The Horror

You either die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain.

Well, I think it’s horrifying.

You Know What “Horror” Means, Don’t You?

Well, I watched the first season of American Horror Story. Not my idea, I assure you. I honestly would not have finished it except I don’t like to criticize something I haven’t completely watched. But now I have and I never, ever have to watch it again.

Okay, recap: the first season is about a family moving across country after the wife’s miscarriage and husband’s affair. They move into a house that’s way underpriced because the previous owners died in a murder suicide. Obviously the place is filled with violent ghosts and…I guess that’s supposed to be scary? I don’t know. I never found it to be. Granted, these ghosts can actually hurt people and then disappear so they’re actually a threat. But honestly, I thought the show spent too much time confusing gore and shock value (and rape; lets not forget rape) with horror. Probably the only thing they did right was the accurate portrayal of an abusive parental relationship. I guess that was certainly horrifying.

The characters are, for the most part, as dull as dirt, with no characteristics besides “Wife and mother” or “rebellious teenage daughter”, to the point where after watching thirteen episodes I can’t even remember their names. It doesn’t help matters that the overall story is completely incoherent. Things are thrown at you with no explanation and you’re expected to remember them if they’re finally brought up again—which is definitely an if as there are several things that are just there to be weird (or gratuitously sexy) and then…that’s it. There’s no reason for it. Take the sleepwalking that seems to afflict the men of the house. It’s mentioned two or three times, but there’s no explanation as to why it happens, why it only affects some men, and why it happens once or twice and then never again. And even if something is explained, it might seem really half-assed, like the writers couldn’t think of something good so they just went with the first idea that popped into someone’s head. Case in point, the reason they cobbled together as to why the house is haunted. Really, sometimes there’s nothing wrong with there not being an explanation. In fact, the not-knowing can be part of the horror. But they came up with this nonsense and it’s not scary or satisfying and that’s basically the entire series in a nutshell.

If you enjoy it…well, go ahead. I didn’t. Except for Jessica Lange, who is both the best actor of the bunch and the only well defined character. Seriously, I would watch an entire show of just her and I can see why they’ve brought her back for every subsequent season.

Bonus Review: Fear the Walking Dead

Yeah, I watched this one, too. The Walking Dead is a show I could generally take or leave. I enjoy it when I watch it and the good points outweigh the bad ones (unlike the above). This sequel series however...not so much. It fails at literally everything the primary show succeeds at.

It is so, so boring. Like, ridiculously so. Six episodes in and I was still waiting for something to happen, and when it finally did, I found it underwhelming to say the least. I didn’t care about any of the characters except for Daniel, the Latino barber who was trying to keep his wife and daughter safe. They really should have made them the focus of the show. It might have been watchable.

The Downfall of Society

Remember when I said I post rants sometimes? This is going to be one of those times.

The most amusing part of this situation is that whenever I read the letters to the editor in the local paper and see that my former English teacher sent something in, I know it’s going to be good. First she was complaining about the fact that schools were dropping cursive from their curriculums and all her former students who were writers (a-hem) used cursive all the time and couldn’t believe it wasn’t going to be taught. Okay, I’d like to know where she’s getting this knowledge from because all the people I know who had her for English couldn’t stand her and maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t imagine her former students call her on a regular basis just to inform her how much they’re using cursive. I’ve also gone into detail about how much I can’t stand cursive and personally am glad it’s being dropped because it was invented when people used quills and ink and wanted words as connected as possible to prevent blotting.

In her latest printed spiel, my old teacher was complaining about (of course) television, and how mean it is these days, full of violence and sex. Now, one of my many many many many many many pet peeves is that I can’t stand it when people complain about how the lamentable state of television, music, video games or whatever is bringing the downfall of society. No wonder everyone in the world is…I don’t know, dying or whatever. They never seem to say what the direct consequences are, just that they’re bad. And we need to go back to a time when it wasn’t bad, i.e. the nineteen fifties.

The easy argument to make is that back during that time period, fathers encouraged their daughters not to become engineers but wives to engineers, people of color could only be stereotypes, and women could only do shopping and laundry and it was okay to threaten them if they spoke out of turn. So why would anyone want to go back there? But, like I said, that’s the easy argument. Why not have the same “victimless” humor and be violence free without all the blatant bigotry?

