Michael Offutt's Blog, page 31

The January 2022 IWSG has asked us to explore our writing regrets.

Happy New Year. It seriously just feels like a breath of fresh air to have made it through the holidays. I know some people just love the holidays, but I've yet to experience the joy of living through them that I had when I was was a kid. There's always so much to do, and throwing get togethers are a lot of work from cleaning everything to food prep. I did make some homemade Swedish meatballs that got a lot of talk from people I invited over to have some, and the following week I made a splash with a homemade lasagna. Lots of wine was consumed, and conversations around the table seemed to become an excuse for people to talk about what was bothering them. Sigh. I attended no one else's get togethers because there weren't any. I think people just realized it was too much work and decided to rely upon me to do everything. So if I didn't throw a party, then no one would see each other for two months during the holidays. My social circle is kind of terrible about doing things for others. I'm the only doer and everyone else is a taker and has the attitude of, "I take care of myself and that's it. That's all I can do. No spoons!"

Anyway...it's all over for another year. :) Now, that it's January, I have a little more time and peace of mind to start blogging again. I'm kicking it off with my New Year's post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. If you haven't heard of this blogfest started by Alex Cavanaugh, then you can go HERE and sign up for it. It takes place the first Wednesday of every month. Here are some other details about the neverending blogfest:

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: As I explained above, the first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Be sure to link to this page and display the badge in your post. And please be sure your avatar links back to your blog! Otherwise, when you leave a comment, people can't find you to comment back.

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

Every month, we announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say.

Remember, the question is optional!

January 5 question - What's the one thing about your writing career you regret the most? Were you able to overcome it?

The awesome co-hosts for the January 5 posting of the IWSG are Erika Beebe, Olga Godim, Sandra Cox, Sarah Foster, and Chemist Ken!

Okay, so now that I've said all of the above, I'm going to answer the January question.
I think my biggest regret with my writing career was trying to please other people. I think that for many years when I was young, I tried to tailor what I wrote to fit within boxes that were checked by creative writing "professionals." It was validation-seeking, and yes...I was able to overcome it. I think to be any kind of true writer, you need to turn off the voices of everyone else that yammer at you about what you should write about. Writing needs to flow from the person that is doing the work. Writing (at least the rough draft) should bring you some kind of joy. If it doesn't, then you are probably not being true to yourself.
At the same time, I think it is okay to idolize other writers out there as long as you know that you are not them. Don't try to be the next Stephen King. There is already one of those. Don't try to be the next Maya Angelou. The only thing you have to be (as far as a writer is concerned) is you. And if the world doesn't make you a best seller, maybe it just wasn't meant to be. And that's okay. That still makes you a writer. You're just a writer with a very niche audience.
I think artists create too many rigid rules to follow that just dumb down everything to mediocrity. I get why this happens. It's a collision where art and business collide and the dollar has to justify the time, etc. But in other industries, there's so much disruption that the dollar isn't even tied to logic of any kind (crypto currency is an example of this as is Tesla being valued at over a trillion dollars). None of it makes sense. But art programs and writer programs are still trying to pound away with their rules saying, "You have to do this to be successful," and "You have to write this way" when the whole world doesn't care anymore. Everything is being disrupted. The old way of doing this doesn't make sense any more. It's just my two cents. However, I think that writing is evolving fast, and the old gatekeeping of the past just doesn't make sense at all anymore when you can just publish on platforms like Medium and start gaining an audience. I also think that many people will also not be able to make a living with writing. However, I want to expand this to: I don't think many people going forward will be able to make a living...period.
Things are changing so fast in this world that it's given me a bit of whiplash. Average homes in Salt Lake City are now $650,000. To buy a home in SLC, you have to make $84.00 per hour. Like...what? That doesn't even make sense. Inflation is going insane, everything is expensive, rent keeps going up as landowners raise rent so that they can afford elite schools for their kids and a family vacation and maybe a new car. New cars now cost $70,000...and that's for a Kia. There are shortages of things everywhere. None of it makes sense, and I have no idea how everything became broken in such a short amount of time. I also don't know how any of it is going to get fixed.
Anyone writing a dystopia should have lots of ideas! Thanks for stopping by for this month's edition of the IWSG.

Is it harder to come up with the title or to write the blurb for that novel you just finished?

The November 2021 Insecure Writer's Support Group takes place during NaNoWriMo. I wish to express my enthusiasm for all of you out there who are attempting to complete a novel by the end of the month. That's quite an accomplishment.
It's also an excellent time to do this blogfest that was started many years ago by science fiction author, Alex J. Cavanaugh. If you'd like to sign up for the Insecure Writer's Support Group, please go HERE and do so. It's a great way to bolster your confidence, get advice, and find encouragement for all of your writing needs.

