Here's how March turned out: 

As Hans Landa says, that's a bingo!

All the squares I didn't talk about last time: 

Been on your nightstand forever: Lives in Ruins by Marilyn Johnson: I've read this author's other two books, one about obituaries and one about librarians, and this was the only one left. It's also quite good and focuses on archaeologists. In true gonzo style, Johnson throws herself into the lifestyle and learns about how they live firsthand. Half travelogue, half anthropology, it was a lot of fun.

First time author: Fresh Off the Boat by Eddie Huang: I followed up "Fortune Cookie Chronicles" with this wanting to read more about Chinese and Taiwanese history in America. I really like Huang's voice and the book is really funny. He talks about his childhood, his foray into criminal activity in his youth, experience as a restaurateur, and briefly appearing on television for a cooking show. It's very engaging and the specific style of his deprecation reminds me of Augusten Burroughs.

Genre you don't usually read: Bitter End by Jennifer Brown: I don't consume a lot of YA romance. I really enjoyed Brown's "Hate List" and her foray into mystery thriller, "Shade Me," but this left me cold. It handles the subject of intimate partner violence and domestic abuse with accuracy and sensitivity, but there wasn't really much else going on. Brown definitely shows her research with the gradual escalation of the boyfriend character's abusive behavior, but in a way, that's kind of the problem. He conforms to an example of textbook abuse too well. The voice is still good, as ever, but I was left wanting.

Written by someone of a different race: Big Machine by Victor LaValle: This was recommended to me by Greg Stolze, one of my favorite authors, saying it was reminiscent of his own style. That's definitely true, and voice is what carries this through. The content's similar to Stolze's too: magical realism in a gritty urban environment. It does a good job with survival horror through strong first person.

Published the year you were born: American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis: This has been on my list forever, and I got around to it this month. A catalogue of music reviews, impossibly gross sounding restaurant dishes, killing, and questions about haberdashery. And I absolutely loved it.

My favorite thing about it is definitely the humor. The increasingly strange subjects on the talk show Bateman watches every day (which may not even exist, honestly) got slowly more insane as time went on, culminating with the host interviewing a Cheerio (complete in a tiny chair) for a full hour. These little details are just thrown in casually in between how many pushups Bateman can do or how much the socks he's wearing cost. While on paper, it sounds like his ceaseless lists would be boring, Ellis knows just when to stop with them.

There's this one part where one of Bateman's friends says he'll meet him at the same bat time on the same bat channel, which I thought was funny, since Christian Bale went on to play both Bateman and then Batman five years later.

About event in American history: The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8 Lee: I had the good fortune to actually meet Lee in a Chinese restaurant in San Fransisco very shortly after the release of this book. She was just super and showed me and my family some of her notes and research for the project, including some video of her giving people in China fortune cookies to be met with confusion, since they do not originate from China.

This clip would later be incorporated in "The Search for General Tso," a documentary covering much of the same content on Chinese food in America and the history of Chinese people in the culture. Bonus: there's actually a reason to read its prologue, something I've never encountered in a book before.

It talks a lot about Chinese food not just in America, but all over the world. Lee researches every aspect of the cuisine, even tracking down General Tso's village. Very informative and engaging.

And that was it for March. Of course, some things could go in different places: American Psycho was banned or restricted in several areas, etc.

Currently, I'm reading Marvel Comics The Untold Story by Sean Howe: It's an account of the company's history and the lives of the founders and some of the more well known talent at the time it spans. It's a fascinating read and has tons of great detail on not only Marvel, but DC as we, since the two companies' histories are certainly intertwined.

What are you reading these days? How did your bingos go? Any new reading challenges floating around out there? Tell me about it in the comments.

National Reading Month

I got this great bingo spreadsheet from Amazon today:

Looks like a blast!

So far, I've got a handful crossed off: 

Memoir: "Girl Walks into a Bar" by Rachel Dratch. Very funny read. I'd definitely recommend springing for the Audible narration. Dratch does it herself, so she knows the precise intended delivery of her jokes and such for her anecdotes. Very different from what I've been exposed to from her in the past. She's got a lot more room to breathe and explore some different kind of humor. I'd recommend it. 

Turned into a movie: "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk. One of those things I'd been meaning to get around to forever to see how it differed from the film. As people often discuss, it hasn't aged particularly well, but Palahniuk's writing's super sharp here. Oddly for a minimalist, I really recommend this more for the writing, more than the plot or character, a lot like Palahniuk's "Snuff," which consists of three guys standing in line, but is still very funny. 

