No, this is not the post about the first originator of the links we still keep getting to this blog by people who think this gentleman did an “excellent summary” of Toni’s post, or that what she’s calling for is a return to the “golden age.” (They do know she’s ten years or more younger than I and even I came of “age” in SF READING during the seventies, right? And that her tastes in reading reflect it? And are frankly way more girly than mine? No, of course they don’t. They never even thought about the rules for internet war. They’re just trying to sit at the cool kids’ table. ) — I’m giving the originator of the attack no links, but if you want to get a good idea of the problem, with extensive, not taken out of context quotes, my friend Rick Boatright wrote about it. (And he has links to the original.)
Those links do worry me because well, I think I did find the problem with science fiction fandom and frankly with literary fandom and maybe even society in general. Either most people have the reading comprehension of stale cheese, in which case we’re in trouble, or — and this is more likely — most people are strangely interested in having a great leader and once they find him, no matter how malicious, willfully destructive or self-aggrandizing through fake controversy he is, they’re going to do this:
But enough about politics. Let’s talk about something completely different.
About a month ago, one of you — he can denounce himself, if he wishes — thought I was too stressed and therefore needed something to make me laugh. He started pming me with stuff about The Disaster Artist, by Greg Sestero.
The disaster artist is a book about the making of The Room. Note that the Hun in question never doubted I had watched what has been called “The Citizen Kane of bad movies.” Sometimes I love how my fans peg me. You know I don’t watch much TV and I watch maybe two movies a year, but The Room? Yeah, I definitely have watched that.
It was, like almost everything, the boys’ fault. Summer before last, they found it, dragged me to the sofa to watch it, hunted down the Mathematician from his lair, took his lap top away, escorted him to the sofa, and made us have a “family evening”… with The Room. Yes, that’s how twisted the boys are.
They in turn had found it via The Nostalgia Critic’s Review of the Room and if you have twenty minutes to kill today, you definitely should watch it. I warn you it’s incredibly cheesy, though not as cheesy as The Room.
The movie is the 2000s answer to Rocky Horror. It is shown all across the land at midnight, and fans act out choreographed scenes.
If you don’t have twenty minutes, this is enough to give you an impression of the room and Tommy Wiseau its writer/star/producer/etc.
Tommy Wiseau is the guy with long hair. The other guy in the scene is Greg Sestero who wrote — well, at least the first draft — The Disaster Artist.
The book chronicles their acquaintance and it’s funny and lsad and strange and … Everything, all the time. It also chronicles, of course, the making of the Room, just like it says on the label.
Tommy Wiseau, btw, says he agrees with about half the book — but not which half. I find that fascinating, because on one hand it makes you wonder whether he agrees with the parts of how he completely botched the writing/directing/etc, or what parts exactly he agrees with.
For me the book is somewhat bitter sweet, because, yes, even though Tommy Wiseau is someone who makes the Oddest of Odds seem like a perfectly normal, average person on the street with no distinguishing characteristics, I found myself feeling a certain kinship with him.
What I mean is, as an immigrant, I could see myself particularly at first. My misunderstandings were never so completely odd as thinking you have to buy all the equipment to make a movie because otherwise your production is “Mickey Mouse” and my adaptation to America is better, at least to the point I don’t cause traffic jams wherever I go, but then I took the golden road, and didn’t come from France as stowage or something.
Tommy Wiseau who is at the center of Disaster Artist and the man responsible (in all senses) for The Room is an immigrant from an unspecified Eastern country. He talks of seeing movies, of dreaming of being in them. On the way there things got… complicated. His history is somewhat dark, but some of the parts of it that Sestero doubted the most, such as Tommy’s treatment as an illegal immigrant in France seem absolutely plausible to me. They are exactly like the stories I heard from Portuguese who were illegal immigrants in France.
Sestero also — being a product of upper class USA,natch — seems to think Tommy’s deep and apparently authentic love of the US funny or at least cute. I saw nothing funny about it. Those of us who come from elsewhere know how good we have it here.
Take Tommy’s story — barefoot boy from somewhere behind the curtain, first immigrated to France, then to the US. There are disturbing hints of abuse of the worst kind in his past, and it is quite likely he got a little scrambled along the way. He first made his living selling little mechanical birds on the street. Busboy in a restaurant was a step up from that. (One of the things never explained is how he made a fortune. Also whether or not he’s a vampire. Don’t laugh. If you read the book, you’d debate it, like my family did around the dinner table.)
But his dream was to come to America and make and star in movies. And he did. And he’s even famous, and has a fandom of his own.
Yes, his fandom comes from how WEIRD and unintentionally funny his movie was. But it’s still fandom, and he’ll be remembered in the history of film.
Yes, it took crazed persistence and desire on his part, and work and suffering more than any of us would ever invest in something (and maybe he only did because he’s a little crazy.) But Tommy Wiseau did make it in America, as he knew he could make it in America.
Let all the people who lament how the American Dream is dead take a powder. Their American Dream might be dead — but did they have half the HUNGER that propelled Tommy Wiseau?
Tommy Wiseau is living proof that whatever your American dream, no matter how far fetched, if you’re willing to go all out for it, you will catch it, or a version of it.
And that, my friends, brought tears through the laughter, while reading The Disaster Artist.
