It is Okay to be Non-Productive

Perhaps this post is for myself more than it is for others but it is okay to be stalled and uncreative during this crisis.

A lot of people have been facing forced idle time as the pandemic shuttered their businesses, their schools, and their recreation and for the creative among them there has been a sense that this time at home should have been a time of productive expression.

That feeling is a false one and ignore a critical component of the creative processes, the artists mental health and well-being.

These are incredibly stressful times. A lethal disease is sweeping the world and if you live the United States of America the situation is made worse by Federally led bungling incompetence. Too many of us are vulnerable to the virus, too many of us have preexisting conditions to ignorantly approach this disease with careless caution and too many of us have already watched loved one die. This is not an environment for fruitful speculation and creativity.

If you are finding your creativity, that is good. Heaven knows that some of the inspiring, emotional, and comedic creations have helped many through these dark trials but that sort of creativity under pressure is an except not the norm.

My productivity as a writer has been nearly zero, and my day to day life has remained mostly unchanged. I have a day job that I still leave home to work so stifling cabin fever has not been one of my issues. But I have loved ones in this disease’s path and one who has been taken far too soon. I’ve found, aside from some large-scale plot concepts and one of those I really love, I haven’t been able to write and that’s okay.

It’s okay that much of my free time has been with movies, sessions of Call of Duty WWII, and puzzling out spreadsheet to making running my Space Opera RPG easier.

Be good to yourself and know that these times will pass.

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Anticipation

This year there has been precious little to look forward to. It started well with the release of my book in March and my first in-person author event at the tremendous Mysterious Galaxy but the pandemic swept the globe, shuttering society, collapsing the economy, and leaving a terrible toll of death in its wake. In the face of cataclysmic events my little novel and its release seemed such a small thing. Still, I am grateful to everyone who has been ordering on-line and those who have left such positive reviews. Honest, I did not pay them for that.

Normally science-fiction conventions are events that help moderate my mood but naturally those have been canceled or moved to purely on-line gatherings.

Luckily the pandemic has not stolen from me entirely one of the year’s most enjoyable and anticipated events the Horrible Imaginings Horror Film Festival.

The festival was founded in 2009 by my pal Miguel Rodriguez and year after year has grown. Due to scheduling and other real-life issues I was never able to attend until 2015 but each year after that this has been one of my go to jams for good times, good people, and great discoveries.

Naturally this year there is no in-person festival but there will be an on-line celebration and exhibition. This is not as fun as a few hundred attendees jamming into the terrific Freda Cinema in Orange County for big screen presentations of short and feature length horror films from around the globe but there still will be new and exciting cinema to discover. I have already experienced the on-line presentation with Miguel’s quarterly mini-festival Campfire Tales and the process works well and while it is no substitute for a proper theater screen my 55” 4K television is passable for experiencing new and exciting film.

I have already purchased my all access pass for the festival and the next year’s worth of Campfire Tales so September should have a least a few moments of horrifying escapism to make life more bearable.

 

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Revisiting Sleep Hollow

Last night, with a big bowl a buttered popcorn, I put the DVD into the machine and settled in to enjoy 1999’s Sleep Hollow. Directed by Tim Burton, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, and starring Johnny Depp. Sleepy Hollow was less of an adaptation of the classic tale by Washington Irving and more of an excursion by Burton into the lovely lush landscape of a classic Hammer Horror movie.

Hammer Studios was a UK film company that produced many genres of movies but is perhaps best known for their impressive run of horror film starting with The Quatermass Xperiment a feature film adaptation of a live television play and running through the dismal and tired To the Devil a Daughter. Between those films Hammer discovered and promoted actors who would go on to be some of the biggest genre stars in the world, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Bring color to Frankenstein with their production The Curst of Frankenstein Hammer studios leaned into exploitive film styles with garish blood and explicit imagery of human organs that previous studios had obscured with edits.

Sleepy Hollow, though with a muted color plate save for vividly bright blood, is thoroughly a throwback to these Hammer Films, Burton has populated the cast with distinguished British actors and a small speaking part for Hammer’s star Christopher Lee as a New York City judge. While the film is supposedly set in New York state the manner, accents, and culture of the cast and characters scream a British environment. The set design in this movie doesn’t reflect Burton’s usual obsessions with German expressionism but reflects a more grounded realistic approach to the setting something I think may have come from the producer Francis Ford Coppola who just a few years earlier had experiment himself with classic horror directing his production of Dracula.

In this film inspired by the classic story Ichabod Crane isn’t a schoolteacher but a young police detective dedicated to science and reason as the sole methods for solving any crime’s mystery. He is dispatched to the isolated settlement of Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of murders by beheading. Upon arrival the town’s leading citizens advised him that these are no ordinary killing but rather the supernatural vengeance of a hessian mercenary slain during the Revolutionary War. Dismissing the stories of ghosts and goblins Crane finds himself in a tangled mystery of greed, forbidden love, and undead mercenaries while discovering the truth of his own forgotten history.

