Olympic Dragons?

Is it just me, or does the NBC coverage of the Winter Olympic feature the promo for HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON on repeat? Not only that, but they have Bob Costas integrating the advertising for a Viking kiddie flick into his dialogue (to his credit, Bob seems to be able to pull it off without choking on his words....)

False advertising

To quote Peter Griffin...wanna know what grins my gears?

Okay, there are many things that cause the red stuff flowing in these veins to reach a boil...today's source of gripiness is EVONY. Yes, if you've been anywhere on the Web during the last year, you've probably seen those chesy ad's featuring a busty young woman in a low-cut faux-peasant or princess outfit, along with some cheesy come-hither line like "How may I serve you, my lord" wink wink, nudge nudge...all deceptive advertising for yet another HTML based strategy RPG that rapidly becomes as boring as watching whale poop dry...always be afraid of anything whose advertising is more interesting than the final product. Like going to Albuquerque. Or Playing Magic: the Gathering sober.

Just another bloody update

Slowly but sure, the re-re-re-rediting process continues….

Percy jackson...what a waste of time!

I saw Pecry Jackson and the Olympians over the weekend, and walked out of the theatre with that all-too-depressingly-familiar sensation of having wasted ten bucks and two hours of my life, neither of which I will ever get back.

Pretty much anyone with half a brain can see that this basically a rip-off of Harry Potter, another example of if one is good, twenty are better. And yes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…but come on! They weren’t even trying here! Five minutes after the opening credits and it was pretty clear what the plot of the movie would be, who the true villain was, and basically how everything would go. It was like the screenwriters had a coming-of-age-fantasy-tale checklist and were ticking off the items one by one. “Mother abducted by evil dark lord villain…check. Tough girl romantic interest...check. Romantic interest and male lead initially hate each other, but then change their minds…check Golden boy school/camp/dorm mate who starts out as a true friend but turns out to be a baddie in disguise…check.”

Originality isn’t something Hollywood is known for these days, but couldn’t they at least have made an effort, instead of employing a cut-and-paste plot that a fifth-rate hack could have written while drunk, stones and tripping? Not to mention Pierce Brosnan as a centaur…you could tell he was just putting in the bare minimum of effort in order to justify a paycheck.

I could and links to a few reviews, but why bother? Here’s the IMDB board for this piece of drek…my opinion is by no means unique.

Fantasy Olympics

The Olympics are here. Great, two weeks of non-stop coverage of sports that at any other time would be regarding as unspeakably obscure. Speed skating....bobsledding...curling? What's next, icefishing? Gold medal for the guy who catches the biggest winter tout, bonus points if he does it drunk?

Then again, I never really got sports in general, so all this goodwill and brotherhoodiness makes the unrepentant cynic in me snarl with rage. Still, after a moments though, perhaps there would be a way to create a fantasy version of the Olympic games, one that doesn't suck, guaranteed to draw high ratings. For instance:

Instead of ice dancing (which seems like figure skating, only more inane) we have Yeti wrestling. Of course, there's no evidence that Yeti's actually exist, but if they did, then we should put one in a cage and have the best fighters in the world step in for one-on-one combat. Winner to be determined by numbers of grabs, pins...oh yeah, and actually coming out alive.

Gnome soccer - same as the regular game, only instead of a FIFA approved ball, we have twelve-inch high mythical nature spirit being booted across the field. That fact that it can run on it's own should play hob with the off-sides rule...

And my personal favorite - orc headbutting. The name says it all, the athlete gets into a headbashing contest with an an orc. The one who lasts the longest before falling passing out get the gold and a years supply of aspirin.

Err...regarding my novel

First, a rant.

I really, really, REALLY HATE editing. After spending the better part of a year doing a line by line edit of my novel, I am now forced to pull it from the virtual bookshelf because...well, I won't go into details, but it turns out that a years worth of detailed editing wasn't enough.

Okay...so now I'm gonna get drunk. Really drunk. The kind of drunk that involves many empty bottles of strong drink with exotic names. Then, after the headache wears off, it's back to the keyboard. And this I'll get it right, and get it done quick.

Never fear, THE STORM AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD will be back....sigh....

Whelan-ized

Snow it's snowing...which brings to mind the idea of fantasy and snow...which brings to mind an old Joan D. Vinge novel, The Soow Queen, which brings to mind the guy who did the cover art fro that book, Michael Whelan. In the world of fantasy and scifi art, Whelan is something of a giant. When you think of some of the biggest books in the genre over the last few decades (as well as some of the more awful offerings out there) a Whelan-painted cover is on the front more often than not.

Anyway, he pretty much retiredfrom that racket a while back to focus on painting full time. He also lives in my state, another point in his favor...Here's a link to Whelan's website. Peruse and perceive....

Snow!!!!!

All I can say is...ugh! At this point anyone rhapsodizing about a white Christmas deserves to be pelted to death with snowballs...

