We’ll start with the book: THE BRIGHT SWORD by Lev Grossman. This was so good. It’s an Arthurian tale about a backwater, wannabe knight named Collum who steals his step father’s armor and heads for Camelot with the hope of becoming a knight of the round table, only to find King Arthur dead at the hands of Mordred and only a handful of bottom-of-the-barrel knights remaining. Not to be deterred, he joins them on their quest to keep Camelot from falling apart.

It feels a little like it was written for people who grew up watching THE SWORD IN THE STONE as kids, only to discover that adulthood is a bit more like A GAME OF THRONES. The Oprah Daily blurb on the back of my paperback says, “If T.H. White's THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING is the legend of King Arthur for the twentieth Century, THE BRIGHT SWORD is King Arthur for the twenty-first.” Which brings me to my movie pairing for this book:

THE GREEN KNIGHT (2021) starring Dev Patel.

The film is an adaptation of the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which a knight made of trees shows up at Camelot, asking to play a game in which one of Arthur’s knights must try to cut him with their sword. And one year later, they must seek out the Green Knight at his chapel and take the same cut in return, “be it a scratch on the che(e)k or a cut on the throat.” Gawain takes up the challenge and, trying to beat the Green Knight at his own game, cuts off his head (since the knight can’t return the blow if he’s dead). But the headless knight stands, picks up his head, and leaves, but not before reminding Gawain that the one year clock of death is ticking. One year later, Gawain must go in search of the Green Knight, knowing what awaits him.

J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of THE LORD OF THE RINGS, did his own translation of the legend into modern English (published in 1975). So I like to think of THE GREEN KNIGHT as Gawain for the twenty-first century.

The tales of King Arthur and his knights have endured, I think, not only because of their elemental themes, but because they are (and have always been) a mashup of history and fantasy, fact and fiction. Grossman expands on this in his Historical Note at the end of the book. The legends lend themselves to adaptation, retelling, and riffing because they are not carved in stone or fixed in time. So, to tell your own version of an Arthurian legend is part and parcel with Arthurian tradition.

To this end, my next Arthurian read will be LEGENDBORN by Tracy Deonn. I’ve had this on my TBR for a while, but it’s getting bumped to the top of the list.

Let me know your favorite Arthur stories, books, movies, or shows in the comments below!

Read more

I just finished reading PROPHECY by Carissa Véliz, a great book about why we shouldn't put our faith in predictions, particularly those made by Artificial Intelligence or the self-proclaimed prophets of Big Tech who stand to gain power from the success of their supposed oracle machines. And it got me thinking about my favorite depictions of prophecy machines in fiction.

First we have…

The machine from WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

The setup of the film involves a race to find a select few Golden Tickets, which will grant the holder entry into the mysterious chocolate factory of candy mogul Willy Wonka. In this scene, an inventor claims to have built a machine that can predict the location of one such ticket. It is a perfect example of an inventor’s claims about technology misaligning with reality. If only it was this easy to make people see that AI is a waste of our time and energy.

Next we have…

The machine from HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

This scene gets at something Véliz touches on in her book: that a big part of the desire to be told the answers to big questions is driven by a deep anxiety—about the future, about death, about the meaning of life. Véliz argues that the answer to this anxiety is not AI, but our own curiosity, which allows us to face our darkest hours even better than optimism or hopefulness does. “The more you find the interesting in the grim, the less traumatic the experience.”

Lastly, we have…

The Pre-cog “Machine” from MINORITY REPORT

This is one of my favorite Spielberg movies, and one of the better Philip K. Dick adaptations. It depicts a technological dystopia in which people live in a surveillance state, constantly scanned, watched, and tracked, so much so that the police even have a special “pre-crime” division which claims it can predict crimes before they happen and jail the potential criminals for “future offenses.” As you can imagine, things do not work out as planned. As Véliz writes:

Surveillance and prediction are partners in crime in the struggle for power. There is no democracy without citizens having agency over their own lives. In being designed to misappropriate our autonomy, surveillance and prediction are digital technology's original sins.

I highly recommend Véliz’s book.

Read more

I just finished reading Shannon Chakraborty’s novel TAPESTRY OF FATE, the second installment in her Amina al-Sirafi trilogy. And I’ll say about this one what I said about the first: this is everything I’ve ever wanted out of a pirate novel. There’s sea battles, sword fighting, legendary monsters, shipwrecks, capers, dark sorceress queens, and sexy demon husbands. I cannot wait for the third and final installment.

After finishing the book, I couldn’t help but reminisce about some of my favorite pirate stories, particularly the films I grew up on.

First, we have:

Crimson Pirate

I was too young to stay up and watch this with my dad when it came up on TV one night in the 90s, so he taped it for me. And I watched that recorded vhs that started halfway through the title credits probably a hundred times over the years. This movie is probably the reason I wasn't as enchanted as I wanted to be by Pirates of the Carribean when it first came out —I went to see Pirates alone (as I often did) in theaters. Crimson Pirate has more camp, more humor, more raw charisma in its first fifteen minutes that PIRATES does in its entirety. Sorry, I didn't know I was gonna be slamming PIRATES so hard. I actually like PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN. Just not as much as Ceimson Pirate.

Treasure Planet

In my opinion, there has yet to be a Treasure Island adaptation that captures the magic of Stevenson's brilliant novel. But Treasure Planet comes pretty close. Plus, you get space pirates, Joseph Gordon Levitt, and a certain early 2000s “je ne sais quoi” that started with TITAN A.E. and peaked with ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE. What's not to love?

Hook

This is the greatest Peter Pan adaptation of all time. There's no point even debating it. And I'm not even the biggest Spielberg fan. But this is peak. And if you're think that HOOK isn't really a pirate movie, it just has Pirates in it, you would be wrong. A central theme of the film is Peter proving to himself that he hasn't become a pirate, hasn't turned into Captain Hook.

As Daphne Du Marier once said, “Every boy has his Captain Hook.”

One of my favorite things about this movie is a lesson it learned from Hong Kong action movies: what Jackie Chan referred to as “contact powder.” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just watch this scene from the Jackie Chan film DRUNKEN MASTER 2.

Now, watch this baseball scene from Hook:

Or this scene were Peter meets the skateboarding Lost Boys:

Or this scene where sparks fly in a face-off between Peter and Captain Hook:

You’ll notice that everything seems to be covered in dust and smoking, much like in Jack Chan movies, where fists hit chests and kicks make contact, and you see a plume of dust fly off the impact, as if the force is just that powerful. The effect this is twofold: like in kung fu movies, it makes everything exaggerated, literally impactful, and it also makes it seem like all of Neverland is literally covered in fairy dust. So that when we return the real world, the fabric of reality feels more settled.

Lastly, we have…

Castle in the Sky

This is a classic Miyazaki film. A common theme of pirate films is sticking it to the man, or more specifically, Empire. CASTLE IN THE SKY does just that. When a bunch of power hungry imperialists are trying to take over the sky by resurrecting an old and hidden technology (aka buried treasure), only a group of sky pirates stand in their way. What’s not to like?

And in our current era, in which Tech Oligarchs are trying to shove so-called Artificial Intelligence down our gullets, wreaking havoc on our environment and melting our brains, CASTLE IN THE SKY is particularly relevant because the treasure the power-hungry imperialists discover is, in fact, a fleet of death robots.

