Michael Offutt's Blog, page 124

Godzilla is the eldritch movie to satisfy your Lovecraftian wet dream

So, you guys know that I LOVE kaiju movies and yesterday was a treat because we got the first trailer for the new Godzilla reboot. Let's just say, it gave me chills. And yeah, I have to analyze it because that's just the way my brain works.

First of all, Let's begin with addressing some of the technical stuff for the uninitiated. The narration is done by actor David Strathairn. The last time I saw him on the screen was for the second season of the now defunct SyFy show "Alphas." For the record, I thought Alphas was good and hated how they ended the series by killing everyone (it's the only show I've ever seen that did that). David has one of those voices that's technically perfect for a voiceover movie trailer. But he's not the only one on the cast that I'm excited to see (insert mandatory "squee" here).

Walter White is no longer the "one who knocks." But aside from this jib at Breaking Bad (best series ever!) I'm experiencing a "baby blue euphoria" at spotting Bryan Cranston. The only thing really that could make the comeback of the King of all Monsters even better is a dash of Walter White and THAT'S TOTALLY WHAT WE'RE GETTING!

Now (I'm a little bit of a classical music geek) so I'll tell you that the opening score for the trailer during the paratroop sequence is called Requiem for Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, 2 Mixed Choirs and Orchestra and hopefully some of you recognize it from the Stanley Kubrik adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. It really makes the fall done by those soldiers seem like a descent into Hell (that combined with the absolutely stunning visuals of a city on fire). I'm reaching for words like "Eldritch" and "Lovecraftian." It really needed just one more thing: someone doing the whole "Oppenheimer speech" that I start my free short story, The Insanity of Zero , with. You know, the one that says "I am become Death, destroyer of worlds..."

As an aside, I'd like to point out that it appears atomic breath is back in a big way (the Matthew Broderick Godzilla film of yesteryear ignored this much to my chagrin). I point to evidence of the giant carved holes through the buildings that are all charred and melted-looking that we see in the trailer. Those weren't created by a big monster running cartoon-like through the sides of skyscrapers.

Also, what is a H.A.L.O. jump?
Ahem...a HALO Jump (for those of you that don't play the video game) stands for High Altitude Low Opening. This is used to keep aircraft above radar and limit the amount of time a jumper's parachute is visible. Think extreme height (like 20,000 feet) and deploy your parachute right before you go splat. That way you evade conventional anti-air fire or detection until the last minute. Because of the devastation and all the smoke, the flares we see are probably used more for the soldier's benefit than to actually hide from Godzilla. They probably think that the monster is stupid so can't act on the flares anyway, and they are so small they'll be beneath detection (which is entirely possible because Godzilla is frickin' huge).
This seriously needs to happen someday. Guillermo get on it please.Now (small spoiler alert) the internet seems to think that the concept behind this film is that there's a secret organization called MUTO that's out there creating monsters and that Godzilla is a kind of "curse" the planet delivers unto us for doing so...for toying around with science. Find out more about M.U.T.O. by visiting their viral website  HERE . The thing I love about this website is that it makes you feel like you're actually exploring some weird and classified information! And what better place to have Godzilla show up than the tech happy urban hub of San Francisco?

Honestly, I can't help but think that the reason San Francisco is being used is to support the "Occupy Google" movement. Yep, that's got to be it. So did I tell you everything you needed to know about Godzilla to be excited about it now? As usual, your comments on this important science fiction topic are greatly appreciated :).

It's inconceivable to suggest that the CW could have picked a more adorable Barry Allen.

Actor Grant Gustin nailed it. Seriously. I'm so excited for the new Flash series that it's entirely possible I'm anticipating it more than Pacific Rim and Prometheus combined. The Barry Allen they showed us in last week's Arrow episode was in my friend Sarah Falen's words "Pure adorbs" and I MUST AGREE.

If you are not watching Arrow, you are missing out on this:






If you didn't see last week's episode, watch the below embedded video right now. The exchange between Barry and Felicity is filled with geeky science, intelligent problem-solving, and just a drop of sexual tension. It'll make you want to go out and smell the sunshine. And if you're a stranger to DC Comics, you just need to know these four words (repeat after me): The Flash is AWESOME.

