#585. Direct Current Friday

Rounding out the week, I'll secretly be participating in the Remakes Blogfest, but not until later in the post.  I've decided that if I do things officially, it just won't work out.  Somewhere along the way I think I either really did alienate everyone or somehow it was construed that I don't want comments.  I love comments.  I loved the dialogue that went into some of the comments recently, and would love to continue that.  Although if I really have alienated everyone, as the title of the obscure Marlon Brando movie suggests, Sayonara.

Today Star Trek Into Darkness opens.  This counts as a holiday for me, although I probably won't be seeing it until tomorrow.  When Star Trek opened four years ago, I used it as an excuse to make repeated trips to the movie theater to see it in an almost exact replica of the instant adoration I had for The Dark Knight a year earlier.  Sadly I have no monies in 2013, so I will not really be able to do that again, but I would beg borrow and steal my way into the auditorium for this.

I'm a Star Trek fan.  Some of us call ourselves Trekkies, and some of us call ourselves Trekkers (because let's face it, "Trekkies" sounds stupid).  I'm not a Star Trek fan in the sense that I regularly attend conventions and have psychotically (but awesomely) retrofitted my living quarters into a replica of a set.  In fact, I've only ever been to one convention, and I had to leave before Robert Picardo made his appearance (yes, one celebrity appearance, so obviously not a big one).  I'm a Star Trek fan in that I've loved Star Trek for a long time.  It's not just one or two of the series or movies that I love.  I have a whole blog committed to the entire franchise.

Ten years ago it was a rotten time to be a Star Trek fan, or at least one the least bit attuned to the rest of the community.  Star Trek Nemesis had bombed in theaters over the winter, and Enterprise was limping its way to a woebegone conclusion two years later.  Fans talked more about what they hated than what they loved.  It was my introduction to Internet culture.  Everyone's too cool for the room, harvesting a cult of personality rather than insightful commentary.  I'm more of an insightful commentary kind of guy.

And so when I talk about Star Trek, it's about the things I love, and I love Star Trek because there are many things I love about it.  I don't spread this love around unconditionally.  It just so happens that Star Trek has a hard time disappointing me.  The last time I was disappointed with it, I pretty much stopped experiencing the offender, which is the pocket universe of the Pocket Books novels.  I used to read those all the time.  I guess the more filmed Star Trek there was, the less tolerance I had for work that I found poorly derivative.  Although that's what the fans who hated the later filmed material said about that, too.

It's all a matter of perspective.  And I'm coming back around on the books, by the way.  I'll be reading a few of them probably later this year.  Anyway, it's not such a bad time to be a fan these days.  Star Trek was more popular than any other film in the series.  It made buckets and buckets of money.  We're only just now getting another one, but that only figures.  I maintain to this day that the main problem a decade ago was franchise fatigue.  The fans went from having a single series that had run for three seasons to a new movie every few years a decade later to another series and more movies to three more series for more than another decade...These fans found plenty of shiny new obsessions, and they had their fun elsewhere.

The reboot was something some of us had dreaded for years.  There was such an interconnectedness to the previous version and all its incarnations, despite minor deviations here and there, it was for those who could follow it exactly like a given author's beloved epic cycle.  But the reboot worked.  It was immediately different from what had come before, but it put a new focus on some of the elements that badly needed attention in the original versions of Kirk and his pals, being a knowing examination of these characters.  Kirk and Spock were already legends.  Now the stories themselves explained why instead of just letting the fans extrapolate.

Some people say the J.J. Abrams version of Star Trek is missing the insightful commentary of its predecessors.  I offer a counterargument that this Star Trek has that, in spades.  It speaks about the human condition, using the main characters, and doesn't do too much to distract from that, other than all the spiffy whizzbang action that won Abrams a seat at the Star Wars table.  Star Trek has always been about the human condition, from Christopher Pike being held captive by the Talosians to "Trip" Tucker deciding to sacrifice himself so his buddy Jonathan Archer could disentangle himself from the mess Shran made.  Every incarnation of Star Trek has interpreted this basic mandate differently.  The new movies are no different.

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The remake I choose to spotlight in my unofficial participation in the blogfest is The Maltese Falcon.

Wait just a hot dog minute, The Maltese Falcon a remake?!?  The classic starring Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre?!?  Indeed, grasshopper.  It's also based on a book!

Okay, maybe you knew that one.  Dashiell Hammett's book was published in 1930.  Someone in Hollywood figured it would make a great movie.  The Maltese Falcon was duly released in 1931.  And then Satan Met a Lady was released in 1936.  Bogart's Falcon, "the stuff dreams are made of," came out in 1941.  It was an instant classic, a masterpiece of film noir.