Here's more that is cut and pasted from the IWSG sign-up page:
Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Be sure to link to this page and display the badge in your post. And please be sure your avatar links back to your blog! Otherwise, when you leave a comment, people can't find you to comment back.

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

Every month, we announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say.

Remember, the question is optional!

November 3 question - What's harder to do, coming up with your book title or writing the blurb?

The awesome co-hosts for the November 3 posting of the IWSG are Kim Lajevardi, Victoria Marie Lees, Joylene Nowell Butler, Erika Beebe, and Lee Lowery!

My answer: Hoh boy...this is a big question. But, I think I have an acceptable answer. It is much harder to write the blurb, because you have to put on your marketing hat (if you have one of those) as well as your editor hat (hopefully you have one of those) and chop chop chop while also trying to hook the reader. Some of us don't have that many heads for that many hats. So, we can end up clumsily putting one hat on top of another and that just makes a mess. However, there is at least one strategy that might help: look to your query letters.
So yeah...if you are submitting the novel for publication to agents, you've probably been through the grinder regarding the query letter. That is...you've written one...and then submitted it to peers to get butchered and sliced and diced and quartered and rearranged until your writing ego has been cut to shreds. But hopefully, you've come out of that experience with a solid product: the query letter that has a bit of a shine to it. At least one of the paragraphs or a few of the sentences describe your book (or capture the essence of it). This might be perfect to use as the start of a workable blurb for your novel.
And that's all I've got to say about that.
I'm going to bow out early for the holidays. Congratulations to all of those who finish their novels by the end of November. Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year to all of you. I will be back in 2022 for the January Insecure Writer's Support Group (I will miss December's so please don't kick me out, Alex).

Arcane from Riot Games' League of Legends is set to launch on Netflix this week.

MOBA stands for "Multiplayer Online Battle Arena," and League of Legends is one of these types of games. This next week, Netflix is launching an animated television series called Arcane, and it tells the backstory of two of the video game's most popular champions: sisters Jinx and Vi. I guess it will revolve around the income inequality between the city of Piltover and the underground (read as oppressed) city of Zaun. That's about all I know regarding this thing. But the trailer for it is awesome, and I plan to watch (or at least add it to the things that I intend to watch, which is growing kind of long if I'm being honest). It's kind of like all of the streaming options suddenly kicked into high gear because of Covid, and now I'm looking at twenty different things that I want very much to consume, because they are all in my wheelhouse.

Anyway, if you have not seen the trailer yet, you should click play and watch it below. It looks awesome.

It's been entertaining to watch the cringe-worthy comments made by toxic fanboys of the Wheel of Time series as the release date looms.

The Wheel of Time dropped another trailer this week. It's one of Amazon Pictures's entries in the epic fantasy genre. Although I've never picked up any of the books (and I don't intend to do so), Utah is a place where you can find a lot of strong opinions about the series given that one of their own (an LDS writer named Brandon Sanderson) finished it for the late Robert Jordan. But even before that, epic fantasy was an enormous playground for people with conservative leanings that run from the middle to the far right, as they usually have a chosen one that is a white male, and they go a long way to reinforce patriarchy, feudalism, and magical belief systems that have no place in a world where people with growing economic clout are fighting hard for science, diverse representation, democracy for all, a demand for high wages and work-life balance, and the idea that billionaires are amoral. As the fight intensifies I have no doubt that blood will be shed and the violence between these groups will grow.

Still...it has been interesting to be the fly on the wall in observing the comments from people who are watching The Wheel of Time's release date approach with narcissistic trepidation They say things on internet forums like, "I will watch, but I am uneasy with the showrunner's choices..." or "what gives me worry is that this adaptation may not land perfectly the thing that differentiated Jordan from others...." and I actually have no idea what that is. Another comment says, "the showrunner is so proud to point out Nynaeve deliberately tugging her braid is a shoutout to fans of the book, but it bothers me because it's obvious he does not quite get the downsides of the representations." Like...gimme a break. It's obvious that The Wheel of Time is going to have even worse toxic fanboys than old Trek and old Star Wars. If you weren't around for The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson was accused of being a hack and a social justice warrior (SJW), which is an insult in the circles they swim in. It just all makes me shake my head, the same reaction I had when I watched toxic comic nerds tear ruthlessly into the Captain Marvel movie, because Brie Larsen was intolerable I guess.