First of all, humor is designed to make us laugh at things that make us uncomfortable or gross us out. Fart jokes are easy because the typical reaction for a person is to laugh at them. Does this make them good? Personally, I don’t like them, but it doesn’t mean that they or other gross out humor isn’t funny. And as for the so-called mean jokes, yes, I think there are some shows out there that are just plain offensive, laughing at certain people instead of with them, and unfortunately, the at shows seem a lot more popular than the with ones. But that’s no different than it was sixty years ago when I Love Lucy was the most popular show on television. Seriously, the only difference between then in now is targets.

Now for the violence, of course, that’s desensitizing everyone and making them kill each other. You know what, one time, I saw this movie that was just horribly violent. It had rape and mutilation and torture murder-murder-murder. It starred Anthony Hopkins. It was called Titus. You know, that movie based on a play by some guy named William Shakespeare. Who lived five hundred years ago. If you’d like to go back a thousand more years, there’s also The Iliad, which was assigned reading when I was a high school freshman. Tons of fighting , sex, and blood there, although at the age I read it I couldn’t even go to an R rated movie without an adult present.

People have found sex and gore entertaining for as long as there have been people. Despite all the threats that television and video games have desensitized us, I really don’t think it’s doing anything that plays and poems and probably drawings on frigging cave walls hadn’t done to our ancestors.

If you don’t like blood or sex or people being jerks, don’t watch it. But don’t blame it for corrupting the world.

PS. It’s hilarious to think what probably happened when people first started drawing in caves. “Damn wall paintings. Ruining family time for hunting mammoths. It’ll be the downfall of society, mark my words!”

Question and Answer Period

Last week when I did a post on believability, Dianne and then Roland mentioned LOST, my third favorite show of all time, and since once I get started thinking about LOST I can’t stop, I decided to do a post on that shows favorite viewer hook: questions.

LOST was a show of mysteries and unlike procedural and crime dramas, it didn’t have them all answered by the end of the episode—or the end of the series. This frustrated a lot of people, not me, because I’m weird like that, but a lot of people felt cheated or just dissatisfied.

That’s the problem of having a series where the driving force is the what ifs, the whys, the hows. People tune in because they get hooked on wanting to know the answers. But answering the questions gives them limits. People might say it’s an ass pull or worse, the dreaded Deus ex Machina. And you can’t go back without inducing a retcon, and come on. That’s even lazier than a Deus ex Machina. So answering means everyone is stuck with what’s given, but never knowing, whew. No worries there. Hence, creators of massive mystery shows will probably avoid answering anything, at least until the clamor gets loud enough, and then you get stuck with something like Twin Peaks.

This doesn’t mean you should avoid questions in your own works, my writerly friends. But I’d make sure the answers make sense, not just to you but to the reader. Otherwise, you’re stuck with an evil smoke monster that can turn into dead people.

The Good, The Bad, And The Nonsensical

I was browsing around the blogosphere (holy crap, Word says blogosphere is a word) when I saw someone talking about the implausibility of something. It probably had to do with The Walking Dead. I mean, it usually does. Anyway, it got me thinking: how much must belief be suspended before something becomes unlikeable?

Obviously the threshold is different for different people, and sometimes one part of a movie/book/show can be enjoyed while the other isn’t, which is the only reasonable explanation for how the above mentioned The Walking Dead still exists. For example, sometimes in that show you see cool, gory zombies. But then the characters start talking and I get all screamy at the television.

It also depends on how well done something is. For example, I went to see the latest Die Hard movie (don’t ask me the title, I don’t remember) and as breathtaking as the twenty-minute car chase was, I regret the money spent on that turd bomb. Nothing that happened made sense. [WARNING: Spoilers ahoy. But only if you actually are worried about the plot of that Die Hard movie and really. Really. Are you? Didn’t think so] First of all, if you’re trying to break someone out of prison it might seem like a good idea to get arrested yourself by murdering someone, but, hello? You freaking murdered someone. It’s the kind of thing that causes a butt load of bad feelings between countries with already strained relations. So it’s kind of a stupid idea. There’s no way they’d let a CIA operative get a free pass for that. And the saddest part? That’s only one example of why that movie is a betrayal to American storytelling.