And just think, all those people who claim remakes are a terrible thing would have done everything possible to block it from ever being made given half a chance.  What are they, a thug in The Maltese Falcon?  I know, I know, they usually adopt this stance because they hate to see a treasured memory attempt to be replaced.  Obviously most remakes aren't based on actual treasured memories.  Except Harrison Ford's The Fugitive.  Or Judy Garland's The Wizard of Oz.  You get the idea.  "Remakes" are the basis of storytelling itself.  You only think it's about original ideas.  A story is only a version of something that already exists.  It's inspired, no matter how tenuously, on events whether fictional or real.  Every single story ever.

I'd much rather live in a world where Bogart's Maltese Falcon exists, thank you.  I love that Homer helped give us The Iliad, and The Odyssey.  Those poems were composed centuries after the events they evoke.  Stories based on stories.

For the bonus round of music, I'm going unorthodox again.  As I recently stated, I'm a fan of the Beatles.  For a few years, I collected issues of the British music magazine Mojo that included complete covers of Beatles albums, uniting various artists and their particular interpretations of the songs.  My favorite remains Revolver Reloaded, based of course on Revolver, another of their formative masterpieces.  It includes Mark Mulcahy's version of "She Said She Said," which is to my mind the definitive one.  These Mojo albums were probably why I was able to enjoy the movie Across the Universe so much, because it features another collective effort to cover Beatles song.  As far as I'm concerned, you can't go wrong with Beatles songs.

Plus we wouldn't have this without remakes.



And I really wouldn't want to live in a world where that wasn't possible.

579. Direct Current Friday

That's the kind of day I had, which is good, because usually I've just been angry depressed at my current job.  Being sarcastic was a massive coping mechanism when I was working at the bookstore.  We all had radios, and when I was being funny sarcastic (because angry sarcastic is bad, or so I've learned), I could make people like me.  I'm naturally a reserved individual.  The way I blog is the way I'd talk, but a lot of what I yammer about when I blog goes over my beloved readers' heads, and it's really no different in real life.  I really haven't known anyone in real life who will tolerate me talking about the things that interest me, including my peculiar observations just from life.  That's half of the reason why I write.  And figuring out how to make it acceptable in blog form has been another process.  These cartoony things will become funny (hopefully), but the introduction has to be a little different.

