E.R. Torre's Blog, page 150

Sometimes they look for a story when there may not be any…

So I’m going around CNN.com and I come upon this article:

Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 Opens to Franchise Low $101 Million

Ok, let’s take this step by step:

The last film in the Hunger Games series was split in two.  Mockingjay Part 1 and 2 are both sourced from the third and final Hunger Games novel, a book many fans of the series feel was the worst of the three.  Further, there were many who read the book and who wondered why, other other than to make more money, two films were created out of it.  They felt there wasn’t enough in that third novel that merited making two films out of it.

Second point: Viewer fatigue may be setting in.  As much as we may like a series of movies and/or characters, there inevitably comes a point where we grow tired of seeing them.  It’s part of the reason I’m determined to conclude my Corrosive Knights series.  Though I’ve introduced many characters and there isn’t one “big” central character in the lot and the books’ various settings/stories are vastly different, I’m well aware that there’s danger in treading the same grounds.

To take one example: I loved the works of author Clive Cussler until I realized he was essentially writing the same novel over and over and over again.

Third point: A $101 MILLION dollar opening is considered, based on this article and its headline, bad?!?!  Sure it may be a “low” opening versus the other films in the franchise, but for Gods’ sake, the film scored $101 million dollars…on its opening weekend!

If I could make one one-hundreth of that on my novels I’d be a damn happy camper!

As I said in the headline, sometimes they look for a story where there may not really be any.  Yeah, Mockingjay Part 2 made a little less money than the other Hunger Games movies.

Nonetheless, I seriously doubt the studios are crying over the results.

It’s all about timing…

Consider me an Adele fan.

When “Hello,” the first single from her new album popped up on the radio and I first heard it, I found myself choked up with emotions.  She really knows how to hit a nerve…

But as with just about every artist struggling to get their works known, talent is but one ingredient in the mix and sometimes success is just as much about timing.

Which brings us to this seemingly oddball article which notes how…

Sarah Palin Sends Very Mushy Thank You Note to New BFF Adele

So you think: What in the world could Sarah Palin (an at best ridiculous figure, IMHO, in politics) and Adele possibly have in common?!

Turns out in 2008 Sarah Palin, during her failed run as the Vice Presidential Candidate to John McCain, appeared for the first time on Saturday Night Live, in the cold opening, to considerable -and massive- audience interest/viewership.  And who do you suppose was the guest musical artist for that particular episode of SNL?

You guessed it: Adele.

At the time she was an almost complete unknown and promoting her first album, 19.  Because of the large viewership of that episode (the episode had one of the largest in SNL’s history), Adele snagged a very large audience to hear her sing and, clearly, they liked what they heard.  Even more luck was on her side as the Billboard ballots were due two weeks from that date and many clearly her songs in mind…

The rest, as they say, is history.

While it is very conceivable because of her incredible talent Adele would have achieved her success anyway, one cannot and should not discount the benefits she reaped from her well-timed appearance on SNL all those years ago.

Doctors and the right care…

Reading this article by Lorraine Boissoneault for Salon.com brought back a frightening memory of my own.  Please, read this article.  Though it focuses more on how some Doctors may react to female patients, the lesson here is one everyone should learn:

My Doctor Told Me It Was All In My Head; I Might Have Died If I Believed Him

First, one shouldn’t lump all Doctors and their relative level of competence/incompetence together, but if you take anything away from this story, let it be this: If you feel there’s something wrong with your body/health, something you feel is serious, and you go to a Doctor and s/he tells you its nothing, get a second opinion.  If need be, get a third or a fourth.

Trust me on this.  Your very life and well being depend on it.

My experience?  (Perhaps you shouldn’t read if you’re eating…at least for these first few paragraphs)

A number of years ago, when I was in my mid-20’s, I developed what appeared to be a very serious sinus cold.  Usually colds work their way on me like this: I get a sore throat and feel low energy.  After a day or two, the sore throat disappears and I get a very runny nose and phlegm/mucus.  This will last a few more days until my nose dries up and the cold is gone, usually within a week’s time or less.

