Superhero Holidays

Honest Trailers - a healthy addiction. Here's the Screen Junkies' take on *plotholes in The Dark Night Rises.



*Blogger helpfully suggested "potholes" become "plot hoes"...and I agree, two hoes are a large part of Bruce Wayne's 99 problems. Smart Blogger!

MEANWHILE...

The gals of Happy Looks Good On You teach us how to make our very own fancy big Superhero Balls.

And she's got big balls, but we've got the biggest balls of them all...



What do you think? Are the Screen Junkies right, or do you diehard love TDKR? Are you going to make your very own Superhero Balls for Xmas?

To blog or not to blog

I started this blog February 4th, 2005 when my awesome Mom started hers. She wrote poetically about her daily struggles recovering from cancer, and I wrote about blundering through caregiving, dating, film school, and my own recovery post head injury from a car accident with a drunk driver in 1995. 

You'll notice there are years of daily posts here. Then an attempt at being less confessional. Then a reincarnation as a lifestyle blog that points out impersonal trinkets. Followed by a sprawling capitalist mess shilling for you and the bizarro world of horror-lovers to view my poor misunderstood feature film that very few people grok. Outside of 70s-cinema lovin' Hollywood intellectual bohemians, the actual Masters of Horror, and some really nice fundamental Christians (When I go niche, I go DEEP NICHE baby. Oh wait, you're NOT supposed to go that niche? You're supposed to find 1000 True Fans, not 100 True Fans? Well fuck me with a chainsaw!).

No no, I swear I'm not doing one of those narcissistic posts where I say I'm never going to blog again as a Tinkerbell clap trap to make you all dance like monkeys to bring me back to life (Though *if* I were a Narcissist (which Dr. Olcese says I can't be since I'm capable of asking that question), you all know I came by it naturally through half my designer genes, n'est-ce pas?).

See??? THAT is why I need to start blogging again. The above paragraphs? CRAPTASTIC writing. I was the most productive and gooder at ze ol' clackety ckack when I was putting in my WGA-prescribed Stream of Consciousness Hour a Day right here at my stupid lil blog. And that discipline naturally overflowed into writing the (unproduced) feature screenplay PISTOLERAS that I still think could save thousands of kids from sex slavery. So that cause and effect alone is cause enough to pause and think deep thoughts with Jack Handey on a daily basis.

But the negatives are like whoa. Violent soul-ripping out of your body junk. Some of it from innocuous stuff that exposes your friends' neuroses. Some of it so deserved that I'll be coming back reincarnated as a snail next life (the first year of true confessional blogging has a steep learning curve that will cost you family members and lifetime friends).

Dealing with feeling the petty envy of watching blogging friends get book deals and paying jobs and Hollywood careers and big blog audiences that financially sustained them. Getting to a Taoist point of not caring about not having that and just focusing on the joy of creating. Wondering then if I'm talking to myself, why exactly am I bothering? The tree is still falling. For whom am I recording the fall? Alien ancestors? And why did I have so many pictures of myself up on my own blog? Ewwww. How desperate am I? You guys are right. I hate me, too.

Getting a readership and having that first high of validation and communication with peers. The fall when they turned. Followed by driving most of the readers away when the snarky wannabe screenwriters kept attacking the underdog, exhausted caregivers. Zeus I can't abide bullies.

Then there's the really evil stuff. My close friends would snort at me typing "I try to focus on the positive", but unfortunately guess what? When you open up a vein and publish your fucking diary on the web, your close friends aren't the ones who come daily to lap up the blood. Nope. It's the two stalkers with autoerotomania escalating towards violence. That cunt hiding behind the mask of feminism who actually has Narcissistic Personality Disorder and IS going to die alone and broke.

Meeting heroes in the film industry as colleagues and learning they really think women are only good for putting their dicks in. Not finding a place as a writer in the boys club of the comic world. Losing boyfriends by not writing or writing about them.

Or the biggest kick in the gut: discovering the pervasive Female on Female Violence that is the real reason women don't have equality in Hollywood, and by extension the world. My close friends REALLY want me to make a documentary about my interesting thoughts about mean girls and the Cavewoman inside us all and how we're the problem not the solution. To which I say, fuck you, YOU go make a documentary. I want to get PAID to do the Wild Thing. Grumble. I've got at least $250,000 I've invested in this hobby over the past 25 years. It would be nice to get ONE PAYCHECK. Just one. So my dead grandparents can stop thinking I'm an indulgent asshat.