According To Hoyt 
I did naaaht PM her. I did NAAAHT. Oh, hai Sarah!
Yes, it was me. I denounce myself.:-D
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Good boy!
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Commenting to follow.
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Reading about Wiseau’s alleged history, I thought that some of it must be true, but I couldn’t tell what. I can’t entirely blame Sestero for being skeptical: Wiseau is very unreliable. For those who don’t know: he claims to have been 30 when he made The Room. Take a look at a few clips from the movie. Does he look like a man who just left his 20s behind?
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I very much doubt he was that you. He now says he was 35 and that’s barely possible. A hard life ages you faster.
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And *something* definately happened to him. He looks like he went through hell at some point in his life.
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I read Toni’s original post when it was over here, but didn’t catch that it was a guest post, and assumed you wrote it.
I read some author-friends’ blogs denouncing an evil Baen post based on the Cranky Best-Selling Author Guy’s’s post… and it never even OCCURRED to me that then article they were discussing was the one that I’d read. Especially since the original post didn’t even strike me as controversial or divisive…..
BUT this is part of the reason that I stopped reading the Cranky Bestseller Author Guy’s blog. I found it via Instapundit, originally enjoyed it and then it seemed to slip into constantly saying or implying that people like me had no right to exist, were beyond the pale, were completely disgusting…. and so, I stopped reading it. I think, if CBAG actually met me in person, he’d probably say, “Oh, I didn’t mean YOU, I met those other disgusting evil people over there!” I’m not sure if this is because he’s a coward, or because he actually believes his imagination (Like Anne of Green Gables and the haunted wood…)
But, as it is, I just avoid him now, and other people like him. I know my friends who piled on work for big publishers and have a living to make. However, watching how their interactions with the world have changed since they became “authors” as opposed to just “writers,” I’ve decided that I don’t have the desire or temperament to be an author.
(I’m sort of the opposite of the people who dream of being famous authors but don’t want to write anything. I love writing, but the whole dealing with the rest of the world thing? No way.)
Anyway… the post you linked to made me realize the two articles (The one CBAG freaked out over, and the perfectly nice one I assumed you’d written) were one…. and now I’m more certain than other that most authors have gone off the deep end, and that the small group of writers who are willing to at the very least take a live-and-let-live attitude towards people like me probably DO need their own bubble, since the tastemakers in our society have decided that just ignoring the mes of the world and writing good stories without feeling the need to turn them into government-approved attack ads, is NOT HOW WRITERS SHOULD WORK,
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Judging by some of the painful idiocy I’ve found on Twitter, most of the people denouncing Toni’s post only read Scalzi’s blog and never bothered to read what she actually wrote. And I have the feeling this could be applied to numerous other pseudocontroversies which have been wracking fandom lately.
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Deirdre — try indie. People will read your stories, you might even make a living AND you can flip the bird to the establishment. I know indies making better money than I by an order of magnitude.
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I probably should, once my current copywriting gig wraps up. For now, my fiction doesn’t HAVE to make money, because there are people who will pay me to write about math and science! :)
(I *am* grateful to CBAG for this– he suggested that aspiring novelists spend a few years as copywriters… so I started trying to get gigs, and discovered that writing for clients ranges from bearable to downright fun (my current gig) and pays well.)
But between you and KKR, I’ve pretty much decided that indie is the only route that makes sense these days, especially given the odd roll that agents play. OTOH, if you don’t have a platform/fanbase to begin with, I’m not sure how you make money at it…so it would have to be hobby publishing. (We can live under my husband’s librarian salary, but it’s nice to have money to spend on books and activities for the kids and whatnot…)
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No, no. Platform, etc is needed for traditional, because of the books-are-produce thing.
Indie, they discover you. It might take a while, but given a little push — like here — you can eventually make a living.
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Glen does book promos on Instapundit, too.
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Sorry – just woke from the obligatory Sunday post prandial repose. I meant “Glenn” Reynolds.
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Of course. There might be other Glenns, but this one is ours. ;)
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The Blogfather or as he is more commonly known: Instapundit.
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Platform?
You write it and put it up, then send the nice clam here the link, and people who like it tell other people.
Same way folks whose books didn’t get advertisement get a fanbase. :D
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I don’t think I’m up to ‘let the clam promote’ worthiness yet. Basically, I’m still into ‘has potential’ to ‘that was kind of fun’ range. So I need to work harder before I feel secure enough to post links here! Some day, I really want to make it to ‘dang, I wish *I* wrote that.’ But I’m definitely not there yet.
The plan is, once we finish paying off the ‘had to bring money to the table to sell the house” and “unexpected car accident” and “babies come with hospital bills” stuff, I can set some of my earnings aside to pay for editors and covers in the future. So…. in a decade or so, maybe I’ll be ready for the clam! :) In the meantime, I’m really thankful for the whole copywriting thing, since you can earn a good wage without ever getting dressed, leaving the house, or having to have an in-person conversation!
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To steal our hostess’ line, KEEP WRITING anyways!
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Yeah. We’re in the “eery dime we have goes to fix up/improve the house so we can stage and sell” right now.
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And then you have the helpful folk who tell you “You should have done this earlier, so you could enjoy it!” But… earlier, you needed the money for medical emergencies and shin guards and field trips and birthday gifts, and the kids would have wrecked the improvements anyway!