Read in One Day: "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson. By the author of the very popular "The Lottery," this is a really fun book. Very atmospheric and highly sessionable at just over 150 pages. Very strongly characterized first person narration. 

Translated from Another Language: "Headhunters" by Jo Nesbø. The author of the very successful "Harry Hole" series, I hadn't read anything by him before. I saw the movie on Netflix and was curious about what was going through the main character's head during the story's events. Nesbø doesn't disappoint. The narration's really funny and very readable. I love Roger Brown's smugness and general debonair attitude. A Norwegian Patrick Bateman. 

A Sequel or Next in a Series: "Death Ex Machina" by Gary Corby. The latest in the Athenian Mystery series is a blast. I love Corby's sense of humor and attention to detail. Like the others, the book's a murder mystery set in ancient Greece. I can't wait for "The Singer from Memphis" later this year. 

Reread because it was so good: "Stiff" by Mary Roach. Like a lot of the nonfiction books I read, I put this one on my chopping block for research purposes. I was gathering information for an RPG character who worked in the death industry, so Roach's book about the history and contemporary goings on regarding medical cadavers seemed like a natural fit. Like all Roach's stuff, it's informative and very funny. 

Recommended by a Friend: "Hate List" by Jennifer Brown. My brother recommended this and I loved it. It follows the girlfriend of a school shooter in the aftermath of his murder-suicide at their school. The emotional complexity here was really exciting to me. It really focused on the aftermath rather than the event itself, which was new to me. 

Not doing too bad so far. 

What are you all reading this month? Have you read any of these? What did you think? Let me know in the comments. I'm always on the lookout for new stuff. 

Why I Still Make Wishes

Like a lot of people, I make a wish exactly once every twelve hours. 11:11 A.M. and 11:11 P.M.

I don't think of myself as especially superstitious. I don't expect punching the air with my right hand (it must always be the right hand, of course) will affect material change in the world.

So why do I do it?

Thinking about what I want to change twice a day helps me get a handle on my priorities. When I notice I keep wishing for something, it lets me know it's bothering me. This is how I know what I want to change.

Obviously some things are beyond my control, but in the minutes leading up to each 11:11, while I'm thinking about what to wish for, I can safely move those to the discard pile and think about things I know I can change. That's why I still do it.

Does anyone else still make wishes? Let me know in the comments.

Spider Sense and Sensibility: the Evolution of Villainy

Quick, think of a villain!

You probably thought of supervillain from a superhero comic, or someone in a walking cape and top hat with a pair of villainous mustachios.  Why?

Answering this question will take a few steps.

At the heart of most stories, there is a conflict between good and evil. This may take a milder approach with comedy as opposed to drama, where the antagonist is merely unpleasant or unfriendly rather than dangerous, but is still almost always present. A ready exception is of course, slice-of-life, which you'll find often gets a pass from conventional storytelling conventions.

Regardless of genre or specific target audience, a story will pick a character or set of characters that it wishes the audience to side with or root for. Often, they will have a rival or character who functions as an obstacle to them accomplishing their goals, and this will be the antagonist for the piece.

Obviously, not all stories possess an antagonist given physical form. Period dramas, for example, will often focus on societal conventions as being the cause of their characters' hardships, but they will often still have a character to stand in for those values, especially if the work is political in nature. For the time being, let's focus on stories with one person or group of people serving as the primary obstacle to the protagonist(s) achieving the primary goal of the story.

Giving an example seems unnecessary. If you think of almost any story, you can pick out the antagonist or villain with relative ease, because they're almost universal, occupying a wide variety of genres. They can be found in romance, science fiction, fantasy, and everything in between. Go ahead and think of someone who doesn't wear a costume. Other specifics aren't important right now.

Then why did you think of someone wearing bright secondary colors (almost always green or purple, seldom orange) yelling their own name in a stylized font at the beginning of this article?

Think back to the character you chose two paragraphs ago. Does he, she, or it ever actually say that they are the villain of the piece? Do they tell other characters how evil they are with their dialogue or call themselves villains with any sort of regularity?

Outside of the superhero genre, the answer to this question is usually no. Why?

As with many things in storytelling, the answer lies in real life. When was the last time someone said that they themselves were evil? Does this move you ahead in your chosen profession or social circle? Does it help you accomplish your life's goals?

Again, the answer is probably no. Most stories are anchored in reality. Even if the specifics of the world are different from our own, and animals can speak, or people can do magic, the way that characters interact with one another and what motivates them doesn't tend to change very much.

So, why does the superhero genre seem to ignore this rule? Why am I coming down so hard on it if I profess to like everything?

Well, it doesn't anymore, for the most part. It hasn't for a very long time, and I do like the genre. In fact, it's one of my favorites.

