I'm going to be "arrested" on Thursday, Sept. 27, and carted off to "jail" at the Outback Steakhouse in PC.
While it's
not a real jail, it's even more important, as I'm raising bail to help
children and adults with muscle disease in my community who are
supported by the vital work of the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA).
I might not be able to rely on good behavior to get out, so that's why I
need your help: I need you to donate to my bail! Just CLICK HERE to make a secure donation, or you can visit the site MDA set up for me and click on the DONATE TO ME button.
Debra and I visited Biloxi, Miss., this week. While she was at the VA, being put through her paces, I drove along US 98 along the shoreline where the casinos used to be (they have moved, and the ruins of their former pre-Katrina locations remain) and stopped in at the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art, drawn in by the beautiful architecture (designed by Frank Gehry).
Named for George Ohr, "the mad potter of Biloxi," (1857-1918), the museum is much more than just his work. It has his ceramics as well as centers for African American art, a reconstruction of a historic house destroyed by Katrina, and other special exhibits. (Entrance was $10, and the exhibits weren't staffed at the time I visited, so I just stayed to the freebies.) In the main lobby, I viewed the work of Trailer McQuilkin (incredible sculptures of delicate and endangered plants that he made from thin sheets of copper. You should check these out.)
I looked at a small exhibit of ceramics that showed some of the historic pieces unearthed in the area, visited the gift shop, had a coffee in the cafe, then took the elevator to the roof overlook. These images below were taken from the overlook across the campus of several buildings.
Next, I descended the winding exterior stairs into a grove of oaks, passed the various "pods" and went to the sidewalk along US 98 to get another shot of the grounds.
Here's another view of the silvery pods showing what appears to be some damage from a fallen oak limb to the one on the right:
Anyway, I really liked hanging out at this place, passing the time.
Obviously, still under construction, but for a moment it was like strolling through the future. I'm hoping that's a metaphor for something.
Peace.
(The quote on the wall reads: "I am the apostle of individuality, the brother of the human race. But I must be myself. And I want every pot to be itself. This pot is here. And I am the potter who was.")
I watched the pilot episode of NBC's new sci-fi-ish adventure series "Revolution" last night. It is still up on the NBC website as of this writing, to view for free (you will have to sit through some commercials during the show, and be warned that the volume on the commercials is about 4 times that of the program).
After a brief teaser that shows the power going out all over the world, the episode jumps 15 years into the future, where the survivors have formed 18th-century villages that pay tribute to feudal lords and "republics." Nothing electrical operates, not even batteries. A young woman named Charly (read as "Katniss" -- she's a hunter and awesome with a crossbow) is sent on a quest to find her uncle in Chicago after some bad stuff goes down at home.
That's all the plot I'm giving away.
I enjoyed the show, though I would have liked to have seen a little more hardship on the road between the village and Chicago; it didn't seem like that much of a trek, which made me wonder why the characters didn't have more of a connection to each other. If Chicago is only a day's march away, you'd have thought Charly and her uncle might have met before.
'Life After People'
Revolution is produced and directed by John (Iron Man) Favreau, executive produced by JJ Abrams (Star Trek), and stars Billy Burke as a swordswinging badass and costars someone you never heard of (Tracy Spiridakos)as Charly. It has epic scope, a neat conspiracy, some teasers of things to come. The action sequences are engaging and the scenery is epic.
Seeing the wreckage of the modern world, I was reminded of a History Channel show called "Life After People" that showed you what would happen to our world if we all just disappeared one day. It really wouldn't take all that long for the drains to back up and the wilderness to eat away our proudest constructions.
The concept also brought to mind the excellent novels "Ariel" and "Elegy Beach" by Steven R. Boyett (a former Gainesville resident), except "the Change" that swept over the world in these books ended all technology and brought magic and magical creatures into our world. (I highly recommend these novels; Boyett's treatment of magic as a sort of mental mathematics is incredible, and his characters are human and engrossing.) One of my favorite scenes in the second novel takes place when the characters locate a "bubble" where technology still works and magic doesn't; they take turns listening to an iPod; the young ones are in tears because they've never heard such incredible music, and never will again.
"Revolution" has no fantasy or magical elements to the story, but it has a palpable sense of danger and loss. There is clearly a scientific reason that the lights went out, and I suspect Charly will get to the bottom of it by the end of the season, opening new questions to explore. Check the show out. It premieres Sept. 17 on NBC, if you don't want to stream it.