So, make no mistake, every one of these folks believes that if the show is not a perfect adaptation, their withdrawal of their support and "not watching" will send a loud message to the "Hollywood types" and get the series canceled pronto, even though as of this writing, it hasn't even aired yet and has been greenlit for a season two. Nevertheless, if it doesn't get their thumbs up, then it is entirely doomed. It's just weird for me to go to a place and think, "Gamer bro that lives in his aunt's basement and doesn't have a job is going to tank this series. Wow...bro...you got powa!" Indeed...I wonder why no one else sees it. It actually takes A LOT to cancel something or someone. Dave Chappelle hasn't been canceled (and it's not for lack of trying). J.K. Rowling hasn't been canceled. Chick Fil-A hasn't been canceled. What all of these things share is that they have been criticized but not canceled. And David Chappelle calls out the uselessness of cancelation by saying that he doesn't care what people say about him on Twitter, because Twitter is not a real place. It's an update on the old saying, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." This is especially true in a divided country, where no one is on the same page anymore, and one person's morality is actually amoral to the next person. As you may already know, the trans community is outraged at Chappelle for being "Team TERF." Well, in comes Caitlyn Jenner who says, "I support Dave Chappelle." Her voice is huge (whether they like it or not), and it just shows that there's no unity anywhere, which is why cancelation doesn't work.

We're also living in a pop culture world now, where fantasy imagery has become mainstream in ways that would have never been imaginable a couple of decades ago. This has both good and bad implications. The good is that a lot of producers and showrunners who've grown up on these kinds of stories don't now regard them as strange or risky ventures. The bad is that a lot has become so mainstream that older fans of the source material cannot (and will not) adapt. They are dinosaurs in their tar pits. So you get these internet outrages over changing a character's gender or ethnicity, even if it's supported or encouraged by the creators themselves (or their estates or spokespeople). With regard to The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan's take on gender was very problematic (Man magic is more powerful than woman magic, etc.). The show is going to minimize or outright eliminate those aspects of his writing. Like...it's a done deal. This is going to happen, because catering to the olds and the toxic fanboys does not make enough money. Their "clout" isn't what they think it is, and it's also wrong for society (or at least the society that I want to live in). And I imagine that many people will not accept this when they see it happen, and they will experience two emotions: 1) shock, and 2) rage.

All that being said, I'm excited for the debut of this series. I have high expectations, because I haven't read the books, and thus, I won't have anything to be disappointed about. What I do know is that the trailers look pretty great, and maybe some of that Jeff Bezos money will actually give us some rousing fantasy entertainment. Anyone else planning to watch? I've attached the second trailer that dropped this week below (you should watch it).

Here are the things I liked and didn't like about season 3 of Titans all in one post.

I've always been a fan of The Teen Titans, The New Titans, and Titans from the DC Universe. I fell in love with them many decades ago, because of George Perez's artwork and Marv Wolfman's writing. But even as the characters evolved and other great comic book writers came and went along with artists that became legends, I've always thought that these characters were a lot of fun. Raven was my favorite, followed by Wonder Girl (and later Troia), Nightwing, and Beast Boy. People who review the shows always want to point out that what we get on screen differs a lot from the source material. This doesn't bother me at all in comic book movies, because every new writer that comes along does their own take on the source material. Look at how many times Spider-Man has been retconned in the comic books, and you'll see what I mean. The only thing that matters (really) is that the characters stay more or less within their lane.

Titans season 3 just recently wrapped up, and there were a lot of loose ends and some startling developments. We found out that ARGUS has moved into town. If you are familiar at all with the Arrow-Verse, you see this agency early on in Arrow as the ones who are behind The Suicide Squad. And then they kind of work a lot with other super heroes like Green Lantern. They specifically dropped the name Roy Harper in the finale, and he's been mentioned a few times before. If you don't know, Roy is also known as "Arsenal" and he is Green Arrow's (Oliver Queen's) former sidekick. This character was also in the Arrow-verse early on as Roy became Olly's sidekick while dating his sister (Thea) in the show. Anyway, I expect that ARGUS will be important in season four (should this show gets renewed). Honestly, it's probably a toss-up at this point as the show has not been knocking it out of the park at all. But it's also just barely good enough to keep me invested. In other words, I am enjoying myself, but just barely.

