends once during either episode. The determinedly quirky cast includes Tony Award Winner Laura Benanti, character actor Bill Cobbs, Sam Witwicky’s mom, the new Sulu, the Chris that Everybody Hates, friendly traitorous Skye from Terra Nova, and some comedians I don’t know, none of which I loathe yet. I’m a big fan of humor/heart fusions, and Go On seems to be working well toward finding the right mix. The “March Sadness” scene is what first drew me in, but the interplay between the variegated members of the support group will make or break it in the long run. I could see it happening…alas, if only I weren’t there to see it.

Wave goodbye to all the nice, well-meaning shows, folks. Perhaps I could save careers and lives by sticking to DVD sets or TV Land reruns, but I refuse to live with my head in the sand, or to turn on TV Land if I can help it.

Here’s hoping more than one of them isn’t terrible, and that at least a few of the Nielsen commoners can finally agree with me on anything. The power to stop my TV show killspree is ultimately in their hands.

2012 Road Trip Photos #14: Morning in the Garden of the Gods

September 13, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Travel Tags: Colorado, Colorado Springs, Garden of the Gods, geology, landscapes, nature, photos, road trip, Rocky Mountains, tourism, travel, vacation 1 Comment

With sweet sorrow we parted with Denver on Day Five and headed south toward Colorado Springs. The tragic wildfires had been extinguished barely a week before our arrival, but we steered clear of Waldo Canyon and other affected areas. Those affected didn’t need voyeuristic out-of-towners traipsing around for scrapbook subjects.

Our first major stop was a park west of the city called the Garden of the Gods, whose claim to fame is a collection of geological oddities that don’t remotely blend in with their surroundings. Once you reach the Visitors Center, where I stood while snapping this, you can just tell which part of the landscape is the actual Garden.

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Unrevised Fragments of a Day Lived on Four Hours’ Sleep

September 13, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Comics/Lit, Mundane Tags: entertainment, Journey into Mystery, lists, mario games, musings, news, Pat Robertson, sleep, Super Paper Mario 2 Comments

1. Last night’s entry took twice as long to construct in print as it should have, even though it was two-thirds written in my head before I sat down. I hate when that happens, even if I’m satisfied with the results.

2. When I have to be at work supernaturally early to compensate for a late afternoon appointment, next time I need to remember to go to bed earlier. Such responsibilities means less time for evening writing, not more.

3. My average for the last decade-plus has been six hours’ sleep per night. I don’t recommend it, but my body complains and groans in those rare evenings when I try to exceed seven.

4. I failed to mention 9/11/2012 also marked my twelfth anniversary with my current employer. I’m certain I’ll never forget my start date or my first anniversary there.

5. The only thing I like about driving to work supernaturally early is the sparse traffic. All straightaways and no logjams make me a happy driver.

6. Jerk turkey is no substitute for jerk chicken. For want of mayo, my food-truck lunch was less remarkable than I’d hoped.

7. My son does not approve of dental hygienists who stab at his gums without mercy.

8. Part of tonight was spent on a surprise visit to the vet. Our dog Lucky tore a rear paw-nail and left cute but revolting bloody prints in several different places. His poor, injured paw is now swathed in a blue bandage that covered an inner gauze bandage. His blue bandage remains firmly in place at the moment, but somehow he yanked the gauze out from inside it with his teeth, like a little Dog Henning.

9. My son and I aren’t finding Super Paper Mario nearly as charming as Paper Mario: the Thousand-Year Door was, though the former’s version of the Pit of 100 Trials was a more refreshing challenge. After completing all 100 levels, your prize is a magical sprite that allows Mario and friends to run faster than normal. In all other Mario games we’ve played, super-speed was one of Mario’s first abilities he has in the game, not one of the last.

10. I’m sad that Kieron Gillen’s epic Journey into Mystery run will be concluding, but the final arc/crossover “Everything Burns” is full of action, shocking surprises, and characters making disappointing decisions that I wish they’d reconsider, even though they’re thoroughly logical given the course of events. I’m already preparing for the days when I’ll have to live with fewer misadventures of Kid Loki, his frenemy Leah, his bird-half Ikol, and his lovable homicidal fire-breathing hound Thori, but the team is certainly going down in flames in style. It’s scary seeing Kid Loki slowly beginning to grow back into his previous, less awkward, far less innocent self.

11. So far Harbinger remains the best of the Valiant relaunch, though the sanguinary madhouse that is Bloodshot isn’t too distant a runner-up.

12. The only news story that caught my attention today was about Pat Robertson cracking anti-Muslim jokes in much the same way that my third-grade classmates would crack “Polack” jokes back in 1980. Our family doesn’t watch The 700 Club, but we attended an episode taping during our 2008 road trip to Virginia Beach. The show’s host Terry Meeuwsen was gracious and amiable, but Robertson kept his distance from the studio audience, all eight of us. It’s sad to see the distancing continue.

13. Even when I’m only half-conscious, apparently I can still write lists.

Waiting Patiently for My Annual Day of Stillness to End

September 12, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Meta, Mundane Tags: 9-11, events, Internet, memories, musings 2 Comments

My mom’s generation had “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” My generation has “Where were you on 9/11?” Since this blog wasn’t around last year at this time, restating my own anecdote for the record — probably just this once — might be prudent.

That day, I was at work sorting daily reports when someone cranked the volume on our quiet morning up to 12. Three hours into my shift, we were all panic and no work. This, plus the fact that I work in one of the tallest buildings in the city, was reason enough for our superiors to let us take the rest of the day off, just in case every American building over ten stories tall had been targeted for destruction. Fortunately nothing happened during the next hour that I spent gridlocked in the employee parking lot, waiting my turn to head for the hills.

Once I escaped and finally arrived home, I turned on the TV news, of which I normally watch an average of thirty minutes per year. With the TV feed kept on in the background to provide a steady stream of information, misinformation, endless speculation, live interviews with the shell-shocked, and endless repeats of all of the above, I served in the best way I possibly could at that particular moment: I spent the entire rest of the day and all of the evening online, talking to anyone who needed someone to talk to, sifting for incoming details faster than TV reporters could communicate them, and monitoring the myriad reactions at the geek message board for which I was a volunteer moderator at the time. As crowd-control jobs go, Internet moderating is less about physical stress, far more about emotional stress during times of unprecedented national trauma. Whether the members needed comfort, sought to make sense of anything, wanted to share updates as they occurred, felt like practicing their rhetorical bluster, or thought this was the perfect time for inappropriate jokes (way, way too soon — thank you so much, insensitive cool-kids), I stuck around to do my part as needed, however minuscule it was in the Grand Scheme.

While others suffered, while still others rose above to do their part in response, I was at home joining and sorting the chorus of those whose first response was to register their horror on the Internet for all to see. Hours passed while I kept waiting for a few moments of calm that might allow me to excuse myself from the fray, long after fatigue set in. The existing records confirm I was online till well after midnight. I broke a personal record for simultaneous IM chats, having carried on six such conversations at one time while still tending to the board. That was my day. Poor, put-upon, still-breathing me, having to type and type and type for the sake of others while buildings crumbled and societal paradigms quaked.

Every 9/11 since then, I’ve spent doing the opposite of that.

Every 9/11, I keep my online communications to a bare minimum. No grand pronouncements, no attempts at punditry, no prolonged conversations, no PhotoShop tributes, and very few laughs. A combination of throwing myself into my work, spending time with loved ones, consoling my coworker whose birthday is 9/11, and offline prayer is usually activity enough to hold me until the clock rolls over to 9/12, the anniversary of not much in particular.

