Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Robin Crew's Holistic Literary Agency

First of all, if you recognize the title of this post from somewhere, give yourself a cookie.

So the other day, I got one of the many “Hah! Every publisher everywhere ever is SERIOUSLY considering my AWESOME book and they LOVE me so you MANY, MANY agents who have POLITELY DECLINED can SUCK IT.” Jesus, what a diva. To be fair, there had already been a couple of “Thanks for your time” messages That day so I knew it was coming. But right as I was deleting this message a new query came in for a book titled “Idol Threat.” This made me shoot milk out my nose (to go with the cookie I gave myself for coming up with a clever title for the post). Gold star to Idol Threat. I mean, it’ll probably be some thriller about a celebrity stalker or something lame. But the secret of comedy is in the timing. And this was just too perfect to be true. Fortune smiles upon thee, Idol Threat.

Also it should be noted that the winner of the month's critique never sent me anything to critique so I am now officially done offering. If anyone wants me to look at something, my e-mail is over there. Drop me a note, make your case, and I'll invent some task for you to earn it. Like doing a tango with your dog.

Next up, in case anyone was wondering- on a recent diplomatic mission to Mikoslavia I read the *other* three volumes of Scott Pilgrim and I was right. From their respective half way points they become increasingly divergent. It's not that big a deal, actually. The movie is easier to follow, doesn't suffer from sudden scene shifts, and keeps a more steady pace. The comic on the other hand portrays the heroine more sympathetically and has a subplot for another character who really gets the short end of the stick in the movie. Take your pick. Reviews also came in for the Third Parasite Eve game. As I feared, they made Aya, the main character, into a wuss. Shit, back in the day we only had like three female heroes so they bothered to make them good. Now that they're common place I guess they don't get to kick ass anymore. Booo. Not sure I understand the logic. Is there some extremely finite amount of ass-kickingness alotted to the "fairer sex" and the awesomeoness of each character is inversely proportional to the total number of female mains? That sounds retarded. They're digital asses that are being kicked. That means there is a potentially infinite amount of ass. So I can't buy that argument.

Also, I saw Kiss Kiss Bang Bang the other day. I would not call it a great movie, but it was fun to watch once (I mean, it does star Robert Downey Jr who I like, a lead actress I'd never heard of but is good (and also gets nekkid!), a hard-ass private dick named "Gay Perry" and Corbin Bernsen as the villain. How many movies does someone accidentally pee on a corpse? Also, why is Robert Downey Jr. always peeing on things these days? See: The Soloist where Downey slips on his own pee twice if memory serves). I seem to recall that a reader recommended it (I think I can guess who. Does your person wear a bandana? Or a...headkerchief?). Anyway, it made me think. Why not ask my readership about something.

See, I've always had a soft spot for genre fiction like fantasy and sci-fi because even though most of it is awful, when I was a kid, that's the middle grade I read. And YA wasn't really a thing yet so I used light fantasy and SF like Robert Asprin, Piers Anthony, and Douglas Adams to make the transition to adult books. But last fall I read some recent upper MG and YA like Behemoth by Scott Westerfield and I realized that genre fiction is alive and kicking. It's just that a lot of the adult stuff is derivative. And also dumb. In other words, bland, same-y and un-original. But they're convinced they aren't. The various "kid" stuff acknowledges the elephant in the room and so can be more adventurous. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. There can be no greatness without audacity. Anyway, you fine folks know my tastes. I like 'em dark and/or goofy. You also know books. Indeed, many of you specialize in YA. So I was wondering if any of all's y'alls had any recommendations.

Monday, March 28, 2011

You Know What They Say About Common Sense

A few choice titles and subject lines from recent queries.

“MG Non-Fiction Juvenile/Parenting.” First thought: I knew kids were growing up fast these days, but do we need a parenting guide written for 10 year olds?

“Jesus Loves Tea Parties Too.” Seriously. Stop laughing. Then read it again. Resume laughing. Personally, I’m holding out for the sequel “Jesus Hates Pinko Commie Traitors.”

“How to be a Fairy.” No comment. Or more accurately, I have no comment that would be acceptable in polite company.

“PB Boo-Bah and the Sugarey Mushroom Take a Plunge With Pirates.” Like, wow man. This title is like. Trippin’ balls, yo.

So not too long ago I was at the dentists’. This is amusing in and of itself. First of all, the dentist is a huge nerd. Also, my whole family makes fun of me for going there and getting along so well with a crazy old man, his slightly crazy hygienist as well as his wife, the receptionist. They also make fun of me because I might be the oldest person who sees him for general checkups. His specialty is pediatric dentistry. Lots of adults go to him, but mostly for emergency work involving caps, crowns and cavities and other things of that nature. Jeez. Look, it’s the three evil Cs of dentistry. So much akin to Convenience, Contrivance and Cliché for writers. Indeed, it’s inspired me to theorize what I call the rule of Cs which states that in all things there are three evil Cs to beware. But I digress. See, the hygienist told me to start chewing gum.

“Dur,” I say “But I done thought that chewin’ done caused all them thur cavities. Mama tolds me tha’ th’ only reason I ain’t never had one was ‘cuz I was a good lil’ boy who don’t never chew.”

Turns out though that *most* gum isn’t really bad for you anymore. What made it bad was sugar. Most gum is now sugar free. Meanwhile, it’s actually pretty adept at picking up tartar and shit on the back of your teeth before it solidifies or you swallow it and it blocks your arteries and gives you a heart attack. I always wondered why bimbos had such nice teeth. Well, mystery solved. Thanks, science.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Office Comedy Week Part V: Abandoned Concepts

I feel pity. Oh so much pity. It’s a pity how shitty I feeeeeel.

Okay, that’s enough singing from me. You can’t hear me, but my laptop can and it ain’t happy. Although with that said, perhaps I should write musicals. For god’s sake I could pretty much vomit and create something both deeper and more melodic than the average musical. God Bless America and its low standards. Anyway, you may wonder why I feel pity. Or feel shitty. Todaaaay. There’s a lot of reasons, actually, including my job status, the situation in Japan, and how, although I actually have some small amount of free time these days every time I sit down to write I realize someone else has already done it better. Or they’ve done it worse, but they did it first.

I remember years ago when I invented Atheistsmas. Complete with its own history, celebrations, and even terminology (such as an Atheistsmas statistical anomaly) only to be told by a friend that I must have been ripping off Festivus. Damn you, Seinfeld. You’re not even funny.

Ironically, one of the things that has brought me the most joy, The Tick, single handedly killed several concepts I had in the works when I first saw the live action series about eight months ago. Here’s a few examples.

Terror on the 20th Floor-
A 1st person narrative where the speaker is never named or described, and is left to be imagined as a regular Joe Everyman (not to be confused with a character whose name is actually Joe Everyman). He’s the odd man out in HR and Facilities, which is to say- he’s a man. In HR. Being in his position he comes to learn that many of his coworkers aren’t what they seem. Andy Mark Deux, CPA is secretly a robot. Richard, the sales rep is a werewolf. And the main’s first ever new hire turns out to be an alien. It’s actually pretty funny. At least in concept. Can you imagine? He invites his new hire to dinner to “tell her about the company” but she moves too fast for him and before he knows it he has to claim in desperation that Earth customs dictate no probing until the second date. Each chapter was planned as a self contained story with the intention of spoofing trends in paranormal and horror (and to a lesser extent, Sci-fi and fantasy). I was maybe half way through the first story when I got stuck. Andy had to subdue Richard with his Rocket Fist (a reference to Japanese robot shows, specifically Mazinger Z) when it was starting to look a little too stupid. That’s when I started to watch The Tick. For encouragement, I guess. Like minds. Inspiration. And by the end of the first episode, The Tick had Doc Brown teaching us the lesson of Metcalf (He wanted to be a superhero, and now he needs a machine… to poop!), a soviet android programmed to assassinate Jimmy Carter, and Apocalypse Cow shooting fire from her teets. How the hell was I supposed to compete with that? And being a book, I couldn’t use visual stunts. Arrrghle barghle.