Plus, the English Dub features the voice talents of Anna Paquin, Mark Hamill, and late James Van Der Beek.

That’s it for this week. Let me know what your favorite pirate stories are (books or movies or both) in the comments!

Read more

I just finished reading MIDNIGHT ON BEACON STREET by Emily Ruth Verona, a great book, and a fresh take on the genre of Babysitter Horror. It’s self aware, set in the 90s, with a cast of characters that pull you into the story. I felt transported back to my own time as a babysitter in high school, and the times (also in the 90s) when I was being babysat by my teenage neighbors.

Babysitters in stories are both caretakers and outsiders, alert to potential dangers that others are often too close to or distracted to see, be it the mortal danger lurking in the shadows of suburbia or the more prosaic and personal (but no less threatening) dangers to their safety and well-being. Babysitters are temporarily placed in a caretaker role, in which they are forced to confront, often for the first time, the biggest fears and challenges of adulthood.

Verona's book also got me thinking about my favorite “babysitting gone awry” movies. I only have two, so it’s a short list, but here we go. First we have…

Halloween (1978)

Directed by John Carpenter, one of my favorite directors, HALLOWEEN is a classic of the genre. It is also referred to regularly in MIDNIGHT ON BEACON STREET. Much has been written about this movie, so I will just say that the final confrontation between the babysitter, Laurie Strode (played by Jamie Lee Curtis), is one of the most hectic, terrifying, and claustrophobic scenes in any horror movie. And after stabbing the killer, Michael Myers, Laurie tries to reassure the kids by telling them that she killed him. But the little boy encapsulates the fear of all children, babysitters, and parents alike when he says, “You can’t kill the boogeyman.” HALLOWEEN reveals the fallacy of the “safe suburbs” ideal. Michael Myers is not some demonic entity or mysterious outsider; he is a homegrown killer, born right there in that small town. But while Laurie may not be able to kill the boogeyman, she faces him down and keeps those kids alive.

Next we have…

Uncle Buck (1989)

While most babysitter stories are about teenagers learning hard lessons about reality, UNCLE BUCK is a reminder that sometimes it takes a while for those lessons to stick. The heart of the film revolves around the relationship between Uncle Buck and the eldest daughter Tia, who is usually the one babysitting her younger siblings, and so is put out by the idea that she needs looking after. In most babysitter stories, a Tia-like character is the protagonist, someone that is both a caretaker and an almost-peer to the kids. So UNCLE BUCK feels almost like one babysitter butting in on another babysitter’s business. And after butting heads throughout the movie, they finally reconcile their differences and join forces.

If you're not a horror fan, I’d stick with UNCLE BUCK.

What are your favorite babysitter books or movies?

Read more

So, exciting news out of the way first. I have renamed the Substack to BOOKWORMS & MOVIE BUFFS, to more accurately reflect what this space has become. I love reading books and watching movies and then writing about them. And more often than not, the two subjects overlap in my writing. Mostly, you can expect weekly book and movie recommendations in the weird and nerdy vein I tend to gravitate toward.

On that note, here are this weeks recs!

First we have…

THERE’S SOMEONE INSIDE YOUR HOUSE by Stephanie Perkins

Really good book. Highly recommend. If you like self-aware slashers like SCREAM, creepy cornfields, well-written characters, and teen romance, this is the book for you. It also does a good job of exploring themes of moral anxiety, the fear of being a bad person, and public shaming.

TOY STORY 5 (2026)

We took the kids to go see this for Father’s Day. It was fun. It felt good to see the whole gang of toys again: Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and the rest. I was seven years old, the same age as my eldest child, when the first TOY STORY came out in 1995. Oh how time flies.

THE CUTTING EDGE (1992)

This movie is a classic. One that I had never seen. And I loved it. I’m also addicted to saying, “Toe Pick” now (if you know, you know). Also, who knew that Tony Gilroy, best known for THE BOURNE IDENTITY and ANDOR, wrote this? I did not. So if you are looking for s nostalgic 90’s Hockey/figure skating romance to watch while you’re waiting for HEATED RIVALRY Season Two, look no further.

SEEK THE TRAITOR’S SON by Veronica Roth

Roth is one of my “I’ll read whatever they write” authors. This book gives DUNE vibes, but is a lot steamier. It came as no surprise when I learned that Roth listened to the score to the new DUNE films while writing it. I can’t wait for the sequel. Roth is also coming out with a new DIVERGENT book, THE SIXTH FACTION, in October. Apparently it is an alternate universe version of the original, not a sequel. And I am super excited.

That's it for this week. Happy reading and watching!

Read more

To put it plainly, David Foster Wallace did not like TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY. And he made some solid points in his 1998 essay, “The (As It Were) Seminal Importance of TERMINATOR 2,” originally titled, “F/X Porn.” Sometimes it felt like he was reading my mind. I too have always preferred the first installment, THE TERMINATOR, over any of the others in the series. Wallace called T1 “a dark, breathlessly kinetic, near-brilliant piece of metaphysical Ludditism,” but felt that the second film, JUDGEMENT DAY, betrayed the message of the first, not only because it made the eponymous Terminator, played by Arnold Schwarzeneger, into the hero (when he was the villain in the original), but because, in his words, “a movie about the disastrous consequences of humans relying too heavily on computer technology, was unprecedentedly computer dependent.”

What Wallace could not have anticipated was that, today, the film industry would be turning to AI as a way to cut costs and replace human artists. He cites T2 as the best example of the “Inverse Cost and Quality Law” which states that "the larger a movie’s budget is, the shittier that movie is going to be.” But in capitalism, the big budget F/X driven movies want to have their cake and eat it too, making CHEAP movies that look and feel BIG.

In come AI tools, somehow weaseling their way into VFX workflows.

And the sad thing is, some directors are complicit in this weaseling, believing that their vision is more important than how the work gets made. In other words, when directors ask for something that is out of their budget, graphics companies, desperate to “keep up with the times,” will say that they can just do it with AI. And directors say, “Great! My will be done.” Who cares if the result is a flattening of art, a replacement of real artists, destruction of the environment due to AI’s reliance on water-sucking data centers, and the enriching of tech billionaires whose only interest is becoming trillionaires.

There is a sad but unsurprising parallel between the softened AI stance of T2 and James Cameron’s personal stance on AI tools today. A few years ago, he was staunchly opposed to AI, saying, “I warned you guys in 1984 and you didn’t listen.” But in 2025, Cameron joined the Board of Directors for Stability AI, arguing on the Boz to the Future podcast that, “[his] goal was to try to integrate [AI] into a VFX workflow.” He went on to say that, “[i]f we want to continue to see the kinds of movies that I’ve always loved… big effects-heavy, CG-heavy films — we’ve got to figure out how to cut the cost of that in half.”

There’s that old capitalist chestnut: how do we we make more GGI blockbusters for half the price?