It’s my way of deferring to those who treat the day with utmost, outspoken reverence. It’s my way of avoiding those who tire of the reverence and insist on bleating about their impatience. It’s my way of observing the truth to be had in Psalm 37:7.

It’s also my way of commemorating the Way Things Used to Be, noting The Way Things Have Been Ever Since, and dearly wishing they were the opposite of that.

Missing Blog Post Vexes, Frustrates, Makes Eventual “Complete Works” Anthology Impossible

September 11, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Meta, Mundane Tags: blog, blogging, deleted posts, missing posts, musings, regrets, unsolved mysteries, writing 3 Comments

I’m fanatical when it comes to keeping my littler possessions organized so I lose as few things as possible. I’m well aware my memory and concentration skills aren’t improving with age, despite how much I wish the opposite were true. If everything I own is filed and placed according to a system, then — theoretically — when those memory lapses happen, my system should direct me to where the lost object should be, if I’m on top of my filing.

I have one assigned pile for bills; one stack of Post-It notes scribbled with either to-do-lists or writing ideas that occurred to me at work; one area under the monitor for filled pocket notebooks; one assigned organizer slot for the pens I prefer to carry with me; a separate dumping drawer for pens that don’t fit the criteria; and one assigned organizer slot for my wallet, keys, and absolutely nothing else (any items carelessly dumped in this slot are immediately removed and strewn on the counter). My computer directories are set up in similar fashion, even if they make sense to no one else except me. When I want to locate something, the card catalog that I’ve turned our house into can simplify the process and lighten the mental burden.

When I lose things anyway, I try to remain calm. Misfiling can occur, regardless of safeguards. Tantrums will not summon lost items from their hiding places or their kidnapper hideouts, whichever the case may be. Most lost objects turn up sooner or later. Sooner would be better, but isn’t always possible. To a certain extent, computers are usually easier to manage than physical reality because they’re equipped with search functions that can reveal files that have been misplaced or saved in the wrong folder. I’ve spent the past few days looking around the room for a Search field in which I can type “Lowes receipt from last week” in hopes of locating a little slip of paper that I know is here somewhere, which I need to return some unnecessary, overpriced grass seed. No such luck — whatever construction company cobbled together this non-futuristic hovel of ours totally failed to install a search engine for the occasion. A wider, more thorough manual search may be necessary, but may be fruitless and really boring to conduct, so I’m continuing to procrastinate the manhunt for now.

Unfortunately some losses are beyond our control and must be accepted, whether memory is at fault or not. I’m trying very hard to focus on that right now because I was reviewing my past blog entries the other day, all the way back to Day One when it was just me and my muse hanging out together, and discovered that one of my early posts has vanished. I only recall deleting a post once (#46, according to my stats page), but I immediately reposted it a few minutes later once the issue that was aggravating me had been resolved. This, on the other hand, was not an intentional deletion on my part. This was either random computer error or an evil act of sabotage. I’m guessing the former, but I have no evidence to disprove the latter, except for the complete lack of tampering with anything else (which is circumstantial at best, and still leaves the door open for far-fetched conspiracy theories).

Through the miracle of Google Cache, I was able to retrieve a fraction of the purloined post:

Avengermania Fuels Nostalgia for Early Whedon Works Like “Cabin in the Woods”
Posted on May 6, 2012

After waiting an eternity’s worth of hours after opening day, I finally saw Marvel’s Joss Whedon’s The Avengers. At last I can rejoin the Internet, already in progress. By and large, I was a happy camper through most of the

That’s all that remains of the body of the victim. I have no idea when or how its silent elimination occurred.

Through additional searches I can tell the original tags included “movies”, “The Avengers”, “Avengermania”, “Joss Whedon”, “ancient gods”, and “Primeval Part 2”. From memory I can testify that it was a spoiler-filled, mixed-feelings piece about my issues with Cabin in the Woods, including a special appearance by Bat-Hulk to serve as a spoiler buffer. Thus does the forensic trail abruptly end.

I’m 75% certain it wasn’t the greatest post I’ve ever written. It was born in the very, very early days of MCC, when my daily traffic was still in the single digits, therefore likely to have drawn no ire or aroused any attention from other humans. Nevertheless, its absence is driving me batty. A few jokes I barely remember have all gone to waste, and I may never know why. Random computer error seems a more likely culprit than malice aforethought, but it’s no more comforting, and doesn’t even afford me the option to plot revenge against something or someone (or at least daydream about said plotting). Then again, I’m not sure the annoyance of such a trivial loss would fade any faster if I had a confirmed target to blame, so perhaps it’s just as well.

I’ll let it go in another day or so, but for now it remains a disappointment. If I never find that Lowes receipt, at least that unwanted grass seed can be returned for store credit. If I never find the rest of that lost Cabin review, my only recourse for recovery would be to watch the movie a second time and recreate it from scratch.

I’ve managed to retain the happy memory of Fran Kranz in action, but I’d rather let the rest go, including my own lost efforts.

2012 Road Trip Photos #13: Denver’s 16th Street Mall, with Good Money After Bad

September 9, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Travel Tags: 16th Street Mall, art, Colorado, colorado convention center, Denver, denver photos, Federal Reserve Bank, federal reserve bank of kansas city, money, photos, road trip, tourism, travel, vacation 6 Comments

After our extended lunch at the Buckhorn Exchange, we spent the late afternoon of Day Four in and around the 16th Street Mall, a 1¼-mile-long stretch of street tiled over for use exclusively by pedestrians and free shuttle buses. This sounded like a novel concept to us, but in person it wasn’t too different from the “lifestyle centers” (the new euphemism for outdoor malls) that we have back home in Indy, despite being four times their size. The constant (and free!) shuttle buses were a wonderful touch, though.

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“Very Inspiring Blogging Award” Nominee Begins Saving Up for Full-Page “Variety” Ad

September 9, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Meta Tags: awards, blog awards, blogging, entertainment, Very Inspiring Blogger Award, writing 22 Comments

Very Inspiring Blogger Award After a most unusual Labor Day Weekend enlivened by the responses to “The Day an Empty Chair Ruled the Internet“, I was humbled and flattered to be notified and nominated for a “Very Inspiring Blogging Award”. I’ve see similar awards passed around other blogs in the vicinity, but this is the first time one was pinned in my general direction. Suffice it to say, when someone presents me with the word “award” in it, I’m nothing less than honored and grateful.

Out of curiosity as a relative newcomer to the WordPress community, I tried researching the history of this blessed community achievement, but the roads were many and tangled. Who created this prize? Who was the original governing body or organization? Is there a Hall of Fame dedicated to past nominees and winners? Alas, the trail that I followed only went as far back as January 2012 before dead-ending, despite my resorting to viewing Google cached pages to connect a few broken links. Along the path I encountered many an exercise guru, photographer par excellence, fellow Christian, wizened sage, creative powerhouse, master chef, published author, and talking cat. I consider myself privileged to share the same datastream as these peers, predecessors, professionals, authority figures, and cats with an above-average command of spelling and grammar.

The official rules for accepting this nomination showed minute variations, as filtered through each respective nominee’s writing style, but always numbered at least four:

1. Display the nomination logo on your blog. See above.

2. Link back to the person who nominated you. Special, humbled thanks to Enchanted Seashells for the unexpected nod. To acknowledge this honor tonight, my planned tribute to Dial H for Hero has been postponed until a later date.