But while Die Hard 5 had nothing to redeem its leaps of common sense, several movies with equally unlikely situations are still good. The Hunger Games had a few iffy spots, but I still liked it—although there are plenty of people who didn’t. Again, The Walking Dead is another good example of something I can’t discern the appeal that gives it such a powerful following.

So there are good things, there are bad things, and there are things that some people like and some people hate. Ever been to Rotten Tomatoes? It’s basically that, but you can see how other people voted. They really need one of those for books.

Recipes

It’s May, which means the networks are finishing up their seasons with needlessly dramatic finales, canceling shows that don’t deserve it, renewing shows that reallydon’t deserve it, and announcing next fall’s lineups, which happen to be carbon copies of shows from other networks that got renewed for another season.

It’s all made me think about how easy it is to create a network show. They follow very specific formulas (yes, I’m using formulas instead of formulae…deal with it).

Family Sit-Com

1 Happily Married Couple. He will be fat. She will be thin and way more attractive than him. Husband will also most likely get involved with crazy schemes wife has to put up with.

1 Friend Couple. May or may not be married, may or may not be happy together. Will spend most of the time going along with crazy schemes because they never have anything going on in their own lives.

1-3 precocious children. Must be combination of sickeningly cute and strangely knowledgeable about pop-culture references for television shows/movies viewers will be familiar with but no child should be watching.

Office Sit-Com

1 Male Lead. Relatable office drone, twenty five to forty, who says what every viewer wishes they had at work. Will have crush on Female Lead but will always be interrupted if he tries to ask her out.

1 Female Lead. Will be attractive, in her late twenties, and clearly out of Male Lead’s league, but interested in him anyway.

1 Crazy Boss. Will do things that would get any real person sued or perhaps arrested.

1 Ensemble Dark Horse. In an ensemble cast, will be the most popular. Will leave after 1-3 seasons for movie career.

1 Creepy Guy. Will bother Male Lead, try to screw up his chances with Female Lead and get him in trouble with Crazy Boss. Displays behavior that one usually sees with stalkers.

Procedural

1 Male Lead. Must be handsome, strong, and righteous, but willing to break the rules when it’s really important/sticking it to The Man. The last is especially necessary because most of the viewers are baby boomers who will be looking for a “rebel” to identify with.

1 Female Lead. Must be attractive and no older than forty (much older and no one’s going to want to see the cleavage she’s sporting through her professionally inappropriate low-cut tops). Being blond is not a must, but if not there must be another blond woman in the cast.

1 Black Man. Will in all likelihood be the male lead’s best friend. Will be the tough guy of the group, but have some sort of heart-wrenching backstory (poverty, abuse, etc.).

1 Old Guy. Will be the supervisor of the leads, and if anyone on the main cast is married (or divorced with kids), it’s him.

1-4 Quirky Side Characters. They’ll end up being liked better than the main cast and added to the opening credits after one to three seasons. 

Nerds

I’m a nerd. Most of my friends, past and present, are nerds (or geeks, or whatever you want to call them). So I feel I’m at least somewhat versed in what makes up a nerd, and I’d like to make a few points based on what I often see nerds portrayed as in television, a few books, and, well, every form of media ever.

1. Not all nerds are unpopular.

Maybe it was just my high school, but several of the nerds I knew were fairly popular. They had a lot of friends, were well liked by even those outside their circles, and weren’t picked last for sports teams during gym class (that was always the freshmen). And things are a lot different as an adult, but the rule still applies. A nerd probably isn’t locked in his parents’ basement playing video games. He’s probably at work like anyone else.

2. In general, nerds are not socially inept.

Over the years, I’ve known several people who were socially awkward (myself included). Not all were nerds. In fact, most weren’t. The people I know who like comics, video games, and anime among other things aren’t the type to show up to a black-tie event wearing jeans and sneakers. It just means they like “nerdy” things.

3. Just because someone is ridiculously smart, doesn’t mean they’re a stereotypical nerd.

The valedictorian for my high school class was super smart, like straight A’s since middle school, perfect attendance, and tons of extra credit assignments. She was also a huge athlete and one of the most popular girls in school. She was one of those people who does everything and does it well, and no one held it against her because she was a really nice person. The next highest GPA belonged to a girl who was the same, minus being a big athlete, and plus being a hardcore party girl. These days, it’s pretty much the same. The smart look like everyone else. Where’s that in your TV nerds?