Sleepy Hollow is an enjoyable film that doesn’t put on airs with a greater meaning buried in its subtext. It is an entertaining tale of love, greed, and vengeance that uses the Washington Irving story for a few moments of imagery but lives and succeeds on its own terms.

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Cinematic Social Commentary: Robocop vs They Live

 

In the essay I will not be taking a position on the merits of either films observations. I trust my readers are more than competent to make their own value judgements and evaluations politically but rather I am looking at how the films made their comments and which films, in my opinion, succeeded more adeptly at its intentions.

In 1987, the penultimate year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop was released to theaters, the story Alex Murphy, husband, father, cop, who is murdered and then scientifically resurrected as Robocop makes important comments on the nature of humanity and identity but its sharpest social observations are on conservatism and Reaganism.

The next year John Carpenter’s They Live debuted and under the guise of an alien invasion movie spoke to the same social commentary about its views on conservatives and the effects of the Reagan presidency.

They Live posits aliens living amongst us that are subtly controlling and directly all facets of human life and social development. The title refers to the ‘waking sleep,’ created by a signal broadcasted by aliens, that keeps people from seeing the aliens around them and the subliminal messaging used to control the population. Global pollution is not a side effect of unregulated industrialization but rather a deliberate project of ‘terraforming’ the Earth to alien standards. Capitalism is an alien system imposed upon humanity for the purpose of extracting the planet’s wealth to the aliens and corrupting select human into acting as quislings for the invaders. Aliens live amongst us at every level of society but most importantly solely occupy the commanding heights of our cultural and political institutions.

The commentary here is not subtle. The direct one to one mapping of capitalist, the wealthy, and the powerful as a parasitic and controlling force with the alien invaders is a clear analog to class-based observations of our real-world economies, However, the worldbuilding is sloppy and not thought out in any logical manner. How the aliens extract wealth is hand waved away. The illogic of aliens travelling hundreds if not thousands of lightyears at great expense of energy to live as beat cops and bank tellers is ludicrous mudding Carpenter’s social commentary allowing neo-Nazis to reinterpret the text in an anti-Semitic screed. The fact that extremists on the right can see the commentary as supporting their racists position rather than attacking the economic system  they favor speaks volumes to the film’s failure to build any coherent statement.

Robocop is set in an undefined near future where crime is rampant and social services are nearly non-existent. The city of Detroit is crumbling under the lack of resources as the tax base evaporates and crime runs uncontrolled in the streets. Changes in the tax codes have benefited corporations concentrating wealth and privatization has turned social services such as prisons, hospitals, and schools over to corporate control and as the film open the fiction OCP corporation takes over management of Detroit’s police force. While corporate control of social services is presented in a plain and unflattering light the factions within OCP, standing in for all of corporate America, are given a richer and more nuanced portrayal. Dick Jones, a senior vice-president who is in bed with the city’s criminal boss, is a greedy immoral man only interested in the wealth and power he can extract from his positions. Bob Morton is a corporate climber and ambitious young man but seems to believe that the corporation can be a force for good and actually wants to deliver beneficial services. The ‘Old Man’ heading OCP is more of an enigma, it is unclear if he is even aware of the corruption within the company or if his ‘it’s time to give back’ speech is heartful or merely for appearances.

What is clear is that the film’s stand that corporate government is an ill is quite clear. Despite the story being about social disintegration and collapse there is no representation of actual government. Aside from a brief use as hostages, and there’s powerful symbolism in that, there is no mayor or civic leader presented in the film. The people and their representatives are whole absent a comment on their invisibility to corporate views.

As social commentary Robocop succeeds for better than They Live

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Corona vs Chernobyl

For some strange and unknowable reason here in the depth of a global pandemic I have started re-watching HBOs Chernobyl mini-series. Brainchild of show runner and writer Craig Mazin the five-episode series follows the historical disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant following the explosion that ruptured the core and endangered million with its radioactive contamination. The series has won a number of awards around the globe and garnered praise for its acting, direction, and writing.

Mazin centers the themes of truth and lies at the heart of his scripts for Chernobyl opening the series with the question, ‘What is the cost of lies?’Given the lengthy time for writing, pre-production, and production Mazin’s work was not a direct comment on the Trump presidency but the applicability of those themes and questions are unavoidable.

The Chernobyl nuclear reactor number 4 exploded because of lies and because of the reliance of the system upon not only lies but that the lies of the authorities were never to be questioned. Lies hampered the recognition of the disaster and hampered attempts to mitigate its lethal consequences.