3. State 7 things about yourself. For those keeping score at home, consider these Bullet Points #101-107:

101. My best possible chance to participate in the National Spelling Bee was ruined by the word “fulsome”.
102. The first ‘D’ I ever received on a report card was in tenth-grade Debate class.
103. Despite dozens of recommendations from very well-meaning friends, I’ve never seen Fireproof because I’m afraid of how I’ll react.
104. I know all the words to “Bring the Noise”, but I prefer Public Enemy’s original to the later jam version with Anthrax.
105. The only soap opera I can say I ever really followed was Knots Landing.
106. I’m now collecting twice as many Image Comics series as I am DC Comics series.
107. One of my ears used to be pierced.

4. Nominate 15 other blogs for the Very Inspiring Blogging Award. And here we go:

1. Bucket List Publications, which I’m pretty sure is already deservedly festooned with awards a-plenty, but consider the fearless Mrs. Carter hereby named nonetheless.

2. Cristian Mihai; same deal here in terms of extra-awardedness. I first began following him early into my new-blog acclimatization period and found plenty of useful takeaways form his regular dollops of writing advice, even though he’s almost half my age and I don’t have an actual book fully planned in my head just yet.

3. Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth.
Recommended reading: “In Defence of Libraries”

4. One Grain Amongst the Storm
Recommended reading: “The Last Salute”

5. Canadian Hiking Photography
Recommended viewing: All of it. Grab a drink, give those sumptuous pages time to load, then marvel at the results.

6. Clotilda Jamcracker
Recommended reading: “Bring out your dead”

7. Leanne Cole’s Photography Field Trips
Recommended montage: “Architecture in the Picture”

8. Ms. Elena Levon Traveling. Great motto: “I choose to collect memories instead of things.” This is almost exactly why our family buys far fewer souvenirs than the average tourists, and why I’ve written online about our road trips every year.
Recommended reading: “Letter To My Father”

9. retireediary
Recommended photo spread: “The Rainbow of Flowers in Biei and Furano, Japan”

10. Simply Sage
Recommended viewing: “Weekly Photo Challenge: Growth”

11. Together
Recommended reading: “Murder in the First” (It helps if, like me, you watched the movie years ago and can still remember the impression it left on you.)

12. Honie Briggs
Recommended reading: “Eighteen Hours in a Red Cross Shelter”

13. The Smile Scavenger
Recommended reading: “‘Wow, That’s a Big Jump!’: a Fool’s Guide to Making Drastic Career Changes“.

14. LIFE is unwritten
Recommended reading: “How to Change the World Without Really Trying”

15. Iconically Rare
Recommended reading: “Releasing Your Inner Superhero — Iconic Exemplars”

As always, thanks very much for reading. Emphatic thanks once again to Enchanted Seashells for the nomination. For those of you still along for the ride, I hope at least one future post here will be worth your time.

Good night to one and all, stay well, drive safely, may God bless you, keep reaching for the stars, and don’t forget to tip your valet. That goes double for you talking cats, who really shouldn’t be driving anyway.

Using Time Loops to Dream-Cast the “Miss Peregrine” Movie

September 8, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Misc. Media Tags: books, casting game, characters, entertainment, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, peculiars, Ransom Riggs Leave a comment

“Mmmm, box office receipts.”

I usually avoid reading recommendations from coworkers because few among them share my tastes. (Twilight? Not really aimed at me. The Shack? ) Not only did I recently make an exception, I’m glad I did so, when I was allowed to borrow a copy of Ransom Riggs’ first novel, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. I’d read a review of it a while back in Entertainment Weekly that stuck in my head because of the unusual creative conceit behind it: Riggs amassed numerous bizarre, disturbing, or just plain head-scratching yesteryear photos of haunting-looking children and developed a narrative to string them together. Granted, anyone with bad vacation photos could muster at least a short story out of their own useless outtakes, but the photos in question elevate the project several levels above that.

On an overly reductive level, it’s a WWII-set X-Men vs. Groundhog Day. Jacob Portman is a present-day 16-year-old misfit who finagles his way to an obscure island near Wales to investigate his sketchy family history after his grandfather dies under violent circumstances. A trail of mystery and oddities leads Jacob into a place outside of time where a most unusual headmistress presides over a coterie of kids with impossible powers and features, here called “peculiars” instead of “mutants” — living in secret inside an endlessly repeating day for their own protection. There are super-powers, magical feats, disgusting things, poetic moments, terrifying evils, an open ending that begs for further journeys, and that mad, mad picture collection. I was left satisfied and ready for more.

According to the author’s official website, as of February 2012 the book has been optioned for big-screen adaptation, with big names attached such as director Tim Burton and screenwriter Jane Goldman, between whom I can easily see this being renamed Big Fish: First Class.

Please note the Courtesy Spoiler Alert at this point, where I’m about to delve a little further into character specifics. If this is still on your reading pile, now’s the time for a graceful exit, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

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2012 Road Trip Photos #12: An Hour Inside the Denver Art Museum, Part 2 of 2

September 6, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Travel Tags: art, Colorado, Denver, Denver Art Museum, denver photos, Japan, Japanese art, photos, Redzilla, road trip, samurai armor, tourism, travel, vacation 2 Comments

The other half of our brief visit to the Denver Art Museum was largely spent in the Japan portion of their Asian section, my son’s exhibit of choice. We knew this without even having to ask. He dreams of going to Japan someday so he can confirm in person what he already tells us every other day, that everything they do or have is better than anything we do or have. The “grass is always greener on the other side” argument is useless against him. They probably have an appropriate metaphor that tops that one, too.

My favorite of the collection: a sculpture so intricate, it must have taken the carver’s entire lifetime and/or driven him mad.

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How Not to Drop Out of College Twice

September 6, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Mundane Tags: advice, cautionary tales, college, dropout, memories, musings, regrets, school, university 13 Comments

Like anyone with a working Internet connection, from time to time I find myself completing online surveys about various companies or products, whether for fun, for freebies, or in hopes that the survey will include an essay question that you can use as a soapbox to unleash a thousand-word tirade about the last time their services ticked you off and ruined your day. “That’ll show ’em!” you think to yourself as your carefully crafted vitriol is forwarded to the survey company and assimilated into the results database containing hundreds of thousands of other surveys, someday to be skimmed by a distracted HR rep who might raise an eyebrow at your poison-pen screed, if you’re lucky.

Every such survey has the obligatory section whose questions are designed for demographic pigeonholing of your results. I don’t mind revealing my ever-advancing age, blissful marital status, or complete lack of Hispanic bloodline. My least favorite question is always, “What is the highest level of education you have completed?” It sounds simple and uncomplicated, especially if you earned a degree. Sometimes I wonder if those who attended graduate school and/or who hold multiple degrees receive a little bonus from the survey company in return, to thank them for bolstering the results with certified demographic classiness.

Mine is the humble ignominy that requires me to check “Some college”. It’s always a multiple-choice question, never a write-in field, so you can’t fall back on the standard glib answers such as “school of hard knocks” or “school of life”, joke answers such as “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” or “Hogwarts”, or even obscure answers such as “School of Fish”, in hopes that someone in the survey company will agree how cool a song “3 Strange Days” was. Every time I spot the bland, undecorated phrase “Some college” on a survey, I wince for a second and have to shake off the reminder of a young adulthood that wandered astray.

