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To my friend Aspen...

I almost never post to my blog anymore (should fix that) Aa lot of what I say I put over on VoxPopcast), but I do pretty frequently say shorter things on Twitter or Facebook. Today, I wrote this on Facebook… a eulogy for a friend. I decided that it was something I wanted to have a copy of here.

I’d like to tell you about my friend Aspen. This morning, my wife woke me up, clearly very sad and distraught, asking me to look at a Facebook post. The post was on Aspen’s wall, from a friend of hers I’ve never met, informing the world that she’d passed away a couple days ago. Details of the post were slight, but reading between the lines.. and mixed with things I know… It’s especially sad. But that’s not what I want to dwell on.

I won’t pretend we were “best friends” but we were definitely good friends. At least to me. Loving pen pals! Just looking at the people posting comments and condolences, I don’t know the vast majority of them. She was someone who modeled for me years ago, but we’ve always kept in touch. She struck up a friendship with both me and Stephanie and I can honestly say that Aspen was one of the kindest, sweetest, most adorable, most genuinely delightful people I’ve ever met.

I don’t know her mother or her sister, but I do know Aspen spoke of them QUITE frequently and loved them very much. So on the off chance that either of them ever see this… or really, anyone else whose life Aspen has ever touched (which, is actually probably way more than anyone knows as I’m about to detail)… I want to share a few thoughts about Aspen in the hopes that my words bring whatever solace to whoever reads them that they can.

The first is about my podcast… and the #BLM movement, which… I guess is now forevermore immortalized in Aspen’s FB profile avatar. The morning after George Floyd was murdered on national TV, Aspen texted me to talk. It was a … I guess weird… conversation in a way, but also completely natural in its own way. She was distraught, and angry, and sad… just like a lot of the rest of us. But she wanted to ask me if she had any right to be. I asked her what she meant. She explained the obvious. She found everything disturbing and awful… she was angry and upset… but she was white and she wanted to know how I was feeling as a black person.

She was concerned for me. It was very clearly from a place of love. Not from obligation. It wasn’t performative. I wasn’t her only black friend. She wasn’t getting advice from a meme to “check in on black people”. She had just been watching something horrific… and I was a person she felt like she could have an honest conversation about her feeelings with. She honestly wasn’t sure if she was even allowed to show concern as a white person because she (in her words) “didn’t want to take away from the hurt that black people had to be feeling”. And what she wanted most of all was to help. And then she felt like she might even be patronizing by showing concern. We had a very honest conversation about this that went on for like… three days.

So… there’s an episode of VoxPopcast… in fact, I think still one of the most popular shows we’ve ever done, which is just me and several other black friends of mine talking about the George Floyd murder and the aftermath. That was Aspen’s idea. She wanted to hear me talk about it. I thank her at the beginning (calling her Amanda, her name at the time) for giving me the idea. This delighted her… she didn’t even want credit. She thought it was silly to think of her. She just was happy to hear honest opinions from people on what happened. It was important to her. I value that integrity and honesty and genuineness. And, based on the feedback that I got from that episode… her idea… it meant a lot to a lot of other people. I told her that. She was proud of it… or happy about it… her feeling was that she didn’t do much. I disagree. She mattered here a lot. I will never forget it.

Second memory: Three years ago, her purse was stolen. Her response was to post a Facebook message the next morning wishing the anonymous person who robbed her the best of luck, saying “I hope the food and gas from the gas station bought with my card last night fed you and took you where you needed to go. I also hope that things turn around for you in life. I’m sure you’re just in a bad spot and need some help.” It almost sounds sarcastic; if you didn’t know Aspen you’d think it was. If you did know her, you’d know it was the absolute most sincere thing ever. The only thing she was sad about was that that purse contained a necklace given to her by her deceased fiancé. To Aspen, the biggest tragedy was that some poor person “had to rob her”

Final memory: The last real conversation we had (other than brief FB comments or happy birthdays). A few months ago, after Aspen wrote a post publicly coming out as: genderqueer, polyamorous, and pansexual… and ummm… as Aspen (instead of Amanda, her given name), I wrote her a private message to congratulate her. We’d talked about sexuality a bunch over the years, so I actually already knew all of those things. I think a lot of people in her life did… I don’t feel like she was ever trying to hide anything. But Aspen felt like taking the definitive step was important. I think more for other people than for herself. For normalization. She felt it was important because, in her words: “I’m a raging, feminist, poly, pan, nonbinary, spiritual atheist who’s sorry she showed up to the game a little late.” She wanted to help others.

