Warm-Up

(NOTE - repost. something funky was happening with the video)

After thundering through long form writing for a few weeks, I found I ... well rewired is the wrong word, but it was incredibly difficult to think in blog post length again. Transitioning from "this has got to be perfect and fit the exact meta-structure and pacing ..." back to what Warren here calls "Burst Culture" proved to be difficult. There are definitely different mental muscles at work. I wonder how he dealt with it while working on his novel and pilot?

I begin to understand why some longform writers or journalists have a genuinely hard time respecting or liking blogs -- there's a moment when the release of intent feels fundamentally wrong. Even sentence and paragraph length, the silent metronome of personal style, changes.

This was compounded by an eerie emotional quiescence I experienced during my first weeks in Canada. I caught myself thinking: "Is this apathy ... or is this just what being relaxed actually feels like?" I just wasn't so angry. But anger, of course is part of what fuels the typing.

Lovely Wife developed an excellent theory. The coffee at Tim Horton's, Canada's ubiquitous coffee chain, is heavily drugged. Canada would be a non-stop raging 28 Days Later apocalypse if not for the fact we're kept sedated. She's working on the screenplay now.

Two days back in LA though, and I find the cobwebs shaking off. You know you're in LA when you stop your car in the middle of traffic to let jaywalkers cross, and the bastards SLOW DOWN to a STROLL, now that they're not in danger. Attempting to capture the spirit of a city in a single image is folly, but LA does its level best to help you: "Look, John, a young mother pushing her stroller ... while wearing short-shorts and black high heels. Welcome back."

In the spirit of such cultural anthropology, I present the following video of a videocamera perched on a conveyor belt at a Tokyo sushi place. Thanks to BeaucoupKevin for the link. Why? Because it brings me a bit of joy, and that may be what blog-length is for -- transmitting bursts of thought rather than full ideas, but those bursts still have the rough edges of raw passion. Your mistakes are your style, I once had an old writer say to me. Blogs are where we can throw down some of the filters and gift more of our mistakes to strangers.

Normal transmissions now resuming.

Go Sens!

Still moving, going back and forth from LA to Ottawa. But yesterday was the first full day in Ottawa, and as I walked the streets, my wife noticed me squinting.

"What's wrong?"
"I don't know, something's weird, like noticing something out of the corner of my eye --"
"Don't recognize the neighborhood?"
"No, it's --"

It hit me.

There weren't any blondes.

Much like the moment you realize that the squirrels of Ottawa are black, it's an odd mental hiccup in one's world construct.

The cashiers and service people are also filthily cheerful. So relentlessly cheerful, I keep expecting them to hand me my change with a cheery "Be seeing you," and the eye-circle salute. They may want information, these wily Ontarians, but I am not a number!

When we're back to full service we'll have a couple screenwriting book reviews, discussion on lessons the Bush Administration could learn from the Irish Mob, nerfing 'locks and Presidents, why Lost going to 16 eps a season is rather important, how Life on Mars ended damn well thank you, sir, and other fun. Thanks for waiting about in the meantime. For the downtime:

-- The interface on this Scott McCloud comic is rather interesting. I think such nods to our physical act of reading are necessary for successfully bringing print to screeniness. Discuss.

-- Tyrone sent me the Buck Rogers TV theme as an amusement. Damn him, as I then spent an hour entranced by the fan videos celebrating Erin Gray's suffering from Gil Gerard's fear of committment.

Gil Gerard as sex symbol: what the hell? Discuss.

-- John Robb's Brave New War came out this week, a study of how insurgencies are adapting open-source networking techniques. It is relentlessly good. I'll be straining the very limits of Fair Use quoting it over the next few weeks. A fast, informative read that I am not hesitating to call crucial to our understanding of what the hell's going on and about to go down.

Take care.

Yippee Kay Yaaaaaayyyy

Thank you Kevin. This does make life just a wee bit better.

