My blog, “Goodreads” and the nature of internet branding.

Yeah, I haven’t posted for a week.
And yeah, I’m not happy about it.
The only excuse I can come up for it is that I’m having some form of mental constipation.  I’ve tried at least three times this week to write something and each time it’s wound up half-finished, collecting virtual dust in my draft bin.
Needless to say, I am not proud of this and it’s made me feel like a lazy hump.
And to make matters worse, I had a thing happen to me this Friday that’s making me kind of nuts.
For those of you who don’t know, this blog is connected to my Goodreads Author Page.  It’s the same page that has the link to the website for my E-Book, “Tales of the Geek Nation”.  A collection of comedy sketches I’ve been hawking for what seems like forever. I added the blog to the page because I felt that maybe people liked a blog post that I wrote, they might be temped to but the book.  A strategy that’s lately been undercut by my own uneven blogging.
And to make matters worse, someone left the following comment on my last post there.  (May 11th. Title: My no good, very bad, deeply shitty mood.)

Why is this blog linked to GoodReads?

And to add to the aggravation, the person leaving the comment wasn’t a stranger. It was a friend of mine from college. (Hi, Kelly.)

Now, it should be noted that in fairness that I don’t think Kelly meant anything   mean-spirited by that comment.  The post in question was fairly personal in nature. And as a general rule, I don’t get personal on the blog. (Okay, it’s more a guideline then a rule.  But still…) And it’s not the best written thing I’ve ever posted. It was one of those, “Oh crap I need to post something and this is the only thing I think of right now” types of posts.  And I did end it with the admission that I needed a blow job. Which is probably something first tier bloggers never do.
And it does beg the question, what is this blog about?
Is it a comedic blog?  A personal blog? A blog about politics that happens to have comedic elements?
What is this thing anyway?  And does it belong on a page hawking a book of comedy sketches?
And if it doesn’t, do I junk it and start over from scratch?  Or do I create a separate blog and post that to Goodreads?
Or do I keep going the way I’ve been going? Only quote the aliens to Woody Allen in “Stardust Memories” make sure I tell funnier jokes?
Those are the questions I’m going to be grappling with in the next few weeks.  All while dealing with whatever crap comes down the pike in the next few weeks and months in Washington.  (That is if talking about politics even survives this…thing I’m going to do.)
So…please forgive the dust around here for the next few weeks as I retool.  All I can promise is that I will try to keep my posts more in keeping of a man hawking a book of comedy sketches.  I.E. Funny.
Oh, and I also promise to keep any desire I have for a blow job to myself.
Unless I’m sure I can get a laugh out of it.

My no good, very bad, deeply shitty mood.

WARNING: WHAT FOLLOWS IS PURE VENTING!

How foul a mood am I in today? Let me count the ways.

1. For the last week, my in box has been filling up with various Mother’s Day offers.  Discounts on flowers, electronics, etc.
My mother died a couple of months ago.  I don’t need to be reminded of this by the giant capitalism machine.

2. My attempts to rebrand my Twitter feed as a funny feed has been limited because…frankly, the writers block has been kicking my ass.  Something borne out by my mostly bare aforementioned feed. To make matters worse, the one thing guaranteed to make my writer’s block worse has happened.

3. Ashland has done it’s traditional leap frog from winter to summer.  The high here today is a balmy 88 degrees.  Those in drought stricken area are more than welcome to tell me go fuck myself at this point.  (Seriously, I understand.) But the fact is that I do not function well in hot weather.  My brain, which hasn’t exactly been firing on all cylinders to begin with, gets even more fuzzier. I have have two fans on in my apartment now.  One at the window and the one over my stove in my kitchen area.  Neither of which seems to be making a dent in the heat. And this heat also up my awareness of…

4. The Carbon count in earth’s atmosphere hit 400 ppm this week!

For many years scientists have said that concentrations need to be kept below, or pushed back to, 350 ppm for countries to meet an international target of keeping the average temperature increase below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) this century.

Which means the climate is going to become more extreme.  The hot places will get even hotter.  Food will become harder to grow. Drinking water will become scarce. Basically, Mad Max without the fun bits.

5.  I’m out of St. John’s Wort.

6. I am acutely aware that I need a blow job.

That’s pretty much my life in a nutshell right now.  My biggest regret is that I don’t have a decent punchline.

“IRON MAN 3″

The Cinema of Shane Black in a nutshell. (Paraphrasing from memory.)