Maybe someone should set up a barter-zone for creative professionals who don’t have money but have skills. With a virtual currency or something. I mean, surely there are artists out there who need things written occasionally… and editors who need art, etc…etc…
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I admire you for learning to do it all yourself, but it seems inefficient to have everyone learn to do everything…..
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You mean the art or the writing, or home improvement?
Home improvement I had a leg up — one grandfather was a carpenter and the other in monument restoration, carpentry. I grew up following them around and listening to them and their friends. Some things I can’t do — brick laying — but I’ve seen it done, and could back engineer it.
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I meant the cover art– I’ve been following your adventures with that. :) Though…. trading writing for home improvement… I might be able to do that! Except that the really good plumbers/carpenters/etc. around here don’t WANT websites and blogs, because they already have too much work….
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I’d rather have someone do the art, but everytime I tried it’s been a disaster of some from.
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For our next house, we’re hoping to get a fixer upper and make it the way we wanted it. We actually did that with the last house, but this one we bought “ready.” BAD idea. the money it’s cost us to correct “plain wrong” things….
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Money always works better than barter.
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“Permissum peloris proveho.” Another good proverb for the Huns.
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translate please
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Is it “do the pelvic thrusts”?
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“Do the Timewarp” ?
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What, again??! ;-)
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Not all of us are old enough to speak languages dead for a millennia.
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It’s the best Latin translation I can dredge up for “let the clam promote.”
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As far as worthiness, dear lady, we’re a shameless bunch of mercenaries hereabouts. If you think someone might give you money for your work (which, for goodness sake, people already do), then it’s worthy to be included here. Just shoot me an email with the link to Amazon and you’re off and running. Though, if you’re writing thinly-veiled Doctor Who/dinosaur/Babylon 5 mashup erotic slashfic, a suitable content warning would be appreciated…
Secondly [shameless_plug] I am a not-too-shabby and highly affordable editor, when the time comes. I’ve also been known on occasion (such as when I’m feeling strangely generous or desperate for work) to discount my rates for Hoyt’s Huns. We might even be able to negotiate some kind of barter. [/shameless_plug]
Last, I have a few questions for you on your professional side. Could you ping me via email? I’d like to pick your brain in a more appropriate channel.
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I emailed you at the ‘editor’ link off your site.
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You can get started and have money coming in when the gig wraps up.
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and now I’m more certain than other that most authors have gone off the deep end
I think it’s less a matter of being a author, and more a matter of a broken feed-back loop.
Without desiring to go into politics, I can remember several bloggers I use to really like who went nuts, uniformly going from right-of-center to flaming moonbat or at least doing a good impression of it in the comments. I’ve stopped reading a couple of folks when they start in that direction, too. (Ironically, two are religious bloggers, not political ones.)
All I can figure is that it’s some kind of a reaction to people attacking you over and over from one way, and they keep doing it if you resist them, while the other side is… polite. If they disagree, they’ll give minor resistance, be attacked by the same crazies attacking you, and if it’s nasty enough they’ll leave.
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The final straw that convinced me that the blog that shall not be named went over the edge into “Here there be dragons” was when he got rid of the wonderful Cox & Forkum header art they’d done for him.
(God I miss those guys. You know, if you look really closely at a few of their cartoons, there’s a little “Mauser” embedded in ’em.)
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I realize it’s the blog that must not be named, but since it’s not named I don’t know what blog it is — so, maybe a hint? Because the unnamed blog keeps coming up…
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Google, without quotes “poor old Charlie lost his mind in the blog wars.” The article you get will clue you in.
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Initials CLJ?
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JS?
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For the other blogger, the one in our field, yes.
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Thank you. Now I’ve confirmed who is who.
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of the blogger? Yeah.
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I wanted to make I knew who you were talking about.
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Gotcha. Many thanks.
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It’s a blog by a bestselling SciFi author who pals around with a former Star Trek TNG cast member and who used to get lots of Insty-love back in the day, which is how a lot of libertarian leaning fans discovered him in the first place.
Sometime during Obama’s first term, it turned into ‘if you disagree with me you’re evil and should be dead.’ I sometimes wonder if it was always a false flag operation, seeing as how the guy grew up in CA. But he went to undergrad at the same place I did, so I assume that at some point he could tolerate opposing views w/o spazzing.
Anyway, if you name it, his rabid fans will come. Apparently they have a google alert set up so they can descend upon whoever disagrees. I thought about cleverly hiding the blog’s title in this comment, but I don’t want to expose the hostess to their trollery….
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That’s the OTHER blog that must not be named.
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THAT one I can parse from the descrip. No further info needed, rabid trolls unnecessary
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“Sometime during Obama’s first term, it turned into ‘if you disagree with me you’re evil and should be dead.’ I sometimes wonder if it was always a false flag operation, seeing as how the guy grew up in CA. ……
Anyway, if you name it, his rabid fans will come. Apparently they have a google alert set up so they can descend upon whoever disagrees. I thought about cleverly hiding the blog’s title in this comment, but I don’t want to expose the hostess to their trollery….”