The real question we need to be asking ourselves is, what is the actual cost? Maybe the cost in dollars goes down, but what about the others ways in which AI tools are costly? There is the environmental cost—these AI tools rely on massive data centers that require MASSIVE amounts of water to operate. There is the labor cost—even if VFX companies don’t lay off tons of designers, but simply force them to use AI, they will just be asked to produce more and more work on shorter and shorter timelines. And there is the creative cost. If all these designers and artists are forced by the James Camerons of the world to incorporate AI tools into the workflow, their real skills will start to atrophy. It may not happen overnight. But give it time. In fact, this is probably why directors are so excited by the possibilities of AI in VFX, even when many artists are ringing the alarm bells: because, while designers using these tools feel the effect it has on their own creativity, Directors are just seeing the short term results. It’s a real top-down, “ends justify the means” attitude toward art-making.

But technology-induced, creative atrophy will come for Directors eventually. As Wallace stated:

There is no quicker and more efficient way to kill what is interesting and original about an interesting, original young director than to give that director a huge budget and lavish F/X resources.

There are many examples (and Wallace names a few), but you only have to look at James Cameron’s career to see that this holds true. His first two feature films, THE TERMINATOR and ALIENS, are masterpieces. I actually prefer his installment in the ALIEN series over the first one directed by Ridley Scott.1 And Wallace does too. In fact, to make sure it doesn’t seem like I’m just totally dunking on Cameron’s films, I’d like to share this spot-on line from Wallace’s essay:

No male lead in the history of U.S. action film even approaches [Sigourney] Weaver’s second Ripley for emotional depth and sheer balls—she makes Stallone, Willis, et al. look muddled and ill.

There’s an old saying, that art is born of constraints and dies of freedom. This is what David Foster Wallace was talking about with the “Inverse Cost and Quality Law.” But what has changed today is how we define Cost. What are we willing to sacrifice for yet another AVATAR movie made with the help of generative AI? I would argue that the juice ain’t worth the squeeze. But I wouldn’t be surprised if every James Cameron movie from now on has a post-credit scene of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator (digitally de-aged, of course), saying, “I’ll be back,” in his robo-tronic, Austrian accent, each time set in a bigger and (supposedly) cheaper A.I. generated background. You know, for the fans.

Read more

I finally finished reading INFINITE JEST by David Foster Wallace.

It was at times hilarious, other times terribly sad, punishing even. Overall, it has the best depictions of anxiety, depression, and addiction I have ever read. It has sci-fi and supernatural inclinations throughout, covering technologies like video-calls and the use of filters on digital representations of ourselves, reminiscent of the conversations we have about Zoom calls, socials media’s unrealistic beauty standards, and AI deepfakes; there are wraiths and reality bending conspiracy theorists; waking nightmares like something out of Twin Peaks or The X-Files; dark, vague existential threats, “shapeless horror” lurking in the recesses of our minds, as well as somewhere “out there,” as Moulder would say; there are the terrors of the prior generation being passed on to the next, coded and indecipherable, projected onto the seemingly innocuous entertainment consumed in the ‘90s, and subsequently interpreted with an almost Lovecraftian terror. No wonder this book is considered by some to be the quintessential book of the ‘90s.

It’s also one of the few books that uses footnotes in a way that doesn’t annoy me.

And the fact that a such a long and hard-to-follow book about addiction, mental illness, technology, and entertainment is so engrossing is a testament to Wallace's abilities as a writer. Wallace once said of the book that he was trying to “have something be long and difficult but have it be fun enough that somebody would be almost seduced into doing the work.” He succeeded.

The fact that his language is more-often-than-not pretty unpretentious and accessible helps a lot. Wallace uses 10 cent words sparingly. And while the book is sprawling, complex, and at times almost hallucinatory, its language is plain.

Wallace once said of Stephen King, whose work he taught, that:

He’s one of the first people to talk about real Americans and how they live, to capture real American dialogue in all its, like, foulmouthed grandeur.

Students come to me and a lot of them have been led to believe that there’s good stuff and bad stuff, literary books and popular books […] with a sharp line drawn between the two categories. It’s good to show them that there’s a certain amount of blurring. Surface-wise, King’s work is a bit televisual, but there’s really a lot going on.

Maybe Wallace learned a thing or two from King.

Michelle Zauner, author of CRYING IN H-MART (and lead vocalist of the band Japanese Breakfast), wrote of INFINITE JEST:

If you allow yourself to trust-fall into the barbed intricacies of the writing, you will discover soft, exquisite humanity as its perennial landing.

She is absolutely right. Her full article, linked HERE, is worth a read. Zauner also wrote the foreward to the 30th Anniversary Edition I read. Maybe I'll read her book next.

Read more

60 SONGS THAT EXPLAIN THE ‘90s by Rob Harvilla

Harvilla’s podcast and companion book of the same name are really funny. I don’t agree with all his takes, but that’s not how people work. If you agree with everybody in the room, you’re probably in the wrong room. Plus, Harvilla is such a funny and insightful writer that even his bad takes made me think and sometimes laugh out loud. In his episode about the Guns & Roses song “November Rain,” he likens it to the Elton John song “Funeral for a Friend.” And while both songs have long instrumental intros, the similarities end there. That said, Harvilla’s description of the cognitive dissonance between Guns & Roses being at their lowest point creatively while being at the highest point of their career was spot on.

There’s also an absolute killer line in the book in which Harvilla likens listening to Céline Dion to “drinking rosé from a fire-hose.”

Next, we have…

WHO’S AFRAID OF KATHY ACKER? (2008)

After reading Kathleen Hanna’s memoir, REBEL GIRL, I wanted to learn a little more about one of her heroes, the writer Kathy Acker. So I found picked up THE ESSENTIAL ACKER, a collection of her writing, and watched this doc from 2008, WHO’S AFRAID OF KATHY ACKER? And after watching the doc, I am even more excited to read the collection.

There is a scene in which Acker is asked about the idea of unmediated language, to which Acker replies, “There’s so much [of] a feeling that any word can mean anything when used by an authority in media, [t]hat I was very interested in, 'Well, what do things look like when not being dictated by an authority?’”

Kathy Acker was a cut-up artist. And in an age where AI-Tech oligarchs, so-called authorities in media, are shoving AI down our throats through their own sort of techno-piracy, one in which machines, not humans, are doing the stealing, I can’t help but wonder what real cut-up artists like Kathy Acker and William S. Burroughs would have thought of AI (I bet they would have hated it) and, more importantly, what we can learn from true cut-up writing, which involves cutting up other people’s art in the same way that collage artists do. You cut out pieces from different places and construct something new. But the key is the “YOU” who is doing the cutting, and the transformative nature of the final work.

People who call themselves “AI Artists” are not real artists because they are using robot middle men owned and operated by tech companies to do the cutting for them. You could argue for hours about whether or not cut-up art is truly transformative. But there is no denying that Kathy Acker made deliberate choices about what to cut-up, be it from Charles Dickens or Don Quixote, and then pasted them together with others in an attempt to create something new. Comparatively, so-called “AI Artists” are more like patrons with no taste who commission what they think is “art” from machines. And what is the cost of their commissioned AI SLOP? The tech grifter oligarchs will say it’s free (for now), while the data centers that power Generative AI are destroying the environment and melting our brains. Don’t forget the old saying, “If you’re not paying for a product, then you’re the product.” Or the fact that Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, famously said, “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.”

