Amazon and The Zombie Apocalypse- Junk Mail

Amazon bought Goodreads. It was big news. Goodreads is a popular social network where readers connect with each other, connect with authors, and review and recommend books.  It’s a very active community. Amazon wants to incorporate the site into their Kindle tablets, and the easiest way to do that was to buy the site.

Amazon’s purchase of Goodreads created some hysteria.  What would happen to the site?  Would it essentially become another arm of Amazon? Would Amazon basically be spying on people to learn what they like to read?  Eh, I don’t know.  I think we are all plenty spied on by merchants, especially online.  I don’t expect to keep my preferences private when I’m wandering all through cyberspace.

Amazon has already changed the world of books.  Basically, Amazon has made traditional publishing companies poop themselves.  No longer do new writers have to bang their heads on the doors of those hallowed halls.  They can publish their own books, and sell them.  Established writers are wandering off the farm, too.  They are self publishing both their old and their new material.  In addition to books, Amazon sells virtually everything you could ever hope to buy, and they are even stepping on eBay’s toes by letting at-home vendors sell. 

So, Jaye Manus and I were discussing this and, frankly, laughing about it, when we started saying, “What if Amazon REALLY took over?”  Thus was born JUNK MAIL, my vision of Amazon making the zombie apocalypse a little more survivable. It’s a twenty-something page short story, and it’s available as an ebook through, of course, Amazon.com

Special shout out to Jaye.  She’s writer, she’s an ebook genius, and she’s a fun, fun girl. Together, we plot our own version of world domination, and it’s a blast. 

No More Normal, AMC’s Freakshow, Episode 8

Episode 8 of AMC’s reality series Freakshow, which follows the fortunes of Todd Ray’s Venice Beach Freakshow, had an air of finality to it. The show celebrates the differences that make us all unique and showcases performers and people who are a little more unique than most of us. I’ve found on the web that eight episodes were made. Fans of the show are surely desperate for more.  If you’d like for AMC to produce more episodes, get over to Twitter and make some noise.  Freakshow is the most popular topic I’ve ever written about on this blog, but I see very few people talking about the show. 

In “No More Normal,” Ray decides to throw a Freak Festival. Special guests from episodes past return to help the resident freaks of Venice Beach spread the word that “Normal” is dead. There’s a parade, a special performance, and Morgue without a shirt. 

Guest performers include returning freaks Billy Owen, the Illustrated Penguin, Half Man Jesse Stitcher, and Armless Wonder Jim Goldman. Molotov, a cowboy who throws flaming knifes, shows up to throw some at resident Brianna.

Brianna. The only performer who got more screwed over for camera time more than Brianna on Freakshow was the wolf boy we never really got to meet. Brianna swallowed some swords, ate a lightbulb or two, and got flaming knives hurled at her. We met Murrugun’s MOM, for God’s sake. It would have been nice to know a little more about Brianna. And the wolf boy.

In spite of a slow start, Freakshow did a very good job with their first season. The show depicted Todd Ray’s attempt to revive a theatrical tradition that is nearly dead, in spite of a rich history. It also spread Todd Ray’s message…that “different” is actually special and unique. In a world where kids are bullied to death and girls starve themselves hoping to look like models, I’m with Todd Ray and his Venice Beach Freakshow. NO MORE NORMAL!!!

If you are interested in reading more about the show, be sure to check out my other blogs under the category Freakshow on the right hand side of this page.

The Walking Dead, Season 3 Finale, “You Kill Or You Die”

The Season 3 finale of AMC’s The Walking Dead surprised me.  The show is famous for its surprises. They love to shock and thrill their audience. They love to keep us guessing. I’d fallen into the guessing game to the point where I was prone to making wild predictions.  I couldn’t have predicted the Season 3 finale, no way no how. Who could have predicted a quiet ending?