THINGS I LIKED ABOUT SEASON THREE: 

1) I liked that the budget seems to have improved. Given that they have so many superheroes, I get it. Effects can be expensive. But I liked the new powers Starfire manifests, I definitely like the effects on Nightwing's batons when he beats up bad guys, and I like that they FINALLY gave Gar another animal form and it didn't look too cheesy. Raven's powers are growing significantly and look cool. It seemed like she swallowed up some people in a "kind of" soul self thing, although it hasn't quite taken on the appearance of the Raven shape that it has in the comic books. But she's now wearing the Raven-shaped hood which I love. Maybe teleportation is next? That would be really awesome. Maybe we will get a huge T-shaped tower on an island in San Francisco? These are all things that I would love to see...so please INCREASE THIS SHOW'S BUDGET!

2) I liked that Hank died. Yeah...I went there. I was tired of Hawk and Dove, and I'm glad that those two have exited the series. They were the least interesting pair of people in the show, and I sincerely hope that they don't find a way to bring the characters back.

3) Donna Troy needs more spectacular effects. The season finale showed her using the lasso to anchor to the sky to draw down lightning from a storm that was created when Starfire and Blackfire vaporized a Lazarus Pit. I gotta admit...that was cool. Superboy is also a really awesome character, and I wish his powers were more represented with some really cool effects. But I'll take what I can get I suppose.

4) The actors are perfectly cast. This is a strong plus for the show. Starfire feels like Koriander to me. So does Superboy and Beastboy, etc. 

5) Themiscyra was fun...I just wish there was more of a special effects bonanza to go along with it (kinda like what we see in the Wonder Woman movies). 

THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE ABOUT SEASON THREE:

1) There was way too much Jason Todd. He's another character that is like Hawk and Dove. I never liked this whiny brat in the comic books, and I was glad when the Joker killed him off (and I wasn't the only one), and I was disappointed that they found a way to bring him back using a Lazarus Pit so that we had to suffer an entire season of him being both a villain and an anti-hero. Like...that was just horrible. It was fun to see Scarecrow though, and I liked very much that they borrowed a lot of Hannibal Lecter to infuse into their version. It made him believably sinister and evil.

2) I didn't really like the Lazarus Pit stuff. Ra's Al Ghul used to be one of my favorite Batman villains. However, I feel like this villain has gotten stale. They used him in the Nolan films. And then they used him again in season after season of Arrow. And I guess he's coming back in Titans. Titans had so many fun storylines that I wonder why they are digging so hard into the Batman's rogues gallery to drum up bad guys. Maybe it's because they squandered/wasted Trigon the Terrible so early on. I mean...that was just a waste in season one, and it hurts even more that they tried to do this world-ending villain on a shoestring budget. Trigon is worthy of an Avengers-level budget.

3) Why are they introducing Tim Drake? I like Tim Drake as Robin in the Batman comics. But can we not (at all) leave behind the Batman and Gotham and have our own Titans storylines? Sigh.

4) I didn't like that Oracle was a supercomputer that was just kept in a room where Barbara Gordon would visit it and ask it lame questions. In the comics, Barbara Gordon WAS Oracle. She was the eye in the sky. She coordinated the Birds of Prey and fed them all kinds of information.

So there you have it. Anyone else watching Titans and care to weigh in on whether you like it or not?

Let's talk a whole lot of Dune today.

Like most of the United States, I watched Dune this weekend. I have a pretty nice entertainment system at home, and one of the people I watched with said, "Man, your sound system is kickin'! 10 out of 10." That gave me a smile. Still, I am curious as to what kind of visceral experience awaited those who purchased IMAX tickets. There will always be the allure of the absurdly large screen and a sound system that is incomparable to the ones that you can get for the small theater at home. I may check it out before it disappears from theaters. However, (and this should be obvious) it is nice to be able to watch something without the fear of catching Covid from strangers.

Invariably, I've been asked by people who know me (as I really like the story of Dune) to weigh-in on Villeneuve's version. In short I really liked it. But I cannot actually say more about it without contrasting to the 1984 David Lynch version of Dune. Even though it was universally panned, I've always liked that version, and I thought it was really well done. Sure...you never get the crysknife battles that you got in the story as David Lynch decided to elevate House Atreides combat-style with a kind of weird mechanical module that converts sounds into different types of killing effects. But for me, that was a forgivable directorial decision. All that really matters is that House Atreides soldiers are known to be some of the best in the known galaxy, trained by Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck, who were just amazing badasses with no comparison.