During this particular “cold”, the runny nose/phlegm/mucus lasted for a very long time.  I can’t remember exactly how long but it was far more than a week and I was constantly blowing my nose and releasing inordinate amounts of mucus.  But other than the mucus, I really didn’t feel all that bad so I didn’t think much of it.

I probably should have.

One day, I felt something strange in my nose and, quite suddenly, out of my right nostril a large amount of yellowy liquid rolled down my nose.  It was the consistency of water/blood and felt like a nosebleed but, as mentioned, the liquid was a dark yellow color.  Once the liquid “bled out” that was it for the mucus and, I thought, I was fine.

Not so by a very long shot.

Over the next couple of years, I developed a strange malady in that right side of my nose.  At night, while lying down and sleeping, a pressure would build in that nostril, somewhere deep within the nasal cavity, a pressure so strong it would choke off my breathing and awaken me.  At first it was every other night but soon enough it was quite literally every night.

Further, I slept only on my left side because if I slept on my right side gravity would instantly cause that pressure to appear within my right nostril and awaken me.  However, even while sleeping on my left side, I could do so for no more than 4 hours before the pressure in my right nostril built and I’d be awoken.

Once awake, I had to get out of bed and walk around or sit upright until the pressure/swelling was gone.  Sometimes this would take well over an hour.  As I usually went to sleep around 10:30 each night it meant that every night –every night– at about 2:30-3:00 AM I was awake and would stay that way until close to 4 AM.  When I went back to sleep, I again had maybe a 3-4 hour window before the pressure once again built up and forced me to awaken.

But there was even more “fun” to be had.

I also developed extreme sensitivity to dust (especially in construction areas) or cigarette smoke.  If I detected even a small puff of cigarette smoke, in particular, I would often feel my nose “tingling” and, soon after, I might come down with a very serious migraine headache.

Up until that point in my life I had never had any problems with headaches.

These headaches were so bad that at times I had to lie in bed (always on my left side!) for over an hour with my eyes closed and all lights off (I was light sensitive as well) before the headache eventually left.  Sometimes these headaches were even worse than usual and they’d upset my stomach to the point where I was vomiting.

After a year/two years of this, I went to see an ear/nose/throat (ENT) Doctor.  He listened to what I had to say and took a look into my nose and said I had a deviated septum in my right nostril (If you are unfamiliar with this, you can read about deviated septums here).

He sounded so sure of his diagnosis that I was instantly up for getting an operation to straighten my nasal passage out.  We did it and, some three weeks or so later, I was “healed”.

But my problem, I found, remained.

At first my sleep was better but after a few months time I was once again getting that terrible pressure in my nose while sleeping.  I was again waking up each night after only 4 hours of sleep and had to stay up an hour or longer before the swelling within my nose was gone.  I still suffered from those terrible migraine headaches.

I returned to this doctor perhaps a year after the surgery and told him I was still having the same problems as before.  He took another look at my nose and said that the deviated septum was gone post-surgery so, obviously, what I was suffering from now was some kind of allergy.  As it so happened, he shared his office with allergy specialists so I went to see them and they did tests on me and determined I was allergic to dust.

So I started a regime of injections, one each week (I believe) which were meant to ease my allergies.  I did this for a year but there were no changes.  I was still suffering and gave up on the allergy shots.

My problems, of course, remained and, after yet another year or two of not being able to sleep a whole night and suffering that damned swelling in my nose and the migraine headaches, I went to see another ENT Doctor.

This Doctor was an older gentleman who looked into my nose and shrugged and said “Sometimes that happens when people get older”.  He nonetheless told me he could operate and cauterize some veins in my nose, thus making the passageway smaller, which would ease the pressures I felt.

By this point I was at least five plus years into this and I was desperate to get some -any- relief.  So I had the operation and, after a week or two of healing, I was better.

But not cured.