Wave of the Future-
The greatest heroes of all time. Awesome Guy. Captain Obvious and his sidekick, 20/20Hindsight. Speedy Guillermo. Psychedelic Lightshow. Aqualung. And the ever popular Wonder Lass (occasionally referred to by chauvinistic pigs as Wonder Bra). This story has nothing to do with them, but rather their Graduate Assistants, known collectively as the Wave of the Future. They are:

Danger Tongue- Apart from being fairly charming (particularly where older women are concerned) he has no powers of any kind and despite being team leader, he insists that he gets no respect. No respect at all. Hence the name Danger Tongue. Mostly he gives statements to the press and is sent to commandeer civilian vehicles, cut people in line and do other little dirty tasks for more important heroes.

The Airy Punster- who has found a way to turn levity into levitation.

Lens Flare- Whose “powers” are all edited in during post production thanks to her 1337 photoshop skillz.

Lok Smith- Secret son of Will, rumored to be the result of a government project in Eugenics, and their resident stealth and infiltration expert.

Together they battle against the world’s greatest fiend- Subsidius, the family farmer whose evil organization is funded by YOUR TAXES.

I think you can see why I dropped this one. Maybe as a one shot graphic novel, except I can’t draw, don’t know many who can, and graphic novels are crazy hard to sell. Also because I’m into novels and short stories. And also because best case scenario, one day I’d be signing copies at a convention and Ben Edlund would come over and say “You just wish you were me.” And he’d be totally right.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Office Comedy Week Part IV: SPOOOOOOON

Alright, I apologize for the title line. I'm not discussing spoons today. No, I'm talking about the little engine that could of the super hero world- Ben Edlund's THE TICK. It started as a comic as far back as the late 80s. But comics are for losers and we all know I'm such a cool guy and totally not a nerd, so like all cool people I was first exposed to the Tick through the mind melting affects of children's Television circa 1994. But while us crazy folks who watched stuff like Freakazoid may remember the cartoon well, so few people ever remember that there was a 2001 live-action version. Possibly no one remembers because it was during that period where Fox canceled everything. As in, that's when they canceled Family Guy (to such strong protests they eventually brought it back) and it's shortly before they canceled Firefly, a cult sci-fi show whose following actually continued to grow until a followup movie was made (Incidentally, Edlund worked with the far more famous Whedon on a number of his projects including Firefly. Edlund; the unsung hero of losers everywhere). Fox was not exercising the best judgement at the time. What really hurts is that the live action Tick is genuinely one of the funniest goddamn things I've ever seen in my life. So much so that numerous concepts I had in mind just fell apart. It seemed like the Tick beat me at every turn. And look at how far it got. A mere nine episodes, not all which even got the chance to air. As a rule of thumb, the better and more distinct something is, the less time it gets in the media. Beatle Bailey and Blondie are still doing their shtick sixty years. Or, since we're talking TV, the Simpsons is 20years old and hasn't been funny since the mid 90s. Shows like Cheers and Frasier went on forever and one was a sequel to the other. These days we've got Two and a Half Men. Thank God Sheen's insanity is putting a stop to that. Pains me to admit this though. The Tick's ratings sucked. Even Firefly could claim 5 million viewers an episode. But again, like Firefly, it had such praise from its existing fans (as well as all the actors in it etc.) that it was quickly released on DVD, and today is perpetually availible on Hulu and Netflix instant.

Again, you might not see how this would be an office comedy but I assure you that it is. The shows I've discussed so far have been either batshit insane (Better off Ted and Archer) or taking the extraordinary and making it commonplace (Dead Like Me). The Tick is unusual in that it does both of these things. Patrick Warburton who played the title role went from being no one as far as I was concerned to being one of the funniest people alive through this role. He's probably the most over the top of the cast, but even the sraight man (Arthur, until recently an accountant and boring enough to prove it) is laughably excessive. There's the episode when he's forced to tell his mother and sister about his "Life style choice" (You mean your family doesn't know that you're... super?) and gets committed. And that's how many episodes go. Little actual heroing is accomplished. It's always about the prelude or the after affects of the heroism. So another example: the episode when The Tick and Arthur are invited to join a League of Super Heroes while their friends Batmanuel (try saying it a few times. It grows on you.) and Captain Liberty (the only proper hero of the bunch, really) start a class action lawsuit against the same league for discriminatory entrance policies. And of course the classic episode where they all have to testify in court against Leonid Kasparov Destroyovitch AKA “Destroyo” despite the Tick's limited understanding of the justice system.

The icing on the cake is Warburton and the hilarious Tickisms which come up frequently.


I know you all expect and hope that I’ll hate everything I come across but I’m not really some hate filled monster. Just a critic. Everybody is. I’m just better at it than most people. But I’ve been feeling pretty shitty lately so I’ve really only been talking about stuff I enjoyed. And this is the best of the best. Stupid, yes. Cheesy, yes. Weird and dumb and niche, yes. But also made of pure win. Watch it. Or I’ll sic Destroyo on you.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Office Comedy Week Part III: Archer

Archer is one of those shows intent on playing devil’s advocate in the issue of whether or not intelligence agencies are actually intelligent at all. I don’t know about you, but personally, I’m sick to death of “realistic” crime dramas where every cop is psychic and even better, the ones that follow FBI, CIA or other such groups who have magic underground rooms where they can see everything happening everywhere at any time forever. It’s like have magic mirrors. Computers don’t work that way. Profilers aren’t magic. Lab techs and hackers are not the same thing. NCIS was tolerable until they gave it a spin off. But in general? These shows drive me ape shit. How they could even have pretensions to realism is beyond me. So maybe my burning desire to tell millions upon millions of viewers that what they’re watching is stupid and why it’s stupid (because it isn’t what you think it is) has been influencing my viewing patterns for the last decade. I’m more likely to watch The Man Who Knew Too Little or A Shot in the Dark than James Bond, and I’m more likely to watch Archer than CSI or Criminal Minds or whatever.

The show centers around an intelligence agency- ISIS, and its key players. Namely, Malory Archer, former black ops specialist, and a drunk, horny woman. She’s also the world’s worst mother. Which is fitting since her son, the titular Archer is the world’s best-worst secret agent. Code named Duchess after Malory’s dog, Archer’s as talented in the individual aspects of the spy game such as shooting, driving get away, stealthy infiltration, and running the fuck away as he is emotionally retarded. Oh, and he’s as horny as his mother. Not that it’s easy to tell in this show. Of course there’s also Cyril the accountant, who is dating Lana, the other star field agent at ISIS and Archer’s ex. Then you have crazy Carol, or Sheryl or Cristal the secretary (she changes it in every episode) Pam, the disgusting HR director, and everybody’s favorite mad scientist, Krieger, inventor of the fabled Fister Roboto.

You may not think that randy, irresponsible spies is an office comedy. That’s because you’re thinking Austin Powers. You’d be surprised how much of the office aspect comes through in this show. Indeed, relatively little actual spy work goes on. The first episode has Archer accidentally uncovering a double agent when he tries to cover the fact he’s been using the agencies’ funds for personal use. And yet everyone seems to be more concerned that the donuts Lana knocked out of his hand will attract ants. It’s actually really clever how they work most of that stuff in. For instance, there’s the episode where they have to try and bribe a representative of the UN to give them a grant rather than their rivals, ODIN.