And David Lynch's unique style in that old 1984 adaptation was just so crazy bonkers that I loved it. There was gold on everything, the costuming was over-the-top, Patrick Stewart rushed into battle carrying a pug of all things, and when Paul rode the sandworms we got an eighties anthem guitar solo from Toto! I mean...it went really big in some absurd ways, and I'd argue that it really paid off. We got Jose Ferrer as the Emperor, and there's a scene where he's fighting the oncoming sandworm army from his golden ship and you see the hopelessness on his face that I just loved. There is also the strange grossness of David Lynch that suffused every inch of his film, like with the crazy eyebrows on the mentats and then Thufir Hawat having to milk his cat for an antidote to the poison introduced into his system. I wonder if we are even going to get any of that. Do I miss Sting sporting only a Batman-esque speedo? Yes, I do. 1984 Dune was a crazy show, y'all and arguably a work of genius.

So in comparison, this new version by Denis Villeneuve, is also a masterpiece. But it is a masterpiece of a different kind. It's slower in pace, and a lot more thoughtful with its screenplay. You don't have the weird inner thought monologues of the characters, and Villeneuve doesn't bombard you with explanations of how the Guild Navigators fold space. He doesn't bother you with any of the colorful minor characters like Princess Irulan and the Emperor of the known universe. Will we even see a guild navigator? My guess is, "Probably not." Instead, he keeps a tight rein on the telling of his story, and unfolds it layer by layer in a way that new audiences should have no trouble understanding. The only real characters you need to know are Paul, Jessica, Duncan, Gurney, Duke Leto, Rabban, and Baron Harkonnen. Everything else is just dressing. That list of characters is short enough for anyone to remember. Even Chani is only a blip in the movie (probably with a bigger role in part two as she becomes Paul's love interest). And it works for the movie really well. I have no complaints, and I actually really like Villeneuve's Dune in ways that I will never like Lynch's Dune. It's also just nice to have an update to a great story with all the modern special effects and a new crop of great actors, not the least of which is Timothee Chalamet who is very easy on the eyes.

This also leads me to other kinds of speculation. First, Dune isn't going to pull the box office numbers that movies pulled prior to Covid. We just haven't gotten back to that yet. But the numbers on it look extremely good despite being streamed and pirated and delayed more than a year from its original release date by a director that hated the idea of it being streamed. I'm wondering if Dune is the beginning of a franchise, similar to the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). It actually lends itself really well to this kind of thing, and Harry Potter has failed in this aspect to produce a kind of universe that Warner Brothers can play in that can be a continuous cash cow for the company. Dune just might be this kind of thing, because it has really epic storytelling with a certain group of characters, and then moves on from those characters to others within the universe to tell other stories. I can't but help and ask, "What is all of this leading up to? Are we going to get all of the books in the series as movies? Boy, wouldn't that be interesting."

Anyway, if you watched Dune this weekend, please leave me a note in the comments and tell me what you thought of it. Also, do you think there will be sequels from Villeneuve within this franchise? 

Dr. Ramani Durvasula got me thinking about the toxicity of pursuing Fame in America and how it ruins lives.

 

I've been reading a book called Don't You Know Who I Am?: How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility. It is written by Ramani S. Durvasula, PH.D. It's one of those books that I'm progressing through rather slowly, at a pace of about 20 pages at a time. This is mostly due to the fact that I want to think about what I just read. It's also because a lot of what Durvasula talks about in the book are things I've witnessed first hand. Additionally, it's kind of fun to be the armchair psychologist and think..."Oh yea...this describes my family" or "Oh yea...this describes that narcissistic friend of mine to a tee. What an asshole they are."

And speaking of "asshole," there's a great definition of this term that I'm going to tell you about. I'd never thought of defining the word in this way. Apparently, an asshole is a "person who allows themselves to enjoy special advantages in social relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes them against the complaints of other people." It's a mouthful, but it kinda makes sense.

There is way too much to talk about in Durvasula's book that warrants attention (or that could fit into one blog post). But one thing did stick out in my reading last night, and that is what I'm going to blog about today. It's about fame. I'd never really given much thought to what fame actually was, but Durvasala defines it in a way that seems more meaningful than a catchphrase or a kind of force of nature/personality. Interested? Please read on.

Dr. Durvasula writes that "we humans want and, in fact, need social belonging and connection...the drive for fame then is largely our need for social belonging. Perhaps fame implies permanent social belonging, because the person will be recognized everywhere they go." Then she goes onto cite a personal example of someone who desperately wanted to be famous. When she asked this person why, they responded with, "So I am never lonely again."