We did lose Andrea, and I should have expected that, but I didn’t.  Honestly, Andrea drove me insane.  She specialized in boinking the most powerful person around, yet it never got her anywhere.  Shane loved Lori, but he didn’t object to tearing one off with Andrea.  The governor half-ass pretended that Andrea was his First Lady for about ten minutes, and we couldn’t pretend that she’d been duped because what turned Andrea on in the first place was the fact that the Governor was a lunatic.  It’s easy to imagine Andrea in high school, with all of the other girls whispering, “He is just using her for s-e-x.”  Andrea may have slept with Michonne during the long cold winter, but that’s the kind of thing that never could have lasted because Michonne is a good person. 

Andrea also drove me wild by plotting plots that were doomed to fail because they were all based on her wildly distorted view of the situation at hand.  There was this whole other Andrea Show that went on a little outside of the rest of the story line, and I’d gotten so used to it that I was surprised when she died. I also felt a little guilty that I’d come to dislike the character so much, when a dying Andrea explained her desire to prevent more deaths and Michonne bawled her eyes out. 

Michonne.  What a great surprise Michonne became as Season 3 wound to a close.  I had been disappointed in the character. She was a badass with a sword.  And that was pretty much it.  The show gave Michonne about as few lines as it had given T-Dog. She was entertaining in a Japanese steakhouse chef kind of way, but she wasn’t the amazing character I felt I’d been promised…until she did more than swing that sword.  As she found her place in Rick’s group, we got to see a character who is smart, who is kind, who is lonely, who has scars, but she goes on with dignity and grace. Michonne has the potential to be a fan favorite on the order of Daryl, and it’s because of her heart, not her sword. 

And that was really the surprise of the Season 3 finale.  “You Kill Or You Die” was more about heart than guts. The Governor, that rat bastard, didn’t die, but that’s okay.  What is really worth cheering over is a whole cast of characters who aren’t always going to kill for fear of dying.   It was great television.  Seriously.

 

 

 

Legless and Armless Wonders on AMC’s Freakshow, Episode 7

Eli Bowen (“The Legless Acrobat”)and Charles Tripp (“The Armless Wonder”) were turn of the century human marvels.  They performed feats of dexterity and strength for circus and carnival sideshow audiences.  They are most famous for a single photograph.  It shows the two riding a tandem bicycle, using the only limbs they had. Bowen steered with his arms while Tripp peddled with his legs.

That old photograph guides episode 7 of AMC’s Freakshow.  Jesse Stitcher, the Half Man, and Jim Goldman, the Armless Wonder visit the Venice BeachFreakshow to talk about their lives and their successes, and to demonstrate that there isn’t anything they can’t do.  They’ve played sports, and they’ve worked successfully outside of the sideshow.  Jim is shown shaving and threading a needle with his clever feet.  At the end of the episode, they do ride a tandem bike down the Venice Beach boardwalk, with Jesse steering and Jim peddling.

The episode is a nice lesson about the capabilities of those who aren’t like everyone else, but I do take issue with Todd Ray’s seeming belief that the performers who inspired the episode, Bowen and Tripp, merely posed on a bike rather than riding it.  Of course they had to pose for the slow shutter of an antique camera.  We have no reason to think that they couldn’t actually ride a tandem bike together.

The episode also includes the Ray family dilemma over whether or not to have Chang and Eng, the conjoined bearded dragons, surgically separated.  The two beardies don’t seem particularly comfortable, but who can really tell?  After a visit to the vet and an x-ray that indicates that the surgery is possible, the Ray family ultimately decides to leave the dragons as nature made them.  Surgical risks are great when pets are involved.  And, let’s face it, separating the two would be a terrible business decision…”and now presenting the formerly conjoined Chang and Eng!”

Episode 7 was entertaining and informative, and it continued to show us what truly sets the Venice Beach Freakshow apart…the human wonders.

“This Sorrowful Life” The Walking Dead Kills Off Merle

As Season 3 of The Walking Dead comes to a close, fans have to worry about more than the long, hot, walker-free summer that looms ahead…they also have to worry which characters won’t make it to Season 4. The show loves to kill off beloved characters. T-Dog, Lori…well, not so much Lori. But the creative team of the show constantly warns us that no character is safe.  “This Sorrowful Life,” the next-to-last episode of the season, did end with a sad moment, but the night was far more about potential future sorrow than current sorrows. I think somebody’s gonna die.