Perfect prose

Prose matters. That's something that took me a while to truly understand. You can gave the greatest story in the world, but if the style of writing is flat that it will have as much impact as a dead fish falling on a garbage heap.

To that end, I've been re-reading Neal Stephenson's THE BAROQUE CYLE. Not strictly a fantasy series, though alchemy does play a part in it, but eh prose...pure poetry flowing across the page. From beginning to end it captivates (and given that each book approaches near a thousand pages, there is a lot to be captivated about.) Good prose does that, pulling you into the story, creating a golden glow in the as it carries you into another world...in fact, I would wager that is the writing style is good enough, plot becomes unnecessary. The prose will be enough.

Steampunk stuff

I've been on something of a steampunk trip the past few days...thinking about writing a Steampunk'ish novel. So in the interests of spreading the word, a few links to interesting things floating around the web, steampunk related....

Steampunk Magazine...pretty self-explanatory....

The Clockwork Century, Cherie Priests alternative history in the 19th century...stories set in Seattle. Think Steampunk meets Wild West...

The Steampunk Home...interesting blog on the subject...

Maneating mutant chickens...a new trend?

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and given the nature of pop culture in general whenever one thing becomes popular it isn't long before a dozen of cheap imitations follow. X-Men came out in 200, and soon afterward i not a summer passes without a slew of new superhero movies (They're really scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point since most of the big characters have been used up..good thing too, since some of the best superhero stories out there involve some of the more obscure characters.) And though Stephanie Meyer tends to get the credit (or the blame...) for the latest paranormal romance vampire craze, it's really being ongoing since the mid top late 90's, with Laurell K. Hamiton, Charlaine Harris and so on. Harry Potter begat Eragon and Percy Jackson...and so on

The general trend, when it comes to, um...trends, is to ride the whirlwind until it runs out of breath. Given the lemming-like nature of the creative class, may I suggest a new motif to pillage when the latest fda finally run their course - maneating mutant chickens. No seriously, work with it for a sec. First, some brave soul needs to write a bestselling novel or make a blockbuster film about brave heroes facing genetically created, fifty foot tall mutant maneating chickens. In a world gone made, a few brave souls stand their ground against a horde of craze poultry...good tag line. Said novel or million makes, like, a billion bucks. Then every other hack writer, movie studio and TV producer jumps on the barnyard-animals-gone-wild gravy train, and before you know it we have romantic books about love in a post-apocalyptic world dominated by sentient turkey overlords that cruelly oppress the human race, a TV series about teens in a Typical American High School (which tend to be NOTHING like actual high schools in real life...for one thing the kids are distressing free of acne. And TV high schools tended to be better funded than the the real thing....) facing a conspiracy of secretly intelligent sheep seeking to raise the ancient Dread Sheep Lord of the Pit from his eternal slumber to bring forth an age of war and blood against the two-legged creatures of the world, and so on. Academic experts in need of a paycheck write theses in which they prove that demonic domesticated creature are a really a parable for man's uncertain relationship with the natural world. We then work the trend until it get to the point where they're making Attack of the Demon Rooster parodies, at which point the original audience ages out and grows up, while the rest of the world loses interest and the money stops flowing in. Of course, by now a whole new trend will be emerging to rake its place, and the process starts anew...

Hey, it would work! And given the nature of popular culture, it's more than not likely....

I'm back...and ebooks are cool!

Well, I'm back...vacation ended early and to be honest I was getting bored. So I did what everyone with an internet connection and portable computing device should be doing these days - installed Kindle for the CP on my netbook. Welcome back to the world of reading, Jonny boy; in the last few days I've spent about fifty bucks on ebooks, my waking hours filled with the devouring of pretty much everything I've always meant to read but never got around to. So far I;m about three books into the Dresden files, read the Art of War and the Tarnsman of Gor (for the record, I don't see what the big deal is. Google GOREAN and you turn up a plethora of S&M websites, which really isn't my brand of kink...as far as the book goes it seems much like any other sword and sorcery that came out during the 60's. Although later on in the series it's supposed to be...er, different. Guess I'll have to wait and see.)

Now I;m re-reading Neal Stephensons Baroque Cycle, about a quarter of the way through Quicksilver. My eyeballs feel like they're gonna drop out of my skull, but it's worth it.. There of NOTHING like a nonstop infusion of the written word to stimulate the creative portion of the brain (or to make one more articulate in his writing....)

On vacation....

Just a quick note...

I'll be away for the rest of the week, taking a...well I call it a vacation, except it isn't, so that would make a not-quite-a-vacation....? I dunno, the point is if you notice the sudden dearth in blog posts, it's not because I've been abducted by aliens (which would be kinda cool...unless there's probing involved. Then it's just scary.) Rather, I'll be sunning myself on the beaches of St. Croix, far and away from the cruel winter weather that afflicts the Northeast...yeah right! Not on my budget...But I will be away from my computer for a few days, recharging the proverbial batteries.

To quote the Governator...I'll be back.