Maybe three to five months after the operation I was effectively back to status quo.  I had the same swelling in my nose, same 4 hour sleep, same migraines, and this second doctor’s words “It happens when you get older” kept repeating in my head.

Two doctors saw me.  I had two operations.  And in the end, I was experiencing the same crap.  I gave up.

So a couple more years passed and I tried my best to carry on.  By this point I was approaching 10 years of this misery and I was starting to lose it.  How does one live when he cannot sleep a full night and at almost any point can be hit with an extremely painful migraine headache?

One doesn’t.

I was miserable, constantly tired, and depressed.

No, not just depressed.  More than that.  I feared I was losing my mind and, yes, I even thought of suicide.

That’s how bad things got.

Luckily, it was at about that time I started seeing a general practice Doctor.  Though I felt nothing could be done about my nose (after all, two ENTs did nothing for me), I nonetheless told him my symptoms and what I had gone through.  He looked into my nose and said:

“Have any of those doctors told you about ‘turbinates’?”

Turbinates, or nasal (mid, inferior, etc.) concha are found within the nasal cavity.  My previous doctors, of course, hadn’t mentioned them at all.

This general practice Doctor, who didn’t even specialize in the ENT field, nodded and said that my turbinates, especially on the right side, looked irritated.  He recommended I see an ENT he knew.  Desperate, but for the first time in a very long time seeing a glimmer of hope, I set an appointment for this ENT.

I went into that Doctor’s office and, when I was before him, gave him a rundown of what I’d gone through the previous many years but made no mention of turbinates.  I was curious as to what he’d say and I didn’t want to influence him one way or another.  After a few seconds of looking into my nose, he said:

“Your right turbinate is eight times the size it should be.”

He recommended I get operated and the turbinate’s size reduced.

Very long story short: It turned out that was exactly what was wrong with me.  Imagine having something just past your nasal cavity and under your eye that is eight times the size it should be and when irritated it swells up even more.  It blocks your breathing but also presses against other tissue.  It caused my eyes to water (I wasn’t even aware of this!) and produced all those nasty migraines.

Yet two -let’s be honest here- fucking idiot doctors -supposed specialists in the field!- didn’t see it.

At all.

I suffered tremendously for nearly ten very long years with this swelling but, after having a third operation on my nose, this time to reduce the size of the turbinate (you can read more about turbinates, or Nasal Concha, here), I was all but cured.

I still get a bit of swelling in that nose now and again, but its very, very minor and doesn’t awaken me or keep me from sleeping.  I can sleep on either my right or left side.  Those horrible migraines and super-sensitivity to dust and smoke are completely gone.

For all intents and purposes, I’m cured.

Please, please, please don’t be like me.

If something bad is affecting your life, get yourself checked.  And if the doctor you see doesn’t help you with your problem, don’t hesitate to get a second, third, or fourth opinion.

As I discovered, ten years is a very long time to suffer for nothing.

Because you had to know! Part the Eighth

This is something that never occurred to me until I saw this article/video posted on Huffington Post:

Why People In Old Movies Seem To Talk Funny

Not interested in clicking the link?  Don’t worry, the article essentially presents this video by Brainstuff, which examines the above question and offers a fascinating explanation:

What is most intriguing, to me, apart from the fact that the accent was something created during that time and was not a “real” accent/form of speech, was how it may have been used because speaking this way allowed announcers/actors to overcome the technical limitations of audio equipment (in radios, theaters) of the time.

Fascinating stuff!

And now you know.

Blackstar…

A 10 minute long music video featuring “Blackstar”, David Bowie’s newly released single (the full album lands in early January, 2016)?

Yes please!

Fascinating, eerie, different…to an extent.  It did echo/remind me of this song/video:

Someone far smarter than me noted that on “Blackstar” David Bowie returns to the “Major Tom” mythology, this time presenting our errant astronaut -or rather his remains!- as a religious totem.