4. Most nerds don’t dress wacky.

Seriously, what is up with this trend? The women always have flamboyant hair and three-inch nails while the men are always wearing nerd glasses and miss-tucked shirts. I have never in my life met someone who dresses like that, not in high school and not now. Most of the nerds I know dress exactly like everyone else. Not that there aren’t people who dress to get attention. It’s just…that isn’t the calling sign of the nerd.

5. Not all nerds are bullied. Not all those bullied are nerds.

On TV and usually in books, high school nerds seem to be bullied all the time. But in my experience, not so much. The bullied were shy, awkward and bad socially, but not nerds in the traditional sense. Not that nerds weren’t made fun of for their tastes sometimes. However, that isn’t unique to nerds. Anyone who liked something that could potentially be made fun of was most definitely made fun of. It’s called High School.

Random Thoughts

---One week and one day until my birthday. Wheeeeee!
---Anyone want to guest post? I’d really appreciate it.
---So. People who watched the Olympics on NBC. You’re kind of getting my point about why they suck, right?

---If a tree falls in a forest, does it make any sound? Yes. Yes it does. My high school physics teacher explained how it works.

---I have to say, 50 Shades of Grey did something I never thought possible: it made me hate TWILIGHT less. So, kudos for that.

---Sometimes, when I hear/read an amusing quote, I write it down on whatever Word document I happened to have open (because there’s always one). It makes for some interesting reading if I haven’t opened one in a while. The one heading this page? “And YES, I understand that of all the things in the world to get worked up about, maybe poverty and climate change are above one soul-crushing shopping experience downtown. But man! The Mall!” Courtesy of Dinosaur Comics.

---Random Note: I don’t think I’ll ever get the proper spelling of courtesy down in my head. It’s like a mental block.

---The third Hunger Games book is going to be split into two movies because money-money-money!

---I guess they need the extra cash for Philip Seymour Hoffman's salary.

---A cat is mayor of a town in Alaska. I had a cat who would have made a good mayor. Too bad he had a heart condition. He was tough. Never backed down. He would have finally cleaned up this upper middle class hellhole.

---Attention people running for election: stop calling me. Seriously, I will not vote for you out of spite. I’ve done it before. Do not f’ing test me on that.

---No matter how much sunblock I put on, I always get burned if I stay outside for too long. Ninety percent of my physical traits are from the French Canadian side of the family, but my skin is very much Irish.

---You know how the SciFi channel changed its name to SyFy to put itself out to a non-hardcore sci-fi audience? Yeah, the History Channel really needs to do that. Their current name just isn’t accurate anymore. I’m not begrudging them that. I’m just saying when you have shows about aliens and lobster fishermen, you’re not exactly in the history business anymore.

---Maybe the Hystori Channel would work.

---Hm. I complain about television a lot.

---At the store, I noticed they have medium eggs, large eggs, and jumbo eggs. They can’t just call them small, medium, and large? I feel like I’m in an episode of Seinfeld or something.

---“Oology” is the shortest ology. It’s the study of eggs. Maybe an oologist can tell us why there are no “small” chicken eggs.

Random Thoughts

---Ah, May. The month where I can’t use “may” in a sentence without Word trying to autocorrect it to the date.

---It also does this other times when I’m trying to write “novel” and “decent”. There are other words besides months!

---Sesquipedalian means given to the overuse of long words. Such as sesquipedalian.

---Why are all the shows I like canceled but frigging Law & Order: SVU is returned for a fourteenth season? How bad has that show gotten? Original CSI is more entertaining. And realistic.

---Seriously. NBC should change their slogan to “Where originality goes to die. And is then investigated by Ice-T.”

---They attached a laser beam to a shark’s head! That’s it, animal uprising, world over, everyone go home because you can’t stay here.

---There’s actually a thread on Reddit that says “What Secret Could Ruin Your Life if It Came Out?” All I could think was…I don’t have a secret like that. Just the regular, OMG-I-embarrassed-myself-again kind.

---A twenty-three year old was locked up in a cell for four days with no food and water because the police forgot to release him. He’s now suing the DEA for twenty million and while I’m usually not a fan of lawsuits, yeah, I think it’s justified.

---Man, I had a great random thought to go here but somewhere between hitting enter and the three dashes I use to start these, I forgot what it was.