Interesting that this applies to both blogs and both guys. The other — a political blog that became very famous in 2004 — has had me wondering if it was a false flag all along as well, because in 2008 he was one of the ones serving as judasgoat. Maybe it was a long game, all along.
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Oh! The other blog that’s not to be named./…Wow! It still exists? It dropped out of the conversation so completely that I assumed it was totally gone and dead!
I sometimes wonder if bloggers are like the emperors in the Never-Ending Story (the book, not the movie)– where every time they create something, they get a little closer to crazy until, one day…. because so many blogs start out sane and interesting and fun, and then get pulled into the maelstrom of cranky and crazy….
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Er… I hope not? And I started out cranky, so there’s that.
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That one I’m in the dark about.
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ahahahaha, and I think I know EXACTLY which ones you mean. ;-) (well 1 of them, still working out the 2nd, unless they’re a part of the same, overall site)
You’re totes on about the broken-feedback loop thing. Though you can drive yourself nuts trying to test and see whether you’re suffering from one yet… lol
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See, one of the advantages of being a writer, is that I STARTED OUT nuts.
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Hey! I resemble that remark! XD
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They’re now on the same site, although I believe the second one hasn’t gone as far… most likely, anyways. And yes, we’re going to be obscure like that for dang good reason!
My husband says that 90% of the grief I give myself is that kind of “test to see if it applies to you” thing about anything somebody else does that annoys me!
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Foxfier, in another life we must have been siblings. XD
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Likewise. When I first ran into CBAG I rather liked him. I bought a couple of his books and I still liked him, even if the books weren’t quite as good as I had hoped.
And then, gradually, especially when he started to venture more into politics etc I realized that several of the groups I agree with are among the groups he loves to make fun of. And write about in ways which seemed often quite misleading.
Okay, if I’m not welcome I’m not going to stay. I may not be an American style conservative, and I’m several things the left leaning usually seem to think should make a me a natural enemy of the American conservatives (neopagan, for one), but if you discount some of the extreme cases I have found I like them more than I like the American liberals (or European lefties…) as a whole. As to what I have in common with these groups… er, I have enough not in common with both sides that I can get yelled at by both, but least the ones on the conservative side tend to be somewhat more polite. And perhaps also somewhat more likely to actually try to discuss things. :)
(I’m probably closest to what you seem to call small l libertarians, although not quite that either)
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Being a neopagan conservative or a neopagan libertarian used to be a really big thing. I’m not sure it’s ever stopped being a thing, either. I think there’s always a good pagan turnout at the March for Life, for example, and very welcome they are. (And you have to be pretty hardcore to go march in damp, windy DC in January.)
Of course, a fair amount of conservative and libertarian neopagans have become conservative and libertarian Christians or Jews, later on.
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My values are mostly Christian. But there are some things I believe which do not fit. Like reincarnation (in some form, but most likely not from man to animal). I don’t have any well argued basis for that, but it’s still something I believe, and have believed most of my life, and beliefs are something you can’t just drop. So I believe in things which do not fit the doctrines of this established religion and because of that I don’t think I can call myself a Christian, not if I want to be honest. But I’m not that far off, either.
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I’ve met what should be a surprising number of Christians of various stripes who believe in Reincarnation. With them, it’s almost always into another human, though.
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Yes, but since it’s not officially part of the doctrine, and with me not the only deviation from that doctrine, well, as said I don’t think it would be honest if I claimed to be a Christian.
Have to admit I can feel somewhat cross with the pagan communities sometimes. :) There are levelheaded ones, but the most vocal part consists mostly of somewhat, er, well, think what the public image usually tends to be like. :D
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And your first paragraph would be one of the reasons I’m officially Agnostic.
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My image of pagans tends to be easy hippie chicks camping naked in the woods.
Probably says more about me than pagans, though. Or maybe about the quality of our local pagans.
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Yep, those tend to be the most visible ones. And then there are the others. All kinds of others.
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I suppose one aspect is that the ones who are most noisy about their paganism tend to be the young ones, who aren’t necessarily particularly serious about it but are only going through their ‘rebel’ phase, the real kooks, and the ones who have turned or are maybe hoping to turn it into a career, in which case high visibility can be an asset so some try to get into news at regular intervals (or at least on Halloween) and since some slants work better for getting in the graces of MSM than others they then use those.
Lots of Odds there, too.
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To be fair, there were some Christian groups who have believed in reincarnation, as a sort of Purgatory or as a description of the thousand year reign thing. The problem is that it tends to tie into Gnosticism, Pythagoreanism, or fun with Sadducees, as well as being hard to reconcile with Jesus dying once for all.
However, the traditional beliefs in Adam and Eve ‘s fall affecting all humans, and of the communion of saints living and dead, are way too connecty these days for some people. Whether or not they would suffice for explaining things otherwise attributed to reincarnation, I don’t know.
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That’s because people are inconsistent. Reincarnation is incapable with the resurrection of the body, since it posits a multiplicity of bodies, not one true one.
And the resurrection of the body is so fundamental a doctrine that it gets mentioned in the Apostle’s Creed, which is about as boiled down a summary of Christianity as you can get.
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There are numerous Christian denominations that do not use the Apostle’s Creed, and not just store front evangelicals. The Eastern Orthodox Church, for example, does not use it. They do accept the Nicene Creed, but that just mentions the resurrection of the dead — nothing about the body.