In the United States, in the mid 1950s, the Comics Code Authority rose to power. Much like the Hays Code before it, its aim was censorship of the then-new medium. If you are familiar with the Hays Code, then you know its general aim (or the aim it professed) was to depict crime and other "immoral behavior" in an unappealing light.

What this meant in effect was that a character who did things the code didn't approve of (a list as byzantine as it is long) could not be portrayed in a "sympathetic" fashion.

In effect, this meant that between the years of 1934 to 1968, if a character in a movie released in one of Hollywood's big studios was a villain, the script was legally obligated to beat the audience over the head with it or be relegated to release outside of commercial theaters, instead seeking audiences in drive-in movie theaters, which were at the time synonymous with low quality movies.

Eventually, public opinion against censorship of this sort became too great and it was abolished. However, the Comics Code Authority persisted for much longer, since the medium was less prevalent, and generally regarded as being for children.

The rules between the two censorship codes were very similar, which is why pre-code comics have a very different feel to those published under it, which are decidedly more black and white.

In 1971, however, Nixon's administration asked Stan Lee to publish an issue of Spider-Man dealing with the dangers of drug use. 

Despite the issue depicting drug addiction in a purely negative light, the CCA would not relax its guidelines forbidding the portrayal of drugs at all, so Marvel made the decision to publish without the seal of approval.

What this meant at the time was that with a seal of approval, a publisher could sell their comics at the drugstore, where most consumers purchased them. Without a seal, they could only be purchased at specialty comic book stores, which the general populace was leery of at the time. This issue changed that and got the general public to come to comic stores and find they were not the dens of iniquity they had feared.

Over time, since Marvel had proved the CCA's hold could be broken without financial ruin on the publisher, other companies followed suit and several decades later, the CCA's stranglehold on the medium had more or less abated.

After that point, comic books could tell stories portraying antagonists as human beings instead of evil incarnate. Storytelling techniques that were formerly forbidden came back into popularity and antagonists were portrayed at times as sympathetic, even if the narrative didn't exactly tell you to put your trust in them.

The reason I have discussed this at length is simple, though it does bear explanation. For many of us, regardless of specific demographic, these are the stories we grew up with. For many of us, a comic book was the first complete story we had ever read.

Due to the serialized format and wide array of choices available, more comics were soon to follow if we liked the first, and even if you didn't, you still remained somewhat aware of it. Children on playgrounds don't tend to act out literary fiction, they're ninja turtles or x-men. These ideas surrounded the generations within this time period, and the people who consumed the work generated then.

These are the people who went on to make art. These are our authors and directors. We all grew up with certain stories, and we for the most part still remember them.

I talk about censorship and restriction of artistry to show how far artists have come since then and how much choice we all have now.

This groundwork is necessary for the next post, which will deal with some of the things that are now possible when artists are allowed to portray an antagonist sympathetically.

The Secret Meanings of Yes and No

Quick, what's the difference between a comedy and a drama?

The answer to this question for most people really just depends on how much time you have available and how many exceptions you'd like to build into your argument. A comedy is something that makes me laugh. Dramas never do? A comedy is something that's funny ha-ha. Again, dramas never do?

Rather than look at the difference between them on a specific level, let's instead do what this blog is going to be all about and take a step back.

Comedy is characters saying yes to each other. 

Drama is characters saying no to each other. 

Does that mean literally? Well, it can, but it doesn't have to.

In the first act of an episode of a sitcom, much of the throwaway dialogue and often some of the plot consists of characters saying yes to each other. If someone talks about how they got lost in the sewers over summer vacation and their scene partner does not object, but takes it in stride as though it were a normal contribution to the conversation, this is what I mean by "saying yes."

If you've ever done any improv, you know the only real rule is to roll with whatever your partner gives you. If they say they've come down with a rare case of hair cancer, you're supposed to look for ways to fix it, not to tell them there's no such thing. This is what characters in comedies do, they say ridiculous things to each other, and don't ever challenge them.

Drama on the other hand is characters saying no. What exactly does this mean? This is a little more specific (but obviously not as rare) as what happens in comedies. When a character comes out to his mother and she pretends not to hear him, this is the opposite.

This is exactly what you're not to do in improv, since the purpose of the exercise isn't so much to develop well-fleshed out characters, but to get lots of ideas out there. When you stop the flow, you are stuck in the moment with your partner and have to figure out what's what.

This is where conflict comes from. This isn't to say that comedies don't have conflict. Of course they do, all stories have conflict of some kind. Dramas just tend to have them more frequently and introduce them earlier. In a drama, the conflict is usually internal, and often present towards the beginning, if not before the story starts altogether. In comedies it tends to be introduced later on and is usually external.