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“Premium Rush” Shows Why Bicycles Should Digitally Replace Cars in All Action Flicks Ever

September 5, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: action movies, bicycles, entertainment, humor, joseph gordon levitt, Michael Shannon, movies, Premium Rush, transportation 6 Comments

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, "Premium Rush" After seeing the new Joseph Gordon-Levitt flick Premium Rush tonight, I’ve realized that bicycles are the greatest machine ever. I should already know this after multiple viewings of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and my mastery of the old arcade game Paperboy, but those are old and Premium Rush is new. To today’s young folk that means it’s more influential than either of those works by definition.

Consider the pros of bicycle ownership that I’ve learned tonight:

* Bicycles use no gas. Not only does this save average consumers money, it means movies that replace all their cars with bikes will overflow with carbon credits or go-green points or whatever currency this market uses.

* Bicycles fit through tight cracks in traffic jams. Related note: traffic laws only apply if bicycle policemen can catch you. Don’t get too overconfident, since bikecops do have the power of teleportation, based on how many places our hero’s bikecop nemesis (stuntman Christopher Place) shows up in the movie through magical point-A-to-point-B locale shifts. That power only gets bikecops so far, though — their advanced age and lack of BMX tricks makes them an easily evaded adversary.

* Bicycle parts are sturdy and survive any and all forms of undue stress, short of a head-on collision. In that event, temporary replacement bikes should be readily available for borrowing from your immediate vicinity.

* Bicycles are much faster than cars. They can dodge and weave through the thickest of traffic, especially if you have the power of instant super-calculus like Amadeus Cho. If a crooked cop is several feet behind you, just pedal really hard. Sure. he could put his pedal to the metal and flatten you, but he won’t. For some reason. Mental block, maybe, who knows. One exception to this rule: when a finale is coming up, cars are faster because they have to catch up with you before the last big set piece begins. You can’t just arrive in time to save the day while the bad guy is still several blocks away because of rush hour or construction delays. No audience wants to cheer the defeat of a villain in absentia.

* Bicycle-related jobs never have a dress code. Our hero’s pride in avoiding nice suits and ties is a large part of Who He Is. (Our hero clearly learned nothing from Pee-Wee.) Late in the movie, a montage of assorted bicycling professionals confirms that clothing, hair care, and hygiene are left to the employee’s discretion. Hopefully they disinfect their packages before handing them to the intended recipient.

* The bad guys never try shooting you during chase scenes. You’re a small moving target, and they’re probably lousy shots anyway, even if they carry a gun for a living. This facet remains largely unexplored in Premium Rush, but in other chase movies, judging by the average number of missed shots per movie, I get the impression that crooked cops and evil military men never have to fret about marksmanship on their performance review.

* Bicycle lanes are optional. Over the past few years, Indianapolis has spent millions renovating and redesigning numerous thoroughfares to add bicycle lanes — sometime widening streets, sometimes taking an entire lane away from cars and designating it as a bicycle lane instead (White River Parkway North Drive, I’m looking in your excessively named direction). As seen in Premium Rush, Manhattan bicyclists seem to do just fine without them. The closest they come to compromising is when they have to share a walkway in Central Park with wheel-deprived pedestrians.

With so much going for bicycles, I foresee a day when filmmakers and studios revisit their works George-Lucas-style and decide it’s time to tamper with them for the sake of a modern audience. Imagine The French Connection with Popeye Doyle free-styling it up, or The Bourne Supremacy filmed in you-are-there Bicycle-Smashing-Cam. Stephen King’s Christine would have been about twenty minutes long, once the possessed 1957 Schwinn American realized it wasn’t really equipped to kill. Best of all in my mind would be the late John Frankenheimer’s Ronin — narrow chases through all those claustrophobic European streets, still at breakneck speeds, and everyone’s still armed with bazookas. The mind reels at the cinematic possibilities, so much so that I have to stop myself from staying up overnight and brainstorming any more. (Maybe that’s tomorrow night’s entry. No one tempt me.)

Setting all that aside, this was a fun, footloose, albeit PG-13-languaged 91 minutes’ worth of popcorn-movie excuse to watch Gordon-Levitt play the same kind of tenacious, hard-luck, unlikely hero that worked well for him in (500) Days of Summer, except here he’s not a jerk and he gets to win. It’s also a showcase for anyone who wants to know what Michael Shannon looks like, before he appears in next year’s Man of Steel. I didn’t see Revolutionary Road, for which he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for what I read was a fairly tiny role, but here he dominates plenty of screen time as a foul-mouthed crooked cop (who naturally is the one to fill the movie’s one-F-word quota) with an amoral attitude and an unfortunate addiction to Pai gow. His tough New York sounds more like other movies than what we heard last year on vacation, but that only added to his scary intensity.

Other random, disconnected thoughts that flew through my head while watching the Greatest Bicycle Film of All Time:

* Fun geek note: Shannon continually hides behind the alias “Forrest J. Ackerman”, named after the famous sci-fi fan. (Yes, once upon a time, they used to have those. 105% of all sci-fi fans wish that were still the case.)

* Other than Gordon-Levitt and Shannon, the only other actor I recognized without research was Aasif Mandvi, my favorite correspondent in those rare moments when I have time to watch secondhand online clips from The Daily Show with John Stewart. Mandvi basically reprises his role as cranky boss Mr. Aziz from Spider-Man 2, but his presence is value-added good times.

* Listen carefully during one of Gordon-Levitt’s course-plotting moments, and you’ll be rewarded with a Wilhelm scream, to no small comedic effect.

* Do the kids these days still say “shred” in any bike-related context? It sounds like previous-decade slang.

* Gordon-Levitt’s motto, “Brakes are death,” sums up every bad commute I’ve ever harrumphed my way through.

* My favorite thing about the movie was recognizing Manhattan landmarks and locales that our family encountered on our 2011 road trip. Among the notable sights that nab screen time are Chinatown; Columbus Circle; a #1 subway station (the 116th Street Station, if the visuals match the story); the Ed Sullivan Theatre (blink and you miss it); Columbus Street alongside the Natural History Museum; and, of course, Central Park. Natives no doubt will recognize three times as many places as I did.

* No, there’s no scene after the end credits, but you can stick around and hear several more minutes of “Baba O’Riley” if you’d like. You can also recover from the shock of realizing that the entire movie flew right by without a single character using the phrase “need for speed.” Writing without that cliché in a movie all about speed may be its most skillful trick.

2012 Road Trip Photos #11: An Hour Inside the Denver Art Museum, Part 1 of 2

September 3, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Travel Tags: art, Colorado, Denver, Denver Art Museum, denver photos, Kwakwaka'wakw, Lao Tzu, Native American art, Native Americans, outdoor sculptures, Pacific Northwest, photos, road trip, tourism, travel, vacation 1 Comment

Our itinerary for the first half of Day Four didn’t feel overbooked when we first arranged it. By the time we finished touring the Molly Brown House and standing next to the Colorado State Capitol, we had a little over an hour to walk a few blocks east to the Denver Art Museum, walk a few blocks back to our parking space, and arrive at the Buckhorn Exchange in time for our 1:30 reservation. After allotting for the hot round-trip walk through the artsy part of town, we found ourselves pressed for time on our whirlwind self-guided tour of the Denver Art Museum.

Further complicating matters: my camera batteries died, and my spares were safe and sound in our hotel room back in Aurora. Fortunately my wife is diligent in keeping her camera’s built-in battery recharged nightly. Between Molly Brown and the museum, we found not a single shop of any kind that sold batteries. Even the Art Museum gift shop was of no help — theirs isn’t the kind of place that stocks up on incidentals for inconvenienced tourists. At best, they might’ve carried a commemorative spoon with a painting of a battery on it. Once again, as with the GenCon costume contest, the day is saved thanks to my wife and her superior camera.