Blue Beetle Biz

"Great! We finally closed the deal for the TV pilot!"
"I'm really looking forward to this. When do you think I have to turn in the first draft?"
"End of April."
"... THIS April?"

Hence, bloggy silence. In the meantime, a reminder Blue Beetle #14 comes out tomorrow:



And because I am so happy with the lad, a preview from BB #16, of Rafael's inks. First, Eclipso comes looking for Alina, Bonita and Damper's baby:

A little later, Traci 13 shows up with some "useless artifacts" from her Dad's collection:



You will notice the distinct lack of massive, levitating breasts, a choice further marginalizing us in the mainstream comics community. Where were we? Oh, yes, the inevitable team-up, with Paco making the not-too subtle seating arrangements. About time Jaime got back in the game...



Got to remember to ask Rafael what car he's using for the model -- as that fixed-up junker is officially the new Beetle-mobile, at least for a while.

Buy Blue Beetle! Punching! Banter! Explosions! Roooooomance.

Islamarama

... and no, I would not hesitate to title a parallel post "Jumpin' Jehova-phat!" God and I are very down with spiffy nicknames for each other. His nickname for me is "Sinner in the Hands of an Angry Me", which I must admit is a conversation stopper.

Anyway, Tapped has a nice article on Irshad Manji's PBS special about Islam, and her relationship with her faith as public believer and critic. Ms. Manji was a light-subject TV journalist who began to explore her faith -- and the ramifications of what it's become and how it's perceived -- a few years back. I read The Trouble with Islam when it came out and found it informative and fresh. Ms. Manji didn't start out as an Islamic scholar, but most of us struggling with faith aren't religious scholars (don't even get me started on people who believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God but never read the bloody thing ...). She tackles the issue like a layman, in the way most of us deal with our own faiths. The Trouble with Islam is a distinctly Canadian book, and for the life of me I can't explain why I say that. Is there a similar book in which a devout Christian woman tackles the second-class status of women in American Evangelical Faith? I'm genuinely interested if there is.

Tying the above with this recommendation allows me the pretense of a theme and therefor an excuse for the above post title: the best "Hey, I'm an Irish Catholic Who Knows Nothing about Islam But I Should Be a-Learnin'" book I've read: No god but God by Reza Aslan. Simultaneously respectful and dryly honest about the history and evolution of Islam, I cannot recommend it highly enough. At the very least, I can now tell the difference between Shia and Sunni.

Be smart! Know stuff! The world depends on you!

Oh, and God, Please Make Glenn Beck Next.

Just saying. It's entirely personal taste, but ... I remember watching a bit of the hourlong confessional special he did on CNN, where he recounted his problems with drugs and alcohol. There was a moment as he described his previous heinous behavior where I realized: "Oh, hey. You're not an alcoholic. You're just an asshole who happens to drink."

The difference will be lost on many of you. But if you understand-- yeah. One of those.

I Sense Your Confusion, TIME ...

... as to "Who Can Say What?". Allow me to clarify:



Cackling, rich old white men are not allowed to call innocent hard-working scholarship girls "nigger whores."



Didn't think that was so hard, but ... hey. Glad to be of help.

The article inside this issue of TIME, by James Poniewozik, is a magnificent piece of wankery. It starts:

But we also live in a culture in which racially and sexually edgy material is often — legitimately — considered brilliant comment, even art. Last year's most critically praised comedy, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, won Sacha Baron Cohen a Golden Globe for playing a Kazakh journalist who calls Alan Keyes a "genuine chocolate face" and asks a gun-shop owner to suggest a good piece for killing a Jew. Quentin Tarantino has made a career borrowing tropes from blaxploitation movies. In the critics-favorite sitcom The Sarah Silverman Program, the star sleeps with God, who is African American and who she assumes is "God's black friend." And the current season of South Park opened with an episode about a Michael Richards-esque controversy erupting when a character blurts the word niggers on Wheel of Fortune. (He answers a puzzle — N-GGERS — for which the clue is "People who annoy you"; the correct answer is "naggers.")