Really, the show has only one downside. It’s ludicrously foul. I have no problem with cursing, or disturbing imagery or ideas or even basic plot premises. It’s virtually impossible to offend me. Which is why this show doesn’t. BUT it’s one of those rare occasions where I can see someone saying “Why would they do that?” because sometimes it’s so excessive it overshadows anything else that’s going on. And usually the show is at its funniest when it’s kinda-sorta-pretending to hide its nature. Like a conversation between Malory Archer and the head of Odin (observant folks will note a clip from this scene is in one of the linked videos. And also, that Malory and the head of Odin are played by the mother and father from Arrested Development, which links us back to Better Off Ted. Re-read that post for a refresher if you’re not sure how)where every exchange between them is a double entendre and seemingly unintentional when taken individually but become increasingly obvious, sped along by Archer helpfully interjecting “Phrasing!” every time. Anyway, it ain’t a show to watch with the young ‘uns that’s for sure. But if you can get past the show’s penchant for excess it’s incredibly funny and unusually clever. Its second season just ended. I’m kind of expecting that’s all we’ll get. Good shows are usually lucky to get that. Anyway, although they took it down during the new season, the show is available instantly on Netflix and *used* to be on Hulu, so it'll likely come back to that as well. I’d imagine the second season will join it soon. Just be sure to only watch when the kiddies are at school.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Office Comedy Week Part II: Dead Like Me

Wheras Better Off Ted was a laugh a minute satire, Dead Like Me is the sort of office comedy that works by making something that would obviously be insane and making it mundane instead. So I guess it’s more of a “Ha, isn’t that weird.” Kind of humor than knee-slapping, vaudevillian, drug-addled crazy time. The show follows one Georgia Lass, who I love. Not the actress. I mean, she’s good. But the character is...well, like me. If I were an attractive girl instead of a fat, ugly man. And also if I were killed by a flaming toilet seat from outer space.

Oh, did I forget to mention that part? Right. Well. Georgia Lass is a reaper. She reaps. Also, she works part time for a large company. But that’s not where most of the office in the office comedy comes in. No, her real office is Der Waffle Haus where her sourpuss boss (played by Mandy Patinkin distributes Post-it notes containing a name, time, and address that the reapers need to be at to relieve dying bodies of their souls. Despite Georgia being 100% green and being a disenfranchised, cynical young idealist, none too keen on the rules of the game, she’s actually one of the better reapers. When your associates are an excessively violent meter maid, a British drug addict who died by drilling a whole in his head while tripping, and a self-important B-Actress of the early days of the cinema, who is always, always always Daisy, Daisy Adair and never JUST Daisy, you don’t have much choice but to step up. Add to this the fact that Georgia barely had a chance to live, her younger sister’s deep emotional trauma regarding the death, her parent’s crumbling marriage, and the menacing gravelings who raise holy hell if she so much as tries to delay the inevitable death of innocent children and you’ve got…well, you’ve got enough hamhanded drama for a soap opera. But there are dead people. And post-its. In a waffle house. Yeah. Yeah. Think about that. Then check the show out.

Objectively it’s not top tier but subjectively? It’s surprisingly effective at keeping your attention once it has it. Which it might have trouble getting since the first few episodes (including the very long pilot) are really setting the situation and don’t really highlight the show’s more unique aspects.

Also, I have decided that this and yesterday's subject are made for each other. Even now, my crack team of humorologists, Phil and Lem…oh no wait. I mean, Travis and Eduardo, are hard at work at the two hour TV-Special cross over extravanganza Ted Like Me. I don’t want to give too much away, but suffice to say that an enormous, life threatening crisis resulting from what should have been a harmless experiment causes Veridian Dynamics (Better off Ted) to be locked down while the reapers, who are there in force due to the size of the impending incident rush around trying to figure out who is who and getting lost in the insane personal dramas of Veridian’s staff while Georgia faces a difficult decision: Save them all and face the graveling’s wrath, or step up to her new responsibilities as head reaper (which she earned in a special that wraps up Dead Like Me, made several years after its cancellation.) In essence, what I’m saying is… crossovers are really easy to write. All you have to remember is that you’re desecrating not one, but TWO worthwhile franchises. If you can keep that in mind, it’s a snap. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I need to spoon feed some bullshit to idiot executives who cancel good shows but can probably be cowed into making cheesy TV specials after the fact to appease vocal fans(To quote Wikipedia: “A direct-to-DVD movie titled Dead Like Me: Life After Death was released on February 17, 2009,[1] with an option to restart the series.[2]”). Speaking of which- anyone seen the new season of Futurama? Jus’ sayin’. Although to be fair, that show came back with A material. I guess after years off the air, they’d accumulated a ton of good ideas.

Anywho, join me next time as I review Archer, which I can only describe as the bastard child of The Man Who Knew Too Little starring Bill Murray, and the absolutely tasteless (but funny in a disturbing way) animated spoofy sitcom Drawn Together. If you don’t know what that means… consider yourself lucky. Because tomorrow, your innocence will be mine. MUAHAHAHAHAHA.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Office Comedy Week Part I: Better Off Ted

Let’s start with one of the more “traditional” office comedies on my watch-it-or-suffer-my-wrath-because-these-shows-are-all-that-keeps-what-little-faith-I-have-in-television-alive inspired wrath. So I guess the most “normal” of them is Better off Ted.

Better off Ted is a good show. And like many good shows, it struggled to get a second season and was canceled after that despite solid ratings. Apparently five million viewers and critical acclaim when the show got no promotion just isn’t acceptable for a second rate Network like ABC. And you know, when they put Castle on the air I thought they were genuinely trying to rise above their pitiful past. Apparently I was wrong. The good news is that the show is available in its entirety through numerous digital means including but not limited to Netflix. Uh. As are all the shows I’m going to talk about actually. Turns out that I can bypass my usual hatred of television by using Netflix instead. If nothing else, it means it’s all there and I don’t have to watch the show piecemeal. Also gives the world time to separate out the chaffe. And let’s be honest. Most TV is chaffe.

So, BOT is about the titular Ted, a director of Research and Development for a Large, soulless, and generally evil corporation. His underlings like him because he’s merely amoral rather than outright immoral. Also because his underlings are batshit insane. His product tester/ love interest, Linda, vacillates wildly between sugar and spice and a rebel without a cause. Maybe if she had a cause she’d be better at it and stop stealing creamer or playing Linda Bagel- a game she invented which involves bouncing bagels off of one wall into a vent in the adjacent wall. His two best researchers are Phil and Lem, archetypal nerds who are without a doubt, the funniest things in an already hilarious show. Who else can make bullet proof dinner plates, lab-grown beef that tastes like despair, or invent an insult formula that will leave you saying “Dag, yo. I done been Philabusted and/or Lembasted.” Finally, there’s Veronica, his nearly sociopathic supervisor. Or as she would say “I’m different from other women, Ted. And by different, I mean better.” She’s played by the very funny Portia de Rossi (AKA Lindsay Bluth from Arrested Development). And on the off chance the show somehow bores you, bear in mind Portia’s married to Ellen Degeneres. So you can always picture her and Linda having a good time. I’m just saying is all. I was usually laughing too hard to think about it. Usually. But it was worth mentioning. And where most people would let tact get in the way of making such an observation public…I don’t. Because I’m different from other people. And by different, I mean better.

You too can be a better human being than the average. Watching this show’s a good start. In fact, I think the only problem with my strategy of avoiding actual TV and sorting it out once everything is already said and done is that I was unable to contribute myself as a statistic its producers could’ve used as they bleeted desperately to their corporate overlords as they begged for a third season. Which is pretty fitting since the show skewers corporate workings pretty well, with a hefty dose of absurd exaggeration to help the medicine go down. For instance, there’s the episode where the company installs cheaper light sensors that can’t see black people, forcing them to hire white people to follow around the black ones. And who can forget the episode that starts with a Spiderman (movie) spoof? “This story is about a girl. This girl. And like most stories about a girl, this one starts with gunplay.” The episode saw Ted halt his unbreakable dinner ware project, secretly funnel money to his product tester so she could actually deliver on the promises the company makes it its commercials to green their buildings, and has to cover his tracks by attributing the shifting funds to a “top secret” project called Jabberwocky. No one catches him only because no one- not even the highest executives are willing to admit that they’re too out of the loop to know what the imaginary project IS. Doesn’t that sound delightful? Well, get watching. Or you’re dead to me.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Life? Don't Talk to Me About Life.

My brother sent me this message the other day to "cheer me up." "Nothing noteworthy here, but a little dreary nonetheless: http://www.theawl.com/2011/03/on-expectations-and-a-writers-lack-of-same

So. Yay. Also, just in case you missed it, yesterday was St. Patrick's day, when everyone is Irish except for Italians and teetotallers. Teetotallers for obvious reasons. Italians because...well, NY is a very Italian state. And the city especially. But NY has the oldest (I think) and one of the biggest St. Patrick's Day celebrations in the entirety of the New World. So there's sort of a rivalry there. As a teetotalling Italian, I was excluded. But I showed them. I ate green curry for dinner. So nyah.

