Tag: Batman

Call It What You Want

Well, LSU lost, which certainly cast a pall over my day yesterday. The game was also early–11 am start time–and after that sucked all the air out of my day I struggled, frankly. I know, it’s silly to put so much emotional energy into being a fan of any sport, but I can’t remember ever seeing LSU play as badly on defense as they have so far this year. I feel bad for the kids, and I don’t know what the problem is–I didn’t expect them to have another record-breaking season, but I certainly didn’t think they’d have a very strong shot at going 1-9, either.

Heavy sigh. It seems to be a very weird year for college football–the Alabama-Ole Miss score was 63-48, with Ole Miss gaining over 600 yards; that’s the most points ever scored on a Nick Saban Alabama team–and Mississippi State lost to Kentucky, with Florida falling to Texas A&M; Arkansas almost beat Auburn, so clearly defense is no longer a thing in the SEC, a conference once known and respected for it. Georgia and Alabama are the only unbeatens left in the conference, and they play next weekend…yes, a very strange year in college football.

I did manage to get some work done yesterday–not enough, of course–but progress was certainly made, and I feel confident I’ll be able to get it all taken care of tomorrow. The Saints are playing on Monday night, so there’s absolutely no need for me to turn on the television at all during the day tomorrow, and the French Open final will be on so early I doubt Paul will get up to watch. This year is seriously shit, you know? All the joy from sports has been sucked out of them, and crowd noise, it turns out, increases the enjoyment of the game significantly when you’re watching at home–who knew?

So, I licked my wounds and thought about the things I need to write, and how to get them done, and how to improve everything I have currently in progress. That’s a win, frankly, and I refuse to feel guilty about not getting everything done yesterday. Sure, it means I have to get it all done today–but as I said, I am certain I can bang it all out and get it all done, and then I can go into the first three day work week of the clinic since March with my head held high and start focusing on the other things I need to get done–the manuscript for Bury Me in Shadows, a couple more short stories–and of course, getting the email situation back under control. I feel like this final quarter of the year, no matter what else happens in the rest of the world, is a time when I can turn this ship around and set to rights.

I especially hate that I somehow fucked around and managed to go a year without having a book out. How in the holy hell did I allow that to happen? What was I doing in 2019 that I didn’t get a book written? I turned Royal Street Reveillon in around Carnival of 2019, and it came out last October, a year ago. What in the name of God was I doing the rest of the year? I know I was working on Bury Me in Shadows, but seriously? I honestly don’t remember, but whatever the hell it was I was doing, one thing for sure I wasn’t doing was writing. Sure, I sold some short stories, but I honestly think most of the story sales were this year, not last. Part of the reason I signed contracts with deadlines so tightly on top of each other was partly to ensure I wasn’t going to go another year without a novel out.

Gregalicious, you need to start getting more focused.

I saw the trailer for the new version of The Stand, and I have to say it looks good. I liked the original mini-series from the early 1990’s–that chilling opening when Campion runs and “Don’t Fear the Reaper” plays over the opening credits as the camera moves through the Army base and all the dead bodies within still gives me chills (it’s on Youtube). I love The Stand, and generally consider it my favorite Stephen King novel. It used to be one of my primary comfort reads; I think I’ve read the original dozens of times. Despite some issues, overall I approved of that initial attempt at filming it; the final episode was the weakest, overall, but they did a pretty good job. This version has a terrific cast, and it looks like CBS All Access spared no expense on putting together a great show…but–the whole Mother Abagail thing really doesn’t hold up well after all this time. At least they’ve added other people of color to the cast this time–in the book and the original TV version, apparently most people of color succumbed to the pandemic.

It’s also interesting that when I was reading plague fictions and histories earlier this year, I didn’t pick up either The Stand or Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, which are both favorites. I think both–which feature almost the entire human population dying–were probably more than I could handle earlier this year.

And I do think that was probably the wisest course.