In particular I asked about the pronouns she’d chosen: specifically she/he/they. I actually went back and forth on what I should use on this post. I decided to go with feminine because of what she said. I once asked if she had a preference. What should I use… Her answer was a predictable “oh no… I sometimes feel totally like ultrafemme or some days I feel more masculine or somedays neither and it changes so much. I’m genderqueer! I embrace the entire spectrum of pronouns. Just do whatever is easiest!” And that was that. Mostly, she told me, that she was just happy that there was so much love and support from people on what she said was a little scary and a very vulnerable day. She was glad she did it. She thought it was important to just be her.

And it was… Aspen was important. I wish she knew how important she was to other people. She was important to me. She was important to my wife. She was clearly important to so many people who knew and loved her… and from the three examples that I just shared, I wish she understood how important she was to people who had never met her.

So… to her mother and sister, and again, anyone else who loved her/him/them as Aspen or Amanda (or Mandie… which is what I actually mostly called her): My most sincere condolences to the loss of one the brightest lights in the world.

And to Mandie, I love you and miss you. I already miss talking to you… I miss your quirkly flirtiness… I miss your goofy tiktok videos… I miss your deep and sincere desire to help everyone that you’ve ever (and never) met… I miss your periodic checking in on me to make sure I was having a good day… I miss your writing me randomly to ask a question about race or to discuss gender or sexuality… I will miss you texting me to point me at some random asshole you want me to roast for being sexist or racist online…. and I miss you writing me out of the blue to say “hey, what comic books should I be reading?” I will miss not waking up to a private text next year that says “Happy motha fuckin birthday!!!”. And I will miss the wonderful person who had the courage to write me on a horrible day and say “I don’t know how to feel”.

You’re gone… today is a horrible day and I don’t know how to feel. But I know I miss you.

-Love Mav

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To my friend Aspen… was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

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Telemarketer Theater

Guess what… It’s telemarketer theater time ya’ll!!!

Caller: Hello is Chris there?

Mav: Sure!

Caller: Hello, this is David with XXXXX insurance.

Mav: Hi, David! So nice to talk to you. How are you, what can I do for you?

Caller: Wow… umm… I’m fine, thank you for asking. Ummm… sir, I’m calling on behalf of XXXXX insurance and I believe we can offer you substantial savings on your auto insurance. How much are you paying for insurance right now?

Mav: Oh, I don’t believe in insurance.

Caller: You don’t… “believe” in insurance?

Mav: Nope. I figure it’s a useless scam.

Caller: I assure you this is not a scam call, sir.

Mav: Oh no, not you David. Of course not, I’m saying all insurance. I’m against it. Just on general principle.

Caller: But what if you get in an accident.

Mav: Well, I do all the time.

Caller: You’ve had an automobile accident? Then I’m sure you understand the importance of…

Mav: Well, I wouldn’t call them accidents.

Caller: Excuse me sir?

Mav: Well, what I do is I ram my car into other cars as hard as I can. It’s fun.

Caller: hahaha… well, sir… then you could clearly get hurt.

Mav: Nahhh… I just drive really fast?

Caller: What?

Mav: If I drive faster than the other guy then he gets hurt and not me.

Caller: Uhhh…

Mav: You should try it. It works great.

Caller: But what if the other guy is driving faster.

Mav: Oh… I assure you NOBODY drives faster than me.

Caller: I… I see… so then you definitely need insurance because after that your car would be destroyed.

Mav: Yeah… but that’s easy.

Caller: How so?

Mav: Well, after a wreck, I’m usually blocking traffic, so I just pull whoever is in the next car that comes up out and I take their car. No problem.

Caller: I see… like Grand Theft Auto.

Mav: Well, I don’t really like to use that term… I prefer to just think of myself as a businessman.

Caller: No, I mean the game…

Mav: This is not a game, David. It’s an opportunity.

Caller: No the video game…. you’re talking about the vid…

Mav: Let’s cut to the chase David. You do crime, right?

Caller: What?

Mav: You’re working as a telemarketer scam call bank. You’re not adverse to crime.