The sacrificial lambs that I’m most concerned about are Maggie and Glenn. Glenn wants to be sure that Maggie knows how much he loves her. Glenn steals an engagement ring from a walker and proposes. (We all know he couldn’t go to Jared, but, my God, ick. Gluing a piece of glass on a washer in the prison metalshop would have made for a more romantic ring.)  The engagement ring might as well be a target on Maggie’s back. The only thing that would make me worry more about Maggie is an appearance next week by Lauren Cohan on Talking Dead, where actors show up for their traditional exit interviews. Apparently the Governor kills Glenn in the graphic novels.  Because the show often goes its own way, that’s no guarantee that Glenn is toast.  However, it does put Glenn firmly in the crosshairs, as well.

Who would we miss more?  Maggie, for sure.  She’s beautiful without being obnoxious about it.  She’s tough without being obnoxious about it.  Men can like her, woman can like her. She’s really one of the more appealing characters on the show.  I’ve never heard a fan say, “Gawd, I just hate Maggie.”  Glenn, on the other hand, has become the less interesting half of what is virtually a third character, GlennandMaggie. Maggie is the motivation for nearly everything Glenn does. If we lose Glenn, we’ll have lost Glenn.  If we lose Maggie, we’ll have lost Maggie, Glenn, and GlennandMaggie. Can the show really afford to lose three characters, one of whom I just made up?

The actual sorrow referred to in the episode is Daryl’s.  His brother, Merle, is bored. When the mattresses of the prison yield up no drugs, Merle decides to find his place within the group.  He realizes that his real talent lies in a being a dick, and he shoulders the burden of taking Michonne to the Governor.  Merle assumes that Rick won’t have the balls to surrender Michonne, and Merle is right.  Rick sees a vison of Dead Lori, she waves his balls at him, and Rick changes his mind about trading away Michonne.  Too late.  Merle and Michonne are already gone.

There’s a lot that’s smart about the episode.  It’s fun to watch Michonne talk her way out of captivity.  Merle’s attack on the Governor’s treaty complex is both clever and exciting.

Then, there’s some dumbness.  Why is the Governor suddenly back at Truces ‘R’ Us? Wasn’t he going to just attack and take Michonne?  I suppose that the loss of the walkers he’d planned to use as weapons has changed his strategy, but the walkers that got barbequed weren’t the only walkers to be had. They are all over the damned place.  There haven’t been so many walkers wandering around the show since Hershel’s farm was overrun.  Merle certainly doesn’t have any trouble rounding up a small horde to use against the Governor.  Plus, why didn’t a man who loves to use walkers as weapons of terror take Zombie Merle and dump him at the prison?  Not making use of Merle is like leaving a $100 bill on the sidewalk.

Merle is really left to wander so Daryl can find him.  The episode ends with Daryl mourning the lost chance for Merle to straighten up and stop being such a dick as much as he mourns his brother’s actual death (which Daryl finishes himself-stabstabstab).

Next week is the big finale of Season 3.  I’m eager to see who lives and who dies.  I’m eager to see if going back to a democrazy will work better for the group than the current Ricktatorship.  I’m eager to see the Governor get some kind of stick shoved up his butt (although there are rumors that he’ll be back, next season).  But, damnit, I will miss the show.  In spite of the fact that I froze my ass off all winter, I’m willing to bypass spring and summer, this year.  Gimme walkers.  Gimme, gimme.  Gimme The Walking Dead.

Strongmen AMC’s Freakshow, Episode 6

Sideshows and freakshows will never see the classic strongmen acts, again.  Men wearing leopard skins, lifting cartoony dumbells with 500s painted on either side, would make modern audiences laugh.  Plus, nobody would pay to see someone who is simply strong when we’ve all seen them on television and at our local gyms.  So, I wondered what Todd Ray had in mind when he announced that the Venice Beach Freakshow would be holding a strongman competition.  I was genuinely worried that boredom would ensue.  I was so glad I was wrong.

