Bryce Moore's Blog, page 65

Revisiting Board Game Arena

About 6 months ago, I blogged about a new-to-me online service I’d come across: Board Game Arena. At the time, I’d just started using it for a while. It was a great way to connect with friends across the country and play any number of games with them. I felt it had a wide variety of games, even if some of their implementations could be a little clunky from time to time. There’s a free version that lets anyone play a selection of free games or any of the games, as long as one member of the group is a subscriber. A year subscription costs a bit under $30, as I recall.

Here we are, 6 months later, and I’m still using it fairly regularly, and I’m still pleased with the service. In fact, I’d say it’s only gotten better. Asmodee bought the site back in February, which gave me some consternation, as I worried they might just be buying it to get rid of one of their competitors. But instead of killing it off, they’ve devoted more attention to it. You might not recognize Asmodee if you don’t play a lot of board games, but it’s a big mover and shaker in the industry, second only to Hasbro. It also includes Fantasy Flight Games and Days of Wonder, and there are a slew of great games under its umbrella.

Sure enough, since buying the site, they’ve brought some of their games over to it. Splendor is there now, and Pandemic was just released in beta not too long ago. I tried it out, and the implementation is just as robust as an iPad app, which is really impressive. In some ways, I enjoyed the virtual board game more than the real life flavor. It was much easier to get an overview of what was going on, and it’s wonderful to not have to constantly shuffle cards. (Though for some games, I really miss having the bits to fiddle with when it’s not my turn . . .) In Pandemic’s case, it was also great that there was literally no way to just show the other person what cards you have. Too often with Pandemic, it devolves into one person telling everyone else what they need to do, so that it’s nothing more than a game of spectator solitaire. When the information is hidden, that makes that less likely.

Anyway. Just wanted to poke back on here to give an update. This is in no way a sponsored post. Just wanted to pass along more good impressions from a service I use often enough to really appreciate its existence. Happy playing!

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

What Does It Mean to Forgive?

Last Sunday in church, we had a discussion in Sunday School around forgiveness, and it’s still been kicking around in my head. It centered around this scripture in Doctrine & Covenants 64: 9-10:

9 Wherefore, I say unto you, that ye ought to forgive one another; for he that forgiveth not his brother his trespasses standeth condemned before the Lord; for there remaineth in him the greater sin.

10 I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.

The part that I really stumbled over this time was the bit about the person who isn’t forgiving having the greater sin. That works totally fine when the act you’re supposed to forgive is something minor. Someone said something mean to you. Someone got in a fight with you. Forgiving something like that seems doable, and I could see that if the person who said or did something to you is there asking for forgiveness, and you decide to be angry at them for forever anyway, how you might be the person with the bigger issue there.

But what if it’s something bigger? What if it’s someone who killed your dog by accident? What if they killed your dog on purpose? Or something worse? Or what if they aren’t even asking for forgiveness. Do you still have to forgive them then? And does the “greater sin” still rest with you?

As I’ve continued to think about it, it’s helped for me to look at this transaction in economic terms. The action of the person who hurt you is a sunk cost. It’s done damage to you, and that damage is already inflicted. At this point, what you choose to do in response to that damage might make things better for you or worse for you. If you choose to harbor a grudge permanently, who is that hurting more. You, or them? If the definition of sin is knowing the will of God and not doing it, which action is bringing you further away from God? Perhaps the “greater sin” is focused on you, not on them. On the impact that action will have on you.

That angle of thinking helped somewhat with my conundrum, but it led to another question: What does it mean to forgive? Are you supposed to forget about the harm that person caused you? You shouldn’t have to put yourself back into the position where you were harmed before, should you? You don’t have to be BFFs with that person anymore, right?

To answer this, it helped me to think about the contractor who walked off with $3,500 of my money, never to be seen again. I was most definitely angry with him for months. Denisa and I had a private investigator track the guy down in hopes of getting our money back. We discovered he was in prison for possession of heroin, and we had to decide what we wanted to do. We could push forward, trying to get some of our money out of him, but it would take a lot of time and effort, with no guarantee that it would work.