In other words, tech oligarchs want people to outsource their own “intelligence” to machines, giving them ultimate control of our minds.

Lastly, we have…

LOSING SKILLS by Carissa Véliz

Speaking of AI melting our brains, I read this great essay by Carissa Véliz, writer and associate professor at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford, in which she argues that, by outsourcing tasks to AI, we risk losing empathy, critical thinking, and creativity. She also highlights how costly, insecure, and unreliable these tools are.

Véliz uses the calculator, a tool that we outsource basic arithmetic to, as a point of comparison. Unlike AI, the calculator is cheap, secure, and, most importantly, reliable. So it's not as big of a deal that we aren't as good at mental math as we used to be. AI tools, on the other hand, have a “dubious relationship with the truth.” Imagine if your calculator didn't always give you the right answer? It would worthless.

Véliz also argues that, by outsourcing creative tasks to AI, critical thinking necessary for the creative process will atrophy. The multitude of choices—some big, some small, some conscious and some subconscious—an artist makes throughout the creative process form a kind of artistic fingerprint. If those choices are outsourced to AI, then the art won’t just become flattened and the artists duller, but I believe that the art will cease to be art at all.

When asked about AI, Bong Joon-ho, director of Parasite, said:

My official answer is, AI is good because it’s the very beginning of the human race finally seriously thinking about what only humans can do. But my personal answer is, I’m going to organize a military squad, and their mission is to destroy AI.

Of course tech oligarchs like Sam Altman wants you to lose your skills to AI. Because once your brain has sufficiently atrophied, then they will make you buy your intelligence back from them on a meter.

Read more

REBEL GIRL by Kathleen Hanna

This is the memoir of Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of Bikini Kill and founder of the Riot Grrl movement. And it is intense. Kathleen Hanna endured some heavy stuff. Her stories are thoughtful, heartbreaking, funny, brutally honest, and straight to the point, not unlike her lyrics. She is a great writer.

One of my favorite parts of the book was her insider perspective on the oh-so-'90s obsession with “selling out,” especially in the punk and alt-rock world she lived in.

RAISED BY GHOSTS by Briana Loewinsohn

I loved this book. It really captured the vibe of the early to mid-90s, down to the fact that everything was brown, everyone was bored all the time, and introspection was the name of the game. The diary entries that are intercut between each page beautifully capture how even the seemingly mundane experiences of teenage life can be deeply meaningful, beautiful and tragic, in the minds of the ones living them.

TWIN PEAKS (Season 1)

I am having such a great time watching Twin Peaks. The performances are fantastic. Everyone is so iconic, from Sherilyn Fenn to Mädchen Amick to Lara Flynn Boyle to James Marshall to Ray Wise to Kimmy Robertson. But Kyle MacLachlan as Agent Dale Cooper takes the cake. Agent Dale Cooper searched for the truth within so that Agent Fox Moulder could search for the truth “out there” in THE X-FILES a couple years later.

The writing is brilliant. The mood. The direction. The music. I can’t believe I never watched past the pilot episode when I first watched it in college. I can’t believe this show was on TV. You can expect a thorough examination of Twin Peaks once I finish. Then there’s the movie, FIRE WALK WITH ME, and the recent season, THE RETURN. I’m gonna watch all of it.

Read more

THE ORANGE EATS CREEPS by Grace Krilanovich

This is an experimental novel written by a fellow Calarts alum, about “Slutty Teenage Hobo Vampire Junkies.” It is never clear whether or not the primary characters are actual, blood-sucking vampires, or if their apparent vampire-ness is an expression of their warped perception of reality as ‘90s teenage outsiders. And by doing so, the book unmoors you from reality too. It doesn’t matter if they’re “really” vampires. What matters is the subjective experience. It’s got a grungy, punk rock vibe. And I loved it.

INFINITE JEST by David Foster Wallace (the first few chapters, at least)

If you Google INFINITE JEST, it won’t take long to come across the term “Lit-Bro” in connection with it. Usually, this would be all I need to decide this book probably isn’t for me. But, given the ‘90s kick I’m on, and that INFINITE JEST is considered by many to be the definitive novel of the ‘90s, I figured I’d give it a shot. I’m only a few chapters in, an I have already laughed out loud.

Of all the things I heard about this book, I never heard anybody talk about how funny it is.

TWIN PEAKS (the first four episodes)

I’m excited to finally finish this show. I watched the pilot episode in college. And, for whatever reason, I stopped there. I was probably freaked out. There is an off-kilter quality to David Lynch’s work that, at times, overwhelms me. When I saw INLAND EMPIRE in the theater, I was frozen with terror, convinced that the theater was haunted and that a poltergeist was giving me some kind of heart attack. In retrospect, knowing what I know now about my anxiety, I was probably having a panic attack.

Now, as a thirty-eight year old who prioritizes his mental health, watching TWIN PEAKS is a completely different experience.

I’ve always been a big believer in the idea that sometimes we’re not ready for certain works of art. Sometimes we’re never ready. And that’s okay. Because there is a lot of art in the world. And not all of it is for everybody. The real lesson has been to keep myself open to the possibility of work coming back around again.

Read more

As a lover of horror films, particularly slashers, I am embarrassed to admit that I had, up until this past weekend, never seen the original Friday the 13th. In fact, I have avoided the Jason Vorhees films altogether. The only one I had seen previously was Freddy vs. Jason, because it was a part of the A Nightmare on Elm Street series, a favorite of mine. But I now understand why the Friday the 13th movie is a classic. And (SPOILER ALERT) it is wild to think about how this film spawned a whole series of films that feature a villain different from the one in the original. In the original, Jason’s mom is the killer, but the rest of the films feature Jason himself. However, a case could be made that Jason is, in fact, the killer.

Once Jason’s mom is revealed to the viewer, it becomes clear that she is hearing Jason’s voice in his head, compelling her to kill. Whether she was merely driven mad by grief, or if she is actually possessed by her son’s ghost is never clarified.

Even in the end, after one of the best literal jump scares in horror history, when young Jason jumps out of the lake to attack the Final Girl in the canoe, it is left up to the viewer’s imagination if that really happened. The Final Girl wakes up in a hospital bed, unsure if the boy who attacked her in the canoe was really there at all.

I will definitely be watching more in the series after this. I want to know how Jason gets his iconic hockey mask!

Arachnophobia (1990)

I have been on a ‘90s kick lately. And I realized that I had never seen this classic ‘90s horror comedy. When I was a kid, this was one of those movies that my friends older siblings would tell us about, describing scenes in order to scare us. I’d pass by it on the shelf in Blockbuster, and the memory of someone else’s description of it would give me goosebumps. Directed by Frank Marshall, it is a fastball straight across the plate. Everyone understands the assignment. Jeff Daniels is great as the city guy who’s scared of spiders. There are some solid jump scares and fun special effects. But the real award goes to John Goodman as the Exterminator.

Slacker (1990)

The last time I saw this movie was in college. And I remember not fully appreciating it at the time. I love Richard Linklater’s movies in general, and was a fan of his when I first saw Slacker. But I remember my main takeaway was that he’d gotten much better as a director since. And while that is true (it was his first feature film, after all), I have a much better appreciation for this movie now. Maybe it’s because I’m 38, and am more nostalgic for the ‘90s than ever. But I really think this film was ahead of its time.