Stephen King's second tweet basically sums up all the #FAIL of twitter

Stephen King's second tweet basically sums up all the #FAIL of twitter. How on earth this social network is worth $40 billion and yet can't turn a profit is something I'll never be able to understand. 

On Twitter at last, and can't think of a thing to say. Some writer I turned out to be.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) December 6, 2013 

I think every single one of us has felt this at some point unless of course you're on twitter to spam people to read your blog or to buy your book. I think with this single tweet, Stephen King finally earned me as a fan because having something worthy to say is where nearly all of us fall short.

Is Luke the new supreme on American Horror Story

Poor shirtless Luke and his mother prior to the
Borax enema that she forces him to use
in order to clean the evil out of her son. He's
becoming a more interesting character with
each new episode mmhmmThis week's episode of American Horror Story (it shows late Wednesday night on FX) had the coven witches basically looking for their next Supreme. For the uninitiated, there is always one witch of every generation who demonstrates powers above and beyond the rest. When this new person arrives, the powers of the old supreme begin to fade and the new one begins to come into their own.

Previously, I assumed that the new supreme must have been Zoe. But that is way too obvious for this show. So I started to look deeper. With the appearance of a male witch on the council, it started me thinking that (if a man could be a witch) a man could be the supreme.

Enter Luke Ramsey (played by Alexander Dreymon). Earlier in this season, Nan and Madison paid a visit to the next door neighbors (where Luke lives with his super religious mother) and we just assumed that Madison set the drapes on fire. But I don't think Madison is the one responsible. I think Luke set the drapes on fire because he was also in the same room. Additionally, in the Halloween episode where the zombies sent by Marie Laveau were thwarted (seemingly by Zoe) Luke was in the car outside with Nan and it's possible he may have been responsible for what happened to the zombies. Marie Laveau woke up and said, "They've got some kind of power in that old coven house!" or something similar to that when the zombies all collapsed back into moldy corpses.
A funny pie chart that doesn't include Luke, courtesy
of starcasm.net.Other evidence that Luke is the supreme? We know a supreme is super healthy and we've seen enough of shirtless Luke to know he fits the bill. Additionally, his own mother says that he's got some kind of evil inside him, even going so far as to give him a (was that borax?) enema in the tub just to clean him out from the inside (what a disturbing scene) and then locking him in the closet.

So here's my educated guess (as I find these little mysteries insanely fun to figure out before the big reveal): Luke is the new supreme. What do you think? Yes? No? If no, then who do you think it is and why?

Jai Joshi has been super productive lately and now's your chance to grab a Hidden Gem for the low low price of FREE!

You may not know Jai Joshi, but she's a regular commenter and participant in the blogging community. Because of this, I wanted to do a plug for her and mention that her newest short story is now LIVE to purchase on Amazon Kindle. Entitled Hidden Gems, it's an anthology of five short stories from her epic Mahabharat series. You can download it by clicking HERE  for FREE all day long (Christmas comes early this year).

Oh and if you want to see the cover, feast your eyes below: Seriously folks, this book is worth the time for you to go and download it right now even if you have no interest in reading it. The sales will help Jai get noticed by the Amazon algorithms at work and possibly propel her other stories into the "best seller category."
So who is Jai Joshi?
Well, she's the author of Never Fear . It's a short story that tells about an event that happened in Krishna's childhood. Here's a short synopsis: "When young Krishna turns the people on Earth from age old rituals to a new spiritual path, he makes a deadly enemy in the form of Indra, King of the Demigods. The clash between them will rock the foundations of the world." That sounds exciting, doesn't it?
Jai doesn't stop there though. She's written a book called Youth, one called The Ancestors , another called The Prophecy , Bhishma-Son of Ganga , and Follow the Cowherd Boy .
All in all, I count seven titles to her name. That's pretty darn good if you ask me. And just like I'm a fan of curry, I intend to gobble several of these up.
If you want to know more of J.A. Joshi and her stories of Indian culture, please check out her Amazon author page or her blog.