I read two more stories by Nathan Ballingrud, from his collection North American Lake Monsters: Stories yesterday while the Alabama-Ole Miss game played on the television–“Wild Acre” and “S.S.”–and both were superbly written. Ballingrud does a truly great job writing about desperate people–financially desperate, emotionally desperate–and his use of the supernatural and how it affects/impacts the desperate people he writes about it is stellar. “S.S.” isn’t really a supernatural story; it’s set in New Orleans and is more about a desperate young man, a loser, who turns to white supremacy to try to find a place where he belongs, and it’s an ugly little story, yet compelling at the same time. The horror of his own life–he’s a dishwasher at a small restaurant in the Quarter, his mother was severely injured in an accident, can’t work, and is now mentally deranged; their power has been turned off for non-payment–makes him an easy target for white supremacy and hate; it’s terribly sad, and makes a surprising turn towards the end. The interesting thing I am learning from reading Ballingrud is that the premise of his work is the real horror comes from humans, not the paranormal or supernatural.

So, today is the day I am going to get a lot of work done, trying to start getting caught up on everything. I slept deeply and well last night, which is always a plus, and so am feeling relatively well rested this morning. Once I’ve had my coffee and finished writing this, I am going to get cleaned up and dig into finishing my essay and then move on to the website writing before the revision of my short story. This will possibly–probably?–take most of the day, so I doubt that I will get around to Bury Me in Shadows today (but one never knows; I could go into the zone and get a ton of shit done today). We watched three episodes of The Boys last night, and I have to say, the primary problem we (Paul agrees with me on this) have with the show is the character of Butcher. He’s really supposed to be the character we root for, leading the resistance against the proto-fascist tendencies of the super-heroes and Vought, the company they work for, but he’s so routinely unpleasant and unlikable it’s difficult to care–and if you excise him and his personal story from the show you wouldn’t really be missing anything; I don’t care about his him or his wife or their situation, frankly, and the fact that almost every sentence he utters includes the words “cunt” and/or “twat” doesn’t help. I realize the words are more commonly used in England and don’t have the unpleasant misogynist implications they do in the United States, but the constant usage is like the writers were all “Oh, he’s British so he can say cunt and twat all the time!” like junior high school boys rubbing their hands together in glee about getting away with something. I do like that the show subverts and looks at super-heroes with a wary eye, exploring the dangers of super-powered beings who are arrogant and don’t really care much about people, but Watchmen also explored the ethics of this, and did it much, much better. Still…for the most part, we are enjoying it, and will continue watching. We only have three episodes left, and so will probably either finish it tonight or tomorrow–there’s also a new episode of The Vow dropping tonight; even though we are slowly losing interest in it, we’ll probably continue watching and see it all the way through.

Although I have to give props where it’s due; The Boys has gotten me thinking about Superman, and why the DC films with Henry Cavill about Superman have been disappointing, despite a stellar cast, because they really don’t get the essence of Superman–and why on earth would you make a movie about the greatest comic book hero of all time when you don’t understand the purpose of the character and why he is a hero? Hero is the key word there; and if Marvel could manage to do Captain America and make him believable, Warner certainly could have done the same with Superman. Watching the first two Christopher Reeve Superman movies would have been a huge help, frankly; Superman isn’t angsty or tortured the way Batman is, and using the film version of Batman as a blueprint for Superman, I think, was the first mistake.

Look at Wonder Woman, for that matter.

And on that note, it’s time for me to get back to the spice mines and get this day off and running. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader.

Behind Closed Doors

I only managed about seventeen hundred words on the WIP last night. (Hangs head in shame.) But in fairness to me, it’s a difficult transitional chapter which sets up some important stuff in the final five chapters, so I am trying to get it just right–which is, by its very nature, the definition of insanity, as I am obviously going to have to revise the fuck out of it eventually.

Heavy sigh.

And so it goes.