Extremis Enhanced Female Busey: Is that all you got? A smirk and a clever quip?

Tony Stark: Lady, that’s the title of my autobiography.

Trim, efficient and with just the right amount of snark. Sums up everything I love about “Iron Man 3″.
Making a big budget summer movie is always a tricky proposition. You want to be able to deliver the big bang boom. But you have to remember that you are still telling a story. I.E., A narrative of connected events with characters an audience can identify and sympathize with while delivering three to five big action set pieces that will be front loaded into various trailers designed to rouse a shrinking middle class to leave their homes and spend money into going to a film that they, by all rights, should be waiting to hit streaming Netflix thus reducing their household budget.
Thankfully, Shane Black has spent years writing blockbusters (And occasionally watching directors make hash of them.) and he has gotten very good at threading that particular needle.
How lean is this script? There’s a point in the third act where we see a secondary character do something unexpected.
And his entire backstory is laid out...in one freaking shot!
I almost applauded right then and there. And that was before the crazy ass “Iron Man catches thirteen people in midair” sequence.

Bottom line.  Solid script, solid performances. (Blessed be, Robert Downey refuses to phone it it.) Great action and you get to see Gwyneth Paltrow in a sports bra.  Joe Bob Jensen says check it out.

RANDOM NOTES: April 30, 2013.

-Postings been sporadic lately. Mostly due to the aforementioned Writer’s block.  But also augmented with the arrival of a new iPod Touch into the Jensen household. (Thank you Apple Gift Card I got for recycling my old Mac Mini.) And I’ve spent the last days setting the thing up with the usual social media gee-gaws.  (Yes, I’m now on Instagram. Thus continuing my metamorphosis into a middle-aged hipster.  The goatee and Pork-Pie hat are forthcoming.)
Also, quick tip for you young people out there.  If you have dreams and aspirations for your lives that you wish to achieve, DO NOT INSTALL  ANGRY BIRDS!
Seriously, that thing is a brightly animated digital crack pipe.
The good news is I now have several more outlets of expression.
The bad news is that I seem to be running out of things to say.

-My take on the Bush Library.
A multi-million dollar amnesia pill shaped like the last thing that George W. Bush would ever be caught dead in.  And if this thing actually succeeds in whitewashing the Bush legacy, I’m declaring the American experiment dead.

And for those of you wondering if my disappointment in Obama translates into a more forgiving attitude for Bush, I will say this.
If someone drives a car into your living room and the contractor is taking too long getting the repairs done, your annoyance at the contractor is not going to lessen your anger at the asshole who rammed your living room in the first place!!!!
Thankfully, our friends in Europe are not buying the okey-doke!

A planned trip by Bush to speak at the Switzerland-based United Israel Appeal later this week has been canceled after several human rights groups called for Swiss authorities to arrest Bush and investigate him for authorizing torture. Bush has traveled widely since leaving office, but not to Europe, where there is a strong tradition of international prosecutions.

The Swiss group and Bush’s spokesman claim that it was threats of protest, not of legal action, that prompted the cancellation. But facing protests is nothing new for Bush. What was different about this trip was that groups including Amnesty International and the Center for Constitutional Rights argued that Switzerland, as a party to the UN Convention against Torture, is obligated to investigate Bush for potential prosecution.

Drip, drip, motherfucker! Drip, drip.

-Wait until 2:15 in this video. Then you may release your bowels.

Yes.
You saw right.
A giant robot just whacked a giant monster upside his head...with a Goddamned Oil Tanker!!!

I don’t want to just see this movie.  I want to have sex with it.
Nasty, unprotected buttsex.

More later.

The brain baby is crying and crapping it’s diaper.

I’m not going to lie to you.
It’s been a long couple of days.
I finally managed to finish a new short only to discover upon completion that it’s the worse thing I’ve ever written. The idea that looked so strong  in my head curdled in execution.
It happens.
It hasn’t happened to me in a while so I guess I was due. The question now is do I take another pass at it or chuck it completely.  Honestly, it was such a slight idea, I’d feel like an idiot for spending anymore time on it then I already did.
What’s also troubling is that I’ve been having trouble focusing for the last few days. Part of it might be that I’ve only been averaging six hours of sleep a day about a week. There’s also various family issues that have been taking up extra RAM  in the old hard drive.
I’ve been taking steps to fix the problem.  I’m trying to get more fruits in my diet.  I’ve started taking multivitamins.  And I may have to start turning off the ringer on my phone so I’m not woken up by idiots with wrong numbers. (Yes, that’s been a thing too.)
So that’s where we are.  hopefully, this too will pass.