We know that this episode is going to offer us something truly different when the first contestant shows up.  It’s Jason Brott, the Illustrated Penguin.  Brott is a heavily tattooed little person with no arms and hands growing directly from his shoulders.  You might think that Brott has nothing to offer in the way of feats of strength, but he intends to lift weights with his earlobes.  Andrew S. is next.  He’s going to pull a car by inserting hooks in his eye sockets.  The Great Nippulini will amaze by hauling around a cartful of people using only his nipples.  Ow.  Owie.  Rounding out the competition is Billy Owen, who isn’t going to lift anything at all.  Billy is a cancer survivor whose surgery left him with one side of his face hollowed out.  He can stick his finger into his mouth and it comes out the gaping hole where his eye used to be.  He can throw an LED light into his head and become a human jack-o’-lantern.  Billy has already carried his heavy weight, and it’s a personal one.

The performers discuss how their acts help them connect with other people.  Morgue has always felt like an outsider, but the Illustrated Penguin and Billy Owen are outsiders in a different way.  People are going to gawk at them, or even be afraid.  Billy can disguise his eye and his mouth with prognostics, but he is never going to truly look like everyone else.  The Illustrated Penguin has made himself even more different than he already is with tattoos and piercings.  Both men talk about the empowerment of being able to amaze people through their performances in sideshows. 

The performance itself is fun to watch.  It really isn’t a competition, because they are all already winners.  The Illustrated Penguin yikes us out when his earlobes stretch to incredible lengths.  The audience gasps, and we all get the impression that the Penguin’s earlobes are eventually going to be down to his knees, if he keeps lifting with them.  Andrew S. tugs a car around with his eye sockets, and you have to wonder what on earth made him decide to ever try this in the first place (I do wish he’d told us).  Nippulini…what can I say?  I put my hands over my own nipples when he pulled a cart of lovely ladies using nothing but his man nips.  Billy Owen makes the audience gasp when he first removes his fake eye and his extensive dentures, then he has them in tears as he explains his story and shines a light in his head that isn’t nearly as bright as the light of his life.

Excellent episode!  Hats off to Todd Ray and his Venice Beach Freakshow.  An episode that could have been eye-rollingly dull was eye-poppingly entertaining and touching!

 

The Walking Dead, Season 3, Andrea is PREY

Andrea found a cheap dentist at the end of the March 17th episode of AMC’s The Walking Dead.

Andrea, a civil rights lawyer before the walker apocalypse destroyed the job market for do-gooders, can take care of herself, thank you very much.  She shoots.  She kills. She works to earn her own place in this harsh world by diddling whoever she thinks is powerful. We even suspect that Andrea diddled Michonne. If she did, it was only because Michonne’s pet walkers obviously weren’t the ones in charge.  If you thought that Lori was setting women back to the Stone Age with her obsession for keeping the men’s clothes clean, you haven’t been paying attention to Andrea’s search for post-apocalyptic security through boinkage.

Andrea The Lawyer finally takes the endless evidence she has ignored all season, puts it together, and decides that her lover, the Governor, is a maniac.  With only her knife to protect her, she goes running off to warn Rick’s group at the prison that the Governor is a maniac.  It’s a hard road that Andrea faces, especially when the Governor interrupts his Michonne torture chamber preparations to go weirdly tooting his truck horn after her.

The episode mainly concerns itself with Andrea’s flight from the Governor through a meat packing plant, but we get a little of Woodbury gearing up for war.  They are collecting walkers to dump on the prison.  Tick tock.  Are we not running out of time to stage a treacherous surprise attack?  We need the time, though, for Tyreese to start suspecting that the Governor is at least as crazy as Rick, only one-eyeder.

Rick prepares for war by standing watch at the prison. A crappy job he does of it, totally missing the Governor snatching Andrea right when she thinks she is safe in the arms of people she constantly supplies with untrustworthy information.  What exactly was she going to say to the group at the prison, anyhow?  “You know how I told you that my boyfriend is perfectly reasonable and you should negotiate with him?  Well, scratch that, I was thinking with my ambitious female parts.  Maggie, you sure look tough and capable…wanna find a cell where we can screw?  Oops.  I meant to say ‘CHAT’.”