Also, you may have noticed a pattern in the updates. I'm trying to force myself into a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. That's what I always wanted to do but really just wound up updating whenever I felt like it. Which for a while meant everyday. Not sure what I was thinking with that. Possibly "free time really sucks." I may end up breaking my newly established schedule anyway for another theme week. Office comedy week. What do you think?

Also, am I the only one insulted by the news? "Nuclear Melt Down Imminent!" followed immediately by "Baby Scared of Mother's Nose!" DO they have no sense of what is and isn't important? It's like some kind of SAT question. Which doesn't fit? Nuclear meltdown, the toppling of a powerful tyrant, a drought that has decimated the world's supply of wheat or some other food staple, a baby being scared of its mother's nose.

Let me tell you guys something. I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. I've decided to be a hermit. And possibly a Luddite.

Okay, so I'll see you all soon for Office Comedy week. You know you can always come to me for information that matters.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Story Time: Dumplings

Gather round, gentle readers and I shall tell you a tale, a tale of love, of honor, and of unintended consequences. This tale has been passed through the ages, penned by the great Master Chuang, and has, through sheer good fortune survived and made its way to me, that I may make this story known to you, as you will one day make it known to others.

Master Chuang tells us that there was a time when the world was divided into three great kingdoms, ruled by Hu, the Lord of the North, Shu, Lord of the South, and the central land ruled by the wise and Benevolent Emperor Hun-Tun. Hun-Tun’s lands were so fertile and his people so happy and productive that he decided to throw a great feast for his friends, the Lords of the North and South.

Upon arrival they were so struck by the emperor’s generosity to his guests that they conspired between them.
“How can it be,” asked one “that such an extraordinary man was not even blessed with eyes or nose?”
“Well,” said the other “We must pay him back for this lavish feast somehow. Eyes and nose may be the only way for us to repay a man of such skill and resource.”

And so, each night of the lengthy festival, Hu and Shu would sneak into Hun-Tun’s sleeping quarters and bore one of the seven holes into his body that all men need to live.

On the seventh night, Hun-Tun died.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Justice Delayed by Snow

So first off, the winner of the 3Cs contest is Vishal Khanna for the resurrect dead lover cliché. Maybe it’s just the sort of books I read and everything, but I see it a lot. In one case, it was actually just implied and totally irrelevant to the plot. Plus the mention of other patients reminds me of Parasite Eve. And now I have to add re-animator to my Netflix queue. Anyway, congratulations. You can send me your first twenty pages any time you’re ready. My email is off to the side there somewhere and is on my profile page. For everyone else, worry not. I do this every month, so there will be more opportunities.

Boy, we’re off to a good start here, huh? Monday morning. Stories about playing god to bring back the dead. And have you guys been following the earthquake and subsequent tsunami, after shocks and nuclear scares in Japan? Where’s Go Jira when you need him? Here’s a cliché for you: Godzilla’s just walking down the street when out of the bushes pops a leaking nuclear reactor. So Godzilla takes off his helmet and uses it to cover the plant, saving us all at the cost of his own life. But he’ll probably just fall back into the ocean and come back in a subsequent adventure anyway. In all seriousness though, it’s a sucky situation. Really sucky. And a little bit freaky for me. I used to work in Japan. Admittedly pretty far from where this happened, but still. And towns I visited when I studied in China have been wrecked in quakes too. Suffice to say, I’m surprised how poorly Earthquakes are doing in that poll. Maybe all my readers are in California or something. Gotta say though, Earthquakes scare the shit outta me. And with the possibility of nuclear meltdown resulting from aftershocks, I don’t know how anyone could not be terrified.

Well, I know a story that’ll cheer us all up. My brother is a corporate lawyer but his favorite stuff is the pro-bono criminal work. He’s got this one client who’s been in jail for over thirty years for selling pot. Without going into a lot of detail, despite him being a model inmate, and despite the fact that long ago maximum sentences were imposed in drug charges that meant that were he convicted today he’d have been out anywhere from 7-15 years ago, the parole board has consistently turned him down based on letters (contrary to the actual evidence) written by the police union. My brother’s big accomplishment was to point out to a court that the parole board shouldn’t be relying on those letters to inform their decision. He won that case, so the parole board was ordered to re-hear the case. That was months ago. They were “delayed” by snow in the city. For the last three months, apparently. The guy’s next hearing is coming up next month anyway. Apparently the parole board has been absolutely intent on NOT DOING A GODDAMN THING while they draw VERY LARGE SALARIES paid by MY TAXES while keeping HARMLESS OLD MEN in prison (also paid by my taxes). It’s a dark world we live in if JUSTICE can be put on hold because of a little bit of frozen water.

Oh wait. I guess that wasn’t uplifting at all. Well. Um. Hmmm. Okay. I think I got it. Here’s something happy: I recently found out that every band ever has recorded their own version of Dick Dale’s Miserlou. Thank you Pandora for your tireless assistance in my research.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Crash and the Three Cs Contest: The Seven Week Itch

So, it’s that time again. A little early in the month to be sure, but I’m feeling the itch.

Wait, what are you thinking of? Anyway, it’s time to MAKE A DEAL. Or something. For newcomers (or those with short attention spans) this is the part where I offer my eagle eyes on a platter to give you some feedback on the first twenty pages (or equivalent) of your book. Why 20? Many agencies require a writing sample before they ask for a full. Mine asks for 20. It’s the largest sample size I’ve seen (most agencies do 5 or 10 near as I can tell, which is really all we need, but eh). So, if you’d be interested in having a life-long critic with a year’s worth of experience slogging through 30 queries a day (including weekends and holidays) give you a couple pointers, listen up.

Whoever comments or e-mails me the most amusingly clichéd character or contrived plot twist, especially if it’s something that actually came up in something you were/are trying to write wins a free edit of the first twenty of a WIP of their choice. My only stipulation is that these things must be text. I’ve got too little experience in design to help photo book authors. Children’s books I’ll do. Less happily than MG, YA or Adult, but I won’t hold it against you if you don’t hold whatever I say against me. You’ve been warned: my edits will include sarcastic commentary designed to shame you into self-editing. Because the greatest gift an editor…well, okay, in my case, an agent’s Editorial Assistant can give to a writer is a strong Editorial Superego.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Crash and the Three Cs

You know, what’s interesting to me is that someone voted that Crash was a boring, lopsided movie about racial diversity. Or tolerance. Or however I worded the poll. I’m surprised because usually, things which proclaim at the outset that they are moral tales also claim to be beyond reproach and people frequently fall for it. Usually not if it’s about environmentalism, but we’re all so damn fired up to prove that we’re not bigots that we feel obligated to like a movie like Crash.

I didn’t. For one, I put that lopsided option there for a reason. Because I thought it was. I imagine many of you have seen it. Did you notice that the Whites, Blacks and Latinos all turn out to be different than who you thought they’d be, for better or for worse? And did you notice how their storylines kept intertwining? Because if you did, you must have also noticed that the East Asian characters were portrayed as dirty, desperate, law breaking human smugglers who can’t drive for shit and harp on about duty and knowing your place and whatever. If they could have maybe declared that life is cheap in the orient before basting a dog in sweet and sour sauce the image would’ve been complete. For that matter, their storyline was completely off to the side. The best part is that I watched it years ago for a screen writing class. Then we had to get together with these American Diversity (Sociology?) classes to discuss it. I brought up this point and the professor leading the discussion- a thirty something African American woman with a PhD who I’d expect to be sensitive to issues of racial profiling pooh-poohed my assertion.

“There are no wise old men.” She said “no Kung-Fu fighting. Therefore it’s not a stereotype, therefore it’s good for them.” I think my jaw might’ve hit the floor. Lemme at her. I’ll show you Kung Fu. What the hell? So we use negative stereotypes, but as long as we don’t give them any credit for having a culture that values education or discipline we’re good. The stated goal of the movie is to promote understanding and tolerance, but it felt to me like what they were actually saying was “Hey now, whites, Hispanics, and African Americans. We need to stop fighting amongst ourselves and focus on the REAL problem- those slanty eyed yellow bastards.” As you all know, I studied Asia pretty extensively, so for me at least, this shit does not fly.

