Category Archives: bizarreness

How To Fix American Horror Story

Seems like just yesterday that I was extolling the virtues of a bold little show called American Horror Story.

In one of the most (unfairly) reviled and (fairly) stagnant genres, AHS was raising the bar. Ushering in a whole new flock of horror fans and giving the long-timers a much needed breath of fresh air. It offered intrinsically good stories and managed to offer cutting social justice commentary at the same time.

So what on earth happened?

We can debate where it all went wrong, but I don’t think anybody can deny that the show is suffering on all fronts, and not even the Evan Peters fanservice is enough to hold it together. [Spoilers from this point on. -Ed.]

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The dude’s the be-all-end-all, if the show’s female fans are to be believed

I could spend all day listing my litany of complaints about the past couple seasons- the skull-numbing boredom of AHS: Freak Show, the abysmally scattered and campy AHS: Hotel (I will never forgive Lady Gaga’s inclusion)…

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I **** you not, the woman’s so vain that her character seduced a gay guy and it was somehow supposed to be taken as her being “progressive”

…but you probably wouldn’t need me for any of that (again though, **** everything about Gaga’s role in this show).

What I’d like to do instead is offer my own armchair suggestions for recapturing that eldritch magic the first couple seasons had. Because I hope that maybe, just maybe, some bored writer will stumble across this piece and think “hey, that’s not a half bad idea!”

Because I’m also that vain.

Not as vain as Gaga though- Miss “I Need To Appear In A Different Crazy Outfit In Every ****ing Scene And Fondle My Harem of Identical Dudes.”

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Okay, I promise I’m done.

So, anonymous and probably non-existent AHS employee who’ll probably never see this, here’s one horror fan’s humble recommendations for restoring one of his favorite shows to its former glory. Continue reading

2 Broke Girls, S5E15 “And the Great Escape”: A TV Review

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Money has always been an integral part of 2 Broke Girls, and this episode had me thinking quite a bit about the show’s budget. Well into its fifth season and having passed the 100th episode milestone some time ago, it’s a show that CBS has some confidence in, albeit one that’s barely beating Mike and Molly in ratings, a show that is currently airing its final season. With all that said, I began wondering about how much money the network was willing to throw its way.

Almost as if reading my comments about the limited settings this three camera sitcom has to offer, and with the sole intent of having me eat my words, “And the Great Escape” is the closest the show has been to feeling like it doesn’t take place in front of a live studio audience. While that’s not necessarily a hallmark of a great episode, it’s impressive to say the least.blowing

The first, pictured above, is Randy’s house. While the interior is nothing special, it’s the fact that production also created an exterior year that really made an impression on me. The sand and plants are a really nice touch, and it even offers an opportunity for some great physical comedy on Beth Behrs’ part [her greatest strength, in this reviewer’s opinion]. Continue reading

Escaping Trump’s America: One Writer’s Harrowing Tale of Survival

trump-011It has been 51 days since Drumpf became president, and I lock the door to my apartment for the final time. It’s a cold day in March, but even my thick coat raises eyebrows as I arrive at the station.

They say Mussolini made the trains run on time, but I’m guessing the strange intricacies that seem to govern the Greyhound buses would’ve sent tears running down the fat, doughy face of the Italian despot. My ticket reads 5:30 to Chicago, No. 302, but the sun is already starting to rise over the desert. All the seats have been taken. I find myself a free spot of ground beneath a leering poster of the president. The bitter morning wind, reeking of diesel fumes and cigarette ash, sends loose papers skittering across the concrete. Discarded ticket stubs, crumpled receipts- a single page that looks like it may have come from some shoolboy’s essay. All decadent, unpatriotic schools have been replaced with Drumpf Universities, where we are to be re-educated to stop thinking like “bimbos” and “losers.”