A few outdoor sculptures greet you as you approach the Art Museum from the east. Between the museum and the Denver Public Library is Acoma Plaza, in which stands Mark di Suvero’s sculpture “Lao Tzu”, named after the author of the Tao Te Ching. I read the latter in college, but wasn’t prepared to interpret the artist’s meaning here, unless some of these shapes represent Chinese pictographs.

Our game plan, once inside: we three each selected one museum section for the group to peruse. I chose the Pacific Northwest section, featuring art from the U.S. and Canadian tribes who dominated that particular coast. Our museums in Indiana and the surrounding states have more than their share of Native American art and artifacts, but I was curious to know if other tribes had their own individual styles unavailable for display in the Midwest. I’ve seen all the maize-based manufactured goods I’ll ever need to see in our museums, but this exhibit was successfully different from those, highlighting the works of the Haida, the Tlingit, the Inupiaq, and the Kwakwaka’wakw (I’m not sure which letters are silent, if any).

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Grateful for “Freshly Pressed” Status, Hoping Not to Turn into Egomaniacal One-Hit Wonder

September 3, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Meta Tags: blogging, Freshly Pressed, Midlife Crisis Crossover, solipsism, WordPress, writing 11 Comments

WordPress "Freshly Pressed" badge First things first: I owe a truckload of gratitude to the WordPress staffer who selected last Friday evening’s entry, “The Day an Empty Chair Ruled the Internet” as a feature selection for the WordPress.com Freshly Pressed page. Before that happened, I honestly thought the page was automated and random. Based on the gracious emails I received that offered me some proofreading and specific content input before the FP slotting went live, I’ve confidently shelved that theory.

I also owe many sincere thanks to you, the Viewers at Home, who were kind enough to give it a look-see and leave feedback. The response has overwhelmed me more with its kindness and generosity than with its appreciable volume. My Labor Day weekend took a vastly different direction than the quiet doldrums I’d anticipated. Keeping up with the replies has been a fun ‘n’ lively time, and I’ve also found myself with a plethora of new blogs and writers to check out.

For anyone who’s returned here and sampled any fare beyond the Empty Chair Blues, it’s my sincere hope that other future entries will be of some use or entertainment value to you as well. I aim for one entry per day, based on whatever’s preoccupying my mind at any given moment. The inconsistent MCC experience is fairly consistent with the scattershot nature of my aging mindset. Nine times out of ten it’s entertainment (comics, movies, TV, whatever) because of my lifelong unapologetic nerdist tendencies and my never-ending curiosity about the arts and assorted acts of creation from a variety of perspectives. Every so often I open up about my faith, though not nearly as often as I should. As special events have been occurring of late, I’ve shared experiences with fan conventions and our family’s annual road trips. Once in a blue moon I’ll write something about Indiana, even though no one ever reads those, not even other Hoosiers.

I assume “Empty Chair” will be escorted off the FP page in due time, and my daily experience here will remain on track. I’ll do my best to hold onto my sense of proportion and not print up thousands of business cards bearing the FP stamp and the obnoxious, self-anointed title of CERTIFIED WRITER. If I do, please shoot me down…and feel free to take a card.

Thanks for reading, and a round of hugs for everyone.

“Avengers” Labor Day Weekend Re-Release: Now You Can See it More Than Once, Just Like the Old Days

September 1, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: encores, entertainment, Marvel Comics, Marvel's The Avengers, movies, The Avengers 2 Comments

"Avengers" Labor Day theater re-release When our family saw The Avengers back in May — including sticking around for the famous shawarma scene after the end credits — we exited the theater starstruck and satisfied we’d received our money’s worth tenfold. My son and I even discussed the possibility of seeing it a second time. For a teenager whose generation doesn’t appreciate the concept of TV reruns, or the nerdist notion of watching a film enough times to memorize the dialogue, a request for an immediate encore marks his highest conceivable level of praise.

Between our hectic summer schedule and my preference for experiencing the unseen over rehashing the already-seen, I demurred and procrastinated. This Labor Day weekend, Marvel Studios reminded my son of our discussion by arranging a return to wide release for The Avengers as one last attempt at usurping Titanic‘s title as the second-highest grossing film in American box office history. For the sake of father/son quality time, we went for it.

Admittedly, I was pleased to be able to watch for a few new things I missed on my first go-around: the throwaway cameo by Dollhouse‘s amazing Enver Gjokaj as a flustered policeman; the indiscernible Alexis Denisof (yay Wesley!) as Thanos’ sidekick; the exact moments in which the “ST” and the “RK” are knocked off Tony’s precious monument to himself; Thanos’ gleeful reaction to the final line of dialogue (“To challenge them is to court death” — if you know Thanos, you know that’s one of his turn-ons); and the entire mountainside chat between Thor and Loki, which was had been ruined in my first viewing by an unwelcome, well-lit distraction from an uncouth cell phone user in the audience.

I rarely see a film more than once in theaters anymore. Except for dedicated cineastes and theater employees, I’m sure I’m not alone in this. Between high ticket prices and sometimes unpleasant theater conditions, it’s become challenging enough to attract some viewers for one showing of a new film, let alone encourage repeat business. It doesn’t help that the DVD/Blu-ray versions arrive on stores shelves faster and more furiously than they used to in the old days of home video. Gone are the times of pacing back and forth, waiting anywhere from six months to several years before being allowed to purchase copies of your favorite films. Today’s accelerated distribution system makes it easier than ever to sit through the same film as many times as you’d like, in as short a time span as you’d like after release. In the final analysis, even one Blu-ray is cheaper than six full-price movie tickets. (Living near a second-run dollar might help, if you don’t mind the celluloid deterioration after all those previous months’ worth of showings.)

I can recall several instances from my moviegoing past when I took opportunities to spend too much disposable income on multiple trips to the silver screen for the sake of a single work. For nostalgic brainstorming fun, I present a montage of films I saw more than once in theaters, and the rationalizations that enabled them.

Return of the Jedi — I was 11 in 1983 and had never been allowed to see a movie twice. I saw ROTJ once and thoroughly enjoyed it, even though I hadn’t seen Star Wars and had only read Donald F. Glut’s novelization of The Empire Strikes Back (a school book fair selection). While on vacation later that summer at my aunt’s place down south, we decided a movie outing was in order; our options were ROTJ again or Burt Reynolds in Stroker Ace. We won; Burt lost. Fourteen years later I also endured the 1997 “Special Edition” re-release, but I was older, less enamored, and had a hard time suppressing my snarky commentary. I’m pretty sure I had to be elbowed at least once before I shut up.

Independence Day — My best friend and I caught it opening weekend at the local drive-in. With such poor radio sound, sundown not yet finished, and the experience basically held away from us at arm’s length, it was all too easy to notice all the shortcomings and tally up all the references and swipes from other, better films. Not long after, I went with family to an indoor showing with a high-quality sound system that included super-powered subwoofers. With the vibrations and the thrumming and the EXPLOSIONS in full effect, suddenly it was the Greatest Disaster Movie of All Time. ‘Twas truly a film where effects made a massive difference.

Star Trek: First Contact — Because, frankly, it was all that.