Rant about hypocritical bullshit aside, even if I wanted to like Crash, I couldn’t because the movie is driven by the three Cs. They’re deadly sins for writers. I am of course referring to Contrivance, Convenience, and Cliché, the triple headed beast of Bad Writing. Crash has a metric crapton of intertwining stories, and everything takes place in just a couple of days. Even in a small city for the same police officer to run into the same guy for two totally different reasons in two totally different parts of town is…unlikely at best. And the whole story is like that. Every single thing that happens has the distinct air of “it happened because we needed it to happen, not because it makes logical sense for it to have happened.” This is convenience- writing a world where logic and commonsense means little. Even worse is contrivance, when your own established logic goes out the window as well or you just drop things on the audience for no reason or without warning. Consider the police officers again. There were two, as I recall. The “good one” is kind, strong and capable, defending an innocent upper class African American couple from his asshole of a partner one night, and then saving the male half of that couple the very next day after that man snaps and creates a huge ruckus. In the real world, he’d probably have been shot in the “altercation.” But wonder cop uses his magic charm to convince the other officers to stand down, equips his IRON TESTICLES to walk right up to a violent, armed man, talks HIM down, then talks the world out of holding anything against this man. And then later in the movie he shoots an innocent man because he’s suddenly very jumpy. Wait. What? He was some kind of ARYAN SUPERMAN until they realized that’s what they wrote and suddenly the world’s most perfect police officer is murdering innocent people and burying them in a shallow grave on the roadside. The other officer, who was a huge asshole turns out that he’s just on edge because his father’s ill. A fact they don’t reveal until almost the end, and which basically doesn’t matter at all to the progression of the plot. The character had all but disappeared in the meantime. And the sad part? He was one of the better characters. These things smack of contrivance.

And cliché? I believe I covered that with the racial stereotyping. In the end, Crash just isn’t a very good movie in my opinion. It holds such incredible disregard for basic characterization or story structure as to make the entire production seem like a disconnected mess.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Shits and Giggles

So do you fine folks follow Stoker nominee Jeremy Shipp on Twitter? ‘Cuz you probably should. He’s pretty funny. He frequently offers extra stuff if you buy electronic copies of his books instead of print ones, and he asks truly deep, philosophical questions very nearly on par with my own upcoming title "Crewd Entertainment Incorporated Presents Robin Crew’s Big Book of Zen Like Non-sense." So, Mr. Shipp, for the sake of our collective publicity, I choose to meet your rapier wit with my own. Although mine may look more like a sledgehammer, do not be fooled. It’s subtle. Really. Blink and you might miss it. Here’s a sampling of his deepest questions, as they were posted Wednesday last.

“If your life was a video game, what would your character collect to obtain points?”

Surely you jest, Mr. Shipp. It should be perfectly obvious that I would collect VOTES. Specifically, VOTES FOR ME. However, I could obtain bonus points by collecting VOTES for OTHER PEOPLE and disposing of them safely, secretly, and within the allotted time, but would receive a hefty penalty for getting caught.

“If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be, and how would you go about taking over the world?”

I think it’s plain to see that the only tree I should want to be is an apple tree, if word domination is my goal. Uh. E. Let’s think for a moment, shall we? Apples grow all over the world in a myriad of climates and cultures. There are dozens of varieties and endless uses. Raw. Pies. Juice. Sauce. Hell, take a good look at that strawberry oatmeal in the cupboard. Those chunks of strawberry? Dyed apple bits. The trees last for years. They require little maintenance, and provide large amounts of food. They’ve even got the health vote locked up thanks to the idea that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Since I plan to take over the world through legitimate, democratic means (well, democratic anyway) I’ll need the sort of widespread support that can only be obtained as an apple tree.

When you’re ready to face my counter examination, Mr. Shipp, I shall be ready with questions so deep as to be truly unfathomable. So until next time folks, remember that I have many bulls and I feed them very well. A bullshit farm is the first thing any political candidate needs, you know.

This message has been approved by the VOTE FOR ME foundation to elect Robin Crew.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Multi-Media Week Part III: Parasite Eve wrap-up

Parasite Eve II (game): A game made several years after the first. While it was pretty good looking at the time, it’s dumb. This time around, all the classic plot points, mitochondrial liberation, transplant surgery etc. have been completely thrown by the wayside. It has no thematic connections to either the first game or the book. It doesn’t have the same *feel* about it either. They take Aya, the game’s main character, and displace her. So now she’s not a NYC cop. She’s part of some secret government task force. So goodbye established support cast. The game plays like a Resident Evil clone, which isn’t a good thing. Indeed, the whole game feels like a RE clone. You can see where they’d get mixed up. Resident Evil is abbreviated RE, and Parasite Eve is abbreviated PE. The difference of a single stroke. Of course, I kid. They’re made by different companies. They’re different kinds of games. I dunno what Square was thinking, but this was the nail in the coffin that convinced me that Square wasn’t having a few bad years (the time since PE1 was released) but were in fact staffed by complete morons. The story is a cross between a conspiracy story and Jurassic Park except with Mitochondrial mutations in place of dinosaurs. I may have mentioned, dinosaurs wore out their welcome in the first game, so I wasn’t pleased with the Jurassic Park vibe. Aya has two possible love interests (One is a loser and the other is an asshole) except it never goes anywhere because the plot is underdeveloped. I really wish Kyle had managed to get himself killed. He’s such a douche. And his presence makes Aya look weak, which I don’t appreciate. She saved the fucking world, buddy. She doesn’t need your shoulder to cry on. They also give her a “little sister” (actually a clone, and it’s really stupid) and the story lacks anything resembling a proper antagonist, and culminates in the least exciting and most expected “twist” in history before launching you into an arbitrary final boss battle that makes no sense. Long story short, even if you read the book, loved it, play the first game, loved it, I still can’t recommend this one. Certainly not from the standpoint of writing. Gameplay’s not so hot either.
Arbitrary Confectionary Rating: A plain donut. It actually isn’t *bad* but it is pretty bland, and therefore not worth the calories or the cholesterol. There’s no reason for it to exist.

3rd Birthday (Parasite Eve III, game): It’s coming out later this month. IOU a second Parasite Eve related review. All I can say now is that A) Kyle is back. This does not please me. B) Gameplay looks to be more action oriented which would be good but for the hefty dose of cover-based shooting which is as popular a mechanic as games have, but it’s never been my thing and C) a recently released English trailer made it sound like they’ve gone and included time-travel. I’m taking bets that Aya’s Clone-Sister (“Eve”) turns out to be her “twin” Maya, the host of the Mitochondrial entity (also “Eve”) from the first game. That would be stupid, but sadly, it makes sense. Well, it can’t be worse than the second game and I’m getting excited despite my concerns. I will say that I’m a little upset about how excited Square has been about the ability to dress Aya up like an idiot though. Do we really need to put the world’s last hope in a maid outfit? And if games are going to do this, could they at least acknowledge how silly it is? What if I wanted to dress her like a Mime or Eddie Izzard? Closest available is Santa, which just sounds like some weird fetish. But fans of the series will all be at least in their 20s by now if not their 30s or 40s, so it seems out of place. Needlessly juvenile. And the series has always had the game equivalent of an R rating, so come on. Time they remembered that we're grownups. Or that we liked Aya because she was a female lead we could take seriously. *Sigh*.

Arbitrary Confectionary Rating: Imaginary Sugar Cookie. You try to imagine it. One moment it’s soft, sweet and delicious. The next it’s kind of gross. Then the taste fades and the cycle starts again.

Book club idea- if any of you decide to read the book after all (or play the first game) try picturing “Mitochondrial Liberation” as an allegory for extreme feminism and see how/if that changes anything.

Mitochondrial fun facts! Actually, I cut them because this post is really long and I doubt anyone cares. If you do, I’ll expand, but here’s the short version: Mitochondria are passed down matrilineally which is why they’re portrayed as essentially female in the series despite being asexual.