Caller: Sir, this isn’t crime, I’m authorized to offer you a…

Mav: Come on David… lets cut the bullshit. This is just you and me.

Caller: Ok…

Mav: Are you adverse to doing crime, David?

Caller: Uhhh…. no… I’m not.

Mav: Ok… what if I’m willing to cut you in on my enterprise?

Caller: Your enterprise?

Mav: I’m offering you a job. A much better job than the bullshit insurance scam one you have going now.

Caller: But sir… this is not a…

Mav: David… How much do you make right now?

Caller: uh… I make… uh… it depends.

Mav: on what… do they give you a salary? Do you work on commission?

Caller: Uh… it depends on how many people I sign up. Last month I made umm… $7000. The month before that I made $45,000. Yeah…. that’s it.

Mav: Uh huh… You made $45,000 working a phone bank for a telemarketing scam.

Caller: Uhhh… yeah, sure…

Mav: David… what if I could make that $45,000 IN ONE DAY!?!?!!

Caller: How?

Mav: I’m offering you a position on my crew. Basic smash and grab, you and four other guys hit a luxury car dealership, get them back to me, I fence them and you get a $45K cut. Are you in or out?

Caller: Sir, this is a recorded line… Anyone could be listening and…

Mav: David… come on… we both know that XXXXX insurance is bullshit. You’re working a phone scam. I’m offering you a chance at the big leagues. Are you not interested? Should I find another guy.

Caller: No, no! I’m interested.

Mav: Then say it, David…

Caller: Say what?

Mav: I want you to admit that XXXXX insurance is bullshit.

Caller: It is… XXXXX Insurance is bullshit.

Mav: Ok… I need to be able to get in touch with you. What’s your last name, David.

Caller: Uh… Stryker.

Mav: Oh come on…

Caller: No, that’s real. That’s my name.

Mav: Your real name is David Striker? S-T-R-I-K-E-R. You want me to believe that?

Caller: Uhhh… It’s with a Y…. S-T-R-Y-K-E-R.

Mav: Surrre it is… Ok, David Stryker… Let me get your home number..

Caller: Why?

Mav: About the job, David. I need to be able to get in touch with you.

Caller: Ok… fine… 201-XXX-4925.

Mav: Don’t bullshit me, David…

Caller: I’m not! I swear!

Mav: Ok. I’m going to need your home address.

Caller: Why?

Mav: So my guys can pick you up for the job.

Caller: Shouldn’t we meet first? Give me your address!

Mav: Oh you don’t get to meet me. I’m the top of the food chain. I need anonymity and plausible deniability. You’re coming in at the bottom until I know I can trust you. You have to work your way up.

Caller: You can trust me. You have my name and phone number.

Mav: I need your address David. Do you want this job or not?

Caller: There’s no job. I’m just listening because this is the most amusing call I’ve had today. But now you’re wasting my time.

Mav: Oh… it’s a waste of time? I thought I could trust you, David. I thought you were my guy. I thought you were ready to ditch this petty phone scam shit and take it to the next level.

Caller: I don’t even know who you are!

Mav: You can call me Mr. Big.

Caller: Sigh… I gotta go. [CLICK]

[FIN]

I am SOOOOOO tempted to call this Jersey number just to see what he gave me the number to or if he was actually dumb enough to use a real one.

Telemarketer Theater was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

[chrismaverickdotcom]

Telemarketer Theater

Guess what happened today? That’s right, it’s Telemarketer Theater time, ya’ll!

INT. PITTSBURGH HOME – DAY

Our hero, MAV, is watching Jeopardy with his wife Stephanie when the phone rings. Mav gives a devilish smile as he looks at the phone. Steph recognizes the smile and pauses the TV. Mav answers the phone.

Mav: Hello?Caller: Hello, may I speak to Christopher Maverick, please?

Mav: Who’s calling?Caller: Angie.Mav: Uhhh… Angie who?

Caller: This is Angie with with Dukwinz University?

Mav: Who? Where?

Caller: This is Angie. I’m calling on behalf of Dukewinz University.

Mav: Dukewinz?

Caller: Uhhh… I mean… Duquincey?

Mav: Oh!!!! Duquincey!!!!

Caller: Umm… yes.

Mav: How may I help you?

Caller: May I please speak with Christopher Maverick.

Mav: Yeah�� sure. That’s me.

Caller: Can you verify your full name, age, address and zip code so that I can discuss sensitive information with you?