In the end, I decided to just forgive him the debt. What did that mean? I never talked to him. I never had this big scene where I said, “I forgive you,” and the music swelled, and we all hugged. I most definitely would never hire him for another job, and I would warn anyone I heard of who might be thinking of hiring him to stay well away. Instead, it meant that I stopped wanted to get back at him. I decided to forget about the urge for retribution. I went from thinking about what he’d done to us often, to not thinking about it at all. Five years later(!), I still remember everything that happened, but I no longer feel much of anything but pity for the contractor. He was in a bad spot. His marriage crumbled around him. He went to prison. Googling him just now, I see he’s been up to no good since then as well. Illegal fires, more drugs, forgery, and more. It looks like someone’s getting money from him, and good luck with that.

But in the end, I felt like the grudge I was harboring against him was doing me far more harm than it was doing him. He never asked for forgiveness, and I doubt he would if he saw me. (I have no desire to see him again, if for no other reason than I know he’s perpetually doing things I don’t want to be around.)

In the grand scheme of things, $3,500 is still not a whole lot of damage, compared with some of the things people do to each other. I don’t know how I’d navigate worse things, and I pretend to be in a position to advise others how to do that. But it makes sense to me to do what we can to minimize the damage terrible things can have on us, and making the conscious effort to move forward is often the best way to do that.

After all this thinking, I still believe that scripture is a whole lot deeper than the surface level it seems at first glance, and discussion of forgiveness and what it means likely changes depending on each circumstance. It’s much more nuanced than you can get with a group discussion of thirty people, especially when you never know what sort of “sins” each person in the room is thinking about in the discussion.

What does forgiveness mean to you?

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Surprise Home Improvement

You all know the big project of the summer is renovating the kitchen. The cabinets are ordered and on their way. The layout is set. The time is blocked off. The budget’s there.

Well, a part of my roof decided it had other ideas about all that.

Seven years ago, we paid to have that part of the roof redone. It was a process that wasn’t without its pitfalls, as you’ll see if you go to that post. Those pitfalls really ought to have been a red flag to us about who we were dealing with. We ignored them, and we’ve been paying the price for that again and again in the years since as we’ve paid to redo the things that contractor did wrong. This is just the latest incident of that.

The roof really should have lasted another 5-10 years at least. Instead, it’s been shedding shingles left and right. The shingles themselves are in fine shape, but they weren’t nailed properly to the roof. Instead, too little space was left between the edge of the shingles and the nails, making it so that the shingles can get ripped off in a strong wind. We also discovered that the roofers from 7 years ago failed to put any sort of underlayment on the roof. Again, something I should have caught back then, but I was much newer in the ways of the roof, and I just didn’t see it.

In any case, we can’t have a big part of our house stuck with a roof that’s failing constantly, and we don’t want to have to continue to pay people to come and fix it, so . . . we’re getting it totally redone. It’s frustrating, and it’s not cheap, but I just don’t see another choice. It’s very high up there, so it’s not something I’m willing to do myself or with a group of friends. I want someone insured, and we have someone lined up already, which worked out well. It should be totally done by tomorrow. Yay for quick, straight-forward projects.

The good news is that thanks to all the government COVID stimulus checks, I think we’re still on track for the kitchen. Here’s hoping nothing else major breaks anytime soon, though. That extra padding only goes so far.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Defining Other People

I don’t have a specific event to blog about today. It’s more of a snowballing thought that’s been gathering momentum in my mind as I continue to watch so many aspects of American society roll around in the dirt. I continue to (try to) maintain friendships on both sides of the political spectrum, but that’s something that’s becoming increasingly difficult. Not because I don’t want to be friends with people, but because it feels like more and more, people on either side are insisting we live in a polarized world where it’s clear what’s right and what’s wrong.