Horror fun fact! We take it as a given that fall, especially October is the “scary season” because Halloween is at the end of that month. But in Japan, Summer, especially August is the scary season. You know the idea of “chills running down your spine”? Well, given their odd sense of humor, they decided to put that sensation to use keeping themselves cool by having the shit scared out of them. Notably, the book takes place in August-September.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Multimedia Week Part III: Parasite Eve Review Part II (Game)

Parasite Eve the Movie- it exists, and supposedly even with English subtitles, but Netflix doesn’t actually have copies available. IOU one Parasite Eve review.

Arbitrary Confectionary Rating: I have no idea, but in my imagination, Parasite Eve the movie tastes like mee grob. Or however it’s spelled. If you ever see mee grob at a Thai restaurant, you should try it. It’s like candied prawn noodles. It’s delicious. Kinda messy though. They’re very sticky.

Parasite Eve (game): Trying to directly translate the book into a game wouldn’t have worked so well. I suppose they could have made a point a click adventure game, but I don’t know that there’s really enough mystery to carry that. And those games don’t make the big bucks, and are rarely made in Japan. Heck, they’re rarely made at all anymore. Though there are some. There’s a well reviewed series of mini Back to the Future point and clicks in development now (two or three of a planned five have been released). So what else would’ve been a direct adaptation? Lab simulator. Can you imagine a game where you never do anything but run stuff through centrifuges and things? So the game didn’t do these things.

Instead, it’s a semi-sequel. It changes location from Japan to NYC, and the new lead character is Aya Brea, a busty blonde police officer. At the time, female mains were pretty rare. They’re still outnumbered, but at the time there were only a handful. So there’s a point right there. It’s an RPG, my favorite genre. Those games are text heavy (not always well written, but what can you do?). Thing is, most RPGs are high fantasy settings, with the occasional space opera. Parasite Eve is contemporary, real world. So there’s another point in its favor. The plot itself has nothing to do with the plot of the book, but it definitely uses a lot of the same ideas and images. It actually expands on the idea of Mitochondrial liberation for example, prominently features transplant surgery and the birth of the ultimate being. And though they’re sort of amusingly awkward in retrospect, the support cast was solid as well. Two in particular. One was Daniel, Aya’s mentor on the force and a trigger happy giant bear of a black man with a heart of gold who couldn’t be more obviously a stereotype of what Japanese people think Americans are like if he tried. The other was Maeda, a scientist who the game indicates is actually Toshiaki from the book, which would be impossible, so don’t even worry about it. Suffice to say, he’s smart, socially awkward, and tends to be easily impressed as well as give out useless good luck charms. In short, he’s what the Japanese think Americans think Japanese are like. But I forgive them. Even though they’re all a little thick. Because the game has so many crazy pseudo-science things going on, everyone put on their stupid hats before they went in to work so that even the dullest player could follow along.

The game is essentially about Aya, Daniel and Maeda trying to track down Eve, a Mitochondrial entity possessing an opera singer and recklessly “liberating” the mitochondria of various creatures she comes across, mutating them into beasts. Along the way we learn that Aya is pretty much the only one who can stop Eve because Eve’s original host was Aya’s identical twin sister, Maya. The opera singer received Maya’s kidney when she died in a car accident, and Aya herself got a cornea. So Aya has similar power but her own mitochondria have chosen to support the current symbiosis rather than putting an end to an insufferable era of “nucleic domination” and hence giving Aya all kinds of abilities that in any other game would be described as magic. It’s a modification of the book’s premise so that there are A) more things to fight and B) an actual way to fight back since the creature in the book was pretty much unstoppable. It sounds dumb on paper but it actually works really well. Until towards the end, anyway. Somehow, Eve uses a crowd she melts into goo to make magic stem cells and uses them in one of the later dungeons so you have to fight DINOSAURS resurrected at the Museum of Natural History. Seriously. That’s not a joke. Plus, I went to that particular museum a lot as a kid. Honestly it hasn’t changed much over the years. And I feel compelled to point out that I have yet to be eaten by a dinosaur.

The graphics are ass. They’re from the early polygon era so everything is realistically proportioned, but hideous to behold. Except the CG scenes which were pretty rockin’ at the time. Not many games have opera houses filled with people spontaneously combusting within the first five minutes. That’s class right there.



The soundtrack was perfect for the game. The game itself is short, but there are incentives to replay it, such as an alternate final dungeon. It’s broken up into bite sized chapters, each taking place on a successive day. They take a cue from the book and each of these chapters is named after a stage in the development process of a life form. Combat is iffy. You dodge enemy attacks in real time, but you have to wait your turn to attack. It was pretty neat but Aya’s movement speed isn’t so great, enemies frequently take up half the screen, and there isn’t anything like a block or a guard roll. Dodging is performed purely by running out of the way which is often impossible, so you’ll usually just tank the attacks and pop healing medicine as needed. And if any of you even remotely cared about anything in that paragraph, I’d be surprised.

Still, it’s fun to replay it once in a while even now, and back when? Well, this was one of the best things Squaresoft ever produced. Indeed, since then they’ve pretty much just been making uninspired trash that relies too heavily on cinematics. Honestly, it was all down hill for that company from there out. At least as far as quality. They were raking in the dough like you wouldn’t believe until just recently when people finally started to wise up. Indeed, between 2000 and 2010 I got the impression that Square was making bad games on purpose, waiting to see how bad they would have to be before people stopped throwing money at them. And, because there was backlash against Square always porting old games to new systems and releasing them at the price of a new game, they’ve been forced to start obeying the unwritten rules of the modern age and releasing them digital only as budget titles. So here's the upshot of their decade of douchery- If you’ve got a PS3 or a PSP (Sony systems) the word on the street is that Parasite Eve will be re-released shortly to celebrate the release of the third game in the series. “PSOne Classics” as they are known generally go for $5.00-10.00 if you’re interested.

Arbitrary Confectionary Rating: Danish. You walked in hoping to get a jelly donut but they were out, so you begrudgingly pick up a Danish instead, sighing about how the sugar isn’t powdered so it won’t make a mess, and how there’s more jelly and you know where it is. After a moment’s contemplation you’re not sure why anyone would have gotten the donut since this is clearly better. Plus, depending on your mood, you can get it light and flaky (play once) or dense and filling (replay for additional content). Sure the jelly looks weird when it’s out in the open but that doesn’t stop it from being delicious.

Friday, March 4, 2011

Multi-Media Week Part III: Parasite Eve (Book)

Some thought it was a legend. A folk tale gone out of control. A mere wive’s tale. Something parents told their children to scare them straight at night. But recent archaeological discoveries have laid those claims to rest. It was real.

No.

It IS real.



Which is fine by me. I rather enjoyed it.

Back in 1995 a lowly pharmacological researcher by the name of Hideaki Sena decided to write a Horror novel. I doubt anyone expected it to be what it ultimately became. In Japan, it came out around the same time as The Ring, and competed with it to the degree that Japanese horror fans were all set to declare a new golden age. Indeed, the Ring is a multi-media powerhouse in its own right, having been a series of books, then a movie, then an American movie. But I’m actually not familiar with it. I suppose I should be, but oh wells. Coincidentally, Both the Ring and Parasite Eve were translated and released in the U.S. years after the fact by scattershot all-things-Japanese publisher Vertical Press.

Parasite Eve was translated in 2005, but I first heard of it back in 1998 when the ending credits of a game by the same name were rolling on my TV screen and words to the effect of “Based on the novel by Hideaki Sena” came into view. The game carries a lot of nostalgic power for me, so naturally when I saw (circa 2008) that the book had been translated, I immediately bought it. The games are still being made, with the third scheduled for release in March, so I decided to re-read the book and review the franchise.

The premise: Toshiaki Nagashima is a researcher and assistant professor at a university in Japan who specializes in the study of Mitochondria, an independent organism living in symbiosis with all multicellular creatures, providing energy in exchange for materials. When his wife dies suddenly in a car crash, Toshiaki is possessed by the desire to keep her alive by harvesting her liver cells for use in his research. What he doesn’t know is that “She”, the collective mind of his beloved’s Mitochondria is using him in an attempt to create the ultimate being and reverse the ancient symbiosis by subjugating host DNA.