Yesterday, despite sleeping relatively well the previous night, was relatively unpleasant.  I had a toothache–which has sort of subsided this morning, but we’ll see as the day progresses–and there’s nothing worse than tooth pain. I’ve been putting off seeing the dentist for quite some time now; I suppose I need to go ahead and make a plan for getting in to see my dentist and then start figuring out how to pay for all the work I need to have done in my mouth. It was so  bad yesterday chewing was difficult–it’s a molar–but this morning it feels, while still not terrific, much better than it did yesterday. I suppose we’ll see when it’s time to chew something, I suppose. But ugh, mouth pain is the worst.

I suppose I could also blame the tooth for how difficult it was to pull those words out of my brain last night and get them down on the page, but that seems kind of cheating. I also did something Saturday–I’m not sure what–but my back has been sore and making me uncomfortable since Sunday morning when I got up. I generally attribute these aches and pains that come out of nowhere with just getting older, but sometimes I get paranoid and worry that it might be something important I’m ignoring and blowing off. I’ve never been much of a hypochondriac–I generally dismiss things and hope they’ll go away so I don’t have to do anything about them–but sometimes it gets too bad and I don’t have a choice (remembering the day of the three abscessed teeth) but this toothache seems to be just that–a toothache–and will probably go away. My gums aren’t swollen, neither is my cheek, and that makes me tend to think that an abscess isn’t going to be the problem this time around.

Fascinating, right?

We continue to watch The Boys on Prime, and it’s getting darker with each episode. Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman sort of touched on this notion that super-powered beings cannot really be trusted, and the comic book ideal of “great power means great responsibility” is just precisely that: an ideal. Even the super-villains of the comics, their antagonists, are rarely more powerful than the heroes (Magneto in X-Men being one of the primary exceptions to this rule), because obviously the heroes always have to win out in the end (one of the reasons I always loved Detective Comics was because Batman usually had to use his brain to outwit the criminals; obviously, one of the reasons I was always a Batman fan was because he was, before The Dark Knight Returns, known as The World’s Greatest Detective…I really was destined to become a mystery writer), otherwise why else would people read comic books about super-heroes? Sure, they suffer and go through angst as part of their character-building arcs, but the point of being a hero is to surmount challenges and difficulties.

And actually, my tooth is much better today, so there will be no blaming of the tooth for not being productive today. I am still trying to get a handle on this enormous, time-sensitive project I’ve been handed; I got some work on it done yesterday, but after awhile–particularly when I’m in tooth pain–I can only deal with Excel spreadsheets for so long, you know?

But I am feeling so much better today–even my back isn’t achy, more just reminding me periodically that I did something it isn’t happy about–that I feel certain I can continue marking things off my to-do list without a problem.

Go, Gregalicious, go!

I also hope to read some more of Steph Cha’s terrific Your House Will Pay. I certainly had to put it down at a place where I really didn’t want to put it down, so there’s that.

I also think today needs to have an appreciation moment.

So, today I am appreciating Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. When I was a kid, I became a huge fan of Ellery Queen from watching the television program, with Jim Hutton. I also remember being disappointed that the character in the books–Ellery Queen novels in the third person point of view by Ellery Queen–wasn’t as much like the sort of absent-minded incredibly intelligent goofball from the show. Anyway, I remember reading my first issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine when I was a teenager, and have read it, off and on, ever since. It was always on my bucket list to have a story published in their pages, and that finally happened in 2006, when they  did a Katrina-anniversary New Orleans focused issue, and it included my story “Acts of Contrition.” That was a really proud moment for me, as was my second appearance some five or so years later with “The Email Always Pings Twice.” I love being able to say I’ve had two stories published there, and hope to someday say three rather than two. Every experience I’ve had with EQMM and its staff has been absolutely lovely.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines.

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Special Lady

Happy Sunday everyone.