Scream and Con Air — Two separate examples of me seeing a film on my own and enjoying it so intensely that I insisted on dragging my best friend to them, so she could see what I wouldn’t shut up about. We were still in that early stage of our relationship where I had no idea that her own movie preferences weren’t identical to mine. It took me some time and a few unfortunate occurrences before I learned an important lesson, one that I still observe today now that we’re married: just because I really, really like something doesn’t mean that I’m required to subject her to it, too, especially not over her strenuous objections. Learn this and learn this well, males.

Godzilla — I was so pumped up and ready for Roland Emmerich’s surely extraordinary reboot of the Toho legend, I saw it twice on opening day. First showing: I was alone and blown away. Second showing, with my best friend: I fidgeted a little more. Third time, with my mom: glaring issues began to appear to me like a kind of unhappy magic. Fourth showing, at a dollar theater, strictly for my five-year-old son’s benefit: I laughed through most of it, but he bawled when Godzilla died. It broke my heart and his, though he calmed down when the egg hatched at the very end. Today he loathes the film, as well he should.

The entire Star Wars prequel trilogy — Six showings of The Phantom Menace, a few apiece of the other two. Star Wars fever was in full swing for us in those days, but it ebbed as the quality of each successive movie ebbed. Some of those multiple screenings were just to spend quality time with the best friend who later became my wife, but I’ll admit that six showings of TPM was far too many. By the final attempt, I found myself dozing through most of the long, long stretch in Tatooine, including some of the podrace.

X-Men — First time was on opening night while attending a St. Louis sci-fi convention whose featured guests included four cast members from Mystery Science Theater 3000. After the prologue and opening, when we MSTies all read the transitional caption, “The not-too-distant future”, this absolutely, unintentionally brought down the house. Second time was back home for the benefit of my son, who didn’t get it.

Serenity — As a huge fan of Firefly, the first showing was A+++++++ but so devastated me, I hadn’t planned to see it again. Then I became offended at the weak box office returns. I became firmly convinced that all those free advance screenings they’d held in hopes of fostering Internet buzz probably just gave several thousand freeloaders an excuse not to pay for it. So I did what I felt was my duty and saw it once more. Wash’s final scene was no easier for me to weather.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — First showing was courtesy of passes I scored to an advance sneak preview. I was so excited about the privilege of a sneak preview for such a high-profile film that I immediately went home, spent all night long writing an unpaid, pre-release, volunteer review for someone else’s gain, and went to work the next day at my actual paying job on three hours’ sleep…only to learn that the site had crashed for reasons unknown, and remained down all weekend long. Many aspects of this incident point to the myriad reasons why I don’t get to write for money. Oh, and my second showing was with family, after I slept for a couple of days first.

The Dark Knight — One mandatory normal showing, and one in IMAX just to see the difference. I was enthralled by the zillion-decibel sound system, but irritated by the switches back and forth from theatrical ratio to IMAX ratio, back and forth and back and forth, like someone playing with the “Zoom” button on a flatscreen TV. Not a fan of that jarring effect.

Toy Story 2 — Once in the original theatrical run; once in 2010 when my wife and I scored free passes to a Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3-D double feature. I’m no fan of 3-D, but I’ve yet to get sick and tired of either film.

Avatar — Once with my son; once as a kindness to my mom. I slept through some of the native alien-acclimatization montage, even in 3-D.

Chronicle — Because, frankly, it was all that. Ignore the denigrated “gimmick”, note the subtleties, and feel the harrowing.

Thus does Marvel’s The Avengers join their quasi-hallowed ranks. It didn’t need the extra cash flow nearly as much as Serenity did, but it was a pleasant use of the holiday weekend. I’m planning no more repeats this year, but Lord knows how next year’s fare will turn out. Best-case scenario: maybe Benedict Cumberbatch will give us a bravura, must-see-again-and-again performance in Star Trek II.2: the Wrath of Not-Khan.

The Day an Empty Chair Ruled the Internet

September 1, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Meta, Mundane Tags: Clint Eastwood, Eastwood chair, empty chair, entertainment, media, news, Obama chair, politics, Republican National Convention 62 Comments

Empty Obama Chair, Clint Eastwood's arch-enemy Behold the face of America’s newest sensation. LOLcats, Kardashians, and the horrors of something calling itself “Honey Boo Boo” all took a back seat to the poor, defenseless chair that withstood a tongue-lashing from Academy Award Winner Clint Eastwood at the closing of the Republican National Convention, which in turn drew an awful lot of press to cover any number of foregone conclusions.

I refuse to watch the video on principle — the principle being, partisan politics don’t interest me. This keeps me shut out of a lot of online discussions and ensures no one will ever pay me a steady income to become a TV pundit. I’m fine with that, but it usually means I have to go slink off into a dark corner and find ways to entertain myself until politics go away.

My admittedly secondhand understanding of the situation, then, is that the 82-year-old director was invited to close the ceremony with no small amount of star power, somehow mistook the chair for President Barack Obama, and attempted to bully it until it cried. I’ve yet to confirm if anyone involved in the incident referred this peculiar condition to Dr. Oliver Sacks.

Maybe this merciless haranguing was the most hilarious improv set of the year. Maybe it was an unmitigated disaster, like the time Anne Hathaway and James Franco hosted the Oscars. Maybe I’ve misread and Obama was actually standing off-camera on the other side of the chair, or had been shrunk with Pym particles and was resting comfortably under the chair. All I know for sure is that this spirited but one-sided argument took over my Twitter feed Thursday night and effectively shut down all other topics and memes. On Facebook, the empty chair emerged from its humble beginnings in Nowheresville and became the talk of the town, superseding the usual daily barrage of Photoshop yuks and Zynga proclamations. This week, NASA launched a rocket bearing twin probes to study the Van Allen radiation belts (the real story here being: believe it or not, NASA is still in the launching business), but that link has now been kicked off all front pages in favor of headlines about verbally abused furniture.

Some people have joked about its unintentional symbolism. Others applaud the moment as Eastwood’s best comedy gig since the flicks he made with that annoying orangutan. Someone naturally registered “Invisible Obama” as a Twitter alias. Rest assured our nation’s crack Photoshop gag specialists rushed to fill the chair with repurposed images of Kermit the Frog, the Sad Keanu meme, and Lord knows what other variations I’ve missed. The Internet plans to milk this new, inanimate media personality for all it can, until the Chair gets greedy and begins demanding large paychecks to make forgettable cameos in terrible films.

Nothing I could write about anything right now could hold an audience’s attention a fraction as much as that now-legendary empty chair’s misadventure has. I’ll just shut up and let the video roll below for the truly, insatiably curious who missed this unique spectacle. I did watch a few seconds of it just to confirm that, of all the versions uploaded, the Wall Street Journal‘s version had the best screen resolution, but that’s as far as I went.

I salute you, empty chair. Enjoy your fifteen minutes, and try to be kind to us little people during your wild ride on the shaky wooden coaster of fly-by-night stardom. Remember, today’s celebrity is tomorrow’s Goodwill bargain.

2012 Road Trip Photos #10: Denver Presents the Molly Brown House and What a Mile Feels Like

August 31, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Travel Tags: Buckhorn Exchange, Colorado, Colorado State Capitol, Denver, denver photos, downtown, molly brown house, photos, Quiznos, road trip, tourism, travel, vacation 1 Comment

After our extensive daylong sojourn through mountains’ majesty, we spent Day Four of our vacation on a metropolitan retreat in Denver. It was nice to get away from nature for a while and relax in the urban hustle-‘n’-bustle.