---I’m sorry, but I have to say it: Johnny Depp and Tim Burton have got to stop making movies together.

---“Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan” is a book by Morgan Robertson about a luxury liner called Titan that sunk after hitting an iceberg four hundred miles off the coast of Newfoundland. It had three thousand on board, too few lifeboats and was eight hundred feet long. Sound like a novelization of the Titanic? Well, this book was written in 1898.

---You know how some other languages have a casual you and a formal you? So does English. The casual is you and the formal is thou.

---Is the best way to demolish a house by driving a tank through it? Possibly, possibly not. But it is definitely the most awesome way.

---Octopus arms can react and process information on their own. Even after being detached from the main body of the octopus. Have fun swimming!

Random Thoughts: The Return

Yes, it’s this time again. You know, the time when I run out of ideas and it’s not a theme day so I have to reach into my post vault and bring out…I don’t know, whatever I can find.

---I had that dream again last night.

---No, not really. I was watching Childrens Hospital as I wrote this and that’s one of the one-liners thrown out by the guy hospital loudspeaker, “Sal Viscuso.” He’s voiced by Michael Cera.

---That’s supposed to be a reference to M*A*S*H, who I think had the same name for their announcer. I don’t really know because I’ve never seen that show. It was off the air before I was born.

---The murder rate in Norway is less than one murder per year. Do they just decide, “eh, it’s too cold out to carry out my murderous rage”?

---Keep in mind, this is also the birth place of death metal. I kind of wonder if these things are linked.

---Don’t ask, don’t tell was finally repealed. And it’s about damn time, too. I think detractors against the repeal used the same arguments as they did to keep out women (too “distracting”). Honestly, if you’re that worried about your fellow soldier checking out your ass in the middle of combat, you’re probably not a very focused soldier to begin with.

---There are people complaining the repeal is part of a larger gay agenda. And they’re right; it’s a larger gay agenda towards equal rights. Crazy to think these people want to be treated like people. 

---At the time of the tone, it will be half past infinity. 

---More snow. Damn it. I bet there’s going to be another spike in births in September, too.

---There was once a joke on Family Guy about “the fat kid from Stand By Me” (aka Jerry O’Connell) marrying Rebecca Romijn. What they neglect to mention is how handsome he grew up to be. Seriously, I saw him on an old episode of Without A Trace and almost choked.

---I’ve probably said this before, but it’s worth repeating: anyone who suggests you watch The Human Centipede is a bad, evil person. Run from them now.

---John Steinbeck is said to have based the Hamilton family of his EAST OF EDEN on his mother's family. A small boy named John Steinbeck is even a minor character in the novel.

---Nine out of ten times, Futurama takes the time to be accurate with its science. That’s higher than shows that claim to be fact based.

---Despite claims to the contrary, a couple, each with blue eyes, can have a child with brown eyes. My nephew is actually proof of this since he has brown eyes, his father has blue and his mother, green.

---BEEEEEEEEP.

Shows

Contest participants should be happy to note that I have not won anything today. But I did get the Batman graphic novel from Chazz and it was great. Well written, good art--what I love about comics. And there are so many incarnations of Batman out there, it can be hard to find one that really feels like Batman.

When I was young, I used to watch Batman: The Animated Series and I always loved the serious nature of the stories. It was a show that didn't talk down to its young viewers. Now, most six year olds watch bland, inoffensive shows on Nick and Disney. I watched a few myself (Power Rangers being the biggest) but my favorites were shows where people were hurt, where the good guy wasn't always good and the bad guy wasn't always bad, and sometimes the jokes were off color. Those are the shows I still watch, even if they're on at four a.m. and I have to tape them. Power Rangers? I could care less. It was fun at the time but did not age well. The fact that I ever enjoyed it is a source of shame when I think of the stupid stories, bad acting, and plots that were basically morality lessons.

And when did this rant on children's shows start? Whatever. So, what are your favorites? What TV shows will you never forget?

Cookies! And also Television.

I won cookies! This is the best thing ever. I've said this a dozen times already, but Karen Jones Gowen rocks. Anyway, for a post, I think I'll show you what I think will happen to Sunday night television in ten years. Why? Because since this is the second contest I've won, I'm going out to buy lottery tickets. Enjoy!


Click to embiggen