Have I told you about how I stopped looking at the search words for how strangers found my blog because it made me want to throw up my spirit? Or how friends of mine have had their photos downloaded, then uploaded to the internet with cum on them? Or how my attempt to raise money for my lead actresses' prosthetic hand after a horrible accident turned into thousands of perverts coming HERE to jack off, then stealing her photos and posting them to a porn fetish website? I tried to buy her a hand and I broke her heart.

Like, what can I ever do to make up for any of that? Or forget it? And this is the nonpersonal stuff that's been going on in my life, not even getting into the "how'd I get so old and fat and yeah, I'm really really old and why am I still attracted to twenty-five year olds what's wrong with me" bullshit. No, this is the stuff I brought upon myself by trying to make a difference.

So yeah, I've been in a man-cave minus the man. There's definitely a feeling of "If I never TAKE a step, then I have a small carbon footprint...right??? It's not my childhood ambition of Avengers Assembling to save the world, but it also means I can't accidentally be on the VILLAINS' side, right??? I'm not fucking ULTRON'S pawn, at least. Right, universe? Hello? Universe, are you there...?

I didn't know what to do. So I threw down the gauntlet last week. I yelled at my mom. I'm not proud. The natural course of losing your way spiritually means I haven't been feeling her or talking to her. Ruminating on all the ways I could have been a better daughter. So last Friday I gave her the ol' "HEY. I know you're there. Why aren't you DOING anything? And what the fuck am I supposed to be doing, because I'm so far below the poverty line hitting it is my vision board GOAL for the year. And I don't know what the hell I'M supposed to be doing, and I think the universe is screaming give up and go live in the desert away from humans and stream Netflix movies all day. (Which is ALSO now evil and corporate; What The FUCK, Netflix??? Where's your indie street cred NOW, after you've singlehandedly brought down the film industry???).

So Barbara...Bitch TELL ME SOMETHING!" And she did. I got a Big Fishie. A big juicy undeniable one that involved my sister, my gradeschool best friend Jen, and some closeted activist Deep Throat old school Hollywood insiders. Barbara laid this Fishie in deep. There's personal nods going back twenty-seven years ago with Jen, twenty years ago with Brenda, and twelve years ago with Mom. A trio of ladies I couldn't love more, all of whom share a deep passion for the underdog. Each one of whom I shared memorable affinity moments with while watching the amazing film work by one person. A Hollywood figurehead who is the Fishie and may or may not have even been the fishmonger with the help of his awesome fishwife. Doesn't actually matter if I ever know how it went down or who delivered the fishie. I know there's someone out there trying to do good in this fucked up world who thinks I'm doing some good work and found me and my family because of this blog.

That is good enough for me. I got the message. "BLOG, BITCH." As you wish, mom.

Oh mom? I got your other message, too. The one that meant "Don't accept yesterday's high bid even though it could buy you groceries. You're keeping your last piece of Avengers art."

To infinity and beyond

Big Bro and his Fies avatar creations in MOM'S CANCER are featured in a new book on the top 60 Graphic Novels of all time. Check out his post. Thanks to the alphabet, the family tome is listed after MAUS.

That's really nice.


You know, it got back around to me a decade ago that my ex-boyfriends were bragging about having slept with a Power Rangers stuntwoman. I wonder if now the lucky few brag about having slept with an Eisner-award winning comic character...

Shoutout Journalista

Charles Yoakum and I were written about in the same The Comics Journal Weblog entry. Pretty cool.


Everyone has fears about creating their art. Those who rise to professional career levels are the ones who have the balls to work DESPITE the fears, instead of letting bitching becoming their fulltime job. Period.

Get up, Trinity.

The Fountain

Beautiful graphic novel version of the feature film "The Fountain." Epic sci-fi story about true love.

And wouldn't you know it, the characters slept together on the first date...just like Sydney Poitier and his wife of 20 plus years. Rules, Schmules. If your guy is emotionally mature, it doesn't matter. When it's love at first sight, you know it.

It's a cool story about the graphic novel. When studio funding fell through for the Brad Pitt movie version, Darren called Vertigo and they started working on the comic...the "ultimate director's cut". Then Darren remembered his guerilla film roots, slashed the script and the budget, and got to make the movie version with his future wife Rachel Weisz. L'amour. The graphic novel and the film ended up coming out at the same time. Synchronicity.

Warning: it's a cancer plot. Death ensues. If you're not up for a crying jag, avoid for now.

My Queen, my wife, my love

J'adore 300. J'adore.

That relationship, the love between the king and the queen, so sacred..my ultimate desire.

The orgy of beautiful men's bodies. The inimitable Frank Miller. Hand to hand combat. Strategy. Comic book framing.

And not to be underestimated, the fetishizing of men's bodies, at last. So it won't be done for the first time in Pistoleras...but still, what will be new is that our heroines will be in baggy sweatshirts as they usurp the male gaze.