They don’t accept reincarnation per se, but neither do they necessarily believe in One True Mortal Body that will be resurrected.
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Correction: they do apparently accept physical resurrection (and forbid cremation accordingly). However, they don’t accept the Apostle’s Creed.
Me, I can’t figure out why a God that can create a whole Universe from scratch needs a heap of dry bones to work with.
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Perhaps He does, whether He needs to or not, for reasons we can’t suspect because He is a bit smarter than we are.
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The point of respecting the Christian’s dead body is that it has also been touched by becoming part of Christ’s body. Cremation was long forbidden by many Christian groups because of the pagan associations and then because of atheists who got cremated as a political act against bodily resurrection; but nobody ever said that cremated people were barred from the resurrection. Too many burnt martyrs.
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Ah, but burning only reduces the body to ash; it doesn’t annihilate it. I was interpreting “heap of dry bones” figuratively.
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Also, the ‘no reincarnation in Christianity’ thing isn’t just about the resurrection of the body– The resurrected bodies are ‘glorified bodies’ and obviously can’t include every molecule we had during life, right? Because corpses rot.
Rather, it’s because we’re not just souls who happen to be trapped in bodies, as the gnostics believed. We’re body AND soul. The two are inextricably linked and we need both to be fully human and fully ourselves. That’s the whole point of things like sacraments. Why does baptism work? Why does it need to be a PHYSICAL act? Because our bodies MATTER. The Physical World MATTERS. God made us this way ON PURPOSE. And not only that, but he deemed it good.
Reincarnation treats the soul as something that just happens to inhabit bodies. But we’re physical creatures. Body AND soul are important. (Which is why, for instance, things we do with out bodies can affect the state of our souls.)
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And to add a bit to that ‘beliefs are something you can’t just drop’ part: yes, you can if you find some good evidence which contradicts that belief, or go through some sort of epiphany. But when it comes to these matters getting some sort of scientific factual evidence of anything is not likely to happen anywhere in the near future, and so far I have had no personal revelations against anything. :)
And when it comes to reincarnation specifically there actually seems to be some vague evidence for it – some children’s stories have gotten some fact checking (somebody named Ian Stevenson and some others) and some of them seemed to check out, if always very, yes, vaguely, and with all cases you could argue that the people who did the search may have been biased towards finding that evidence. So it’s still a matter of faith. And I can’t help believing since I do believe. But I always believe with the reserve that I’m well aware of the fact that my belief, no matter how strong, is no guarantee that things actually are as I believe.
Oh well. If we have not only survival after death, but also awareness in that state whatever it is otherwise like, maybe I will find out some day.
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It’s a really short hop from a ‘lorax neopagan’ (i.e. “I speak for the trees.. and the squirrels, and the ants, because all life is sacred!”) to a pro-lifer.
Though, to be fair, the most militant pro-choice folk I’ve known are actually into it because they wished that their parents had aborted them. It’s really a suicide-wish transferred to something socially acceptable…..maybe a female version of a school shooting?
See… and this is how I get into trouble! ;)
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Imagine that. ;)
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Actually… I’m not sure that came across with quite as big of a grin as I’ve got.
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I think a transferred suicide-wish explains pro-choice militance more for females than males. Among males who are militantly pro-choice, the motivation usually comes from the fact that abortion makes women more available for their use as sexual objects.
Go around saying that and you can get in real trouble.
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Oh Lord and Lady… the fluff brains of the neopagans are a pain to deal with and the ones embroiled into the pro life/choice are the loudest of them all.
Don’t get any of them started on the whole right to practice self-defense and 2nd Amendment either. That will cause a desire to ice pick your eardrums. (Says the 2nd amendment-practicing neopagan.)
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Yeah… I don’t recall the same pacifist streak among Paleopagans. ;)
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Some neo-pagans deserve to be dropped back in time to Mexico at the height of the Aztec Empire. [Very Very Big Evil Grin]
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Ugh. Wouldn’t wish that on anyone! The Aztecs were really scary and gross!
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*in best soothing, faux-concerned tone* No, no, you just don’t understand. The Aztec religion was misunderstood by the Spanish Imperialist patriarchs who put the worst possible interpretation on the native rituals and cosmology, a trend unfortunately continued by the academic hegemony of Euro-American neo-colonialist archaeologists and anthropologists to this day.
Which theory fails to explain why all the surrounding peoples were so happy to help the Spanish beat the stuffing out of the Aztec empire.
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Yes. I’ve heard JUST this.
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Another amusing liberals have made: Sure the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice, but all their victims were devout believers who willingly went to their doom. Yeah sure. (There are times when I think that that there must be some limit to liberal stupidity and fecklessness, and then I look around and say nahhhh.)
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well, there is considerable evidence that the prisoners had to cooperate to a certain extent — and often so much that drugs could not explain it all. A mystery. But not the simple and easy way
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I find it hard to believe that all that human sacrifice was perpetrated on a joyfully willing population. And note that the Aztecs were so thirsty for murder that they made constant war on their neighbors to get captives for sacrifice. I suspect that their society was held together by terror.
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I wouldn’t wish that *on* the Aztecs. Gross yes, deserving of dealing with neopagan snowflakes?