When I thought about this example, I put down the book and was suddenly struck with how lonely some people must actually be. One particular example that pops into my head is Gabby Petito, the late (murdered) Instagram woman who went on a trip to see national parks in the United States with her fiancée, and their van life (though very instagrammable) was obviously a nightmare, and she was murdered by someone she trusted and her body left to rot under the sun. I wonder if she was driven to that kind of life because she was lonely. She was trying to pursue fame, and it just led to a toxic mess of abuse and violent crime.

And it got me thinking about how toxic our culture is. Americans are really good at walling off people, ignoring people, canceling people, and being mean to people. It's kind of like a super power that Americans all have. The idea of having fame seems to be a salve for that. If you are famous, then you can open closed doors. You can be invited to parties on the other side of the wall. You can feel welcome in places that are largely unwelcoming to everyone else. You can even rise above and profit from negative criticism that would destroy someone that wasn't protected by fame. So fame and fame-seeking seems to go hand-in-hand with the hatred that pollutes our country.

The more people hate, and the more people build walls to keep people out, the more important it will be for a person to have access to something that will allow them to move fluidly through all of those boundaries. Fame appears to be that "something," and it may be the most desirable commodity of all among America's youth these days. That (I think) is a bad thing for our country. For example, I can't imagine what it would be like to try and have a meaningful and fulfilling relationship with a famous person. How would they ever have time to emotionally support you when there are so many people clamoring for their attention? I think it would be a fertile breeding ground for massive insecurities unless the famous person took steps to create really firm boundaries with the public and put you at the center of what was important to them. Unfortunately, we see this kind of thing play out over and over again in the media. Those who are excellent with the boundaries have relationships that survive. Those who aren't good at boundary setting end up decimated by the public that worships them. There are so many bad things about America now though that it's honestly hard to keep track of them all. So it's just adding one more sociopolitical catastrophe onto the steaming garbage heap.

Anyway, I appreciate the thought exercise that Dr. Durvasula gave me regarding fame. And since we're on the topic, do any of you who are reading my words now hunger for fame (or do you have kids who are fame obsessed)? If so, care to share why? I'm a very non-famous person who legitimately wants to know.

DC Fandome's Black Adam event looked glorious.

I've kind of become a super Dwayne Johnson fan. I drink his energy drink, Zoa. I follow him on Instagram. I watch all his movies. And I kind of just think he's a guy that continuously inspires me no matter what he is doing. Also, a lot of his public stuff intersects really well with the nerd things that I enjoy. The latest of which is that he unveiled the first look at Black Adam during a DC Fandome event earlier this week. I've embedded it below for your viewing pleasure. 

For people who don't know, Black Adam is evil. And this just opens up a philosophical can of worms starting with the question, "What is evil?" George R.R. Martin doesn't think that evil actually exists. Rather, what you mistake as evil is simply a person's motivation that is in opposition to yours. So, if that is the case with Black Adam, you can expect that there will be a lot of people who do not align morally with the character. But, if January 6 told us anything, it's that there are a ton of viewpoints out there, and a ton of people who admire different things. So there will be those whose motivations perfectly align with those of Black Adam, just like there was with Thanos.

I expect that the film will also go further, and try to sell the holdouts to Black Adam's cause...people who might like superheroes like Superman (for example). You know...the traditional good guy that does no harm and is essentially the stereotype of Sir Lancelot gussied up as a superhero. This is where we cross over from villain to "anti-hero," which is a big thing these days in the media that we all consume. With regard to Black Adam, I say that the possibility of this happening is doubled, because we've got Dwayne Johnson headlining the character. In the super short clip that aired on Fandome, you basically just see him stand up and vaporize one dude. But it looks really cool, which is all that matters. The fact that he vaporizes someone without so much as a warning is pretty much their way of saying...yeah...this guy is bad and isn't afraid of killing people.

That being said, it will be fun to see Dwayne Johnson playing a more villainous character. He's played the unequivocal good guy for so long that this feels like a fresh take on his career. To see him directly kill on-screen (as in the above example) is super rare. It's usually more of an "exploded the car with the bad guy in it" situation.

Anyone else excited for Black Adam? It looks like it hits theaters in summer of 2022.

The fact that Dune is such a great story is a significant contrast to the legacy of Frank Herbert.

My relationship with Frank Herbert is complicated. Can we separate the artist from the art? Or more appropriately, can I separate the writer from their great ideas and their book? None of what I do is logical. I am not Vulcan, and I suppose having said that, my open-eyed approach to enjoying the arts lends itself to hypocrisy. On one hand, I cannot bring myself to read Orson Scott Card for his obvious controversies with homosexuality. On the other hand, maybe because I learned of Frank Herbert's terrible views of homosexuals at a different period of my life, I can just dismiss the man as a bigot and think nothing of it, and then consume the products of his late estate and revel in his genius.