An hour passes, and the guards return- weak, winter sunlight glittering off of their glossy, golden uniforms. They have proper haircuts- as we all do now. Aryan blonde, brushed forward to cover the parts of our head that absolutely aren’t balding. Any illicit hairstyles will earn you and your barber 80 lashings. They takes measurements our hands, to ensure their proper size. They search my belongings. I’ve prepared for this. Just enough clothes for a three day trip. No money. No passport. Just my mandatory certificate proving native birth and authorized religious beliefs. My papers say that I am going to Houghton to visit a sick friend. I am lucky that I already have documents that show I went to college there- at least, to the Houghton in New York. I do not think I could have afforded to have all my papers forged. Continue reading

For Your Consideration: Asian Doctor Strange, Courtesy of Kurt Busiek

Some weeks will prove busier than others, and on those occasions I’m choosing to present all of you with something worth thinking about.

As you may know just last week I covered both sides of the debate over Daniel Rand, AKA Iron Fist, being played by a person of Asian descent. Of particular concern to the writer in the “for” camp was that the narrative within the comics pushes the idea of a White man entering a foreign land, mastering their arts, and ultimately rising up to be one of the greatest among them. It’s a trope that belongs to Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Strange just as much as it does to The Living Weapon himself.

Kurt Busiek is a writer who has been in the industry for decades, with a four year stint on Avengers being his greatest claim to fame. With an extensive biography that spans the Marvel universe he’s widely regarded in comic book circles as a professional who knows what he’s talking about. Roughly a week ago he began sharing over Twitter about how Doctor Strange was very likely intended to be Asian from the very beginning, or at least depicted in such a fashion. I’ve compiled all relevant tweets below, for your consideration [all tweets not by Busiek were retweeted by him]:

https://twitter.com/karloff_fan/status/703650412381868032

https://twitter.com/devincf/status/703650991409750016

Continue reading

Not Everyone Got A Trophy

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that lines used.

“Not everybody wins a trophy.”

That patronizing line gets spat from the lips of sneering pundits on the news. It makes its appearance in venomous opinion columns in the local papers and it graces cover of national magazines.

“Not everybody wins a trophy.”

“Some people are losers.”

“This is what happens when you give kids awards for just participating.”

To hear some folks talk, the sum total of this country’s ills can be traced back to the coddling of America’s youth- Generation Y in particular. And certainly there’s no shortage of criticism launched in the Millennials’ direction.

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This is the generation of entitlement, the generation of immediate gratification, the generation of the two-second attention span, the “me” generation. And all stemming from the baseless sense of accomplishment and self-esteem given out with every participation award.

Or does it?

The idea that kids are being handed award after meaningless award is rampant- so much so it seems to have gone unchallenged. Yours truly took to the internet to find out what the statistics were on the number of participation awards given out, and my efforts were utterly fruitless. Now there were plenty of polls on public opinion of participation awards, but neither my old friend Google Scholar nor the internet at large had anything to offer in the way of hard numbers.

And that should concern us.

Ask yourself- just for a moment- how many participation ribbons or trophies you’ve actually seen anyone receive. Not how many you suspect might be out there. Not how many schools or competitions have that “mentality”.

How many have you actually seen with your own eyes?

I’m guessing the number of actual occurrences might not quite be so high.

Then why the outrage?

Millennials are constantly painted as greedy, lazy, thin-skinned egotists as a result of a kind of upbringing for which little to no hard data exists. One might just as easily blame the decline of glam rock or UFO sightings for the supposed ills of Generation Y.

Yet the accusations persist. Continue reading

2 Broke Girls, S5E11 “And the Booth Babes”: A TV Review

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Next week 2 Broke Girls makes its way to Thursday to join CBS ratings juggernaut The Big Bang Theory, which actually segues really well into a lot of what this review is covering. See, while the latter has absolutely killed it for the network it’s also received a fair amount of flak, primarily from the types of people it claims to represent. General nerd news site Bleeding Cool referred to it as “the television show that hates you” back in 2011 and hasn’t stopped since, and I actually took time on this very blog to cover an episode that featured some particularly divisive promos.

All of that is to say that CBS as a network doesn’t have a stellar track record when it comes to appealing to what I’m going to call “nerds” from this point on [Supergirl not withstanding, which I’ve only heard excellent things about]. Couple that with 2 Broke Girls not having a stellar track record with most topics and we find ourselves here, tonight, with me dreading every second leading up to this episode, tempered by a bizarre sense of excitement. Continue reading