That’s just cruel.
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The ARGUMENT I had with a friend about how Phoenicians, YES, did sacrifice babies, with her insisting that was Romans (whom she seemed to think were Christians at the time of the punic wars. Never mind) calumny.
They have unearthed sacrifice sites with hundreds of baby skeletons sealed in glass jars that were put through the fire. Those Roman calumnies are STRONG.
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Nono! Haven’t you read the spin? They were all just still born!
Not that the pagan Romans had a great record on infanticide, mind you. They just focused on the deformed and unfit. It took Christianity to start that whole “Least of my brethren” thing…and the “even Samaritans are your neighbor” thing….
I mean, sure, you can point out times that Christians fell short of their standards, but…. they were pretty much the only people who saw “massacring these people who are not us and taking their land’ as a shortcoming as opposed to something to strive for……
It’s like blaming Algebra when you solve 3x+2=5 and get 2/3 =5/3. (Actual error my math students used to make…)
The problem was what the students did, not with the theory of algebra.
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There’s a reason Carthago delenda est.
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Hear hear.
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yep.
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Well, yeah. Because Carthage was Rome’s #1 rival.
And the Fine Young Hannibals pushed a bit too hard.
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“Fine Young Hannibals” ? First of all, I am old enough to get this joke, and second, ** sigh ** Rob Crawford used to be a friend before he wrote it …
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“Fine young Hannibals”? That’s horrible. In the words of John Cleese, you are a very silly man and I’m not going to talk to you anymore…Instead I’m going to steal your joke. :-)
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Don’t get me started on that short-lived (thankfully) TV Series “Roar!” about *Romans* in Ireland and how peaceful & earth-loving the Irish Celtics were. [Frown]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roar_(TV_series)
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See, my kids think the pre-Christian Irish were bloodthirsty pirates who kidnapped and enslaved the people around them.
Actually, my favorite revisionist history is my 1913 Encyclopedia Brittanica, which talks about King Edward Longshanks and his wars with the ‘Papist Scots.’ Because, of course, Edward MUST have been a good Episcopalian, right? ;)
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I remember watching that show for a while. I found it an entertaining bit of fluff… until the stupid episode about a lost Gospel. Funny thing is, I have no problem with the overall conceit. There’s evidence that the current canon is missing both Christian and Jewish texts that were once considered important but are now unknown. And that corrupt priests would try to suppress such a thing? Sure, I can buy it. But then they get the thing, and the end of the episode was someone reading the thing, which was a badly-written load of all-that-matters-is-be-nice-to-people hippie crap. Ugh.
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A good place to start is the texts repressed during the Reformation because Luther couldn’t find a Hebrew copy bopping around Europe. Because clearly, the people to ask about the texts used by Christians in the first century are the folk who DIDN’T convert……
Anyway, I highly recommend the apocrypha. Or, I would, if I could remember what books Protestant bibles are missing. They’re all mixed in in my Bible, so I occasionally have moments like “How can you NOT have read the Book of Judith?? It’s right there!”
Personally, I’ve always loved Tobit and Maccabees….no idea why they got tossed out…
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IIRC, many Jewish scholars see the Book of Tobit as badly flawed in historical terms (ie mixing historical periods) and containing non-Jewish folk magic. Not sure why those Jewish scholars didn’t consider the books of Maccabees non-canonic.
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The Jews ruled out all the books of the Bible for which they did not have Hebrew originals at the time when they got together and ruled them out.
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Carthage and infant sacrifice: I used to hear LOTS of assertions from neo pagans that all those stories of human sacrifice were Christian lies. Haven’t heard that as much lately. …although that may be because I don’t get around so much anymore and know far fewer pagans. Not sure why, but it might have something to do with the pained expression I could not suppress when they would insist on asking my sign and then tell me what kind of person I was. :-)
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Ask why the pagan Romans spread them too. Before there were Christians.
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I watched that clip. Painful. But I can rarely watch camp all the way through. It bugs me too much.
There’s an idea flitting about, revolving around how much many immigrants love this country, about how unaware many Americans are of the nature of their own country, and how blind some travelers are (particularly the Europhiles) to the realities of the countries they visit. But I haven’t quit beat it into submission and gotten a good look.
Maybe later I’ll say something interesting. In the meantime:
Follow comment!
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It’s not camp. It’s just BAD.
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Camp involves irony. Wiseau probably thinks irony has something to do with metals.
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Deliberate camp, yes. Unfortunately there’s a number of movies and such which have achieved camp status by virtue of aiming toward serious film-making and accurately targeting unintentional hilarity.
Kinda like being pedantic about camp… (it’s my brain, what-am-I gonna do about it?)
I thought irony was the status of a well-pressed shirt.
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The Evil Dead!
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Yep. Though I rarely can sit through the whole of (any of ’em) the movie without additional distraction, I’m still a bit of a Bruce Campbell fan.
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Have you seen Jack of all Trades? Um… (goes off to check hulu) … gah, had to check imdb because it looks like it’s gone from hulu… yes, Jack of All Trades…. freaking hysterical.
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I GOTTA get this on DVD.
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Haven’t, no… *furiously scribbling in the margins*
Will look into it, thanks!
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Looks like someone put a bunch of episodes up on You Tube.