#573. Direct Current Friday: A-to-Z Reflections

• Somehow I survived the 2013 Challenge.  I know I survived because I distinctly remember going insane at the end of it.  I lost it.  Thanks for being discreet.  Thanks for stopping by!
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• It was a combination of things, really.  I finished writing a commentary series examining The Annotated Sandman over at Comics Reader about a week before the end of the Challenge, and I think I was more emotionally invested in that than the Challenge.  Twenty issues of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, writing notes about the stories and notes about Leslie Klinger's notes (and managing to muscle past my one regular reader's criticism about this).  I've long been interested in reading Sandman, but have only had sporadic experience with it.  There's still plenty for me to read, but it was interesting to see that I really did get wrapped up in it.  I know Gaiman far better from American Gods and Good Omens, but it's impossible not to know about his Sandman if you know much about comic books.  Like when I finally read Jeff Smith's complete Bone, it's a rite of passage.
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• The end of the Challenge happened to coincide with ones of my many existential crises.  I don't think readers like to read about that sort of thing, which is why I don't tend to write about it.  Unfortunately I was writing on a daily basis.
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• The Boston Marathon explosions hit me pretty hard, too, and I was genuinely upset that it didn't seem to affect pretty much anyone else.  Earlier in the month Roger Ebert died, and people cared about that.  They didn't care about Margaret Thatcher's death, which I guess is either apathy or politics.  But to gloss over the explosions and whatever they might signify was a little much.  Anyone ought to know that the blogosphere itself exploded over the idea of gun rights recently.  I get that the blogosphere tends to be pretty liberal.  Writers in general seem to be pretty liberal.  I'm an atypical middle-of-the-road-leaning-toward-conservative (officially listed as an Independent for American voting purposes) writer.  I'm pretty sure that bugs anyone who thinks about it, even if they don't realize they're thinking about it.  One of the prominent bloggers in my own little circle earned my rare Black Mark of Doom.  I won't visit them again because of their emotional and popular but not very critical opinions (even if they seem critical).  I won't name them here.  But I get that people will or won't visit or comment on a blog if they decide they don't like the opinions being expressed.  I didn't expect that during an event that's all about being as accessible as possible I would come across something that would do the exact opposite.
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• Last year was the first time I participated in the Challenge.  I picked up actual readers, and I found a number of blogs that I still enjoy reading to this day.  Some of them didn't participate this year.  I found that I was disappointed about that.  I tried finding new blogs this year, too, and I'm not completely certain how many I found because I sought them out during the Challenge or because I'd recently found them outside of it.  There were a few.  But the most frustrating thing for me was that one of the things I thought could be improved from the last time that was actually undertaken this time by the hosts was in the sign-up process.  People were encouraged to categorize their themes.  Most of them didn't.  What. the. hell.  I visited the first five hundred blogs on the sign-up after an initial attempt to visit based on the categories, only to see that most people didn't do the categories.  There were nearly two thousand blogs signed up.  That's far too many for any one person (even a ninja clone like Alex Cavanaugh) to visit during a month.  And the subsequent 500 blog survey turned up...Well, maybe a saint can come up with positive things to say and like about all those blogs.  I can't.  Most of them simply didn't interest me.  Yes, there was always a good bet that most of any number that big won't register well.  But when "most" is in the 90% range, there's a problem.  So I didn't try to visit the remaining ones.
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• (Yes, I'm still yammering.)
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• I found that some of the blogs I really enjoyed reading early on I couldn't muster myself to keep the same enthusiasm for later on.  The topic was fascinating, but not fascinating to read for an entire month, day after day.  I'm assuming even my most dedicated readers eventually thought the same about my material.  It only figures, and that's another thing that wore on me.  I never thought my stuff would be trivial.  But that's why most people only talk about things other people might already have a chance to know.  That's how you get comments, anyway.  Most people are only really interested in talking about their own thoughts, or offering basic encouragement.  That's the extent of their reaction.  They don't generally tend to care about reacting to someone else's thoughts more directly.
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• It's very hard to tell the difference between genuine interest and general encouragement.  In something like this, most people are simply trying to visit and write as much as they can.  
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• I'll also come out and say this: the blogging community still bothers me in that it seems to be based on a system of reciprocity.  As in, you follow me I follow you.  You give me a comment I give you a comment.  There's no such concept of altruism.  It just seems as if most people won't bother to invest their time unless they see a benefit to it.  The benefit to me is whether you derive anything personally from an experience (i.e. enjoyment).  The gain is what you take away.
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• Yeah, so I was a hypocritical idiot, because I went in at least half my own part of the Challenge expecting people to care about books I'm in the middle of releasing.  I've since realized that for me, that's no reason to blog.  If a blogger "cares" about my book because they can also get me to share their book, that's advertising.  There are plenty of blogs like that.  I'm not one of them, and I've got plenty of blogs, including a reading blog, and I don't write about the blogging buddy books there because I read plenty of other books, and there are other websites to do that sort of thing (such as this or this).  I want to be as positive as I can about blogger buddy books.  On my reading blog I tend to be critical even of books that have been around for centuries.  Blogger buddy books can't function like that.  The whole idea is to be as positive as possible, because anything else can potentially get you a new enemy.  (Repeat Blogger Buddy Rule No. 1.)  So that's why I don't do that on my blogs.
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• Oh!  Speaking of my reading blog, the linky list that's on the right is for a new reading club.  Visit the Armchair Squid's blog to find out more about the Cephalopod Coffeehouse.  I'll be participating here at Scouring Monk, but anyone interested, can read more about my reading habits at Hub City (or those other links).
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• Of course, that assumes I haven't succeeded in pissing everyone off, alienating myself.  Although I've bitched about blogging before and survived.
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• I've also been watching a lot of TV-on-DVD recently.  I enjoyed Day Watch and Defying Gravity and Flashforward again.  I loved these short-lived shows the first time.  I love them more now.  I watched Firefly (and Serenity) again.  Everyone loves Joss Whedon right now.  Yet I've never quite gotten around to loving him.  Appreciate him, yes.  But he speaks a different language, the way most people would approach, say, Grant Morrison.  Firefly has always seemed to me a little disturbing.  It's a pastiche on the Civil War and clearly sides with the Confederacy.  In one of the special features from the Serenity DVD, he says it's less to do with sympathy for the so-called Lost Cause so much as the classic underdog conceit.  And yet it's such a clear parallel...Anyway, it got me thinking about being a native of a region where there was a regime that was later determined by popular record to be on the wrong side of a conflict (or ideology or whatever).  Whedon is a native of New York, but I would have assumed that he came from a Southern state.  Why then such apparent sympathy with Johnny Reb?  He says there's a great wealth of American literature from this vein.  I'm thinking Jesse James?  Even Star Wars to an extent.  Apparently I would need to study that a little more.  Anyway, I've determined to write some Browncoats fiction to explore this for myself.
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• I also just finished watching Spin City, some of Michael J. Fox's favorite episodes.  This was a great show.