I've been M.I.A. on this blog (I almost wrote D.O.A., which at least metaphorically speaking would not have been incorrect) for a while now. Lots of reasons, no excuses (I mean, I haven't even done the lazy thing and posted a link to my weekly column). It's a strange time to be me, with one transitional status after another washing over the family. Suffice to say, I apologize and pledge to do better.
We visited the "Clothing Optional" artists reception at CityArts Cooperative Saturday evening:
Martin Trejo, left, and Nathan Simmons
Then we drove over to Rosemary Beach to enjoy my son's band (The Offer) performing an acoustic set at Amavida.
Friday, we took a couple of hours to look at rental properties (we're trying to sell our house), and Saturday we spent a few more hours combing various neighborhoods looking for rental signs. I don't even remember Sunday. I need a nap.
Anyway, I'm back, and for the 19 of you who care, I'm returning to a more regularly-scheduled program. Peace.
Had one tonight. Cracked this story I started last night. It incorporates elements from ideas I first churned at the Rosemary conference, as I think I mentioned already. But it's a new thing, and I think it works. I'm pretty pleased right now, but then, I'm not working on the details of it yet. That will be tomorrow, when I begin to force the parts into a shape.
But this is a cool place to be in right this moment. To paraphrase Hannibal Smith, I love it when a plot comes together.
Macro image of deep ocean worm Taken from Telegram.co.uk
This is what I'm working on tonight:
A horror short story. An original creature (not a vampire, werewolf or zombie). At least three deaths. Taking place in Century.
And I'm stealing all of my own ideas from the recent writers conference prompts to get there.
Wish me luck. Peace.
This week I want to talk about reboots. Not the kind that the guys on “I.T. Crowd” refer to when they answer the phone and instead of saying “hello” say “Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on?”
I’m talking about remaking things that worked well enough the first time. Restarting franchises. Reworking old concepts. Or worse, reworking new concepts.
I don’t know about you, but as a consumer of movies, TV and other mass media, I’m getting tired of reboots. Even the ones that are good (and some are very good indeed).
In recent years, we’ve seen “Clash of the Titans,” “The Thing” (presented as a prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 movie “The Thing”), “Footloose,” “X-Men: First Class” (a reboot that threw out continuity established in the initial X-Men films), “The Karate Kid,” “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” “Arthur,” “Conan,” “Fright Night,” “Hawaii 5-0,” “Nikita,” “Teen Wolf,” “Thundercats,” “True Grit,” “21 Jump Street,” “The Three Stooges” and “Star Trek.”
(I’m sure there were many more, but these were the ones that came to mind. I haven’t included here movies or TV shows based on classic literature and that so often are adapted, such as “Sherlock Holmes” or “The Three Musketeers.”)
And don’t forget the lesser English language versions of recent foreign films “Let the Right One In” (remade as “Let Me In”) and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”
Here’s a partial list of remakes/reboots either currently playing or coming soon to a media outlet near you: “Mockingbird Lane” (a TV reboot of “The Munsters”), “Total Recall,” “Dallas,” “Dark Shadows,” “The Crow,” “Red Dawn,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “Dredd,” “The Lone Ranger,” “Robocop,” “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “The Amazing Spider-Man,” a reboot of a perfectly good movie released in 2002.
Since the third Spider-Man film came out in 2007, only five years ago, doesn’t it seem too early to retell his origin? Or are we supposed to be so much better than 2002 already that we can improve upon the Sam Raimi version? It’s gotten to the point that you almost would expect reboots a month or two after the original.
That’s what DC Comics seems to be embracing. The company rebooted its 70-something-year-old history last September (that’s just 10 months ago) with new versions of classic characters, re-establishing their origins in an attempt to modernize them and entice new readers. A few months later, DC’s “second wave” of titles launched with “Earth 2,” an alternate world where the same basic heroes have slightly different origins.
This September, DC is putting out “No. 0” issues of each book, telling the origin stories of these characters (something the ongoing books have at least addressed already). Meanwhile, the company is releasing a series of original graphic novels subtitled “Earth One” that — again — reveal alternative modern origins for classic characters such as Batman and Superman.
And next summer, a new Superman film will hit theaters and focus on another new origin story. We will get to see Russell Crowe play Jor-El (Marlon Brando’s character in the Christopher Reeve series of films) and Kevin Costner as Pa Kent. That’s only a handful of years after “Superman Returns” (2006) failed to reboot the franchise.
Couldn’t they just turn it off and turn it back on again?