Insecurities in strikethrough is what confidence is all about

I got a bad review. I got a good review.
I'll never finish my book. I published my book today.
No one will read it. I got fan mail in my inbox.
I'm not the next Stephanie Meyer. There's only one Stephanie Meyer; there's only one me.
I don't understand self-publishing. I got a book loaded on Kindle Direct Publishing in only three hours.
Success will never find me. I am successful.
I am a writer. I am an author.
I'm boring. I'm fun.
Readers hate me. Readers love me.
I'm too old. Every passing second is another opportunity to turn it all around.

If you come away from this post with only one thing it should be this:

Insecure people have to make excuses and put others down to feel confident. Confidence isn't walking into a room with your nose in the air and thinking you are better than everyone else. It's walking into a room and not having to compare yourself to anyone in the first place.

Have a great Wednesday and...
Go HERE to sign up for the Insecure Writers Support Group.

A little Dickens is a great place to go to sharpen your financial acumen

Illustration for Nicholas Nickleby by Hablot BrowneWith the holiday season almost upon us, I can't help but try to unite my two loves: writing and making money. So to bring these two worlds together in an article, I've decided to enlist the aid of Charles Dickens.

Now, I don't know much about Charles Dickens' personal life, but from having read several of his stories, the man must have been the equivalent of a C.P.A. because he understood the integral relation between a person and their money. To elaborate, lets look at how this famous writer used money to wreak havoc in the lives of characters. In Great Expectations, Dickens delivers a story where Pip receives a windfall from a mysterious benefactor who turns out to be a criminal. To contrast this with Nicholas Nickleby, the title character's troubles begin after his father loses his life savings in a bad investment (Bernie Madoff anyone?)

Now a question for you Dickens fans out there: have you ever wondered how often the plots in his written works turn on making bad financial decisions? How many of us wanted to save Pip from squandering his money? And poor Nickleby and his family could have been spared financial doom with just a little diversification, but that was probably an ugly word back then, right? Dickens is where many of us can get our first experience with the "Swindling Financier" character, and it would behoove us as critical readers to pay close attention because these "swindling financiers" are real people and they want nothing but to separate you from your hard-earned money. I can't help but think maybe a few people could have been spared financial ruin at the hands of Madoff if they'd just bothered to read a little Dickens.

Now, you may not agree with me (and that's fine) but I think money tends to dissolve concerns about a person's background and overall character. I'm not sure why this is, but I've just noticed it a lot in my life. Maybe the illusion of having money and wealth and not being a stinking poor person breeds "trust." And Dickens warns time and time again against this kind of thing: never ever judge a person by their appearance or by the things that they own.

And of course, any conversation about Dickens that centers around his view of money would not be complete without touching on Ebeneezer Scrooge. A Christmas Carol is the ultimate story that shows you a vast difference between "saving" and "hoarding." As many of you know (perhaps with first-hand experience) hoarding is dysfunctional and unhealthy. I wonder if they even had a DSM in Dickens' day. If they did, they could have used his thoughts on "hoarding" and put it in there as a  mental illness so that others who have this disorder could get help in order to pursue more productive lives.

In short, a little Dickens is a great place to go to sharpen your financial acumen, and that's all I've got to say about that. Have you noticed any nuggets of financial wisdom tucked away in the fiction you read? If so, please share in the comments.

***** 
I'm going to take a short blogging break. May you all have a great Thanksgiving, and I'll see you in December for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. Gobble Gobble and all that :).

When the BBC decides to play Bill & Ted with three Doctors you're in for some campy fun

The 3-D oil painting of Gallifrey was really cool. Steven Moffatt has to be
insane to come up with this stuff.I've decided that when the BBC decides to play Bill & Ted with three Doctors from different timelines, you're in for some campy fun. As a reminder, for those who have not seen Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure in some time (pun intended), you may recall that they used time travel by leaving things that they needed (and telling themselves that) so that they could find it. Example: "In the future, I'll go back in the past and leave the keys over here behind this bush so I can find them right now. And look! Here they are!"

Well in the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special, we got some of that and I liked it. The first happened when they were breaking out of the prison in the Tower of London, and the second occasion happened near the end, when they used time to start a calculation that would take centuries in order to remove Gallifrey from space so that the Daleks would annihilate each other. Clever and very cool.
I guess the huge "chip" on the Doctor's shoulders is now gone, because
he never started a holocaust. All's well that ends well, I suppose. Next
season has got to be all about finding Gallifrey though: an entire lost planet
of Time Lords just sounds really cool. Maybe that's how they intend to address
The Doctor's regeneration issue.So the Day of the Doctor by all accounts was a resounding worldwide success. Simultaneously broadcast in 94 countries and screened by millions of Whovians, it was a pretty epic event that lived up to all of its hype. I'm glad I participated, even if the pre-show was kind of lame.