This fucking week…

So, let’s review…

MONDAY: The Boston Marathon gets hit. Death, Blood, gore, sadness.

TUESDAY: The Senate The GOP minority in The Senate plus four Red State Dems totally fucks all of us on Gun Control via the Filibuster. And while Sharron Angle may have been crazier then a bag of meth-addled Doberman puppies, I’m beginning to think that maybe it would have been worth dealing with her then having a candy-ass Senate leader like Harry Reid.
Also, a town in Texas got pancaked by a fertilizer factory explosion which apparently had not been inspected by OSHA since “Ghostbusters” came out.

WEDNESDAY: We find out that President Obama was threatened by an Elvis impersonator.  Instead of memeing the hell out of it, the internet decides to let it slide.
It had been that kind of week.

THURSDAY:  With extra spending money in my pocket and a hearty “Fuck this shit” on my lips, I decide to go out for Chinese food and a movie. (G.I. Joe: Retaliation. Big dumb, goofy action film. Mostly notable for Ninjas fighting on the side of a mountain!) I then go home, fire up Twitter and discover that THE MOVIE IS STILL GOING ON!!!!!

FRIDAY: We all watch as Boston gets locked down as everybody and his Uncle Fester track down the surviving bomber. (The other bomber being killed when he got shot by the police and then run over by the surviving bomber.) The resulting lock down and arrest being either an example of superior police work or the further militarization of civilian space, depending on your point of view.
And while this is all going on, we have Alex Jones screaming “False Flag”, Lindsey Graham screaming “Enemy combatant” like it’s 2005, a report came out confirming that yes, we did torture after 9/11 and somewhere in the middle of all this, Nestle’s CEO suggested out loud that drinking water should be privatized.

My verdict? This previous week should die in a fire and America deserves a collective, sloppy blowjob.

MAN OF STEEL TRAILER: “He’ll be a God to them”.

There’s no denying that the footage looks epic.  Superman is the cornerstone of the DC comic universe and there’s no which way in hell they’re going to nickel and dime this thing.
The trick is going to be nailing the stuff you can’t throw money at.
The brief snippets of performances look good.  Kevin Costner seems to have aged nicely in to the prototypical Blue Collar dad. And I really dig Russell Crowe’s rumbling thunder from God voice he’s using for Jor-El. I’m already on board with Amy Adams as Lois Lane but I haven’t seen enough of Michael Shannon as Zod to form an opinion.
And Henry Cavill as Supes?
Well, he doesn’t have the “Anointed by God to play Superman” look that Christopher Reeve had.  But he comes damn closer than anyone has a right to.  He’s got the build, he’s got the ernest look and delivery down.  And most importantly, he sells the suit.
That last part can’t be overstated.
Yeah, Christian Bale had to wear a suit for Batman.  But it was functional as body armor and to hold the gadgets.  Superman’s suit on the other hand, is just freaking spandex.
I would imagine the hardest part of the role is to wear the suit without feeling like a schmuck.
(Digression. In his book “Which Lie Did I Tell?” William Goldman talked about when the Salkind’s were making the first Superman movie, they tried to cast a big star in the lead at first. And nearly every big star of that period including Paul Newman and Burt Reynolds were approached.  When they got to Warren Beatty, he actually took the suit home. He tried it on, went to his pool in the backyard and started running around it with his arms outstretched.  Like kids do when they play Superman. Just then, he saw his maid looking at him as he’s running around.
And he stopped.
And he said, “Yeah, I can’t do this”.
The suit is a bitch. End of digression.)

The other big X factor is the score.
Hans Zimmer is a terrific composer but John Williams’ work in the original film is as iconic as anything he ever wrote. It’s second only to his work on “Star Wars” and it continues to flow through the Pop Culture bloodstream. Seek out Petra Haden’s album “Petra Goes to the Movies” and you’ll see what I mean.
If Mozart was preserved in Amber and cloned Jurassic Park style and given this gig, I promise you, he’d be shitting his pantaloons.
To Zimmer’s credit, it sounds like he managed to not only keep control of his bowels but also deliver themes worthy of Williams without falling into pastiche.
Again, I’m waiting until I see the movie to pass judgement.
But the fixings seems to be there.