It’s not enough to just define yourself these days. There’s a tendency to define people you disagree with, and more and more, some corners seem to want to define themselves by defining other people. The tendency to insist on defining others is something I’ve had a fair bit of experience with, having grown up as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Mormons” were often referred to as being cult-ish and strange and deluded. When I went on my mission to Germany, I met with many people who insisted they knew my religion better than I did.

One of the more bizarre things I routinely ran into over there were the people who had confused us with the Amish somehow. I was told it was due to the Harrison Ford movie Witness. When they’d done the German translation, they’d figured not enough people knew who the Amish were in Germany. But they had heard about Mormons, so they just translated it as Mormon instead of Amish. I still haven’t seen the movie in German, and I can’t help but think that story is way off, but the fact remains that I had multiple conversations with Germans who were convinced I couldn’t use electricity.

It’s a humorous example, but it serves to illustrate my point. I know full well what my religion believes and doesn’t believe, but there was no arguing with people who were not of my faith and yet were convinced they knew better than I did. The defined me as Amish, and nothing I could say to them would persuade them otherwise.

From a religious perspective, this is something that definitely continues to day in pop culture and society at large. People who would vehemently attack anyone who would disparage someone for being Jewish or Muslim will casually deride Latter-day Saints without a second thought. You only have to dip a toe into any Reddit post that touches somehow on the religion to see the throngs of people showing up to throw stones. According to them, it seems all members of the religion are either completely duped or deluded or bigoted or sexist or [insert another slander]. As a faithful, practicing member of that religion, I can both see why some would accuse it of those things and still be hurt for having people blithely claim I’m a simpleton or a con-artist, without ever having met me.

I know my religion is not alone in this. There are people on both the left and the right who do the same thing with any religion. Evangelicals. Muslims. Catholics. Jews. What’s the result of all this name-calling? Speaking as a Latter-day Saint, it definitely has a tendency to drive believers closer together. Yes, some leave the faith, but many dig in deeper, bristling at the attack.

This post isn’t about religion, however. I see this same principle at work in the political spectrum right now. Liberals define conservatives, claiming they’re all bigots or (at best) bigot-enablers. Soulless hypocrites bent on oppressing women and minorities. Angry, sad, white people who cling to guns and religion and the empty memory of an ideal country that never existed in the first place. And what’s the result of all this defining? I only see conservatives digging in stronger. Insisting that they aren’t trying to take the vote away from minorities. They’re trying to protect free elections.

Pick any of the arguments liberals make against conservatives, and conservatives have a simple explanation for why they’re doing what they’re doing, and why they’re being unjustly accused by the other side.

This goes the other way, of course. Conservatives insist liberals are baby-killing maniacs hellbent on ripping apart the entire American way of life, tarnishing our heritage, turning us toward Communism and Socialism in an ill-conceived effort to take money away from those individuals who have earned it and give it to people who want to sit around and do nothing all day and be paid for the privilege. And once again, the liberals bristle at being defined this way, pointing out that each of those arguments is misguided and unfair.

I believe stereotyping people is wrong, and that includes stereotyping political parties. I sometimes wonder why I even try to keep writing these posts that go down the middle. They’re not generally well-received by either side, and when the posts are even tolerated, it’s not like they make a change. But when I’ve had real conversations with people on either side of the aisle, I’ve often found there are many similarities between each side. There are genuinely good people in each political party, no matter how easy it may be to want to paint with a broad brush.

The sooner we can all somehow remember that, the sooner we might start making real progress again. Until then, I worry we’ll just be caught in a never-ending loop of name calling.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Television Review: For All Mankind (Season One)

The premise behind For All Mankind intrigued me right away. What if the Russians had been the first to walk on the moon instead of the Americans? What sort of an impact might that have had on history? Ronald Moore (creator of Battlestar Galactica) poses that question in the first episode, and then proceeds to play out the what if from then on. The result is an intriguing season, bogged down occasionally with too much melodrama.