THE NINETIES by Chuck Klosterman

If you are STILL feeling as nostalgic as I am, or simply want to understand what the deal was with Y2K, this is the book for you. Klosterman does a good job of contextualizing the attitudes of Gen X, the cognitive dissonance that defined many aspects of the decade, and how weird it was to come of age in a decade both before and after the internet. Everything from grunge, to Michael Jordan, to the decline of baseball, to the real impact of The Matrix is covered in this book. A must read for anyone who grew up in the ‘90s.

Read more

Hello there! This is just a quick reminder that, while all of my Substack writing is available for free, if you prefer to listen to it, you can access Audio Versions of my essays by becoming a Paid Subscriber! You also get access to the Comments sections and Chats.

One annoying feature of Substack is that, if you don’t record an Audio Version yourself, Substack creates one for you, without your permission, using an A.I. generated voice. If you’ve read any of me recent essays, it should come as no surprise that I am not a fan of this so-called “feature.” And the irony of Substack, a platform claiming to be focused on the wants and needs of writers, stealing those writers’ words to feed into a machine is inescapable.

I prefer hearing a writer’s—or, at least, a human’s—actual voice when I listen to articles or audiobooks. It feels more intimate and personal; there are subtleties of performance that an AI-generated voice cannot capture. And I am not interested in, and am frankly disgusted by the possibility of, our words are being used to train AI to read our work for us.

So please consider becoming a Paid Subscriber. You’ll be supporting a real, human writer, and will hear my real, human voice in return. And while you’re at it, consider reposting with a call for Substack to stop using AI narration without writers’ consent. I have enjoyed Substack so far, and want to stay. So let’s hold them to account and get this “feature” removed. Or, at the very least, make it easier for writers who don’t have the time or desire, like I do, to record their own narration, to opt out of the AI-generated ones.

Thanks!

Read more

Harlan Ellison’s short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream depicts a post-apocalyptic future in which a malicious AI has destroyed all of humanity except for five people, who are kept alive for the sole purpose of being tortured for the rest of time. After attempting to free themselves, only one person is left, transformed by the AI into a gelatinous blob. His last words are, “I have no mouth. And I must scream.”

On the surface, it seems like a gruesome but straightforward cautionary tale about the use of Artificial Intelligence. But re-reading this story through a modern lens, in a world were AI has run amok, its final lines tell us more about what we are allowing ourselves to become: the gelatinous blob, “Smoothly rounded, with no mouth,” our eyes “filled by fog,” reduced to a lump of “soft slippery matter.” The true nightmare it presents is that AI will not help us at all, but will either transform us into something only vaguely resembling humanity, or something much worse. In other words, AI will turn us into itself. While we are fed the lie that AI is a tool that will improve and connect us, it will do the opposite, isolating us and dumbing us down.

The story speaks to the psychology of why we are drawn to AI tools in the first place. Lost, confused, and overwhelmed by modernity, the humans in the story turned to Artificial Intelligence to help get their bearings. But in doing so, they created a weapon that ultimately destroyed and enslaved them. We are doing this now, handing our agency over to AI tools, letting them into everything from autonomous military weapons to the way we create art. When presented with the idea of AI-generated art, Hayao Miyazaki, the creator of beautiful animated films like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, said, “I feel like we are nearing the end of times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves.” AI tools like ChatGPT have been shown to only amplify our fears, not subdue them, leading to paranoia, delusions, hallucinations, and violent behavior.

Take this line from Ellison’s story:

What do you do with the desperation that boils up from your stomach when you know there’s a road out there with your destination at the end of it, but it’s too damned dark to even find the road? You turn and turn and turn around like a dog trying to escape. Shrieks in the cavity of your head that so urgently needs to be filled with facts and challenges.

In short, it is fear that draws us into AI’s grasp: fear of death, fear of our own inadequacy. We search for distraction, for help, for something to hold onto. But the thing we grab onto is our own tail. Like an AI Ouroboros, we chew and chew and chew our own tail until we have shredded every aspect of our humanity, leaving nothing but a grotesque reflection of our former selves.

A lighter view of this future is depicted in the animated film Wall-E, in which humanity flees Earth on a big spaceship after rendering the planet uninhabitable, only to be carted around space by a malicious AI program that keeps them sedated and docile with never-ending entertainment and floating La-Z-boy chairs.

These humans are turned into a kid-friendly version of Ellison’s gelatinous blob. But Wall-E is ultimately sympathetic to AI, showing that there is a distinction between “good” AI and “bad” AI, depending on the degree to which we hand over the reigns.

The villain in Wall-E is also more akin to HAL-9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, whose motivation is tied to a cold adherence to a mission directive at odds with the goals of the humans for whom the mission has changed.

This idea of the cold, analytical machine at odds with humanity is a common theme of AI fiction—or, I should say, fiction about AI. But what Ellison’s story captures is the way that AI tools of our present reflect our ugliest and all-too-human emotions like fear, envy, and hatred to a psychopathic effect. Take this quote from AM, the AI villain of Ellison’s story:

THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU.

Now, take this scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey (linked below), in which HAL-9000 turns on Dave and the rest of the ship’s crew:

Compared to HAL-9000’s cold, calculating tone, AM’s vitriol seems almost cartoonish. Sadly, the AI tools that tech companies are shoving down our throats have more in common with AM than HAL. But we cannot allow ourselves to becomes the gelatinous blobs. We might be better off pulling the plug, the way Dave does in 2001. Because these so-called tools, at best, become a crutch, and at worst, drive us insane. And the tech companies that create them want exactly that. We either need to create strict parameters around their use, or simply shut them down. Because we cannot trust the mission directives created by tech companies to have our best interests at heart.

Read more

And I'm talking about the first Terminator, not the second one where the A.I. killing machine becomes the good guy. All respect to Judgement Day, but the first one has always been my favorite. The term Skynet, the name of the tech company responsible for creating the Terminators and nearly destroying humanity, has become a catch-all term for the potential A.I. Apocalypse. And for good reason. A.I. tools are already being used by the government for surveillance, weapons targeting, and beyond. Take this scene in which Kyle Reese is describing the Terminator.

The way he describes how the Terminator disguises itself as human is a good description of LLMs like ChatGPT. They are intentionally disguised as human, designed to placate, in order to get inside people’s heads. People confuse the fact that AI makes people’s lives easier with some kind of intelligence. But hammers make our lives easier too, and we don’t think they are intelligent. Even in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, after Terminator helps John Connor save the day, it incinerates itself, saying, “I know now why you cry, but it is something I can never do.” The Terminator admits that it is not an actual living being. If only ChatGPT would do the same.

Subscribe now

One of my favorite details in this film is that if you start a timer at both the Terminator’s and Kyle Reese’s arrivals in the present from their future, it takes them both the same amount of time to get clothes, weapons, and figure out what year it is. For Reese, it’s simply more difficult. This is a great takeaway for the prevalence of AI today. Tech companies are shoving AI tools down our throats by selling it as something that makes our lives easier. But easier is not always better. Things might have been easier for the Terminator, but he also punched a hole through a dude for his clothes. And by relying on these tools, we risk atrophying our own abilities.