Direct Current Friday (#534)

• I think Wednesday's post kind of proved why I don't talk about religion too much.  It just isn't relevant to a general discussion.  Although of course most of what I blog about isn't relevant to general discussions.  Still, happy to have done it.
• Starting Monday is the 2013 A-to-Z Challenge, and I've finished mapping out my April.  Like last year I'll be doubling up.  Each day will feature two topics, in this instance both from my own fiction.  One will be from the Space Corps saga, and the other from the Yoshimi Trilogy, so hopefully theoretically interested readers will get a better understanding of both!
• The icky buttermilk I mentioned last week?  I dumped some grape mix into it and will hopefully be able to finish the stuff.  
• Icky Buttermilk would make a great name for a rock band.
• One of my many spin-off blogs is called Hub City.  The title may not make it apparent, but it's my reader's blog.  The title comes from comic book character The Question's base of operations, and was at one point going to be the name of a bookstore I hoped to open.  (Incidentally, Austen Paradise is my underperforming attempt to still possibly finance such a dream, because I have no idea how else to do it.)  Anyway, one book that I just finished reading that I won't be talking about there is The Friedkin Connection, which is the memoir of director William Friedkin, who made The French Connection and The Exorcist among other films.  I generally only talk about the books from my Reading List, which is something I started talking about here at Scouring Monk and then used as the basis for Hub City, which is why I didn't talk about Pat Dilloway's A Hero's Journey or another such literature when I read it earlier this year (although every book I read is chronicled in the link that follows).  Generally there's a post about the book I'm about to read, and then a follow-up one about what I actually thought about it.  The preview more or less explains why I'm reading the book in the first place, why it ended up in my extensive backlog of books.  Anyway, The Friedkin Collection came from Good Reads, where I've been actively seeking out free books from its regular giveaways (mostly so I can get some free comics, but that hasn't worked out yet).  It reminds me of when I was working at Borders, which being a bookstore received lots of advance readers from publishers.  I still haven't read the majority of the books I picked up in those days, mostly because of that extensive backlog, which is the reason I have a Reading List.  
• Getting back to April, as you may or may not have noticed, I have theme days here at Scouring Monk now, and at the moment I'm thinking I'll continue those throughout next month in addition to the Challenge, in separate posts.  Life & Theft Sunday naturally will be unaffected, since everyone gets that day off anyway.  And still no one will be reading my poetry!  Yay!
• After Wednesday's episode of Modern Family, I think I'm officially Hooked For Life.  You know how it is.  Sometimes you watch a TV show and you figure out you'll be watching it forever.  Also, the unintended new catchphrase "Factor!" will be something I'll be saying from now on, too...

Direct Current Friday (#529)

Here's the kind of week I've had:

• I tend to agree with Arturo Bandini about buttermilk, or so I discovered.  It's horrible!  Why is this even a thing???
• Rise of the Guardians may be the best animated movie released last year.  
• The Last Starfighter is an excellent sci-fi adventure.  I'm sorry I didn't discover it sooner.
• Dune may after all be a story about a member of the elite discovering that the common folk aren't so bad.
• Dead Man Down is an excellent movie, and ranks well in the canon of Colin Farrell movies.
• In addition to some blogfests I participated in this week, I also began a new series of themed blogs I hope to maintain.  This one's a version of something I was doing at the start of the year.
• I released a new book!  Yoshimi and the Shadow Clan (in paperback and ebook).  This would of course be the biggest personal bit of news.  It's the first in a trilogy about a teenage girl who has bounced around the foster care system for most of her life, only to discover that the man she thought was just a social worker and her de facto best friend has been hiding the truth about the death of her parents.  She then sets out to learn the way of the warrior, earning the Scimitar blade and hurtling toward Bill, who may be the pupil of the man who killed her parents, her lover, or both!  It's my best shot at writing a young adult adventure, and is the first time I've released a novel since 2007's The Cloak of Shrouded Men, which was also a trilogy.  (In fact, basically all my books are written in three acts.)  If you don't follow my writer's blog, now would be a good time, because I'll still be talking about the book there, as the series will hopefully be released on a monthly basis through May, so there'll be plenty to say.  Anyone who wants a PDF preview edition can request one in the comments, on condition that you provide me a review on Amazon, listed in both versions of the book.
• I finished writing Seven Thunders, meanwhile, which is why I've started blogging a little more regularly.  This is the first in the Space Corps series, and a book I've been planning since 1998.  
• Part of the blogging blitzkrieg was definitely felt at Comics Reader, where I unleashed a torrent of "quick hits" on new comics, some from as far back as last December.
• The new season of Survivor, Caramoan, which is also known as Fans vs. Favorites II, got some love at Your Torch Will Be Snuffed, in which I caught up on a bunch of episodes, including Brandon's recent flame-out.  If you don't know who Brandon is, consider yourself lucky.  But he's been one of the personalities who've definitely kept this season interesting.