And yet dozens of scientists and engineers and bureaucrats managed to evade the lies and with the dangerous work of hundreds of thousands more and the sacrifice of millions more confront and contain the contamination. The Soviet system when confronted with the awful truth of the explosion and what it imperiled spent vast amounts of treasure and resources doing what was required. Mikhail Gorbachev the final General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has expressed the belief that the economic cost of the Chernobyl disaster was a critical factor in the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Which brings me to the global COVID-19 Pandemic.

The government of the United States, the world’s wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation/state, under the presidency of Donald Trump, aided and abetted by support from his governing party the Republicans, has lacked the courage shown by the brutal communist government of the former USSR.

The Administration has failed to spend the treasure necessary, has failed to muster the resources required, has left its citizenry to face the crisis alone and instead has continually counseled with lies resulting in a count of 150,000 thousand dead, a count that continue to rise.

Trump and his GOP enablers have plugged their ears, squeezed their eyes shut and like children pretended that the mess simply doesn’t exist.

This is not to praise the Soviet System. It was a brutal, monstrous, and evil empire responsible for the murder of millions. It subjugated and enslaved its own citizenry and that of its neighbors the world is better off with its collapse.

It is shocking however that a system so utterly reliant upon lies and the denial of truth rose to a crisis while a party that prides itself on virtual signaling its patriotism leaves its country to burn.

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Leave Fiction in its Period

Last night my sweetie-wife and I watched a portion of the BBC’s live presentation of The Quatermass Experiment. Written by Nigel Kneale and originally produced as live television in 1953 the shows centers on Bernard Quatermass and Britain’s first men into space with the disastrous and horrifying consequences of that first rocket flight. Kneale is one of my favorite television and film genre writers who produced material that was both thrilling and thoughtful. His ghost story The Stone Tape remains a beloved production to me.

In 2005 the BBC recreated the energy of live television with this new production of The Quatermass Experiment. Transposing the action to the modern-day United Kingdom. Instead of Quatermass’ Experimental Rocket Group being part of the British government it now stood as a private space launch concern. However, much of the dialog and drama revolves around the concept of a first flight into space and for 2005 that’s a concept that simply doesn’t carry a lot of sense of the unknown. The mystery of where the spacecraft flew to simply can’t be sustained in our current technological world. And while 500,000 miles is further than any manned flight actually flown it’s still in our own neighborhood and unlikely to yield up a story about aliens and monsters.

The Quatermass Experiment belong to its period just as numerous other stories that shouldn’t be ‘modernized’ such as The Manchurian Candidate or Fail-Safe, another experiment into revitalizing live television.

Works of art are products of their time, the social pressures and environments that both inspired and constrained the artists as they created and it is in their time they should remain.

 

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Fiction Reveals the Author

There’s often a huge cry from some quarters that that creatives need to keep their politics out of their arts. The arts are there for simple entertainment not any form a grandstanding.

Naturally this is an ignorant position. Art has the most lasting value when it speaks to values and that can’t be done without stepping on toes.

This is all very evident in movies, television, and literature but even in other matters of creativity the worldview and positions of the author or authors influences the art.

I run an in-person Role Playing Game, or at least I did before the pandemic shut everything down, of Space Opera a massive game from the very early 80s with an amazing detailed, if poorly edited, set of rules. In order to make the game flow quicker and easier once we can assemble to players again, I have been crafting spreadsheets to handle the more tedious and complex calculations the game often calls for. One the objectives were met I decided to expand the project and create a spreadsheet that would use the rules to automatically general star sectors and that has been an interesting experience. Certainly, my Microsoft Excel skills have been expanding but it has also revealed interesting biases of the game’s authors.

For example, a society in Space Opera is rated for its social strength on a scale from 1- 10, with a  1 signifying a society that has collapsed or is in collapse, the world of Mad Max both the original film and its sequels, while a 10 represents a society able to withstand nearly any serious shock with it institutions remaining functional and intact.

The gamemaster rolls a 10-sided die for the social strength and then modifies it based on the type of society and those modifiers express the authors’ biases.

“Open Societies” no modifier, it is whatever is rolled though the game’s heroic Terran Union no planet will score below a 5.

“Corporate Society” no modifiers, somehow you can have both corporate societies that are falling apart which seems illogical, without rule of law there cannot be corporation and societies rock solid and unshakable.

“Aristocratic Society” no modifiers, lord, ladies, kings and all that can be utterly stable withstanding any shock.

“Socialist Society” Max social strength 8, 9s and 10s must be re-generated. hmm socialist systems, without providing a real definition of that means find true stability impossible.

And in case you thought ‘Socialist’ means USSR because this game is a product of late 70s engineering.

“Communist Society” max social strength is 7 with result 8-10 re-rolled.