Yesterday was a bit of a revelation. The other day (yesterday? Who knows? My memory has more holes than Swiss cheese) I was talking about how the Internet is such an enormous distraction, and one of the terrific things about the old dial-up modems was the process of signing onto the web was such an irritating process that it wasn’t a big deal to shut it all down when I had other things to get done and couldn’t be distracted. So, yesterday I did precisely that: I closed down both browsers when it was time to work, and guess what? Not only did I get some work done on the Scotty, I got the page proofing for Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories form filled out, cleaned the apartment (the living room still needs work) and made shrimp creole for dinner. I also wound up watching the final three episodes of Titans last night (which were quite excellent, I might add), and read some more Walter Mosley before going to bed. So, this morning I am going to finish writing this blog post before cleaning out my email inboxes, after which I am going to shut down my browsers and get to work. I want to finish cleaning the living room, have some dishes and laundry to do, some minor touches need to be done in the kitchen, and then I am most likely going to make potato leek soup for dinner in the slow cooker.

Pretty cool, huh? I felt really good in getting that work on Scotty done yesterday, and I think it’s good work. I am most definitely pleased with myself. I also need to make a list of things that need to get done this week.

I have to say, shutting down the Internet on my desktop was a pretty genius thing to do. I couldn’t believe how much free time I had yesterday to get things done. I will admit I occasionally checked my phone every few hours or so, and last night while I was watching television I also pulled out the iPad occasionally, but over all it was terrific. I had already, years ago, came up with a new rule to not answer emails over the weekends (emails always beget emails), and limiting the Internet is actually kind of genius.

I was very pleased with the entire first season of Titans. This is how you launch a television series about a super-hero team; a continuing story arc where you get to know the characters as they work together or meet each other, with back story episodes mixed in here and there to deepen and enrich the viewer’s understanding of the characters. The actors are all good in their roles–they are gorgeous and can act–and the main character arc–the growth of Dick Grayson from sidekick Robin into himself as an individual rather than what Bruce Wayne/Batman wants him, has been grooming him, to be–is very compelling, as is trying to solve the mystery of who amnesiac Kory is, and who Rachel actually is and what the source of her power is. Kudos for an excellent first season.

Friday night I watched two episodes and resisted bingeing the rest…and discovered that the pilot for the Aquaman series the CW had considered doing during the run of Smallville was available on DC Universe, starring the incredibly handsome Justin Hartley as Arthur Curry/Aquaman. (He now stars on This Is Us.) The pilot is terrible, really terrible, and I can see why the CW didn’t pick it up. Hartley went on to play Green Arrow on Smallville, which was how I came to be a fan of the handsome actor with the phenomenal body. But as I watched Titans, the actor who plays Hank/Hawk (of Hawk and Dove), Alan Ritchson, looked familiar. Last night it hit me: he played Aquaman on Smallville! After the Aquaman pilot failed and the show cast Hartley as Green Arrow, when they brought in Aquaman he was played by Ritchson, who now plays Hawk on Titans–and does a great job of it, too. And of course later, when Greg Berlanti (also involved in Titans) rebooted Green Arrow as Arrow, he cast Stephen Amell as Arrow rather than spinning Hartley off, which also worked. So, how confusing is all of this? Pretty confusing. Hartley played Aquaman and then Green Arrow; Ritchson played Aquaman but now plays Hawk; Amell now plays Green Arrow. Whether Titans will cross over with the other DC Universe shows on the CW–Arrow, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl–remains to be seen.

But I have to give it up to this rebooted television DC Universe. And this isn’t even getting into the film DC Universe.

Right? It’s a lot.

The nice thing about the DC Universe subscription is you can also read comic books on the app for free, so I don’t have to buy them anymore. Also a really good thing, because I still haven’t read all the comics on my iPad that I’ve bought. There’s never enough time, quite frankly.

All right, on that note, Constant Reader, it’s back to the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday.

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Sleigh Ride

Today we’re going to see Aquaman. I am very excited for this, if you couldn’t tell by me pretty much mentioning it every day for the last week. I didn’t discover Jason Momoa until Game of Thrones (I know, I know, bad gay), but have been a huge fan ever since. And while my initial reaction to the news of his casting was problematic (but Aquaman is blond!) I got over it pretty quick. I’ve always been a fan of Aquaman–yes, I love Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, but have always had a place in my heart for the ‘lesser’ heroes–Flash, Aquaman, Green Lantern, etc. So I am excited to see Aquaman get his own movie, and I do hope someday they give Green Lantern another shot.