Why didn't I see 300 in Imax? Stupid, stupid, stupid.


Wow. Don't remember any training like that on Power Rangers.

Apologies

Sorry I've been withholding lately...if there's anyone out there still reading, I'm going to give this confessional blog thingie another shot. Gets confusing because some people don't want me to blog about them, I really can't blog about work, and I chased off the spec-screenwriters last year when they were rude to my cancer caregiver crowd, so that leaves what to talk about? Not sure.

Just finished an emotionally difficult/fulfilling script on Wednesday (been working on it for a year and a half, so that feels gooood), then went to Comic-con. Had an awesome weekend. Saw my brother and sister-in-law and some confriends. Charles Yoakum and I had several successful meetings with our target publishers who are interested in the Pistoleras graphic novel. Got through the first gate...yea!

Really enjoyed being at Geek Prom as a seller instead of a buyer this year. Charles and I swore last year we weren't coming back until we were pros with a property, and we did it. So that's really something. And he got to meet Valerie D'Orazio, and I left without buying more original art, so that's all good. That the trip cost more than we'll make on the book...not good, but the reality of the comic industry. Got some great life advice relayed to me from our mutual good friend Todd, who has been worried about me since I disappeared off the planet a month ago in my writing spell. So from now on when I'm writing strong, I need to put an autoresponder letting people know I'm writing and that if they hear back from me it's completely by accident. Good advice. Witty with a hint of bitterness and longterm knowledge of me, but you get the gist. Thanks Todd, and sorry!

Also met some new cool friends over the weekend, some from LA at the Eisner Awards (congrats guys!) and one from San Diego who also does powerful activism work for underdogs; very brave and effective, flying around the world and to DC to change policies. Had a perceptive phone conversation with a best girlfriend on the short trip home from San Diego where we solved all our personal issues and negotiated world peace. Then a lovely talkfest/dinner with my cosmic twin Sarah. Sarah's continuing to do amazing, world-changing activism, work on her documentary, and is up for several professional screenwriting jobs that have powerful themes and issues. Kudos to Sarah! Though somehow everytime we get together we manage to make each other cry over our dead moms. I guess that's good. Yeah, that's good, right Sarah?

In general, I'm feeling really good. I like my life. A lot. I love that I have two fantastic girlfriends who told me they loved me on the same day that I came home from my celebration of all things male at Dorkapalooza. One of my favorite things about my life is that I'm blessed with great male and female friends.

Have any of you been watching "Confessions of a Matchmaker?" My sister turned me on to it, and I find it so sweet. I think if anyone gets down on humans hurting each other, they should watch this show and the way everyone just wants love. The soft-hearted, hard-edge matchmaker is spot-on at laying down boundaries and helping people become better and happier and more self-aware. If the personal is politicial, then she's doing some powerful gender work there in Buffalo New York.

Another way to get in touch fast with humanity is to watch this amazing video made with all the love and joy of children...who just happen to be "hardened" criminals in a jail in the Philippines. See if you can open your hearts and enjoy life and all our ongoing rehabilitation with them:


I just got the weirdest urge for a V-8. I always wonder if that's a fishie from Mom, because that was her drink when I was a kid, and I never liked them until after she died. Now it's my most reliable vegetable source. Of course, my cupboards are bare at the moment...Time for bed. Sleep well, bloggers.

The new Joker

Hmmmnnn...I hate to agree with Aint it Cool talkbackers, but he does look like a weird cross between Ichi the Killer and The Crow, when what he should look like is the Joker. The Joker came first, dammit, and he's only the most revered comic villain ever. It's hard to get better than a brilliant sociopath who's unpredictable and completely dedicated to bringing Batman's hypocrisy down.

I'm curious what my nineteen-year-old nieces would say, though. I bet they'll like it, growing up on Heath Ledger movies and with Emo in fashion. Guess they're the real market, and that us codgers are never going to see The Killing Joke onscreen.



UPDATE: It's a fake.

Wow, it's probably not going to be that far off, though. I like Heath Ledger as an actor in other projects, but I don't get the idea of casting someone so humorless and pretty model boy.

It's just all wrong, unless they make him monstrous with the makeup. Even then, I feel like that brooding, dour, emo spirit is going to shine through the latex. I mean, can you picture Heath Ledger hysterically laughing? Hysterically crying with a daisy in one hand and a Longfellow poem in the other, but laughing with psychotic glee as he rapes and paralyzes your daughter??? Or would you still invite him over for dinner afterwards. His hair is only a little green after all, and he still has those wounded Heathcliff puppy dog eyes...

The two things The Joker absolutely can't be are likeable and hot.

I'm so confused...