As with “Loving the Alien”, with “Blackstar” it would appear Mr. Bowie is again examining, in his own inimitable way, religion.  While I believe he may be an atheist (in interviews he has hinted at this fact, if my memory is correct), he is obviously deeply fascinated with religious ideology and mysticism.  He’s released many songs and even full albums which have, again in his own way, dealt with philosophical/religious ideas.  With “Blackstar” it would appear he’s once again looking in on this issue.

Fascinating stuff.

The Brood (1979) a (horribly) belated review

While casual moviegoers today may be most familiar with director/writer  A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, Cosmopolis, or his most recent film, Maps of the Stars, there was a time not so very long ago he was known for creating some very edgy horror films.

These same casual moviegoers may recall his 1986 remake of The Fly, a movie made very near the end of his “horror” producing phase…

While he would go on to make the chilling psychological horror-themed Dead Ringers (1988), Mr. Cronenberg’s subsequent films tended to move away from the horror genre from that point on.

If you found The Fly intriguing and were curious to see Mr. Cronenberg’s earlier horror efforts, you should begin with 1975’s Shivers and 1977’s Rabid.

It was the success of these two early horror films that gave Mr. Cronenberg the clout to make the next step in his directing career: Create larger budgeted movies featuring veteran and sometimes very well known actors.  And so his next feature, 1979’s The Brood. is arguably the start of this phase which continued with Scanners (1981), Videodrome (1983), The Dead Zone (1983) and finished off with either The Fly or Dead Ringers.

Featuring starring roles for veteran actors  and , The Brood is a great example of David Cronenberg’s disturbing brand of horror.  Having said this, watching the film the other day was a curious experience.  I recall first seeing it when either when it was originally released or shortly thereafter and finding the entire experience terrifying.

Watching the film now, however, I found most of the graphic material not quite as chilling but the movie nonetheless presents a very deep and (here I go using this word again) disturbing vision of a family breakdown.  Today, the movie’s horror is therefore more psychological than graphic, though the film’s most graphic scene, presented toward the film’s end, retains its power even today.

The movie’s plot goes like this (and I will try to avoid major spoilers):

“Every-man” Frank Carveth () shows up at a remote psychological retreat run by Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed) to pick up his daughter Candice ().  We find that Frank’s wife, Nola (Samantha Eggar) is in therapy with Dr. Raglan and, while their marriage is crumbling and she is isolated while in therapy, she has visitation rights.

We further find that Dr. Raglan’s brand of therapy is very much “out there”.  It involves a great deal of theatricality, role playing, and outbursts of rage.  Dr. Raglan’s ideas fall on almost Lovecraftian lines for the rage he forces his patients to unleash, he has discovered, sometimes manifests itself physically.

After Frank takes Candice home, he discovers she has bruises and cuts on her body.  He is outraged by this and knows his wife is responsible for this abuse.  However, as she is in isolated therapy, he cannot see her and is forced to confront Dr. Raglan about this abuse.  He demands the visitations be discontinued.  Dr. Raglan notes that Nola has the right to see her daughter and rejects as harmful terminating the visitations.

Thus rejected, Frank leaves Candice with her grandmother -Nola’s mother- and visits a lawyer.  He finds that terminating visitations is a tricky thing and could work against him.

However, while he’s away, Candice finds and goes through old photographs of her mother and grandmother.  She finds that as a child, Nola was often “sick” and hospitalized.  Further, we find her grandmother is a heavy drinker and the implication is clear: The grandmother abused Nola as a child, just as Nola is doing the same now.

And then things get very strange…

Something appears in the grandmother’s kitchen and tosses plates and food onto the floor.  The grandmother goes to investigate and is attacked by what appears to be a Candice doppleganger, a blond child with deformed features.  This creature viciously kills the grandmother but leaves Candice alive, and the mystery begins…

As I said, I don’t want to go into too many spoilers (other than what I’ve just mentioned above) but the most fascinating element of The Brood is that while it is a horror story, at its heart it is about familial dysfunction.