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Irony is what irons commit, just as felons commit felonies.
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<nods sagely.
There's a whole lot of irony around this area. No need for iron supplements.
Are ions speech impaired irons? Do they commit iony?
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They’re obviously not common laborers, since they’re clearly not unionized.
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:-D
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You are just encouraging him.
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I do it for you. I know of your love for the games of words…
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They’re from the Deep South.
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Just as willowy is eating hobbits.
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braised?
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baked– less calories *blink
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grilled or better yet sauteed in a lemon butter sauce, garnished with dill.
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I’ve never understood how sticking something together with melted brass is supposed to make it taste better.
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Not much irony at the camp I went to: Mostly canvas tents on wooden platforms. Maybe a few nails here and there, but not many.
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You watched it all, I’m not gonna gainsay…
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Bad enough to be funny, or just bad boring? I have some fondness for bad movies, occasionally they can be entertaining, if one is in the right mood. Or drunk enough (haven’t looked at that clip, right now I’m not in the right mood).
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It’s really really bad. So bad it’s almost a monument to bad.
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Hilariously awful. The book is hilarious (and sometimes creepy). You might want to fast-forward the sex scenes, though. Wiseau gets . . . carried away.
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…..AND – the Mathematician and the PreMed student tried to hook ME into this *BAD* movie!
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But it’s FUN Bad…
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“most people are strangely interested in having a great leader”
Not most, I’d say, but many. Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer is invaluable in understanding the psychology of these people.
“BUT this is part of the reason that I stopped reading the Cranky Bestseller Author Guy’s blog.”
CBAG’s outrage tends to be somewhat…selective. For example, Rupert Murdoch is the Prince of Darkness unless his name happens to appear on a check made out to CBAG.
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I would say that one of the defining differences between Americans and others is what they look for in a leader. Most of the world is looking for someone to tell them where to go. Americans are looking for someone to figure out how to get where we’ve already decided we’re going.
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And Americans also like to tell their would-be leaders where to go.
Hint: “Gimme an H! Gimme an E! Gimme an…”
:P
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What was it Pratchett wrote about a “king-shaped hole”?
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yes, indeed.
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It was very painful to watch so I will take your word on it Sarah– got to the bed scene before quitting. I know– I don’t have a high tolerance for pain anymore.
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Never worked up enough intestinal fortitude for Rocky Horror Picture Show, let alone The Room. I am, however, a proud (?) alumnus of Dark Star and Buckaroo Banzai.
Holy Grail goes without saying.
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Life of Brian (I whistle badly, but sometimes I find myself whistling that closing song)? I remember being quite taken with Buckaroo Banzai too, and quite disappointed there was no sequel, but I was so much younger then that I’m not quite sure if I’d like it as much now.
I recently watched one bad movie from the 80’s I had found very, very funny back then, ‘The Ice Pirates’, and while several scenes were still funny as a whole it didn’t quite live up to my memories. :)
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I remember “Ice Pirates” as a serious thriller/adventure film. Of course, that’s how I remembered “Willow” until I rewatched it last year! Oh, and Goonies. Totally wasn’t a comedy when I was a kid!
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Heh. I watched Goonies with a friend who was ten years younger than I am, and only slightly past the most likely target audience age. I liked it until they found the ship. But that is usually the problem with that types of movies (search for something mysterious, lost city, lost people, lost something), the target, when finally found, rarely manages to live up to the expectations, at least not when we are talking about something which should have more than merely monetary value. At least to my expectations. One of the few times I wasn’t disappointed was with the first Indiana Jones film, the idea of the Ark of the Covenant that movie presented was rather impressive. :)
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Well, to be fair, there are only about 5 minutes of movie left when they find the ship! And they save the neighborhood from the evil real estate developers, which was the whole point!
(It seems like a lot of 80s movies/TV centered on evil real estate developers…. I wonder if my kids will even understand the concept! I mean, now the problem is ‘ghost-towns…’ A real estate developer would be a welcomed savior, not an evil villain!
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Yes, those villains belong to times when economy is booming. So let’s hope they will come back. If we start getting evil real estate developers as the villains again it’s probably time to buy some champagne. :)
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Yep. Actually finding the MacGuffin is often a mistake.
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“You’re all individuals. You have to think for yourself.”
“Yes … we’re … all … individuals …”
“I’m not.”
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Buckaroo Banzai annoyed me beyond belief. No, don’t ask. OF course, I’d just come from Europe, so that might have changed.
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Well, you know, Sarah. No matter where you go … there you are.
——————————————————>
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Carp ———————————————————–>
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Buckaroo Banzai is basically Doc Savage, except with more skills and background points. I love that movie.
Lady Iron Monkey is an excellent bad movie, bizarrely dubbed, yet with genuinely excellent monkey-style kung fu.
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Wouldn’t you love to see Doc Savage done today like John Carter?
Seriously, 1930’s steampunk with Auto-gyros, zeppelins, you name it.
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I’d love to, but you’d know the villain would turn out to be an evil industrialist trying to start a world war so he can sell more evil weapons. Because Hollywood.
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Oh yeah!
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Wait, no. It would have Nazis. Trying to make the first atom bomb. Or maybe all three. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
See? I’m good enough to write for Hollywood!