Mav: Nope.

Caller: Excuse me?

Mav: No, I don’t want to give you any of that information.

Caller: But sir, I need you to verify that information so that I can discuss sensitive information with you.

Mav: But I don’t know who you are. Why should I do that?

Caller: I said. I’m Angie with… uh… Duquincy University and I’m…

Mav: I don’t believe you. Caller: What? Mav: I don’t believe you, Angie.

Caller: Uhhh…

Mav: See, I don’t think you are working for Duquincy University, Angie.

Caller: But I…

Mav: Can you prove it?

Caller: Excuse me?

Mav: Angie, can I have your full name, age, address and zip code?

Caller: I don’t… ummm… it doesn’t work like that. Mav: I think it does.

Caller: But that’s not how we do this.

Mav: It’s how I do this. I don’t believe you are really employed by Duquincy and I believe this is a scam.

Caller: Well it’s not.

Mav: Well, what is this regarding then, Angie?

Caller: I’m sorry, I can’t give you more details until you have verified your identity by giving me your name, age, address and zip code.

Mav: You first.

Caller: But we don’t do that. You need to verify.

Mav: I don’t believe you, Angie. I don’t think you work there. I think you’re a scammer. In fact, I’m sure of it.

Caller: Why would you think that.

Mav: Because I know what the place you are trying to mention is. I’ve worked there several years. There’s no such place called “Duquincy”. You don’t work there. You can’t even pronounce it.

Caller: Well, I’m sorry. But I don’t think that matters.

Mav: It absolutely matters. You are fraudulently representing your self as an agent of my employer. You are in violation of federal wiretapping law section 32a clause 3b. I am recording this call and will be reporting it to the authorities.

Caller: I am not!

Mav: Yes you are! Totally in violation of 32a.3b.

Caller: No I’m not. Because E.C.S.I is not a scam organization.

Mav: Oh, so you don’t work for Duquincy?

Caller: Uhhh….. I uh… I never said I….

Mav: Yes you did.

Caller: I clearly identified myself as working on behalf of Duquincy … now if you can please give me your…

Mav: No… that place doesn’t exist you can’t work for them if you don’t know their name. Caller: Well, I don’t think it matters if can’t quite pronounce it. I do have important information that I can’t release unless you verify your identity.

Mav: But you first.

Caller: How would I do that?

Mav: What’s your full name?

Caller: Angie. Mav: Angie what?

Caller: Angie… uh…. Jones.

Mav: Angie… uh… Jones?

Caller: Uh… yeah, that’s it.

Mav: Sure that sounds real (Steph laughs out loud at this one). Anyway. What’s your address Angie.

Caller: I don’t see what this is supposed to prove.

Mav: I’m verifying your identity. I want to know you are who say you are.

Caller: Well, I clearly am. Look, I have important information for you, bu I need you to verify your identity first with…

Mav: I don’t trust you, Angie. I don’t believe you work for ECSI. You are going to have to verify your identity first. Caller: I don’t see why I have to do that. You can just verify who we are by doing a search online.

Mav: Oh I already have.

Caller: Then you understand that we are a legitimate organization working on behalf of … uh… yeah… Du…Quin…sey… University.

Mav: What does E.C.S.I stand for?Caller: What? Mav: What does ECSI stand for, Angie?

Caller: It doesn’t stand for anything. Mav: It stands for nothing?

Caller: Yes… we’re just ECSI. Mav: I don’t think so…. I think it’s an acronym. I think if you worked there you’d be able to tell me what it stood for. I think you’re kind of full of shit, Angie.

Caller: Look, this is a very important call. I’m not scamming you. I’m just doing my job. But I need you to verify your identity so I can give you this important message.

Mav: What’s your social security number?

Caller: What?

Mav: I’d like your social security number. So I can verify your identity.

Caller: But I didn’t even ask you for your social security number. Mav: I know. But I’m asking for yours. Caller: Why would I do that?

Mav: Well, how else will I verify your identity. you called me out of the blue. I don’t know who you are. So I’d like to do a background check.

Caller: Well, I’m not doing that.

Mav: Well, I think we have a bit of a problem.

Caller: Look, if you want your information you’re just going to have to call this number back. [CLICK]

FIN.

Seriously… why the fuck did she hang around that long?