Our first major attraction was the Molly Brown House, the well-to-do abode of the famous socialite and boat jinx from 1894 until her passing in 1932. It exchanged a few times after that and was put to less fabulous uses until a 1970s restoration effort renovated it into a historical highlight not far from downtown Denver. Photos were unfortunately forbidden inside the house, but the exterior has its own quirks, least of which is the house being decades older than its surrounding neighbors. You’ll notice under the ad banner for the Titanic tour is an unusual place for a relief out of time.

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Anderson’s “The Master” Final Trailer: No Similiarities to Persons or Groups Living or Dead, We Totally Swear

August 30, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: Amy Adams, entertainment, Joaquin Phoenix, jonny greenwood, L. Ron Hubbard, movies, oscars, Paul Thomas Anderson, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Scientology, teaser, The Master, Trailer Leave a comment

Readers who consider themselves unabashed Midlife Crisis Crossover completists (i.e., my wife and me) may recall my preoccupation with the trailers for Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film The Master, in which Academy Award Winner Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays a charismatic jack-of-all-trades who’s not named Hub L. Ronnard, who attracts followers to his self-invented belief system that’s not called Scientetics or Dianology, who has Academy Award Nominee Amy Adams as the wife by his side, and who’s trying to lure Academy Award Nominee Joaquin Phoenix to his side with vague platitudes and cryptic encouragement.

Recapping our first three installments for newcomers:

* Teaser Trailer #1: a reserved interrogation, a forgotten fight, some crawling through machinery, and adult sand sculptures, all set to spooky bass-‘n’-percussion from composer Jonny Greenwood, the Radiohead guitarist who also worked with Anderson on There Will Be Blood.

* Teaser Trailer #2: Hoffman takes center stage with his myriad talents and elliptical statements of purpose, all overlapping and fighting to surface in the consciousness of Phoenix, who chafes in a new, awkward chapter of his life. Adams loves her husband. The Greenwood score repeats.

* Full Trailer #1: an unbalanced Phoenix fails at life on the post-war homefront and instead follows a writer who’s big on doublespeak and revival tents. Adams is not at all happy this time around — glaring at doubters, questioning Phoenix’s sanity, and acting perfectly fine with her husband’s shenanigans. Greenwood is replaced at the 1:39 mark with Jo Stafford’s maudlin 1950 hit “No Other Love“.

And now, the four-part miniseries, “The Trailers of The Master“, concludes with the final, fragmented chapter:

Other than reruns from previous trailers, the core is a stilted speech about how human spirits trump the animal kingdom. A soft orchestra is drowned out by Joaquin Phoenix drumming like Buddy Rich on a locked window. Standard male viewers should now be excited by the prospect of fights, guns, motorcycle races, and sex scenes. (Yeeeey.)

The officially R-rated movie begins its limited-release rollout to American theaters on September 14th. IMDb lists release dates in several other countries over the next several months, mostly in Europe. (Is Scientology discussed or even heard of in Asia? I’d be curious to know.) My intrigue in the general concept has ebbed a bit, but we’ll have to see if Indianapolis’ only art-house cinema offers it before next Oscar season; how my curiosity, budget, and conscience are doing by then; and if I’m not yet tired of those involved repeating in every related interview like a holy mantra, “IT’S NOT ABOUT SCIENTOLOGY.” When I turn it over in my head, it’s funnier because I hear it in the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger from Kindergarten Cop. In reality, it grows more disappointing every time I hear it.

Can the Final Season of “The Office” Out-Excruciate Season 8?

August 29, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in TV/DVD Tags: entertainment, final season, Greg Daniels, NBC, predictions, rainn wilson, Season 9, television, The Office, tv 2 Comments

Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute, "The Office" After Steve Carell’s departure near the end of Season 7, and an uneven Season 8 marked by low ratings and much grumbling in our household about quality control, The Office returns for its final season on September 20th with original producer/showrunner Greg Daniels retaking the controls. I’m letting optimism get the best of me and taking this as a positive sign.

In a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, Daniels revealed some of the plot points in store for the last stretch of episodes, in which they’re free to go nuts and “blow things up.” Among other surprises in store, Season 9 will see Kelly’s defection to Fox’s The Mindy Kaling Project; two new characters taking over Customer Service; the return of Pam’s ex Roy (among other long-gone faces); an inevitable segue to Rainn Wilson’s Frasier-iffic spinoff The Farm, and at long last, a behind-the-scenes look at the documentary crew that sees, knows, and films all.

What about those other surprises in store? It’s too early to know for sure what ideas are locked in, what remains on Daniels’ wishlist, and what will end up as mere Season 9 DVD extras. It’s a good bet that whatever happens, it won’t be predictable, and in some cases it won’t be what we longtime fans want to see. Sometimes that’s a good thing, because we fans tend to imagine and ask for the safe, the easy, and the comforting from our favorite shows. When The Office is working as it should, it’s generally never safe, easy, or comforting — it’s the kind of awkward, messy, embarrassing series that can leave you laughing even while you cover your face in disbelief and keep peeking between your fingers at the TV.

If they really want to awkward things up, here are a few post-shark-jumping ideas for any number of episodes that will likely never be requested by fans, thus making them 50% more likely to happen than most of the typical fan wishlists currently viewable online:

* News arrives that Michael Scott has died offscreen. Totally, thoroughly, irrevocably, irretrievably dead, dead, dead, dead, DEAD. Thus is Steve Carell finally granted some semblance of peace, quiet, and reprieve from millions of fans who won’t stop pestering him to come back One Last Time to Save the Show. Carell instead relishes the chance to watch Season 9 from home as a fan while pondering his next dozen seven-figure-paycheck film roles.

* After buying the company, David Wallace gives Andy his blessing to run the Scranton office as he sees fit. Andy reassigns Nellie to the receptionist’s desk, has Erin take over the fictional role of office administrator, transfers Pam to Quality Control, and moves Creed down to the warehouse in the newly created role of Janitor Emeritus. Creed still never lifts a finger, except to devote more time to Creed Thoughts and its eight million imaginary followers. Most popular entries among the voices in his head include “Where’d All the White People Go?”, “What’s a Janitor, and How Does One Janit?”, and “I Must Kill The Baler Before It Kills Me”.

* Wallace also assembles his new officers. His new COO: Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration. Phyllis is subsequently appointed to an executive VP position.

* Pam follows up Cece and Philip with a set of healthy quadruplets. Pam can’t convince any of her coworkers to look at their cute photos. The writers never even bother to name any of them.

* Jan brings her li’l toddler Astrid in for a visit, but is dismayed to find out that He Who Is Not Coming Back no longer works there. She spends the day hanging around anyway, pays Kevin a thousand dollars to babysit for her, then goes out for a lovely, wild evening with Stanley.

* After a disastrous incident with Angela’s state-senator husband that no one ever describes onscreen, Oscar decides he might not be gay after all and tries flirting with Angela, just because he’s curious to see what happens. There is no conceivable TV universe in which this begins or ends well.

* Ed Truck’s ghost returns to haunt Dunder Mifflin, approaching each of our characters one by one and asking if they’ll be his friend. Everyone hems, haws, and finds excuses to say no. David Wallace drives his son to the office and has him capture Dead Ed with a Suck It. When fans ask if there’s a remote chance of a super-special cameo by Michael Scott’s ghost, the very next episode features a team of priests, rabbis, shamans, and Ghost Hunters taking turns doing whatever they can to Scott’s grave to ensure that he remains dead, dead, dead, dead, DEAD.

* Mose rides a jet-ski over a shark pool. Turns out it’s his favorite hobby. No one knows why, and they’re afraid to ask where he got all those sharks.