It launches on from that for about four pages of discussion, but then lands on, second to last paragraph:

You might say that there's no excuse and that I'm as big a hypocrite as Imus' defenders for suggesting that there is one. Which may be true. That's finally why "Where's the line?" is a misleading question. There are as many lines as there are people. We draw and redraw them by constantly arguing them. This is how we avoid throwing out the brilliance of a Sacha Baron Cohen — who offends us to point out absurdities in our society, not just to make "idiot comments meant to be amusing" — with a shock jock's dirty bathwater. It's a draining, polarizing but necessary process.

That's ... separated by four pages of writing? That's the WHOLE BLOODY POINT. All the people in his own example are using those transgressive phrases in a context. Even if you don't agree with the validity of the context, it still exists. Silverman, as magnificently over-rated as she is, is mocking her own racism. Borat is not supposed to be an admirable human. South Park is examining the ramifications of racist speech in modern society. The context justifies their use of the imagery. To pretend you need to explore other points before arriving at that conclusion is just justifying your penny-per-word count. Imus may have said "nappy-headed", but that's "nigger", plain and simple. To call someone a nigger without a context, even a half-assed one, is just racism. Period. And much like porn, we all know it when we see it.

At least the Poniewozick sensed the need for value in transgressive statements here, but is hampered by his own misunderstanding of how humor, at least in America, works:

Imus uses jokes to establish his power, in other words. He's hardly the only humorist to do that. But making jokes about difference — race, gender, sexual orientation, the whole list — is ultimately about power. You need to purchase the right to do it through some form of vulnerability, especially if you happen to be a rich, famous white man. But the I-Man — his radio persona, anyway — is not about vulnerability. (The nickname, for Pete's sake: I, Man!) That's creepy enough when he's having a big-name columnist kiss his ring; when he hurled his tinfoil thunderbolts at a team of college kids, it was too much. "Some people have said, 'Well, he says this all the time,'" Rutgers' team captain Carson told TIME. "But does that justify the remarks he's made about anyone?"

Almost, but no. Humorists don't use jokes to establish power. We use jokes to steal power. We use jokes to steal power from the audience. We use jokes to steal power from smarter, better looking people. We use jokes to steal power from powerful men and women, politicians and celebrities. I do believe that this balance, these scales are hardwired into us culturally. This is why we tolerate celebrity-bashing humor -- the comedian is our proxy in levelling the playing field. "Britney may be rich and beautiful but she's still a redneck" ... and therefore not better than I am. This is also why shock humor tends to work. The boundaries of polite, acceptable behaviour are set by society, which is immensely powerful. When you break those boundaries, you are stealing power from society at large. It does help, however, if you have a larger purpose in mind than petty larceny.

The power relationship is why you need to be self-effacing -- if you're not in a power negative position, you're kind of breaking the contract. A stand-up doing jokes about his wife running his life gets laughs from men, who feel (wrongly, but hey) that their wives have more control of their lives than they do. He gets laughs from women because by complaining about the situation the comic is in fact confirming the woman's superior position as the status quo. He has stolen power for the woman ... by insulting her. Tricky, eh?

(On a side note -- why don't many conservatives think Colbert and Stewart are funny? Because they're not. They're not stealing power from the right people for the conservative mindset, because for them power belongs to a different set of people (Same with liberals, by the way, just flip the framework). Rush is funny because he transgresses against the powerful media and politicians and Others who may be nameless, but they must be more powerful than I am, or why else would I be struggling to pay my bills and YOU GET 'EM, RUSH ...)

I think this is the key to understanding why the Rutgers incident suddenly brought the whole Imus parade to a halt. The guy's been a frikkin' cretin for years, and this was really not that different objectively -- you really have to listen to the whole thing, by the way, to get that this was a good solid chunk of time dumping on these young women, not just the magnificently constructed "nappy-headed hos" sound bite. McGuirk in particular is just hateful ... Anyway, why this comment and why now?