Now, an interesting idea that my friend Dee brought up is that perhaps the Governor was bitten by a walker when Andrea set a whole slew of them loose on him in the meat packing plant.  Will the Governor turn during his war, becoming a roaring, ravenous, General Zombie who retains enough spark of his own crazy-assedness to continue the battle with an added undead flair? It’s the kind of surprise that the show loves to unveil, for sure.

And what of Andrea?  Strapped to a dentist’s chair, waiting for her cleaning?  The final two episodes of the season have a lot of questions to answer.  Like Andrea, we wait with bated breath.

Ali Chapman Ties The Knot on AMC’s Freakshow, Episode 5

This week on Freakshow, Todd Ray gave us the wedding of Ali Chapman to Matt McCarthy.  Ali is the host of Ray’s Venice Beach Freakshow, and when Ray heard that the couple was engaged, he set out to top P.T. Barnum’s wedding of General Tom Thumb to Lavinia Warren. 

Did Ray succeed? Eh, not so much. There was only one P.T. Barnum, after all, and the sidewalks of Venice Beach aren’t Grace Episcopal Church.  The boast that Ray would outdo Barnum soured me a little on an episode that really would have done better to concentrate on being heartfelt and sweet.  Ali’s confession that she thought that marriage wouldn’t happen to her was more touching than any of the festivities that Ray engineered, and Matt’s wild joy over the sight of his bride in her dress added charm (he seemed nearly as excited over a gift blender at the reception).

The guest list was fairly impressive.  Of course the Venice Beach Freakshow cast was on hand, along with a bearded lady and a wolf boy.  One of the things I do enjoy about Freakshow is that a wolf boy can appear on the show and remain just a face in the crowd, although a hairy one.  The Sabu Hobo was also on hand, and he earned money for a wedding gift (and for survival) by allowing visitors to the show to staple currency to various parts of his body. 

I would like to wish Ali and Matt all the best.  I hope that their union is a happy and prosperous one!

I blogged about Tom Thumb’s wedding earlier in the week.  Click on the photo of my Tom Thumb collection if you’d like to read that blog.

Freakshow Is Hosting A Wedding!

In 1863, General Tom Thumb married fellow Little Person Lavinia Warren. It would be nice to think that it was a love match, but P.T. Barum was the driving force behind everything Tom Thumb did, so the marriage could have easily been a business arrangement.  Barnum turned the wedding at New York City’s Grace Episcopal Church into quite the spectacle.  Then, Barnum sent the couple on tour to marry again and again all over the world. I assume that Ali Chapman‘s union is a love match, but Todd Ray isn’t one to let an opportunity go to waste.  He’s going to replicate Tom Thumb’s wedding with Ali and her partner, Matt, in the leading roles.

The episode hasn’t aired yet, so I have no information other than the tidbits that AMC has thrown out, but I thought I’d prepare for the party by showing some of my own souvenirs of that long-ago Little People wedding event. 

Souvenirs were a big part of the sideshow business.  Performers sold them to supplement the take of the show.  Giants sold huge rings so the audience could marvel at the size of their fingers long after the show was over.  “Pitchcards,” were the common souvenir, sold by many performers.  A pitchcard would feature a photograph of the performer and often some information on the performer’s life.  Sometimes performers autographed them, particularly if they had no arms and wrote with their feet.

  Sideshow souvenirs and images are hot items on eBay, and I have a few, but very few.  Bidding is often fierce, especially when the item or the performer is uncommon.  My favorite souvenir is my Tom Thumb locket.  It’s a little brass locket in the shape of a suitcase.  It has the words “Somebody’s Luggage” stamped on it.  The locket opens to reveal a little brass series of frames that accordion out.  The tiny pictures in the frames are of Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren. 