* Toby resigns to become a full-time crime novelist. His first book is poorly reviewed, but sells like gangbusters in Latin America. Several months pass before anyone in the office notices he’s gone.

* Ryan begins to freak out when he realizes that all of his coworkers have been slowly pairing up over the last several years, that sooner or later he’ll be required to pair up with someone else now that Kelly’s gone, and that the only remaining candidates are Meredith and Madge down in the warehouse. When a desperate Ryan finds out the hard way that Madge has already hooked up with Gabe, he spends the last three episodes in his office closet, curled up under his desk and crying till the cameramen promise to go away.

* Darryl goes back to being really cool, just like he used to be, once upon a time.

* Some genius superfan kicks all his social-media accounts into hyperdrive and organizes an international “Bring Michael Back” campaign by convincing several million fans to mail buckets full of cheese puffs to NBC. In answer to their demands, Greg Daniels appears in the very next episode in a special cameo, dressed as the Munchkin coroner from The Wizard of Oz, holding a poster-sized death certificate, and singing: “As showrunner / I thoroughly can now confirm / That he’s not only merely dead / He’s really most sincerely dead!” All of fandom agrees to stop asking if Daniels promises never to wear the costume again.

* Instead of filing for bankruptcy and closing its doors forever in the final episode, Dunder Mifflin becomes a new power player in the publishing industry with its brilliant innovation that takes America by storm: electronic paper that exists only in virtual form, but which the company sells in virtual reams of 500 and in virtual cases of twelve reams apiece. This proposal makes no sense whatsoever, but crafty ol’ Jim finds a way to sell millions of cases to hundreds of gullible companies whose management are all over age 80. It is the greatest prank of his entire life.

* Final sequence: for the first time in his life, Dwight accidentally kills someone with one of his stashed office weapons — a delivery boy who didn’t check in at reception and has more tattoos than Dwight would prefer. His retreat to The Farm is borne not of a desire to focus on a different career, but to escape the long arm of Scranton law. Dwight imagines he’s an excellent refugee. The reality is that the Scranton police know Dwight pretty well and never did like that delivery boy, who had a rap sheet a mile long and was more terrible at delivering than Fry from Futurama. According to their final police report, the evidence was all too circumstantial for them to build a solid court case, so they’re prepared to let it languish in permanent cold-case status. As a practical joke they let Dwight live the rest of his life in hiding instead of telling him all of this.

Jamal Igle’s “Molly Danger” Aims to Remind: Comics Aren’t Just for Adult Males

August 27, 2012 By Randall A. Golden in Comics/Lit Tags: Action Lab Comics, comic books, comics, entertainment, Jamal Igle, Kickstarter, Molly Danger 2 Comments

Jamal Igle's "Molly Danger" Older collectors can recall a time when fans of all ages could find comic books skillfully produced as entertainment and inspiration for any and all comers. In ye olden times of my own childhood, kids like me were more than welcome to read the adventures of the Marvel and DC mainstream universes, to participate in the stories that “mattered” in the lives of their favorite heroes.

Today, not so much. In recent decades, creators have taken considerable pains in expanding the boundaries of the medium, crafting ostensibly sophisticated stories for a self-described “mature” audience, and convincing themselves that the one true path to literary respectability requires copious bleeding and nonstop pandering to the hormones. Some comics from the Big Two comic are a few steps removed from the average issue of Maxim. In the prevailing sales theory of our times, adult males are the only audience that matters, and this is obviously what all adult males need. Kids who naively or accidentally wander into a comic shop are discouraged from roaming the store freely, instead shepherded over to one designated rack filled with tons of cartoon-based comics, Archie Comics that the regular shoppers have learned to ignore, and thirty-year-old back issues — in short, not much for their generation to call their own. (If your child is lucky and your retailer is magnanimous enough, you might see a lone shelf copy of Strawberry Shortcake. Big if.)

Jamal Igle has something different in mind. After two decades of working for Marvel, DC, and several major independents, Igle is working outside the corporate scene on his own creation, a four-part graphic novel series called Molly Danger, taking full advantage of the shocking truth that some girls like action, adventure, super-heroes, and sci-fi, but should have at least one viable option beyond androcentric pabulum. Several years in the making, Igle described the premise in a recent interview like so:

Molly Danger is the world’s most powerful 10 year old Superhero. The catch is, she’s been 10 years old for almost 20 years. The public and Molly herself believe she’s an immortal, superhumanly strong alien being form a planet called Gamma 7, a world on the edge of the Galactic rim. She protects her hometown from the Supermechs, a collection of cybernetically enhanced villains. She lives in her own museum, lovingly referred to as the Mollydome. She’s respected and loved by everyone.

Unfortunately, Molly is a bird in a gilded cage. She doesn’t have any friends or family, she doesn’t have a secret identity or a life outside of being Molly. She’s kept sequestered from the public because she’s a target for her enemies and a danger to others because of her strength. She longs for a normal life.

Molly Danger should address a few lamentable shortcomings in today’s field: the lack of reading options for young but literate fans; the preponderance of sex toys pretending to be actual characters; and the derivative nature of so many heroines who are basically sidekicks or female versions of preexisting male heroes. (The underlying message therein: the best ways for a woman to succeed are to work for a great man, or to copy him Single White Female style. Plan C, of course, would be to settle for marrying a great man, leaving your five-year plan at that, and hoping really hard not to meet the same grisly fate as countless other wives and girlfriends in comics.)

Igle has a Kickstarter campaign in progress as of this writing, with three days and several dollars to go. The publishing plan is a four-issue miniseries of oversized hardcovers to be released by Action Lab Entertainment, purveyors of the excellent, award-nominated Princeless (fit for the same audience and pretty high-quality, judging by the first issue I read). Setting aside the mild language in the Maya Angelou quote that prefaces the Kickstarter video, this looks to be a winner on an all-ages level, in the sense of Pixar “quality for all fans at all levels” instead of the sense of “innocuous twaddle for ages four and under”. Igle has drawn comparisons to the likes of Astro Boy or The Powerpuff Girls in that sense.

The Kickstarter page offers plenty more art samples, typically top-notch from the artist whose favorite work of mine was an underrated run on Firestorm some years ago. Igle’s own blog also contains a recent press release with more details about supporting characters and other assorted tidbits.

For the jaded comic readers among you, consider the competitive advantages of Molly Danger for your reading dollar:

* Guaranteed not to be just one long, soulless ad for a corporate cartoon!
* Guaranteed not to be ruined by short-sighted editorial meddling halfway through!
* Guaranteed not to be wrested from Igle’s control and assigned to some hack writer who’s unclear on the concept, decides the series needs to be more “modern”, and has half the cast butchered!
* Guaranteed not to be interrupted ten pages from the end by a three-month-long crossover that requires you to buy twelve other Action Lab series!

I would like to say “fun” is also guaranteed, but fun is in the eye of the beholder and may vary by user. If Molly Danger isn’t fun after all, then Igle totally misrepresented and we should all sue him to death. But I’m betting fun will win out.

* * * * *

Department of Full Disclosure:

1. I’ve been an official Supporter of Molly Danger for a few weeks now. I’m not a paid shill here, just a happy reader who likes seeing nifty things published.

2. My only experience with Igle in person was watching him at a 2011 fan-awards presentation at C2E2, where he had the privilege of accepting several different awards. They were mostly accepted on behalf of other no-show winners, but still, I’m sure there’s a certain prestige to being Award Acceptor Jamal Igle, even if all our photos of that presentation turned out dismal beyond belief.

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