I slept in this morning, later than usual–last night I even fell asleep in my easy chair, showing how tired I was (although that’s happened twice this week), and I feel very rested this morning. I have to run to the post office this morning, and I have some things to get at the grocery store (the Saturday before Christmas! Hurray!) before we head out for the movie. I did work a little on Bury Me in Satin a little bit last night, but I also had dinner with some friends in from out of town, which was lovely, and then we also watched the Schitt’s Creek Christmas special. I do want to talk some more about this show, but I am going to give it, I think, it’s own entry because it deserves it. Seriously, people, if you aren’t watching this show you need to. It’s hilarious, but incredibly warm and sweet at the same time.

It definitely deserves an entry of its own.

My kitchen is a mess; and I have loads of chores to do this morning. I’d like to, obviously, get as much done today as possible, so tomorrow I can focus on the Saints game and editing the Scotty book, maybe log some time in on Bury Me in Satin, do some reading, etc., and then have both Christmas Eve and Christmas to not only do some writing/editing in the morning, but spend the rest of each day relaxing, which will be lovely. I get a three day work week this week and next (huzzah!) and so here’s hoping that some of that free time will be spent productively.

Or not. We’ll see. Oh! I have to stop at the library today, too. They’re holding a book for me. Yay! I love having a library card, and being able to reserve books on-line. I do think one of these days I need to just go spend a day in the library, though; try to remember what it was like when I was a kid and used to spend whole afternoons in the Tomen Branch of the Chicago Public Library on Pulaski Boulevard. And the Latter Library on St. Charles Avenue here in New Orleans is so, so beautiful.

I am also, by the way, in total denial that Carnival is just around the corner.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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Woman

I slept really well last night, yet again, which means now over a week of good, restful sleep. I’d forgotten in all the years of not-so-good sleep how addictive sleep can be; how hard it can be to come back from the wonderful, deep slumber and get back to life and reality. But I am determined to shake off the sleep and laziness today and hit my revising goals–and my cleaning goals. I started reading Cain’s The Cocktail Waitress, and I intend to get further along in it, as well.

Yesterday was a lovely day. Five months into owning a new car, and I’m still not used to it, being conditioned for so long with my clunker so that I don’t want to drive anywhere–and then I get in the new car and am all, “Oh, yes, the reason I hated driving was because I hated driving that car” and everything is right with the world again. Yesterday we drove out to Elmwood to the AMC Palace 20 theater to see Wonder Woman.

And it was, indeed, a wonder.

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While I would not refer to myself as a ‘comics geek’, as that implies a level of fandom and devotion I don’t feel I am entitled to, I do consider myself a fan. I grew up with the DC Comics titles, and periodically throughout my life I’ve dipped back into comics–I have a ridiculous amount of them in my iPad at the moment that I’ve not read yet–and I’ve always managed to try to keep up with what was going on in the worlds (universes?) of DC and Marvel; I’ve always been partial to DC because that was my childhood, but at the same time I’m impressed with Marvel and what they’ve done/accomplished over the years. I saw the Christopher Reeve Superman (and later, Superman II) in the movie theater, and yes, I did come out of them thinking that a man could fly. But as good as those two films were, and as good as Reeve was in the role, there was a bottom-line cheesiness to the movies, and some of the roles were miscast (Margot Kidder as Lois Lane was a mistake; with no offense intended to Ms. Kidder, they should have gone with Kate Jackson or Jane Seymour or Pamela Sue Martin; I never believed Kidder in the role and I never believed Superman would fall in love with her Lois Lane–and that’s not even taking into consideration the absolute lack of chemistry between Reeve and Kidder). But I did enjoy them, and was happy to see super-hero movies being made. The Superman movies eventually went off the rails–the last two Reeve-as-Superman movies were terrible, and that was, I feared, the end of that. I wasn’t crazy about the Batman movies, either; they were entertaining enough, but that film series also went off the rails completely in the last two installments. As Marvel began dipping its foot in to waters of film, I liked the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies, but didn’t love them; the X-Men movies were just okay (brilliant in moments, awful in others), and while I thought the reboot of Batman with Christian Bale were done really well to begin with–again, as the movies progressed they started going off the rails. I didn’t hate the rebooting of Superman with Henry Cavill as much as everyone else did; I enjoyed the movies, thought he did a fine job in the role, and even Ben Affleck, whose casting as Batman in the new world of the DC Cinematic Universe was, to me, questionable, kind of pulled it off in Batman vs. Superman. I also enjoyed Deadpool and Guardians of the Galaxy, and loved Chris Hemsworth as Thor, but the movie overall itself was just kind of meh. (I’ve not seen the other Thor movies, so can’t judge them.) The Iron Man movies I’ve seen were enjoyable, but not memorable.