If you didn't know, Brian Herbert wrote about the strained relationship that his father, Frank, had with his brother Bruce. He even writes in Dreamer of Dune that when Beverly Herbert was on her deathbed, Frank discouraged Bruce from coming to see his own mother. Brian says, "Bruce had wanted to come afterward, but dad was delaying in giving him a time that would be convenient. My brother wondered, but did not say so to dad, if this had anything to do with his homosexuality, which our father never accepted."

There are also several first-hand accounts from people who knew Bruce, and they remembered him saying that he didn't speak with his father, because his father didn't like that he was gay. If memory serves, Bruce ended up dying of AIDS in the nineties. And (of course) there is other stuff you can find out if you dig (which I did). None of it made an unapologetic liberal and gay person like myself very happy. 

For example, Brian Herbert has written in as many words that his father wasn't just a Republican voter, but he was a Republican operative. While in his 30's, Frank worked for four Republican candidates. His most important employer was the US senator from Oregon, Guy Cordon, who was a bastion of hardline conservatism in a state that was tilting left. Cordon was pro-logging, pro-business, pro-military, anti-labor, anti-regulation, and a supporter of Joseph McCarthy. Herbert came to regret McCarthy's tactics, but Cordon was a "strong influence" on him.

So knowing all of that, I'm getting ready (like much of America) to watch the first half of Denis Villeneuve's Dune that is coming out at the end of the week. I'm looking forward to it, and I think it will be a beautiful adaptation of Frank's novel. However, I suppose that there is a wish inside of me that a better man had written it. Of course, there are people who love the man that he was. Those people are not my tribe, and just highlights how far apart many of us are on what we think being good and moral actually means.

Anyone else planning on watching Dune this weekend?

The United States in 2021 is in a really weird place in its overall history and its relationship with the idea of work.

This is an interesting time to be of working age and living in the United States. Growing up, my father always railed against foreign countries usually finishing up with, "America is the greatest nation in the world. You are lucky you were born here instead of someplace else." It was a kind of strange self-awareness, but because it came from the mouth of dad I never really questioned it until I was on the other side of my university experience. I suppose that is where the critical thinking started.

So, being alive and healthy enough to work for a living in the United States has got its surreal moments in 2021. Of the people who play in my D&D group, only myself and two others have jobs. The other five don't work at all and probably don't intend to work. One makes his wife work while he sits at home and plays video games; he sometimes applies to jobs but he's underqualified for all of them and will never get them. He's the person with a high school education and who managed a Sonic once that puts in a resume to be Dean of the School of Business for Harvard University. Like really...that's what he does. Another is able-bodied and lives with a parent who coddles him like a baby and pays for everything and tells him that he doesn't need to ever work if he doesn't want to (the man baby is almost 30 and believes that being forced to work is trauma).

A third person is a low IQ individual who takes a lot of explaining in order to understand things. Somehow they qualified for SSDI at the age of 40, and they followed up with, "My life has been so much better now that I don't have to work. I spend my days reading, watching programs I want to watch, visiting with friends, exercising, playing board games, and playing video games. Because of this, I don't have the stress that I used to have that was making me sick." So...translation...I become a man-baby and play all day and as long as I have a room to sleep in and things to eat...I'm happy. Okay then. It is what it is, but it puzzles me as to why this is happening. Current events are conflicting so much with the mantra that my dad pounded into my head... "This is the greatest country on Earth..." Is it though? By what measure? My dad obviously never had a friend tell him about "passive suicide." I recently had this conversation, so that I would understand why a friend made the choices that they did that were unhealthy for them. I was like...okay then. I validate you. A man should have a right to dictate the course of their own life. Ironically, I think a lot of "despair" has its origins in the Americanized idea of "work." The despair sets in when people realize that the kind of work that they really want to do is unavailable to them. Instead, the kind of work they can find is oftentimes a steaming pile of doo doo on a tin plate.

And in writing this, I seem to have sparked a realization that I have a lot of friends who don't work. There's the 44 year old woman who essentially plays all the time, because doing actual work is stressful and depressing and causes anxiety. She lives at home with her mom and they rent out rooms to people on SSDI so that no one in the household has to work. In fact, SSDI has become so commonplace in my social circle to see, that to my observation, it is kind of startling. It's like watching people launch out of childhood to be hit full force in the face with the brutality of capitalism. These people then cave-in mentally and crumble before it, the same as a person who would seek refuge from a raging bull in an arena. And then they cower in fear and safety behind a shield of SSDI for the rest of their lives. So the new life cycle for many people seems to be childhood until 25...a few years of work wherein you run screaming...SSDI by the age of thirty and essentially a permanent retirement of "getting by" and hoboing around with dozens of sexual partners and casual drug use until one passes from the Earth.