I find conflicting information on the internet about the number of pictures and the images featured in the locket.  I can only assume that there wasn’t a lot of quality control when it came to the production of 1800s sideshow souvenirs.  A common theme I find is that some of the images repeat, and I’ve seen different numbers of frames mentioned.  My locket has five, with pictures in either side.  And, yes, some of them repeat.  There are certainly lockets in better condition than mine.  I can’t made out all of the images in my locket.  However, it’s one of the coolest, oldest things I own, and I like to imagine the excitement of the person who first bought it, all those years ago.  I’ve actually seen one claim that the lockets was sold at the church on the wedding day, but I doubt that was the only time they were sold.  I’ve also seen someone say that their locket has a picture of Abraham Lincoln in it.  Although that seems unlikely, it’s really not, because the couple did have an audience with the president on their wedding day. 

I wish Ali and her husband all the best, and I will certainly accept the invitation to watch their wedding from my living room!

(I’ve included my Tom Brady stereoview of the wedding party in my picture, and also a later carte-de-viste of the couple with Lavina’s sister, Minnie, and Commodore Nutt.)

The Walking Dead: Why Didn’t Rick Kill The Governor?

My pick for Most Annoying Horror Movie In Movie History is the American remake of The Grudge. Here is me watching The Grudge: yowling little cat-ghost-boy-thing pops up on screen, I spill my drink, and yell, “Damnit!” Then, it happens again ten more times. Yowl, spill, damnit! Yowl, spill, damnit! The Grudge was scary in the way that someone jumping out of a closet and yelling “Boo!” five hundred times is scary.  Yes, it makes you jump.  No, it’s no damned fun.

The March 10th episode of The Walking Dead, Season 3 had me tense in a Grudge-like way, but I didn’t even get to spill my drink. The tone is set early in the episode, when we fully expect there to be a zombie at the window of Hershel’s car after he looks up from checking his stump gun… and there is no zombie. The episode uses every trick in the book to set us up for a “Boo!” moment that never comes.  Camera angles that make us sure that something is going to lurch into frame, creaky old buildings, corners that things could jump around, hidden guns that could fire when we least expect it…and never one “Boo!” All of that unreleased tension right before bed caused me to wake up with a crick in my neck.

The show needed to distract us last night because it was one of their talkier episodes, and a lot of fans don’t like that.  Me, I’m fine with talkie episodes.  I don’t even care if they don’t really advance the story, much.  I absolutely loved last week’s episode, “Clear.” The difference between this week and last week is that “Clear” explored the characters and “Arrow On The Doorpost” used tension to keep us from wandering off while the episode meandered to a conclusion that was basically NEXT week’s plot.

Rick meets with the Governor to discuss a truce.  Well, Rick is there for a truce.  The Governor is there to show Rick his penis.  The Governor says, “Okay, buddy, I’m going to send my army of school teachers and asthmatic kids and old ladies and Rick Moranis-type scientists to kill the shit out of you unless you give us Michonne, who could easily massacre everybody in Woodbury before they had time to put down their Starbucks and grab guns.”  Rick seems impressed by the Governor’s penis and refuses to show his own, although he does show the Governor a little proposed truce map with which the Governor wipes his butt.

There are things that are hard to swallow about the episode.  The most obvious is that Rick doesn’t shoot the Governor.  He has plenty of opportunities to shoot the Governor and even more reasons. “I’m going to put my weapons down over here behind me.” Blam! “All I want is your surrender.”  Blam! “I know that your wife screwed your partner.” Blam! “The primary goal of this enormous penis of mine is to kill all of you.”  Blam! Maybe Rick is afraid that, if he shoots the Governor, he’ll end up in prison…wait, that’s not it.

Even harder to swallow is the fact that the Governor’s offer of truce in exchange for Michonne sends Rick soul searching.  Maybe he SHOULD give up Michonne.  After all, thugs always go away after they get what they want, never to torment their victims again.  Is this what Rick learned during his years of law enforcement?  I think not. Give Michonne to the Governor to torture and kill, and next he’ll be demanding Little Ass Kicker as a replacement for his dead zombie daughter.  Hell, we learn before the episode is over that the Governor is planning to attack before Rick even makes up his confused mind.

I know that we need the Governor alive for the season finale and possibly beyond, but this Rick?  The Rick we know now?  The Rick who leaves hitchhikers to die and talks to dead people? He would have killed the Governor.