For all these years, Imus stayed, barely, on the right side of the power equation. Always gone after public figures, or his bosses ...

... but then he screwed up. He didn't steal power, he used it. Used it to say just shitty things about people who, in our minds, just didn't deserve it. He broke the power equation. And when he did, we balked, even if we don't quite understand why this one got under our skin. The wiring goes both ways. It's actually heartening, because it confirms one of the admirable things about American society at large:

America loves a rebel.

America loves a bad boy.

But America hates a fucking bully.

Is this the start of a sea change? I don't know. Some people are even distressed at all the attention being paid to this -- after all, he's a shock jock, he says shocking things, why are we doing the victory dance? I don't know about that. People lump all shock jocks together, never realizing the damage context-less bullies do while skating under the radar of other funny shock-jocks. These guys have gotten a pass for a long time, like our racist, drunk uncle at Thanksgiving. At some point you have to slam your beer down on the coffee table and say "That's not cool." Not everybody will agree with you, and your mom will accuse you of ruining the shared fiction of the family holiday, and let's face it, you're not really going to change anything ... but you know it's the right thing to do.

I Am a Jerk.

But you knew that.

It's very easy, once you're up and running and you've got dozens of hits a day from your Mom on the blog, to forget that some very decent human beings linked to you and gave you your first traffic. Or at least it is for me. Because I am a jerk.

Mike at Visible Monsters was not only nice enough to toss me a link from his very cool London-based blog back in the day -- he is, for lack of a better word, a tech hipster -- but also took me out for a pint at a goth pub when I was in London beating Shibumi about the head and shoulders with the blunt club some believe to be my writing ability. Then we got Japanese food and he trundled me off in what was apparently called a "rape cab." I wish I were making that up.

Side-barred, sir, with my apologies.

Caption This Cheny Pic

(Stephen Crowley/ New York Times)

"Ahhh. Back on the grassy knoll. After all this time. Feels good."

Spell Name: Mind Control
Range: Line of Sight
Saving Throw: Will

"I'm pantless, fuckers. I'm pantless and high and there's SHIT you can do about it."

Monday Quick Hits

-- Blades of Glory: Although enjoyable, it's the first time I've said after watching something: 'You know what would have been funnier? More incest."

-- Geek Humor of the Day: The E-Mail Inbox of Star Wars Worst Engineer.

-- More Blue Beetle pimpage: Besides the nice folks at the Shuster nominating me for Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Writer, otherwise known as "Darwyn Cook's Next Award", the Something Awful folks handed us a Bessie for New Talent, and Newsarama gave #13 the Pick of the Week. Come join the Beetle Train. Which, despite its name, is not some horrible sexual game Warren Ellis discovered in the depths of a Bangkok sex pit.

-- Your Free Software Recommendation: Either VLC Player, which will play an media file on the planet, including that weird bit you picked up one night from space, or Foxit for pdf's. I finally got my home Windows machine running on all free/shareware software except for the screenwriting program, and it's just fine.

-- DRM free music on iTunes. This is kind of huge. Hopefully the days of the RIAA suing small children will soon be over.

-- Two words on a certain somebody's "stroll" through a Baghdad market: "Dukakis." "Tank." Considering how much I admired this man at one point, I'm just buffaloed.

-- Battlestar finale: Although enjoyable, it's the first time I've said after watching something: 'You know what would have been better? Less space-lawyering."

-- LOST: Expose was a genuinely fine, tight little piece of television (I will take my Rosencrantz and Guildenstern check now, thank you)-- which unfortunately only reinforced what a great show there is about Hurley, Sawyer and Jin lost on an island, and how sucktastically boring the Others plotline is by comparison. As ridiculously talented as the writing staff of the show is, I'm not sure "Hey, let's put all the angsty, brooding, annoyingly cryptic characters on one side of the island, and all the fun characters on the other side of the island" ... was the right choice here.

-- David Brin's blog has been listed. You're mad not to go.

Discuss, complain, backtalk. I'm going to look at DP reels.