Review: I don’t want to do a full plot run down. There’s a lot of characters (and although Toshiaki is ostensibly the main, most of the book is limited 3rd and follows at some point or another pretty much every named character including but not limited to Yoshizumi, a transplant surgeon, Kiyomi, Toshiaki’s late wife, Asakura, one of Toshiaki’s students, and Mariko Anzai, a teenage girl who receives Kiyomi’s kidney), and being a horror novel a lot of the fun is the tension and mood and whatever. So I’ll say this much: if you like Horror, you really oughta read this because it’s something different. Also, if you like biology or medicine you should read this. Most of the complaints I’ve ever heard are that the book starts slow. There’s a lot in there about transplant surgery and hospital administration and things of that nature. Trust me, they’re all relevant and as a former bio nerd, I ate that shit up. If anything, I wish the first half (which is not science fiction as much as it is SCIENCE) was even slower. Sometimes I felt like the book was tipping its hand too early and too often. Also, the production of the book is… questionable.

I don’t think Vertical Press had been around for very long when they did this (according to their site, they seem to have formed in 2004 and this translation hit shelves in 2005), and surely had a pitiful budget. It shows. The text is appropriately sized, but it’s in a serif, not sans-serif. The margins are very small. The cover is absolutely atrocious. They don’t end a page with the chapter so they run right into each other. They’ve got back of book ads, which I have no problem with, but what they advertise is a scattershot because vertical hadn’t done enough horror yet. So one page advertises the Ring trilogy, which makes sense, but the next advertises some random manga series. And the translation has some issues. It’s not awful. It’s a fun read and plenty clear. They could have safely cut about half the commas though. They also use lots of ellipses and in at least one place they use double exclamation points. Two sentences in a row. You know!! Like this!! This is stuff big boys and girls don’t do. On the whole though, the writing is detail oriented and spartan. Very matter of fact. It works well with the setting, and the ideas are original. So it’s a good read, a good book. Despite the hideous cover. The funny part is that the designer actually stuck his name on the back cover as if we care who he is.*

Arbitrary Confection Rating: It’s a day old cupcake made with Splenda. It would’ve been better yesterday and substituting Splenda for the sugar messes with the recipe, but in all fairness, it was a blue ribbon recipe. Blue. Not like, yellow. Or pink. Blue. That’s a heck of a ribbon to have associated with your recipe, so it’s pretty hard to make it bad. It’s just not as good as it should’ve been.

*Interestingly enough, on Wednesday I was talking with an industry veteran and the books we were each reading came up. I actually had PE with me and I showed it to him. You know what his first response was? "Ah, and a cover by Chipp Kidd. You know of course that he's very famous and sucessful as a cover designer, yes?" Why, so he is. I guess that explains sticking his name on there, but not why the cover's so damned ugly. What happened, Chipper?

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Multi-Media Week Part II: Review II: Prince of Persia: Sands of Time: Part II: The Movie: Revenge of the Colon.

Before you know anything else about the movie, you know it’s going to be bad. Being a movie isn’t a great start. Being a movie based on a game is like a contract with the devil written in blood that it will be awful. I recall the posters proudly proclaiming that it came from the same folks who made Pirates of the Caribbean, which would’ve had at least some chance of fooling someone if there had only ever been one, or maybe even two. But by World’s End, can you honestly say you trust their judgment anymore?

Once the movie begins, we see the first reason that the movie will suck. The prince is not a prince, but a rascally street urchin. D’awwww. Ain’t that cute? Oh wait. No. It’s not. Also, why is ancient Persia filled with pasty white dudes? Also, wait. The King ADOPTS the rascally street urchin because…he pisses off some soldiers and gets caught? By falling from a roof while attempting some acrobatic nonsense? So the story is already off on a bad foot and the Prince has been downgraded from eminently capable but emotionally retarded down to incompetent twat. The movie immediately skips forward about twenty years when we meet his adoptive brothers, One being a good person but a terrible leader and the other being an angry, shouty man. We also meet the uncle/advisor and if you couldn’t tell from his bald head, eye liner and Fu Manchu that he’s the villain the INSTANT he appears on screen you must be a complete moron. He might as well have walked around wearing one of those sandwich plate signs reading “Hello, I will be your villain today. Our specials are Backstabbing, and manipulation. Our goal is the throne.” I’d say the movie’s story follows the game, but only in part. There is no apocalypse for one. The Prince only ever reverses time like twice in the entire movie. The princess can’t decide if she’s a helpless flower or some snotty bitch but she’s never half as much fun as her game counterpart. The dialogue between the two is pretty much crap. Here’s an example.

Prince: I didn’t kill my father.
Princess: I believe you. Now Russ stands to inherit the throne.
Prince: I didn’t kill my father.

I’m not even joking. It’s like he forgot what line he was on and they decided it was too much work to refilm the scene. Meanwhile, what kind of name is “Russ” for a Persian Prince set to inherit the throne? Also, did you really think that you could convince us that his adopted brother framed the prince for murder when there’s an obsequious bald man with a Fu Manchu standing right fucking there? Like I said, it’d take a special kind of idiot not to know who the villain is. The Prince is a very special boy. It takes him half the movie.

At which point the writers panic because they’ve only got forty pages of screenplay. So suddenly they shoehorn in some backstory that might’ve been halfway decent if they’d mentioned it early (and they had many opportunities so I don’t understand why they didn’t) then they introduce the evil Uncle’s elite force of Hassassins, Persian ninjas. No that is not a joke. That really happens. Clever, right? Sticking an H on the word assassin. You know, I don’t even care if Hassassins were real. It’s too stupid.

The Prince convinces one of his brothers that their uncle is the real villain right before that brother gets killed. Then they do it AGAIN like two scenes later with the other brother. Christ. When you finally get to the ending, it almost feels like you’re on safe ground again, admittedly not as well done as in the game but hey. But then when he goes back in time he doesn’t stop the war from happening as happened in the game or as the movie repeatedly insists is going to happen. He comes back to right after his daring gambit to let in the Persian armies (resulting in a swift and relatively bloodless victory) confronts the evil Uncle, who cackles maniacally like a James Bond villain and more or less says “and what are you going to do about it?” while surrounded BY THE ENTIRE PERSIAN ARMY. What the hell kind of villain was he? It took an entire movie to take this loser down? I feel so cheated. Well, maybe it can be rescued. The princess will surely hate the Prince for what he’s done, right? Wrong! Rather than slipping out into the night, leaving the Princess with a confusing story, an apology and the time controlling dagger, in the movie THEY GET ENGAGED. So he gets glory and the girl, consequence free.

This isn’t even having your cake and eating it too. I never understood why that’d be a problem. Why wouldn’t you eat a cake if you had it? This is more like having a cake and eating everybody else’s. You know what? Fuck you Hollywood. Fuck you. Up the ass. With a hot iron poker.

Arbitrary Confectionary Rating: Laxative chunk brownies. You can scoff at video game writing if you want, but remember it could always be worse. It could be a movie.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Multi-Media Week Review II: Prince of Persia; Sands of Time (Part 1: The Game)

I should point out that there is actually a series of games going back to the dark ages of gaming history. The original was just a boring side scrolling plat former like every other game of the time whose only notable feature, “realism” only served to remove the fun. The series was eventually revived (very poorly, but I didn’t play that, so whatever) and then revived again, this time good. The good revification began with Prince of Persia: Sands of Time developed by Ubisoft Montreal. As games go, I never thought it was great. The combat was not particularly deep or varied, and frequently you'd have four enemies constantly on top of you, each replaced by a clone the second you kill them. It sort of makes you wonder what the combat actually brought to the end product. The core of the gameplay mostly involved insane acrobatics. Running up a wall, backflipping off it, catching a flagpole in mid-air, swinging off of that towards another wall, bounce off that, climb up a ledge, get cut in half by a trap you couldn’t possibly have seen coming, then rewind time with a Magical MacGuffin and duck under the trap. It gets old after a while, but it’s actually pretty fun and in this aspect outdoes any other game if only because they focused on the platforming rather than making it incidental. It also has surprisingly competent writing. Which is not to say it’s great writing or that there’s a lot of it, but most games have pretty bad writing. Of course, as we shall see, it could always be far worse.