Oliver Reed delivers a terrific performance as Dr. Raglan.  He is a calm, cool character who nonetheless can act out in therapy sessions to bring out the rage in others.  By the time the film’s over we realize he’s essentially a modern day Dr. Frankenstein, a man who pushed the limits of science and decency and, ultimately, must pay the price for his hubris.

Even better is Samantha Eggar as Nola Carveth.  She is equal parts frightening, pitiful, enraged, jealous, and protective.  Make no mistake: Ms. Eggar had a very tough role to play in this movie and I doubt many other actors could have done what she did here.  In this movie conveys so many different -and at times paradoxical- emotions, sometimes within the very same scene.  Despite her monstrous nature, in the end we can’t help but feel pity for her as she’s very much a victim of her abusive upbringing and inner madness rather than some crazed monster that needs to be “taken down.”

While The Brood likely won’t make your heart race like it did when originally released, it remains a startling journey through psychological horror made real.  If you can handle the film’s slower pace, you’ll be treated with a very deep disturbing film.

Highly recommended.

Build ’em up, knock ’em down…

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression before: We love to build people up, place them on a pedestal, and worship their accomplishments…and then we absolutely relish their fall.  Or, to put it more succinctly: Build ’em up and knock ’em down.

So it would appear has happened to MMA fighter Ronda Rousey, who built a reputation as “unbeatable” in the ring but was indeed beaten this past weekend in a bout with Holly Holm.

The below article, written by Matt Scaro for Salon.com, notes how quickly people have turned on Ms. Rousey and how venomous some of the barbs are:

Ronda Rousey’s Fall From Grace: From America’s Brash Sweetheart to Punch Line in Only One Knockout

Without sounding like I”m too high on my horse -hey, I’m guilty of focusing on people’s failures from time to time as well-, I nonetheless don’t understand the need to pile on and become so insulting against people who have achieved success in their respective fields and then experience a personal low/failure.

For example, there’s been considerable venom directed at George Lucas for his Star Wars work post release of Return of the Jedi.  I understand people not liking the prequel films, but really, why such hatred?  It’s a curious phenomena (one which I wrote about here) but at worst he messed up and/or lost his muse and delivered three mediocre or worse films.  It cost audiences a little of their time and not all that much of their money to realize the works weren’t all that good.

If that’s the case, then why not move on?  George Lucas may well have failed in your eyes but in the long run he didn’t damage your life.  He didn’t kidnap your children or swindle you out of all your money.  In fact, I’m reasonably sure George Lucas tried hard to make those three prequels as good as he could but simply failed.  As for Ms. Rousey, audiences cheered her brash talk and were impressed with her quick fights, which were often brutal -and short lived- affairs.

Now that she’s been defeated, many are turning the previously cheered brash talk around and throwing it at her.  Brash talk to them is arrogance, and they want to rub Ms. Rousey’s nose in it.

Reality check: To succeed in just about anything, you have to have a certain level of arrogance regarding your skills.  It’s a big world out there and there are plenty of people competing with you in all manner of jobs/careers.  If you don’t believe in yourself, who will?

Ms. Rousey’s defeat doesn’t change my life.  Neither did seeing those not-very-good Star Wars prequels.  They were failures, sure, but who out there has succeeded in everything they’ve tried every single time?  The only difference between you and them is that their failures were delivered before large audiences while yours weren’t.

Frankly, I wish Ms. Rousey all the luck in the world with her next bout just as I’m always hopeful a writer/artist/director/actor’s next work, even if he is George Lucas, is something I -and other audiences- can love.

And if it doesn’t work out that way, it doesn’t.

I’ve got too many things to spend my time and energy on each day and it feels like a waste to devote that much time and energy into viciously kicking someone when they’re down.

Amazing…

My wife and daughters are fans of the TV show Flip or Flop.  The show features a married couple, Tarek and Christina El Moussa, who buy homes, fix them up, and then “flip” or sell them, hopefully for a profit.