There buried in the rules in the modifiers are the authors’ political belief that open, capitalist societies are inherently more stable than other systems.

All art, even gaming,  is political.

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Comic Con Online

I won’t have a lot to say about this as I have never been a regular attendee of San Diego’s famous Comic-Con. My interest in the Comic industry has always been light, never a collector myself but during the 80s reading the issues purchased by my collector friends. That said I am not putting down the Comic-Con. It’s a tremendous event that now puts a global spotlight on things geeky and nerdy and I am thrilled that so many of my friends have such a good time most years.

The pandemic, just as it has with some many other fun events, canceled in person Comic-Con but the organizers have thrown together a virtual convention with panel discussions and presentations now available on YouTube. Yesterday my sweetie-wife and I watched a pair of these, first a cast discussion for What We Do in the Shadows, FX’s hit vampire comedy and this was quite enjoyable and then an interview discussion with Charlize Theron about her evolution in an action star and general all around badass on-screen.

The online presentation is a poor substitute for the crowded chaos that is Comic-Con and I dearly hope that my friends can soon return to in person geekery.

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The GOP MUST be Burnt Down

Yesterday as part of my political podcast world I listened to The Dispatchwhich is part of the conservative but not pro-Trump continuum. I listen to mainstream news and political discusses from both the right and the left in part because I am not going to judge any faction by what their opponents say but rather what I hear from them myself. One of the topics of the Podcast raised by writer David French was on the desirability of the election removing Trump from office but without serious damage to the Republican office holders below the level of President. French seems concerned with ‘collective’ punishment being unfairly handed to the GOP at large.

“Collective’ punishment conjures up impressions of innocent member of a community being unjustly punished for the actions of a minority of the person who by mere happenstance are also member of the community.

That is not what has happened with Trump and the Republican Party.

First off, Trump did not fall out of the sky into the position of Leader of the GOP. He was the party’s leading choice from the moment he entered the race. The GOP had spent decades preparing a political ecosystem where someone of Trump character would thrive. They are Doctor Frankenstein and he is their monster; the responsibility is theirs.

Next, the Republican Office holders with a clear view of the man’s corruption and incompetence did not thing to limit his damage to our nation. Satisfied with tax cuts and judges and terrified of the base that they themselves had cultivated they stood by, abandoning their duty, their oaths, and their honor as they turned a blind eye to his maleficence. The culminated in, at their hands and their hands alone, the cowardice of his acquittal.

Faced with Trump corruption, criminality, and incompetence the Senate republicans turned their backs on the United States of America, pushed their fingers into the ears, squeezed their eyes shut and desperately wished for it all to just go away. The result of this abdication is the death of tens of thousands of Americans.

Had the Senate removed Trump as their clearly needed to it we would but have faced a pandemic with an incompetent, fragile ego, narcissistic failed businessman and reality television star as President. While people can have their issue with Vice President Pence, we would have stood a much better shot at a competent response to the crisis and that would have saved lives. Thousands of lives.

Of course, I am not saying that the senate knew the pandemic was rising. But they knew, we all knew, Trump was incapable of rising to a crisis and for the US President a crisis is always on the horizon.

It is not ‘collective punishment’ to hold them accountable for their inaction. An 18-year-old infantry man who through cowardice gets his unit killed and wounded would not be excepted from the consequences of his failure and neither should his elected officials be excused simply because they may advance a policy you desire. They are not being held accountable for Trump’s actions but for their own. The GOP cannot be an honorable party if it is comprised of dishonorable members.

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Quick Hits for July 23rd

No long form essay today just a few quick thoughts to kick off the morning.

 

Ladyhawke this film from 1985 doesn’t get the love that it deserves. A romantic fantasy directed by Richard Donner and starring Mathew Broderick, Rutger Hauer, and Michelle Pfeiffer this movie has it all, action, comedy, romance, and one of the best magical curses ever devised and yet it doesn’t get a tenth of the fan love and devotion as The Princess Bride. Both movies deserve to be in the Fan Cannon.

 

The year 2020 sucks. Not a new or shocking revelation but one I think constantly. I never expected that the year I debuted as a published novelist would be so terrible.

 

It’s hard getting people to leave reviews on Amazon. Please if you’ve read Vulcan’s Forge leave a review even if it is one star and you hated the book. Though of course I pleased that so far people seem to really like it and got what I was shooting for. Reviews raise visibility on the shopping sites and all of this year’s debut authors need the help.

 

Though it doesn’t look like I will return in in-person role play gaming before next year I have been hard at work on my Space Opera Campaign. I’ve been spending weekends working on Excel spreadsheet to do the tedious calculations that slow down the flow of play and last night I had an epiphany for solving a calculation that has been bugging me.

 

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