But all the movies made money, which is all that matters in Hollywood, no matter what kind of critical roasting they get, and so we were bound to get more of these movies. When they announced who would be playing characters I’ve known and loved since childhood for the  Justice League movie, I wasn’t so sure–I didn’t know who either Gal Gadot and Ezra Miller were, and while I love Jason Momoa (who doesn’t?), I wasn’t so sure about him playing Aquaman. But the brief scenes in which Gadot appeared in Batman v. Superman were luminous, and that gave me hope. I really, really wanted Wonder Woman to be a great movie, because I love the character so much (and always have), and the previews looked pretty damned spectacular. Already people were posting on social media about how much they enjoyed the movie, so that was good–but I was still a bit nervous about it when we took our seats in the IMAX 3-D theater in Elmwood.

Two and a half hours later we walked out of the theater, stunned.

Not only did it exceed my expectations, but it was a great movie, from beginning to end. Origin stories are extremely hard to tell and make interesting, but we get to see young Diana as the only child on Themyscira (which was indeed a Paradise Island), and Connie Nielson was terrific as Queen Hippolyta–although Robin Wright as her sister Antiope stole every scene she was in–who knew The Princess Bride could be such a badass? (Robin Wright has always been under-appreciated as an actress–from her beginnings as Kelly Capwell on the soap Santa Barbara and The Princess Bride–and I’ve always believed she gave the strongest performance in Forrest Gump and should have at least gotten an Oscar nomination as Jenny) Chris Pine is, of course, thoroughly appealing as Steve Trevor–everyone in the cast was superb–but the true success of the movie lies completely in the hands of Gal Gadot.

And she was amazing, absolutely amazing. From her first glimpse of London to seeing an actual baby for the first time to trying to figure out how to get through a revolving door to her first taste of ice cream, she managed to capture Diana’s innocence and naivete without coming across as an idiot–and that is not an easy thing to do. She inhabited the role perfectly, and the film was not shot to sexualize her or make her an object of lust–and that is all due to the superb direction of Patty Jenkins, who should be put in charge of the DC Cinematic Universe. The action/battle sequences never got boring–as they tend to do in most super-hero movies–and there were moments when I got goosebumps and tears in my eyes–the scene where she emerges from the trench at the battlefield in her uniform for the first time affected me so deeply I wanted to stand up and cheer in the theater, but settled for teary eyes and goosebumps. There were many of those moments in this movie.

I think what gets lost, what was missing, in earlier super-hero movies (and most especially in the recent two Superman outings) is that the heroes themselves are symbols of hope, and that they themselves believe in the ultimate goodness of humanity; and they have an innate sense of nobility. That’s the piece that was missing from the Superman movies; that, and the sense of fun. Wonder Woman delivered on both counts, in spades.

There hasn’t been a single super-hero film I’ve seen since the 1970’s that I would be excited to watch again on television, let alone go see in the theater again.

I would go see Wonder Woman again in the theater.

I can’t think of any praise higher than that.

Well done, DC, and everyone involved in this film. Bravo.