2. Virtuosity

This movie reminds me of Grok. Ever wonder what would happen if you fed an AI nothing but the toxic waste on Twitter? You'd get a Nazi Troll machine like Grok. Ever wonder what would happen if you fed an A.I. nothing but dossiers on the world's worst serial killers? You'd get a program that would make Hannibal Lecter look like a wimp, like Sid in Virtuosity.

But the fears and warnings played out in this movie are all too real dangers today. AI chatbots are encouraging child suicide and playing a role in mass shootings, murder-suicides, and other incidents of real world violence.

3. The Stepford Wives

The Stepford Wives is what happens if incels have ChatGPT girlfriends. The film is based on Ira Levin's novel of the same name. And the guy who runs the town is basically a cross between AI tech billionaire like Elon Musk, Manosphere influencers, and old Christian conservatives. From deepfake pornography to catfishing to stalking, AI tools are facilitating the abuse of women and it is only getting worse. AI tools are also being used to create misogynistic propaganda aimed at men, normalizing violence against women and fueling toxic online communities like the “Manosphere.”

4. Alphaville

If you want to see an old school, film noir-style detective take down an AI-controlled city, then this is the movie for you. Lemmy Caution has one mission, to destroy the central computer that makes mindless drones of everyone in Alphaville.

Free thought is out the window in a world controlled by AI. The successful development of these AI products rely on our usage to train them. If we don't use them, then AI has nothing to learn from. And by using them, we are complicit in our own subjugation. To quote the detective Lemmy Caution, “I refuse to become what you call normal.”

This film is also a great example of how you can make a great science fiction movie without crazy visual effects, props, or sets.

5. The Congress

This film, loosely based on The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem, is about what's currently happening in the entertainment industry. It’s about an actress who signs away her likeness to a production studio who will put an AI version of her in films for the rest of time, under the condition that she never performs again, be it in a film or a local theater production. In the future, her likeness is still used in a hallucinated reality consumed by the majority of civilization, whose dystopian reality has become to much to bear, while an elite class live in floating airships above. If this feels a little too close to the present, you're not alone.

That’s it! Those are my recommendations. If you have any others, let me know in the comments!

Leave a comment

Read more

It’s been about a year since we got those rejections, I’m in the thick of book two, and I’m plan book three. I like the feeling of having two projects in different stages of the process. In film terms, book two is in production and book three is in pre-production. Practically speaking, what’s nice about it is that whenever I send chunks of book two for feedback, I can work on book three as a way to resist the temptation of dipping back into other book before getting feedback. It’s also a good idea to step away from a project from time to time so that you can look at it with fresh eyes. Elmore Leonard (I think) used to say that you should never think about your book when you’re not writing it, but that is easier said than done. So having a different project that you can consciously think about instead is a great workaround.

That said, I think two or three project at different stages is probably all I can handle. Any more and I start feeling like Bilbo Baggins at the beginning of the Fellowship of the Ring, like “butter scraped over too much bread.”

I know people who aren’t this way at all. Some prefer to focus all their attention on one project and only one project at a time. While others live for the thrill of balancing projects like spinning plates. There’s no right way to eat a Reeses. There’s only what works.

This is kind of how I feel about writing advice in general. It’s kind of like the pirate’s code from Pirate of the Caribbean, “more like guidelines and actual rules.”

That said, I do think it’s a good idea to know what the guidelines are before you break them.

I’ve tried all sorts of writing advice. Some works for me and some doesn’t. And some of it works around 90% of the time. Big rules like, “Show, Don’t Tell” and “Write what you know” are some of the most sensible, but if applied too strictly can suffocate your creativity. Sometimes you need to “Tell” instead of “Show.” But you just have to know that it’ll slow down the pace of the story. And as for “Write what you know,” while many people take that saying a little too literally, I like Chuck Wendig’s explanation from his writing blog, Terribleminds:

What it is, I think, is that in the writing of fiction — whether you’re writing about a broken marriage, a troubled assassin, a tribal war between the moonicorns and the comet-ponies — you’ll be writing about moments that will be strengthened by drawing on elements of your life. It’s about the things you understand, not merely the things you “know.”

He expands upon this in his full “Write What You Know” article, which I highly recommend you read. You should also read Chuck Wending’s books. They’re great.

The point is, whether you’re talking about how many projects you can reasonably manage at once or the more creative, crafty problems in the writing itself, it all comes down to what works—not just what works for you, but for the reader as well. You might think you can juggle ten projects at once, but the people who have to read your coffee-stained, typo-ridden ramblings might disagree.

There is, however, one set of guidelines, one Pirate’s Codex, that I refer back to again and again: Elements of Style by Strunk and White. It teaches you the proper way to use a semicolon, yes. But it also lays out the key elements of clear writing, the bare bones of style needed to write a clear sentence, or paragraph, or book, whether fiction or nonfiction. I still have the copy my grandma Harriet Harvey—also a writer—gave to me in High School (pictured below). As a fellow artist and writer, she saw that spark in me at an early age. And every time I flip through its pages, I imagine her doing the same at various points in her career, and I feel like I’m keeping the writerly spark of my ancestors alive.

Read more

I like our local Y. But there is one person who gets in the way: our local Dickhead Gym Bro. His behavior in the gym is annoying, to say the least. I don’t know his political leanings, but given that I have caught him mad-dogging my “Make Orwell Fiction Again” t-shirt on several occasions, I’m guessing he’s not a fan of the idea that Trump and his regime are manifesting the authoritarian dystopia of George Orwell’s 1984.

My workouts usually take about 30 minutes. I have a plan and I try to keep chit-chat to a minimum, because my kids are only be in the Y daycare center for a short period, and I want to get a bit of writing in too before pick-up. But then Mr. Gun Show (that’s what I call him) shows up, flexing his muscles and bobbing his head as he assesses how best to assert his dominance over the space, and I curse under my breathe. Because now my workout might take up to an hour—and not a pleasant hour.

Mr. Gun Show checks every box of the Poor Gym Etiquette checklist. He always sets his weights on a bench and just lets them sit there while he chats up women who clearly do not want to talk to him (the one conversation I overheard was him bragging about his gun collection). He also does pull-ups on the bar above the squat rack, instead of one of the two dedicated pull-up bars that don’t obstruct people (like me) who need to use the squat rack, and always does super-sets where he jumps from spot to spot, machine to machine, one set at a time, so he’s technically using at least half the machines in the gym at once, all while stopping periodically to chat up more women. He even chooses to do barbell bicep curls in the squat rack, despite there being a designated bicep curl rack right next to it. And, if that wasn’t enough, he never wipes down any of his equipment.

So, the other day, I caught him mad-dogging my "“Make Orwell Fiction Again” shirt again, and I remembered this quote from Orwell’s novel 1984, in which the villain O’Brien monologues while torturing the protagonist Winston:

We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.

Power is not a means; it is an end.