This article originally published on September 10, 2013 and found on People magazine, tells the tale of what happened when Ryan Reed, a registered nurse, watched a marathon of the show and noticed something odd on Tarek El Moussa’s neck.

What Mr. Reed noticed may well have saved his life:

Flip or Flop Host Tarek El Moussa Battling Thyroid Cancer

While its great that Mr. El Moussa received the message from Ms. Reed and acted on it, one hopes that anyone who reads this article takes it for the cautionary tale it is.  As noted in the article, even before Ms. Reed contacted him Mr. El Moussa knew something was up with that lump in his neck yet was, until Mr. Reed contacted him, content with one Doctor’s opinion.

The moral of this story is if you feel there is something strange/wrong going on with your body, get it checked out and get a second opinion.  Obviously not everyone has a TV show which allows others to see you and notice oddities which may turn out to be life threatening.

The conclusion to this particular story can be found in the link below.  It features video of Tarek and Christina meeting up with Nurse Ryan on a TV show for the first time:

http://on.aol.com/video/hgtvs-tarek-el-moussa-meets-life-saving-viewer-517931215

How Artists in the Late 1800’s Imagined Life in the Year 2000

The title is self explanatory.

The article, written by Kristin Hohenadel and found on Slate.com, can be found here:

How Artists in the Late 1800’s Imagined Life In The Year 2000

The illustrations presented are pretty absurd.  Given all the technological advances made in the 20th Century, it would be startling if anyone from the late 1800’s (well, other than Jules Verne!) could conceive of what things might be like one hundred years later.

I particularly enjoyed this piece, showing us a future school:

Love the fact that in this far flung future you have books being dropped into some kind of grinder-like machine (and one of the students has to work that grinder!!!) and the information on the books is somehow transmitted to the students…how?

An auditory presentation?  The books are read to the students or perhaps the implication is that the headphones transmit the information to the kid’s minds somehow?

If you like that piece, you should see  some of the others!

Copyright and the Diary of Anne Frank…

So it appears Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank and the man most responsible for getting his daughter’s diary to the public, will now be listed as the “co-author” of the book.

The reason?  So that the book retains its copyright status as Mr. Frank died in 1980 and European copyright for publications lasts for 70 years after an author’s death.  By having Mr. Frank listed as a co-author, The Diary of Anne Frank can retain its copyright status until 2050 versus ending this year (Anne Frank died in 1945).

Want to read a little more about this?  Check out the below link:

Thanks to Copyright Bullshit, Anne Frank’s Diary Now Has A Co-Author

There are many in the commentary sections who decry this move and, based on the headline to the article, the author of the piece, Rachel Vorona Cote for Jezebel.com, also decries the move.

As an author myself, I’m a little more on the side of those who want to retain the copyright.  Sure, Anne Frank passed away a very long time ago and with the death of Otto Frank in 1980, all immediate family from that original time are gone.  The beneficiaries of the continued copyright will be the Anne Frank Fonds, or the Anne Frank Foundation, which I understand contributes quite a bit of the profits made from selling the work to charity.

Having said that, I’m also aware that copyright laws can have a decidedly negative impact on society.  I’m referring to things outside of books, novels, and autobiographies.  Elon Musk has made his electronic technology schematics available for other car manufacturers to use, the idea being that a future with electric cars will come quicker if the technology is a shared one.

Regarding medicines, this too has become a sticky issue.  A company can create and copyright a medicine and are the sole company to release it.  What’s to stop them from charging crazy fees for their medicines?

But with books and, especially, novels, these are an author’s creations and their ownership by an author/authors does not prevent society from advancing.  If anything, it bothers me to see other authors using those creations to themselves make money off these well-recognized characters/stories.  My hope is always that someone, even if it is a distant relative of the original author, is compensated for the work, even if they themselves had little if nothing to do with it.

For my works, should they one day gain a large enough audience, I would want that for my daughters and, eventually, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  My novels are my legacy and I would hope that my offspring would benefit from these works.

Is that so wrong?