The show shines when it can have fun with the premise, showing both how some things might have changed and how some things would have stayed the same. In a fairly non-spoilery example, the Chappaquiddick scandal in Ted Kennedy’s life was avoided, since the Russians landed on the moon the same evening Mary Jo Kopechne died in our normal timeline. Kennedy left that party before the death occurred, and voila, he was then scandal-free, letting him win the presidency in 1972. (Of course, since Kopechne was still alive in this new timeline, he was then bogged down in a sex scandal later on, when the affair came to light.)

On the other hand, sometimes I felt like the series got hung up on the lives of its characters, to the detriment to the plot. I know that sounds like a pretty lame reason to critique a show (the characters are too important!), but when the main engine of the show is running on “what if,” taking the time to explore universal issues like the stress of the space program on the families involved feel like the show spinning its wheels. I can get that in any number of shows about the space race. Give me more of that sweet alternate history action, thank you kindly.

But thankfully, that bogged-down feeling is generally kept to a minimum, and the show moves forward quite quickly. (Yay for binge watching.) It’s rated TVMA for a bit of language here and there, but nothing that should cause too much of a hangup for most audiences. (A number of episodes are actually TV14. The show seems to want to appear more “mature” than it really is, as if audiences don’t want to watch a TV14 show. I do wish they’d just trim the content to be more squarely in the TV14 range, since that’s what the show feels like it wants to be.) Honestly, the biggest strike against it is probably that it’s on Apple TV+, which just isn’t that widely used as of yet.

Overall, I gave it a 7.5/10. There’s plenty to like, and I’m intrigued enough to move on to season two, but it isn’t complete bliss. Season two might well make or break the show. We’ll see. If the premise seems interesting, or you’re a sucker for space exploration or light science fiction or alternate histories, this is one I’d definitely keep an eye on.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

A Virtual ALA Event

This will be the second ALA in a row that I’ve missed due to the COVID pandemic. It’s a conference I always enjoyed going to: a great fusion of my work as a librarian and my work as an author. I got to catch up with librarians and publishers from across the country, going to presentations, doing author signings, and have a grand time. I’m hopeful next year I can go back with a vengeance, especially since this year, I would have been able to go and promote THE PERFECT PLACE TO DIE.

Thankfully my publisher, Sourcebooks, arranged for a virtual event in an effort to replace at least some of the hobnobbing. Last night I and four other Sourcebook authors got to go to a virtual dessert party with around 50 librarians. We each had a chance to talk about our books, and then we went to a series of breakout rooms, meeting with smaller groups and answering questions. It’s easily the most authorly I’ve felt in years.

There were a lot of compliments on the book’s cover, so huge props to the Sourcebooks folks for putting that together so nicely. All of the librarians in attendance had received an Advanced Reading Copy of the book (as well as some gourmet popcorn and other goodies), and many of them had already read it. I heard good things all around, with people excited about the book’s setting and crossover appeal with The Devil in the White City. Being able to tell them about the starred review in Booklist certainly didn’t hurt, either.

Being an author is often a solitary endeavor, so when there are opportunities like this to actually talk to people who are excited about books (and my book in particular!) is very invigorating. Leading up to it, I realized that I’m woefully out of practice speaking to groups, as I had much more “stage fright” ahead of time than I usually would. You’d think after all the hours and hours (and hours) of Zooming I’ve done over the pandemic, one more Zoom would have felt like nothing, but I did stress about it. Thankfully it all went off without a hitch.

A month and a half to go until the release!

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Ocean’s Eleven: Twenty Years Later

We watched Ocean’s Eleven the other night with Daniela. In my head, it’s a movie that’s still pretty recent. I mean, it didn’t come out that long ago, did it? But then when I saw all the actors, I realized it must have been a while. Even knowing that, I still figured it was maybe 10 years ago.

Nope. It’s been 20 years. It came out in December, just a few months after 9/11.

The great news is that it still very much stands up to the test of time. I’ve loved this movie since I first saw it. It’s such a great mixture that operates well on so many different levels. The actors, the plot, the soundtrack. The movie just oozes with cool. I love a good movie where the plot itself is a heist, setting the audience up for something and making them think they know what’s going on, only to leave them all bewildered at the climax, thinking everything can’t possibly turn out okay now, and then twisting a final time to show what’s really going to happen. The Sting is another movie that does that supremely well.