When two characters are talking and one says no to the other, the scene really can't move forward until they either reach a resolution or break on a note that leaves us, the audience with a distinct vibe that it will be addressed later on in the episode or arc.

This obviously isn't two venn diagrams that never intersect, and shows that possess aspects of both certainly exist. These are just two extremes, and you can decide for yourself where something falls. I find this a useful tool to ascertain what sort of attitude whatever I'm watching would like me to take towards it. The dissonance experienced when you realize you've been watching something serious as a comedy or the inverse is sometimes hilarious, and sometimes just annoying. Being in the proper state of mind when you're ready to watch something is often important to enjoying it, and the better you can figure out what that is by placing it on this scale, the more you'll be able to be entertain by being in the proper state of mind.

How does this work for you? Do you have other suggestions?

Also, I'd really love to be able to use one word for read/watch/observe/listen to/etc that's not specific to one medium, since the stuff I talk about here (and in the future) won't just be about movies, but will also apply to movies, plays, and other things. The only one I can think of is "consume" which seems sort of odd and sinister. Do you have any tips?

Introduction: Let There Be Lips!

The internet is awash with sites about movies.

We've got IMDB for reference, rottentomatoes for editorials, Wikipedia for fact-checking. In between these skyscrapers lie smaller structures, the reviewers. There are positive reviewers, gushing about things they like. There are negative reviewers, railing about things they don't. I don't need to tell you which is more popular.

So bad it's good has gone past being a cultural phenomenon and is now simply something that is. It's understood, accepted, and even embraced to seek out something you know is bad and watch it anyway, deriving pleasure in spite of the obstacles that lie in your way. Joel and his robots would be proud.

In the wake of this, there are a great many talented reviewers all over the world posting humorous reviews of the worst of the worst, mocking the Ed Woods and Roger Cormans and doing a fine job of it, the material has much to offer.

Don't take this to mean that I think it's easy to review these sorts of movies. In fact, I believe just the opposite. I'm sure it's especially difficult to review things like this precisely because they're as popular as they are today. If sat down in a room playing "Plan 9 from Outer Space"  what could I possibly say about it that hadn't been said before?

I don't say this to re-re-retread the idea that there is nothing new under the sun, primarily because I don't believe it to be true.

ASIDE: Allow me to use this opportunity to demonstrate my asides. They will be a regular occurrence in my entries here. I don't believe there is such a thing as an impartial audience. We're all consuming fiction through the lens of our own lives and experiences and identities, and simply because I call myself a reviewer, I don't think it's fair to say that I'm different. Rather than glossing over my own personal views on things, or pretending they don't exist and that I'm giving a purely objective stance on something, I will call myself out on my own views and explain them to the best of my ability. They won't always be objective, and admitting that is the first step of an honest examination of something. If I pretend that I as a reviewer am no different from any other reviewer, then it means I'm admitting I have nothing worthwhile to say. This is the space I'll be using to talk about it when I notice my own views affecting how I consume something.

I don't think the idea of nothing new is true because it's saying combining things that already exist into something else isn't creation. By that token, making a cake out of eggs, sugar, flour, and other things isn't making something new, nor is mixing chemicals to get a reaction, words to get a sentence, or actors and ideas to get a movie.

I don't think I can believe this and be interested in art. Just because an idea's been expressed before doesn't mean there's never a way to add to it or present it in a new way.

Instead, what I'd like to do is something that I haven't seen as much of. As will become apparent in future installments, I have watched lots of movies, television shows, internet reviewers, read lots of books, blogs, and sites, and I haven't seen much of this. Not to say it doesn't exist, just that I think it's something that can set this blog apart from the crowd.

Instead of looking at specifics, I would like to use this blog to talk about generalities. I don't mean I want to be vague instead of incisive, but that I'd rather talk about causes as opposed to effects. Instead of talking about why a specific character doesn't work in the story, I'd rather talk about why that character as an archetype isn't working here, and talk about what makes up that archetype.

It'll make sense once I get started, really. It's like trying to describe how to use chopsticks to someone, eventually you give up and just show them.

As anyone who works on the internet must, I am of course willing to take suggestions. If there's ever any show, movie, book, or other form of fictional media out there you'd like me to talk about, go ahead and tell me about it.

I'll try to have a new post up at least once a week, and if interest flags and I need to change my approach, let me know. I am writing for others, of course, and the goal for a piece of media is to entertain the audience.

I hope you and I both have fun here. Welcome, and as it says in the title:

Let there be lips!