The best writers usually cut their teeth in journalism. Ernest Hemingway, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, E.B. White, David Steinbeck, Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells, Mark Twain, the list goes on. It’s where they learn to write for an audience and how to be a taker-outer, not a putter-inner (because you need your words to fit on the page next to the car ad). I took Journalism I and II in high school. That was the only way to get on the school newspaper. It wasn’t an after-school activity, and you couldn’t take it until 11th and 12th grade. If I weren’t a software engineer, if it weren’t such a comfy and…
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Do Gay Characters Have to Be So Gay?
My headline didn’t have to be so incendiary, but you know… got to farm that engagement. I could be talking out of my ass here, but this is my personal opinion. I don’t like it when movies and television make gay characters super-gay. Like take Agatha All Along. The character of “mmf” is clearly gay. He has a lilt, an effeminate quality, lack of strength. I mean, yes, those kinds of people exist, but there seems to be a disproportionate amount of them in TV than in real life. This sounds like I’m being homophobic. I’m not. I have no strong feelings about homosexuals in media. What I have strong…
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Why Movies are Underperforming — The Obvious Answer
This is more of an addendum to my earlier rant about why all media feels disappointing these days. But focused on movies. But that’s a big chunk because pretty much all eyes are on movies these days. Aren’t you sick of headlines that say “XYZ Underperforms at the box office”? Napoleon was out for two days and it was labeled as underperforming. I don’t know if these movies are good or bad or simply not interesting, they’re just underperforming and I don’t know what I’m supposed to take from that. The Marvels, Trolls: Band Together, The Little Mermaid, Fast X, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Elemental, Oppenheimer, Killers of the…
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Maybe It’s Us (Why Is Recent Movies and TV So Disappointing)
Are my expectations too high? Is it wrong to have high expectations of media? They can make magic… so why aren’t they? Why does it feel like everything anticipated in the last year/year and a half has been a disappointment? Why are they filling the void with Space Jam 2 and Trolls 3 and Five Nights at Freddy’s and another Saw movie and another Fast and Furious movie and Blue Beetle and Shazam 2 and another Indiana Jones and Disney live-action remakes and, of course, anything from Marvel. MOVIES Avatar 2 was more of the same, another bloated military rah-rah explosions and gunsfest. Lightyear puts its message before the story.…
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Mommy, Why Is That Man Cancelling Culture?
“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.” Ever since I heard those words in “The Dark Knight”, I keep seeing it proved again and again, like a horrible Blue Car syndrome. Role models, world leaders, artists, athletes. Time makes fools of us all. Except now those fools have teams of Proud Boys and Twitter trolls to call to their side. Like most terms, “cancel culture” started as light slang being thrown around. If you were “swiped right” you were canceled. People tweeted at Kanye West “you’re canceled” when he did something stupid. Now it’s grown to where public outcry on social media…
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Where Does Comedy Live?
Where am I supposed to go for comedy these days? I used to go to movies, but it’s not there anymore. When I grew up, there was great stuff like Airplane! and Ghostbusters and The Naked Gun and Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Tommy Boy and Galaxy Quest and American Pie, then started transitioning into Mean Girls and Napoleon Dynamite. Now we have Borat and Trainwreck and Neighbors. Just gross-out and drugs (I guess American Pie was like that, but you can’t win them all). Crap like Macgruber and The Lobster. It’s like all the comedy drained out of the theater. What happened? Did the writers and creators go…
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72 Virgins Would Be Horrible
I know, I know, it’s a myth that the Koran says if you die promoting Islam, 72 virgins await you in Heaven, and that’s where all the extremists come from. Total lie. That doesn’t mean media doesn’t perpetuate it. Mostly for purposes of comedy these days. Along with the more common tropes of “virgin sacrifice”, “virgin stupid” and others. But I was thinking the other day, wouldn’t this be horrible? You die, and you go to a place with 72 women (I’m making assumptions about orientation here. Substitute your favorite gender where appropriate). I’m not going to make the cliche joke of 72 shrews complaining and nagging. Let’s assume they’re…