Of course, Ocean’s Eleven is an interesting case, because it’s a remake of an earlier movie, done forty years later. I’ve seen both, and the new one resonates better with me. That actually leads me to a good question: what makes a movie fair game for a remake? I know Hollywood is in love with taking something that’s already there and just redoing it, and I know it gets a lot of guff for it. Which movies should be considered off limits, and which shouldn’t?

Funnily enough, I’m not at all opposed to remakes. I’m just opposed to bad ones. And often you don’t know if a remake is going to be good or bad until you see it. That said, the hallmarks of a bad remake are usually easy to spot. I’d say the biggest one would be what’s motivating the remake. If it’s really nothing more than just wanting a quick cash grab, it’s almost certainly going nowhere. Take the remake of Psycho, for instance.

Done in 1998 (just 3 years before Ocean’s), and a remake of another 1960 movie. But Gus Van Sant mimicked the original to a fault, using the same shots, the same camera movements, the same editing. He basically made a modern copy of Hitchcock’s. It was in color and with different actors, but . . . why in the world did anyone think it was a good idea?

With Ocean’s Eleven, they took the core conceit of the original. Vegas heist. All-star cast. And they updated it. Changed the plot. Modernized elements. Brought in a new sense of style and coolness, and so it all worked very well. To make a successful remake, you can’t just photocopy. You have to bring something new. Something of yourself.

Could they remake The Sting? Sure. It’s one of my favorite movies of all time, but I’d go check out a new version. If that new version had ragtime music, took place in the 30s, and just treaded water in the wake of the original, I’d pass, but if they saw something in that original and wanted to do their own thing with it? I’d give it a shot. The biggest trick is reminding yourself that a remake doesn’t replace the original. It doesn’t erase anything.

There are some movies that I think would be very difficult to remake and bring something new. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, for example. It’s a work that so sprawling and involved, I just can’t imagine a movie studio funding something like it again. But never say never. I would love to be shown up by Hollywood, and while the industry excels at pushing out a fair bit of drivel, it also can make some really great stuff in the process.

In any case, back to the original topic. Since the movie is now older than quite a few college students, if you haven’t seen it and want an excellent example of how much fun a heist movie can be, I encourage you to check it out.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

If You Can’t Say Anything Nice . . .

After my article yesterday gushing about In the Heights, I was taken aback to read about some of the blow back the film has been suffering from in certain circles. Not because it’s too diverse or too woke (which I cynically expected), but rather because it isn’t diverse enough. Specifically, that it doesn’t adequately represent the Afro Latinx community. Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jon Chu have both publicly apologized for this now, and when I read about it, my reactions were mixed. I wanted to parse those reactions out a bit to see what I’m thinking, why I’m thinking it, and if those thoughts were justified.

A warning in advance: I’m going to be blunt, to try and show both where I started and where I ended up. Please read to the end, and please keep the whole of the post in mind.

My knee-jerk response was an eye roll, to be honest. Come on. Not diverse enough? One of the things I found so encouraging about the movie was its diversity. It made a point to show how people in the neighborhood came from all over: Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, and so on. There’s even a song and dance number about it. If a movie like In the Heights is getting yelled at for not being diverse enough, then it feels like there’s just no pleasing some people. They should be happy with the progress that’s being made, and quit being so impatient all the time to have every single teeny tiny group represented. What are film makers supposed to do? Run a statistical analysis of their work to make sure it accurately portrays the actual racial and socio-economical make up of the setting of their work? Stories are about different people. It doesn’t make sense that the story should need to come second to the race or gender or whatever of the characters involved.

So. Once I got that initial thought out of my system, I took some time to think about what’s going on, and why it might be upsetting to some. In this case, there’s a film being made that’s supposedly celebrating diversity. Where everyone’s going to have a place at the table. And so members of that community head into it expecting to find themselves in there somewhere, only to walk away feeling excluded yet again.