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It would be the evil industrialist Koch, With the powerful Prescott Bush working with the NAZIs on super secret weapons in 1940 and hiding from FDR’s Secret Service on a secret island and Doc Savage would run into the attractive Secret Service agent(female) trying to get on the island where Koch and Bush are enslaving Black people and Muslims. Now to clean out my mind with mindbleach.
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Actually, wasn’t that the plot of a number of those books? Besides the Scooby-Doo type scare everyone away so we can mine, or destroy the competitors for market-share?
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Well, a fair number of them were about hunts for hidden treasures, usually with at least one faction of bad guys using some kind of superweapon. A few are about megalomaniacs going for blackmail or world domination. Some are about lost worlds.
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I realize that the type is over-used, but really, there are good reasons why you might want a villain as an evil industrialist for adventure tales.
This is good
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The Rocketeer had Howard Hughes as one of the good guys, and the villain was a Hollywood actor!:-). I think a good Doc Savage movie could be made, but how you keep modern Hollywood from ruining it…I dunno. Get someone else to make it?
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Get it made outside of Hollywood.
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Considering what was done to John Carter… Although I’m kind of hoping that movie did well enough that there might be a chance for a way lower budget reboot. Maybe. If they ditched most of that movie and started fresh from the novels. For which there is probably only a vanishingly small chance.
I liked Woola, and a few of the visual choices, but otherwise that movie was painful.
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And picked a movie title that didn’t leave people saying, “Huh?”
Seriously, “John Carter” as the movie title? The only people who would perk up at that name are long-time sci-fi/fantasy types. And even a lot of them probably wouldn’t recognize it.
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Awww, I loved John Carter. The marketing was pretty horrible, yes, and it probably should have been named A Princess of Mars, but I thought the film itself was great (although I think it overpowered Carter just a bit, then again, it did that for the therns also so…)
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I loved John Carter and could not get into the books.
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It probably helps me that I was reading them from when I was about eight years old or so, though I still love ’em.
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I’m a Disney fanatic, but the high point of “John Carter” was seeing Gaius Julius Caesar and Marc Antony ruling on Mars.
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SPQR????
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I’m anxious to see an explanation for this also …
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I think it was the light fliers and the Tharks that I liked the most. They took great license with the Barsoom stories, but I am not sure if it was to condense everything down together or if it was because they were following comic-book adaptions.
Still, the CGI is incredible nowadays. I was watching a “how I did it” video on a short video based on Portal 2. The guy was doing motion capture in his bedroom, and the finished procuct looked awesome
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My short people are actually more impressed with special effects in old movies than they are with CGI– because CGI is their baseline, but they’re fascinated by how people did things w/o computers, and some of the older effects actually look more real in the context of film now that CGI has gone hyper-real.
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The Thief of Bagdad. The original, silent version — accept no substitutes! That one has interesting effects.
And a Human Wave theme is spelled out for you.
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Loved John Carter. Alas, it’s gonna be the only one for a long time. :-(
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What bothered me about Buckaroo Banzai is that it had such promise. It had such wonderful series of back stories, and so many sly comments about things that never happened I kept waiting for any of them to become relevant. It was like the bleah fifth movie on an adventure franchise, only they forgot to make the other four (or three and the so-so fourth) wonderful movies that launched the whole thing first.
Other than John Lithgow chewing on the scenery and channeling Mussonini, everything they referred to in passing would have been more interesting than the plot and story they actually chose.
Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, though….Pure German-Silver plated base metal with Rhinestones, just the way I like it.
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I like Buckaroo Banzai myself. Of course, it had a lot of actors I like, Peter Weller, Jeff Goldblum, Clancy Brown, Lithgow does seem to be having the time of his life. And I had a “thing” for Ellen Barkin back then too …
But it definitely fell short of its promise.
The Ron Ely “Doc Savage” suffered from being made just before Hollywood learned how to do that kind of comic book mashup right, and so was too tongue in cheek. It could have been great too.
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The original Author of Buckaroo Banzai produced a run of comic books that further explored the whole thing. They’re about to be re-issued too.
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Any links available? I still want to know the story behind that watermelon…
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Well in the BOOK it was a treatment that made it invulnerable. Don’t remember how or why, though.
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Hadn’t realized there was a book. Added to my wish list, thanks!
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Vote for the April read here:
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/99877-which-of-the-comedy-nominations-should-we-read-for-april
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All this, and no one has linked to Tommy Wiseau’s “Memorial Day” commercial for Urban Outfitters? This oversight must be corrected.
http://youtu.be/R799vrY6zVA
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Thanks for the pointer Sarah. I was very reluctant to post it, and sat on it for two days before releasing it, but it needed to be done, and you can’t do a fair fisk without links…
-_ Rick
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I know. And when something is THIS egregious it’s hard to ignore.
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I was going to post a comment/question* on your blog, but Google demanded that I set up a Google+ public profile.
(What the heck is the Church of Butler?)
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I’ve helped out with a couple 48-hour Film Festival productions. Great fun — and I’ve seen better acting in the last-place contestants than in “The Room”.
Seriously — people who have had to write, shoot and edit a film in 48 hours have done better than that piece of dreck. And that includes films where the boom mike had as much camera time as the star.
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