But of real interest is the interaction between the titular Prince and the leading lady. The game is structured with the Prince recounting his exploits, starting with how, despite his distaste for battle, he sneaks into an enemy city and steals an ancient MacGuffin just to please his overbearing father the King. Long story short, the evil advisor turns out to be evil (no shit) and uses the prince to more or less screw over the entire world turning it into a hellish nightmare. Apart from the advisor, only a handful of people survive this ancient Persian apocalypse intact, one of them being the princess of the enemy kingdom, Farah.

Neither the Prince nor Princess are particularly likable. He’s whiny and arrogant. She’s secretive and controlling. But she knows things he absolutely needs to know and she’s handy with a bow, and he’s actually a good guy with some emotional issues but whose control over Time Manipulating MacGuffin and acrobatic skills are necessary for their survival. And that’s what it is. Slowly he becomes less of an ass (although he does very humorously talk to himself whenever the two split up which makes him seem slightly unhinged), and slowly she reveals a bit of the things they need to know and they use each other to survive because they aren’t superhuman. Just awesome. Anyway, it makes for a pretty good interplay between them because heroes usually are presented as superhuman (with love interests/side kicks being of the also super human variety OR the useless twit variety) so this is a huge mark in its favor. And as far as mainstream gaming goes, I guess you could even hold up the Princess as a shining example of how to write female characters. Interestingly, no reviewers ever seem to mention the part where she uses a combination of magic and seduction to steal the MacGuffin back from the Prince towards the end because both of them have serious trust issues. I’m guessing that since reviewers are pretty much all male, no one really thought this was a problem. It seems a little out of place. Not massively out of place though, and I like jumblies too much to really complain. Just thought I’d mention it.

And at the end, the Prince manages to fix the world by going back to the night before the war started. He kills the villain and it turns out that the whole game he hasn’t been telling the story to you, but to the Princess. So although the journey made him a better man and they were maybe a hair’s breadth away from loving each other or whatever, he has to give it up to undo his mistake. So it’s a decent twist and adds a slight tinge of tragedy back into the proceedings. Not real tragedy, but it’s not a happily ever after. In short, the game was good; not great, but perfectly fills a particular niche. For more information, feel free to consult a certain foul mouthed British man I intend to kill and replace.

Arbitrary Confection Rating: Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. Sometimes you’ll wish those raisins weren’t there. Sometimes you’ll wish there were more. Ocassionally you’ll just start munching and pretending that it’s okay because, come on. Oatmeal raisin. Gotta be healthy, right? If you’re in the right mood, it’s gold.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Multi-Media Week Review I: The World of Roger Rabbit

Who Censored Roger Rabbit: You’re probably familiar with the movie, but how much do you know about the book that inspired it? If all you know is the movie, you might as well unlearn it. Who Censored Roger Rabbit is a completely different story. At the outset, we meet Roger and Eddie. He’s not the surviving half of a pair of detectives. He’s a solo act and only slightly drunk. He comes across more like a Bogart character, and he never has quite the emotional responses to toons that his movie counterpart has. Roger isn’t quite who you’d expect from the movie either. He’s silly to be sure, but not off the walls wacky. He’s actually quite intelligent and well spoken…or as well spoken as you can get when you speak in word bubbles rather than actual sounds. He hires Eddie to investigate some “contract” irregularities between himself and his employers, the DeGreasy comic “syndicate.” As you can imagine, the DeGreasy brothers are essentially an organized crime ring. The story takes the normal first steps of any detective story. Eddie interviews around. Jessica Rabbit, used to run with Rocco DeGreasy before marrying Roger and has returned to him. Both Jessica and the DeGreasys deny that Roger had any talent, but others, such as Carol Masters who photographs the toons in action (to make comic strips, not animations) says he’s enormously talented. Some quarrels come up regarding Roger getting his own strip, or his contract being sold to another comic company that would give him his own strip. And from there things just get weird. The DeGreasys turn out to be very human like toons, just like Jessica. Rocco is murdered. Roger is the prime suspect, or would be if he wasn’t murdered too. Toons are adept at making temporary copies of themselves )dopplegangers) that they use for stunt doubles, and Roger’s prodigious talent allows him to create one that lasts for several days and accompanies Eddie on the investigations. And when you find out the real reason for all the intrigue you’re seriously not even going to believe it. It has nothing to do with Rocco and Roger’s competition over Jessica (who got her start in pornography!) nor contracts nor money. It’s safe to say that when the real reason first comes up you’ll dismiss it for being stupid.

And yet it works. The whole book is an awful lot of fun and I don’t want to give away anymore than I have already because I think probably a number of you might really be interested in reading it and I wholly encourage you to do so. Although copies are pretty much impossible to come by in print these days (even several years ago when I got it I needed to hunt around on Amazon Marketplace) it is available as a Kindle file now, and probably in other formats as well. As it should be. It’s a good book with a niche audience that provides a slow, steady demand. The story is definitely darker than the movie, and it has more..questionable content. Toon doctors who make pamphlets on VD and whatnot. It also highlights the human-toon dichotomy more than the movie did. There’s a whole extra layer to the Roger-Jessica-Rocco triangle when you think the Degreasy’s are human because interspecies relations like that are… frowned on. Seriously though, this thing is 2 bucks for a digital version. Buy it. But just ‘cuz your eight year old loved the movie doesn’t mean they should read this. It’s a fun, somewhat light read for adults or, given that I grew up in a time before YA was a big thing, it’s the sort of silly adult novel that makes for a good transition from MG.

Arbitrary Confection Rating: Nougat. Soft and chewy. You don’t think you want it, and after you’re done you’re not sure what was so special, but it’s good going down.

The Movie: You know what? In the interest of space, I’ma do this quick because I shouldn’t even have to review it. When I become the overlord, it’s just required viewing. It’s fantastic and if you haven’t seen it you’ve lived a deprived life, presumably under a rock, in a cave somewhere outside of existence as we know it. Eddie Valiant is played by Mario Mario/Smee’s Me Bob Haskins and he’s so good at it I really want to praise the actor, but I’ve only ever seen him in those three things. And the Super Mario movie was awful, and clearly Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of Captain Hook was the centerpiece of Hook, so yeah, this is Haskin’s best role. Still, a performance like that is far more than most actors could ever hope for. Roger is a “hero” for the every man (being completely incompetent) with a lot of brilliant one liners. “Yeah! Check the probate. Why my uncle had a problem with his probate and he had to take these big pills and drink lots of water.” Come to think of it, just because it was the first VHS I ever owned (I think it was a Christmas present in 1989, which would make me fourish) doesn’t mean the movie’s really much more innocent than the book. Jessica Rabbit is sultry, but a loving devoted wife rather than a manipulative bitch this time around so hooray for family morals I guess. Baby Herman has a bigger role. Gotta feel bad for Eddie’s Love interest Delores. She does a lot of stuff but doesn’t get much screen time. There are cameos out the ass from famous cartoons. And Christopher Lloyd is creepy as shit as Judge Doom (do you notice he never blinks in the entire movie?) assisted by his crew of cartoon weasels. The only bad thing about this movie is no reflection on the movie at all. The only bad thing is that it clearly inspired the insipid 1992 Live Action-Animated-Hybrid-Mystery-Drama crapfest known as “Cool World.” So if you ain’t seen it, do it NOW. Seriously. Right now. I’ll wait.

Arbitrary Confectionary Rating: Chocolate Chip Cookie. May not be your personal favorite, but absolutely everyone likes it and there’s a reason for that. And if no one with a peanut allergy (a child) is hanging around, you can toss in Reese’s Pieces or bits of toffee (snort and giggle at jokes above their heads) and stuff too and it just becomes awesome.
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Also, I think I saw somewhere that it's women's History Month. So think about your favorite historical women and celebrate how you choose. I chose to get food poisoining. I was up all last night in terrible pain. Maybe it's just because it's the second night in a row without sleep, but I can't for the life of me figure out how it was supposed to celebrate women. I'll let you know if I figure it out. Meanwhile, if this post is poorly edited, you know why.