How are they not supposed to feel disappointed? Back pre-Fellowship of the Ring, I was typically disappointed whenever a fantasy movie came out, because they generally stunk. Was I supposed to just suck it up and be happy they were making any fantasy movies at all? If I was upset back then over something as frivolous as “is this fantasy movie any good?” then how can I begrudge someone for feeling like they’ve been left out of a movie that, when you think about it, really doesn’t have many dark-skinned actors in it?

But then I waffled once again. “Criticism like this is exactly what’s keeping people from speaking up online about anything remotely related to race or any potentially sensitive topic,” I thought. If you say one thing out of line, then the twitterati will show up to yell at you and tell you all about how you’re wrong and how dare you. And indeed, I’ve talked to numerous people who have expressed just that sentiment. They don’t express any opinions online for fear of saying the wrong thing.

That’s clearly not something that’s held me back over the years, for better or for worse. But at the same time, it has kept me from doing some things that I’ve wanted to do or say. I recognize that I don’t fully understand the meaning of some words or some causes or some ideas, no matter how much I may try to. And so I’ve been hesitant to wade into those waters, for fear of saying the wrong thing. For example, I wasn’t going to write this post today, because I was unsure how it would be received, and I didn’t really feel like it was my place to speak up on the topic. In the end, I decided to write it, mainly to illustrate how I’m trying to navigate issues like it. (The biggest issue being my ignorance, and the fact that I consistently want to default to a “what’s the big deal” mindset that’s so dismissive and potentially hurtful to minorities.)

What else have I shied away from? Another example would be putting up a rainbow around my picture on social media in support of the LGBTQIA+ community. I worry that I don’t fully understand the statement I’d be making with that, and so I do nothing out of fear of making the wrong statement. This despite the fact that I believe members of that community deserve protection, support, and love. Despite the fact that I voted in favor of gay marriage and consider myself very sympathetic to their cause. But am I sympathetic enough? I don’t know the answer to that, and so it feels duplicitous to try and interject myself into the conversation.

Where am I trying to go with this? I suppose I’m trying to say to all the people who roll their eyes at some of these issues, “I see you. I get it. I understand why you might feel that way.” But at the same time, I’m trying to explain why it’s important to get over yourself and understand it’s not all about you and the way you feel. That just because things have changed from how they used to be doesn’t mean that they’ve changed enough, and people in the majority don’t get to tell people in the minority when it’s time for them to shut up and stop being heard. Not if people in the majority really think of themselves as compassionate allies.

If there’s one thing I know about feelings, it’s that no one gets to tell you how you feel. If you tell me you’re upset, I can’t say, “No you’re not.” Only you know how you feel. And if I care about you at all, telling you to suck it up or stop being so sensitive or insisting that there’s no real reason for you to be upset is pretty cold-hearted.

So where do I end up after I go through all those thoughts sparked by one simple article? I conclude that the people have a right to feel upset, and that the creators of In the Heights were right to apologize and express a desire to keep improving. If you’ve been failing a subject for year (centuries!), and you finally get your average up to a C or a B, you can be congratulated, even as you can also recognize you still have work to do to really master the material. Sure, you might feel like those are laurels you’re resting on, but if you find out they’re really just dandelions, stomping your foot and insisting they’re not won’t really help anything.

When it comes to these sensitive issues, I try my hardest to listen to the people who are actually being hurt, and then adjust my actions accordingly. Those knee-jerk reactions are my own shortcomings in action, and demanding the world conform to them is short-sighted, egotistical, and kind of a jerk move.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Movie Review: In the Heights

I remember back when I first heard about In the Heights when it was on Broadway. It won 4 Tony’s back in 2008, and it was nominated for 9 others. I . . . didn’t get it. At all. I remember watching the Tony’s and just wondering why in the world people were making a big deal out of a hip-hop musical. It felt very non-musically to me.