The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

Like the Party in 1984, Mr. Gun Show’s behavior in the gym is done to assert his dominance; he does it for its own sake; he does it because he can. He is not interested in the well-being of others. He is interested in his own power. Now I could go into a whole thing about the “Manosphere,” and how men are being sucked into the alt-right pipeline via Gym Bro Content, but that would just be exhausting. Because these days, it’s hard to not give in to despair. When I listen to the news in the morning and evening, it feels like we are on the brink of World War 3. But it’s important to stay vigilant. That is why I think that it is more valuable at this point to draw attention to alternative voices that men can listen to for inspiration. And that is why George Orwell is my gym buddy, he is one of the voices in my head when Mr. Gun Show is hogging all the equipment and bragging about his weapons.

In his small way, Mr. Gun Show is an example of what we are seeing today with Trump and the MAGA movement trying to dominate spaces and make them their own through a multitude of aggressive power tactics that are done so blatantly and pervasively that we risk normalizing it, which is exactly what the Party in 1984 does. Orwell reminds me that one of the reasons to get stronger is to be able to defend ourselves against the fascists that are trying to take over our country. And I'm not the only one thinking this way. There's a great NPR story about the “Swoleteriat,” a subset of leftist gym content that incorporates leftist politics and physical fitness. It goes into the long history of leftist fitness in America, going back to the socialist, abolitionist Turner gyms and the Black Panther Party.

So, to do my small part for the Swoletariat, here are some quotes from George Orwell’s 1984 to think about at the gym:

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.

This is the America that Trump wants, one in which he and his rich friends are constantly stepping on everyone else's faces so that they can profit. Period. Full stop.

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.

Trump called himself the “President of Peace,” but now he has the U.S. engaged in an illegal war with Iran. He says that he's trying to save us from a regime that poses an “imminent threat” to the U.S, and he claims to be “anti-forever war,” but that is the opposite of what he is.

Subscribe now

One of the reasons why allying himself with conservative Christians has been so effective for him is because people with blind faith are willing to look past the atrocities he commits, believing that the ends justify the means. You can hear it in the language conservative politicians use when talking about the war with Iran; they use the phrase “short-term struggle for long-term gain.” But this kind of catchy slogan is designed to sweep moral corruption of the present under the rug. It's designed to keep people ignorant.

Big Brother is Watching You.

Domestic surveillance of American citizens is at an all time high under Trump. For more information on this, check out the ACLU’s breakdown of Trump’s surveillance efforts (linked HERE), particularly the section titled BIG BROTHER SURVEILLANCE.

The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.

This line reminds me of a scene in the Star Wars spin-off THE MANDALORIAN, in which an Imperial officer says that “people don't actually want freedom, they want order.” Watch the scene below:

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

Just think about all the statues that Trump has had torn down, all the buildings and departments that he has had renamed, all the museums that he has had altered to reflect a version of history that he prefers. The Department of Defense is now the Department of War, while Trump plans to funnel billions of taxpayer dollars into his Board of Peace, whose primary job, it seems, is to perpetuate war.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Trump is manifesting the authoritarian dystopia of 1984. So we must be ever diligent to not become desensitized to or avert our eyes from his crimes. But to do this without falling into despair, we must strengthen and fortify our minds. Because American citizens will need to be strong enough to put the broken pieces of our country back together. I just hope it’s not too late.

Share Nick Gibney’s Story Board

Read more

I wrote about PREY, Dan Trachtenberg’s first Predator movie, when it came out in 2022 (linked here), and about his most recent one, PREDATOR: BADLANDS, last month (linked here). This week I will be talking about his and co-director Joshua Wassung’s animated film, PREDATOR: KILLER OF KILLERS (2025), in relation to the other two.

Watch the trailer below:

As both an animator and a fan of the PREDATOR movies, it was great to see a film that took advantage of the creative opportunities available with animation in order to push the limits of what a Predator film can be. You can defy the laws of physics and realism to a degree in animation that would be much harder to get away with in live-action. And to even try could be prohibitively expensive. The live-action PREDATOR: BADLANDS, for example, had a reported production budget of $105 million, while the animated KILLER OF KILLERS, which tells multiple stories set in different time periods in different parts of the world, as well as the alien Yautja home world, had a budget of $50 million (less than half).

But I think one big reason Trachtenberg’s Predator films have become comfort watches for me right now is because, in a time when ICE agents are given carte blanche by fascist ideologues to invade cities and murder American citizens, it is comforting to watch movies where relatively ordinary individuals win against the Predator, a relentless invader with superior firepower, surveillance technology, and a blatant disregard for the law.

With timely themes of survival, revenge, honor, and duty, these films also look to the future. BADLANDS, for example, has one of the Predators—or Yautja, as they are called—discover the problems inherent in the Yautja ethos. Dek, the Yautja protagonist, is like someone who was born into the MAGA manosphere but is slowly de-radicalized.

The epigraph at the beginning of PREDATOR: KILLER OF KILLERS, attributed to the Yautja Codex, reads:

Go forth among the stars and seek only the strongest prey. They shall be your trophy. Become the killer of killers.

And the epigraph at the beginning of PREDATOR: BADLANDS reads:

Yautja are prey to none. Friend to none. Predator to all.

The Yautja code is one of dominance, in which they set the rules. But they also change the rules as they see fit, not unlike the Trump administration. For example, in PREY, the Predator supposedly only fights people it deems to be a threat, but the minute anyone becomes too much of a threat, it uses advanced technology that gives it an unfair advantage. In other words, the Predators are cheaters whose ideals are only useful as long as they give them an advantage.

But PREDATOR: BADLANDS directly examines the problems inherent in the Yautja code by telling the story of the Yautja, Dek, who learns to grow beyond his clan’s ideology. He discovers that not only does survival rely more on cooperation and protection than it does on predation, but that there is more to life than being “prey to none.”

We humans need to start learning this lesson quick if we are going to survive.

Read more

I’d love to do reviews for everything I’ve been watching and reading this winter, but I’m on a bit of a deadline, so I just can’t. But I will do what I can. So here’s what I have been watching and reading so far this winter. First, let’s start with:

WHAT I’VE BEEN WATCHING

I saw THE LONG WALK, which was based on Stephen King’s novel (when he was writing as Richard Bachman). It’s a dystopian film that is not so far from our current reality. And I really liked it. It is a harrowing film. But, as is the case with many of King’s works, he is able to find humor as well. His work always reminds me that, even in our darkest moments, humans are capable of finding a sliver of light. The two lead actors are great, played by Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson (who was awesome as the android in ALIEN: ROMULUS).

There are a few really good murder mystery shows I’ve been watching.

HIS & HERS is a show that, I haven’t finished yet, but my wife and I have been watching together and enjoying.

SEVEN DIALS is a three part series on Netflix based on an Agatha Christie novel. It is classic cozy mystery. And the star, Mia Mckenna-Bruce, is fantastic. I really hope we get more mystery adventures with her and this character.

Lastly, I rewatched PREDATOR 2, which I don’t think I’d seen since high school, late at night watching cable. Sometimes you just need to watch Danny Glover call a buff alien “one ugly mother $%@!-er.”

Next, let’s talk about:

WHAT I’M CURRENTLY READING

I am currently juggling a few books at once, which is not uncommon.

I’m re-reading BRAVE NEW WORLD, because sometimes we need to read a dystopia when we’re living in a dystopia.

SERPENT & DOVE by Shelby Mahurin. That’s really good. It’s a YA fantasy.