It does leave me with some questions though. You Whovians out there know that "The Day of the Doctor" addressed the decision made by the Doctor to destroy the planet Gallifrey (wiping out his own people in the process) because the Daleks had to be stopped. Now that this episode is over, and those events are changed, is the Doctor different now? I mean he'd have to be, right? For example, being responsible for a holocaust gave The Doctor an added depth that should be missing now that the holocaust didn't technically happen.

The painting of Gallifrey though was really cool, and I wish I had that to hang in my house.

So, did any of you watch "The Day of the Doctor?" And if so, what did you think of it?

This week's American Horror Story brings up an idea that I find disturbing and wonder if it's true

Kathy Bates joined the cast of American Horror Story this season, and she's playing Madame LaLaurie, an actual woman from New Orleans history who did horrible things to her slaves. Transformed into an immortal through the magic of voodoo queen Marie LaVeau, Madame LaLaurie is a pretty despicable person. She's murdered babies for their blood to make a poultice to keep her young, mutilated people, and just in general expressed a lot of delight while others around her suffered.
Delphine LaLaurie and Queenie (in the back). Queenie's witch power
is to be a living voodoo doll. Basically anything she does to
herself can be inflicted on another person.So in Wednesday night's episode, she's cutting some sandwich meat in the role of "maid" some 200 years removed from the actual time period that birthed her, and explains to Queenie (played by black actress Gabourey Sidibe) and states that she's trying to be good. She says, "I'm learning. That was a different time. I'm learning to be good from people like you."

Now, this episode had A LOT of things in it. We had our first undead threesome, we had one of the best "I'm a millennial and people assume we are all about entitlement and narcissism" speeches ever, and we saw that Marie LaVeau has a throne of alligators that outdoes Katy Perry's throne in the music video "Roar" (If you haven't watched "Roar" you should because it's full of awesome!) But the one thing that stuck in my mind was this line from Madame LaLaurie.
Marie LaVeau 1 Katy 0Is she saying that "good" can actually be taught? If that's so, can "evil" actually be taught?

Guys, maybe I've grown up in a bubble, but I kind of believe that true evil just exists, and you don't have to be taught that. It just happens and those of us that aren't evil are left to pick up the pieces. The same way with good. If you are truly a "good" person, it just happens. There's not a cruel bone in your body. You feel compassion for others and you follow a moral compass that unabashedly points true. Someone that's "good" is the kind of person that would give someone the shirt off their back and make do without one. That's what "good" is.

So I guess I'm soliciting some opinions from you all on this. Can "good" actually be taught? Can "evil" actually be taught? Now just to be clear, I'm not talking about lawful or illegal behavior. I'm not talking about a person doing what's right because they make a choice based off of repercussions that might happen if they don't do what's right. I'm talking about actual goodness that goes down through all the layers and into the very center of who we are. Is that something that can be taught? Or is it something like blue eyes...you either have it or you don't.

I suppose that "teaching" is in line with this season's American Horror Story. After all, it takes place in a witch's school, and class is now in session.

Do Time Lords have control over their physical aging? Watch this 50th anniversary prequel and ponder it with me.

Below is a Doctor Who 50th anniversary prequel that confirms a secret of the Doctor's long-lived life. But after watching it, be ready to answer a question aimed at the serious Who fan.

Here it is: In the clip below, McGann clearly regenerates into a visually younger Hurt and we know he ages into angry old Hurt if you've followed the series. So, do Time Lords have control over their physical aging? Recall that Matt Smith's doctor took a long hiatus between the Ponds and meeting Clara but hadn't aged a day.

Yet for young Hurt to age to old Hurt that we're going to see in this weekend's Day of the Doctor, has a significant amount of time passed or did he just age himself into an old man? Seriously, this is the most important question you'll be asked this week.
If you do decide to take a stab at an answer, please provide supporting evidence.