A lot’s happened over the next 13 years, of course. I’ve changed. Music tastes have changed. Hamilton happened. And so the musical that I was totally uninterested in back in 2008 became the movie adaptation that I really wanted to see in 2021. I would have seen it in the theaters, but I’ve got HBO Max, and it’s right there to watch on that service, so it was an easy decision to just watch it at home last night with Denisa and Daniela.

We loved it.

In many ways, it felt like a modern West Side Story. Just without the gang wars and Romeo and Juliet vibes. (So yeah, not like West Side Story at all, I guess.) It’s a celebration of diversity and place and heritage and people in general. The rhythm felt very Hamilton-esque. I’d try to sum up the plot, but it’s really a kaleidoscope of different plot lines all arranged around Washington Heights and its impending gentrification. The neighborhood is changing, and its changing the lives of everyone in it. But it also shows how things are always changing and evolving and moving forward, and it’s a celebration of that as well. There are no real villains in the show. No one’s out to sabotage the place. There’s no one everyone can fight against and overcome. It’s just life.

Do I regret not having seen it in the theater? In some ways, perhaps? It’s definitely a show that would play well to a crowd. But at the same time, I got to watch it with subtitles on, which made it much easier to understand and follow. I went into the movie blind. I’d seen a trailer, and that’s about it when it came to the plot or the music. The lyrics come fast and furious, and they’re hard to catch. I definitely would like to rewatch it again soon, just so I have an easier time keeping up with it all. I think seeing it without the subtitles would have left me more bewildered.

The songs are great. The acting is great. The voices are great. The choreography is great. The cinematography is great. There’s honestly not anything I can nitpick about the movie. I loved it from start to finish, and I heartily recommend it. 10/10. It’s fantastic.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

End of School: 2021 Edition

And here we are. I keep having to remind myself this is the end of the second year of COVID-affected school. Last year and this year just sort of blended together into one big mush in my head, as I’m sure it’s turned to mush for most of you. Did we have a summer last year? What month are we in now, anyway? What year is it, exactly?

This morning, I went downstairs and the kids were all still asleep, so I called up to wake Tomas and Daniela up. “Last day of school!”

“That was yesterday, Dad,” Tomas called down to me. Because they’re full remote on Fridays, and they all turned in their computers yesterday, he didn’t have school today, and I didn’t even realize it. Which is about par for the course this year, really.

That said, I realize my kids have had it better than some, and worse than others. We’ve had in-person school for the whole year, even if it was only about half the time each week. It was still miles better than when COVID kicked in during March of last year, and the school decided to keep everyone home and not have any assignments count toward a grade. (I get that kids are supposed to be learning for the love of learning, but how many of you actually believe kids did any work last year once they realized the grades wouldn’t matter?)

What’s on the agenda for the summer? Well, we’re launching things off by going down to stay in Boston this evening and visit with my cousin and her family tomorrow. Tomas is going to be working as a deck assistant at the pool in town until he passes his life guard exam, at which point he’ll start life guarding up a storm. We also have about 50 hours of driving practice still to go with him, so I imagine he’ll be Denisa’s chauffeur whenever possible. Daniela and MC are going to be doing various summer camps and lessons (drama, tennis, swimming), horse riding, and Daniela and Tomas will be back to cello and violin lessons at last.

We have a camping trip planned for the end of July, and we’ll try to get to the beach at least a few times. Denisa is up to her elbows in the garden, and I have . . . work. (The same thing we do every day, Pinky.) I also imagine I’ll have a deadline to revise DON’T GO TO SLEEP once I turn it in the first time and I get feedback from my editor.

On the horizon above everything else looms The Great Kitchen Renovation. Cabinets should arrive at the beginning of August, and that’s when the actual work on the kitchen is slated to begin as well. I’m expecting it to be much less than fun. The kitchen sits in the middle of our house. We’ll likely be without it for well over a month. Nothing says “fun August” like using a hot plate in the bathroom to cook all your meals, right?

But hey, even that will be better than last summer. I think we’re all looking forward to something like normalcy. What are you going to be up to? Maine’s lovely in the summer. Just sayin’ . . .

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.