Now, some of what I'm seeing does actually make sense. For example, there have always been jobs that no one wanted to do. On my short list of terrible back-breaking and stressful jobs are phone centers, trucking, and being a C.N.A. I'm sure there are more. Retail (I've heard) has gotten really bad with the Karen's and the other "entitled" people screaming and demanding to see the manager and pulling off masks and spitting on people while being filmed. This is yet another nuance of "great America." But, there have always been people who did these jobs. There have always been people who moved the pipe in the fields (I did it for a few years and never again). There have always been people who drove truck or who took on the duties of care-giving.

What's different is that in 2021, people are saying, "Hell no! You can count me out!" And it's causing a huge problem globally. I've never been so fascinated by people walking away from work and essentially, going it alone to try and find some version of retirement or freedom, whether it is living off of another person, living off the government, or being a brazen thief in what's called "organized shoplifting." If you aren't familiar with this last one, you need to check out this article HERE that explains why Walgreens has closed 5 stores in San Francisco alone due to the phenomenon. There are amazing videos of people walking out of Home Depot stores with carts filled with merchandise...just going out the door...and pushing and punching anyone that gets in the way. They are literally daring the staff that work in these stores to do something. And then they just drive away with the goods that they sell through some other place at a later date. It's like my microcosm of a world has gone nuts all at the same time.

There are Republican pundits who say outrageous things on Fox News like, "We need to force people back to work." There are others who buy up billboard space to chastise those who drive by them with the message, "Get off your butt! Apply Anywhere!" Or something similar (I'm seriously not kidding...just google it). On the first note...I have questions...what does this "forcing" look like? Cause, from my perspective, that sounds like trauma in the best of light. And as someone who has received the message (or gaslighting depending on how you want to look at it) that work gives a person meaning and makes their life better...this doesn't jive with that message. I mean...if you have to drag someone kicking and screaming to do a thing...isn't that "without consent?" Aren't we, "The land of the free" or was that more gaslighting? If something is without consent...isn't that against the law? Like what the hell? And regarding the billboard messages, I don't know what planet the people who bought and paid for such a thing came from, but shaming someone to do a thing doesn't work anymore. It's almost laughable. We are a society of shamelessness...of grifterism...of just flagrantly doing things to get attention, because we are attention-starved. Ringing the "shame bell" is not going to work on anyone. No one cares anymore.

So, it's a strange time to be alive. I oftentimes find myself in the company of a dozen people knowing full well that I'm the hardest worker in the room. And it's a bit unsettling. Dwayne Johnson wears a shirt that says, "The hardest worker in the room." He takes pride in that, and he does inspire me and millions of other people. However, I don't wear that shirt out of personal choice. I never wanted to be the hardest worker in the room, but in America today (at least my slice of it), it's like there's been some unseen and unannounced race to the bottom, which has left me weirded out in more ways than one. At its most basic level, I think we need to seriously reconsider (as a society) what the idea of "work" actually means.

I don't think that "work gives value to a person's life." I think that wherever that bullshit came from was probably a self-help book written by a person that wanted to motivate others so that they could make money and sit back and have it easy. These days people are onto that, and everyone wants it easy. So, maybe, as a start, we could begin by acknowledging that, "Work is a terrible but necessary thing. If it is your time to work, we are sorry. We will make sure to pay you extremely well, to try and make it as easy as possible for you, and to make sure that you are taken care of when you cannot work anymore. Additionally, we (as your employer) appreciate you and will not subjugate you to micromanagement or performance evaluations as those are trauma-inducing. Rather, we will be appreciative of whatever it is that you can give us, but know your limits. We respect your boundaries." Maybe this is what work is moving toward? I don't know at this point, but it would be nice if it was.

Has anyone else noticed a profound shift in the country? Does anyone other than me out there have at least ten friends they can name that are long-term unemployed and have no prospects of ever fixing that at all? Like...ever? I'm talking about (essentially) permanently retired and in the prime of life? It's really strange, and honestly, it makes me wonder why I work so hard. I haven't figured that last part out yet. But I'm also in awe of the people who either have enough privilege or who have been smarter than me and figured out how to careen from year to year of life in America as an adult while doing nothing but play, play, and then play some more.