THE EXTRAORDINARY DISAPPOINTMENTS OF LEOPOLD BERRY by Ransom Riggs, who you might know from his HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN series.

RITE OF PASSAGE by Alexei Panshin

Those are what I’m currently reading. We’ll see which one sticks. Sometimes I get overwhelmed if I’m reading too many books at once. But it’s all about finding the one that’s most grabbing me [at the moment]. Right now, it’s kind of a toss up between BRAVE NEW WORLD and SERPENT & DOVE. But I’m also really enjoying Ransom Riggs’ new book. RITE OF PASSAGE I keep dipping into, but we’ll see…

Lastly, let’s talk about:

WHAT I FINISHED READING THIS WINTER (SO FAR):

I read LEGEND by Marie Lu, which was amazing. It’s part of a series. I want to read the rest. But there’s just so many other books I want to read.

HERE LIES A VENGEFUL BITCH by Codie Crowley. That book was great. It’s an awesome title as well.

THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES by Agatha Christie. This was the first Hercule Poirot novel. And I liked it. Agatha Christie—you can’t go wrong.

LEGENDARY FRYBREAD DRIVE-IN edited Cynthia Leitich Smith. It’s an anthology of interconnected short stories. Really good.

IT by Stephen King. I’ve tried to read IT so many times over the years. And it was just one of those books that, I think, intimidated me. It’s very long. But I’m also a big believer in the idea that sometimes you’re just not ready for a book. And you need to just accept that and get to it when you are ready. And I was finally ready. I really wanted to read it in preparation for WELCOME TO DERRY (which my last Substack was about). And I’m so glad I did. It’s such an amazing book. I’ll probably do a whole Substack newsletter about it at some point.

THE DEAD CAT TAIL ASSASSINS by P. Djèlí Clark. Clark is one of my favorite contemporary authors. I read everything he writes. THE DEAD CAT TAIL ASSASSINS was no exception. It’s like a fantasy Terminator story.

And that’s it! There are some books that I left out, but mostly because they are nonfiction research books that I read for the books I’m currently writing. Maybe at some point, if (when) my books get published, I’ll talk about the stuff I read for research. But, as of right now, I don’t see why those would be of any interest.

Hope you are staying warm. Talk soon. And please, let me know what you are reading and watching this winter in the comments. I would love to hear it!

Read more

So, I had one goal over the holiday break and that was to watch IT: WELCOME TO DERRY, the prequel series to Stephen King’s 1986 novel IT, about a group of friends, known as the Losers Club, who are terrorized by a shapeshifting entity known as Pennywise the Clown in their hometown of Derry, Maine.

I loved it. This is how you do a prequel. I wrote a Substack a while back about the challenge of making prequels, specifically regarding the PREDATOR prequel, PREY (directed by Dan Trachtenberg), in which I talked about how, instead of trying to “out-Predator the Predator,” the focus always has to be on character. And WELCOME TO DERRY does just that. Instead of trying to out-Pennywise Pennywise, the show introduces a number of characters who play an important role in the history of the town and its relationship with the evil clown, and tell stories that, in the novel, were mentioned briefly or only alluded to.

One such opportunity was found in the connection that Indigenous Wabanaki people had with Pennywise the Clown long before the arrival of European colonizers, and how that connection endured through the centuries leading up to the events of King’s book. To be clear, the Wabanaki people were never mentioned in the original book. But WELCOME TO DERRY shows how much of a missed opportunity that was, especially when you consider the way that Indigenous American culture and history was used as a plot device in the book to enable the Losers Club to understand and combat Pennywise. Through these Wabanaki characters, the show not only corrects an odd omission, it actually deepens the original story by finding thematic connections between the experiences of the Wabanaki people and the book. Kimberly Norris Guerrero, who plays Rose, a Wabanaki guardian of secret knowledge, said, “There was a first Losers Club. And that Losers Club was a group of indigenous kids.”

John Bear Mitchell, a Lecturer of Wabanaki Studies at the University of Maine, who served as a consultant on the series, hit the nail on the head when he said:

When we look at immigration or colonization, we (Wabanaki people) followed the path of respect. Everybody should have the ability to eat, to be housed, to pray in any way they want. So why not let these people land on our shores? That’s the compassion that we showed, and it backfired. What happened in the meantime? Did we lose our compassion? No, we didn’t lose our compassion. We actually kept it, and we’re dealing with situations that worked against us in a way.

This idea of compassionate people facing off with an evil force that has invaded their land is what the novel IT is all about. Pennywise the Clown is an apex American colonizer. It crashes on the east coast, burrows its way into the land, and engrains itself in the collective psyche of those who live there, exploiting their fears in order to hunt and consume them. But, in the end, It is unable to break the collective spirit of the Losers Club. In fact, it is the indomitable spirit of the protagonists, in both WELCOME TO DERRY and the original novel, that enables them to overcome; their compassion allows them to endure. As Rose says, “Derry is a beautiful place. But things do happen from time to time. Never a bad idea to keep the people you love close.”

Read more

This Substack is, in part, a response to a New Yorker article called “How Music Criticism Lost Its Edge,” about the transition of art criticism from harsh to “poptimism,” with the belief that critics are slowly getting mean again. But it is also a continuation of two previous Substacks of mine:

After reading the New Yorker article (which I liked), I read a number of responses to the article claiming that it didn’t go far enough, that we should clap and cheer at the idea of making critics mean again. But that is the wrong lesson to learn, in my opinion. What we don’t want is for critics to just swing like a pendulum, back and forth, from too nice to too mean, over and over again. Maybe, just maybe, there's a middle ground, something to be learned from both extremes.

The obvious criticism of Poptimism is that critics have just become tools of The Man, not wanting to bite the hand that feeds, so they just play nice, essentially becoming a type of promoter, while the problem of older, meaner critics, is that they wrote as if their critiques were carved in stone, objective truths about art. This was intentional, done to give art criticism the sense of serious attention they felt it deserved. But it was also pretentious as hell. I’m looking at you Harold Bloom and Manny Farber. So maybe the middle ground between false objectivity and Poptimism is just plain old constructive criticism, while acknowledging that *gasp* the critic might be wrong.

But what does constructive art criticism look like?

Well, it should probably focus on specific problems, not broad issues. It should offer solutions, present examples, and, most importantly, embrace subjectivity, those classic “I” statements. It acknowledges that subjectivity is a part of both art and art criticism. It should also come from a genuine appreciation of the art and the artist. This is the most important part. I don’t know if there is any value in critiquing art that you think is without merit. I expand more upon this in my Substack, “What Is the Point of a Bad Review?” Criticism should come from a place of encouragement. And, as such, it shouldn’t just be a total dunk-fest. Nor should it come from a place of, “if this was MY movie, etc.” That’s how critics get the reputation that they are only critics because they can’t make art of their own.

There is value in criticism, but if you’re writing a critique in the hopes that the artist might read it and learn something, wouldn’t you want to write it in a way that the artist would want to listen to? The same goes for if your goal is to elevate the conversation that readers and viewers have about the art they experience. So, maybe, instead of reveling in the return of mean critics, in the pendulum swinging back to its opposing point, we should be trying to focus on that equilibrium point, that fuzzy middle ground.

Read more