Telemarketer Theater was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

[chrismaverickdotcom]

Telemarketer Theater

Telemarketer Theater is getting harder and harder to do.

[INT. PITTSBURGH HOME – DAY]

Our hero, MAV, is doing some work on his laptop as his phone rings. He’s been discouraged by these last few calls. But maybe something will happen with this one. Mav answers the phone and hear the call center on the other seems to be particularly loud and busy]

MAV: Hello.

CALLER: Hello, this is Ravi with Senior Benefits. How are..

[Mav is encouraged because this time the Indian caller doesn’t seem to be poorly attempting to disguise his voice as a midwestern white man]

MAV: Ohhh! Hello Ravi.

CALLER: Yes… Hello, this is Ravi with Senior Benefits. How are you today?

MAV: Lonely and horny!

CALLER: Uh… very good. Sir, this is Ravi with Senior Benefits, and I am wondering if you have consi…

MAV: How big is your cock?

CALLER: Excuse me?

MAV: I want to know how big your cock is.

CALLER: Sir, this is Ravi with Senior Benefits, and I am wondering if you have considered the…

MAV: But how big is your cock?

CALLER: I don’t see how that matters, Sir.

MAV: Oh it matters! It definitely matters!

CALLER: Sir, I am with Senior Benefits and I am calling to see if you have considered final expen…

MAV: Do you have what I need, Ravi?

CALLER: I don’t understand, sir.

MAV: Ravi, sometimes, a man has needs. Needs that only another man can… fulfill. Do you understand what I am saying, Ravi?

CALLER: I…. I think so sir…

MAV: Do you have what I need, Ravi?

CALLER: I… I don’t know…

MAV: Can you… fulfill me, Ravi?

CALLER: How… How old are you?

MAV: How old do you want me to be?

CALLER: What? I don’t understand…

MAV: I’m old enough, daddy.

CALLER: What?!?

MAV: Is it ok if I call you Daddy?

[Click!]

MAV: Hello? Hello?

I mean, at least he stuck around for a bit.

Telemarketer Theater was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

[chrismaverickdotcom]

Tabulating Instructor Honoriffics

Not that this will be an accurate sampling group, but based on comments with Stephanie and Jameel… Steph and I are wondering something that we’ve put together a little poll for.

What was your undergrad major.

Did you call your professors (or most professors) by their first name or last name?

Was it different for grad school (if applicable)

If you currently are (or ever were) a teacher what do you prefer?

Steph wants to do some statistics.

Tabulating Instructor Honoriffics was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

[chrismaverickdotcom]

So about Triplicate Girl...

Ok… question for old skool comic book fans… (Wayne Wise, looking at you since this is a favorite of yours).

There’s a Legion of Superheroes character named “Triplicate Girl” or “Triad” (depending on which era of comics you’re reading). Her powers are that she comes from an alien race where everyone three identical beings. Only she’s a weird mutant and where everyone else on her planet has three bodies that share a consciousness, Triad is unique in that her three bodies have autonomous thoughts and personalities.

But it’s JUST three bodies. She can’t create more. And when one of the bodies is killed she becomes “Duplicate Damsel” with only two bodies. And then when another is killed she becomes “Una.”

So… the question… isn’t this not really a “power” per se. I mean, isn’t she really just “three regular girls”? I mean, I guess she is just as much “three regular girls who have the power to combine into one regular girl” but that also doesn’t seem… terribly useful.

Maybe that’s why she ends up getting killed so often?

So about Triplicate Girl… was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

[chrismaverickdotcom]

Cartoon Character Gender Test

So, in a discussion with my cohosts on the Oh Gosh, Oh Golly, Oh Wow Podcast, and some of our fans, we came to the theory that most of us can’t conclusively gender cartoon characters UNLESS they have specific gender markers (skirts, boobs, etc). OR if we know from context (because we know the show

I also expect it’s even harder the younger you are!

So I wanna test it. Can you gender these characters? Can your children?

In the comments, let me know your age and gender (or the age and gender of the person taking the test) and then, without googling, for each of these 14 characters let me know what gender you think they are. AND for each let me know if it’s a character you recognize or if you just had to guess based on appearance or whatever (I expect most people won’t know all of them… maybe some of my comics scholar peeps).

This is an open ended thing. So feel free to have your children guess too (let me know their ages and gender too… I expect for very young kids who likely know few if any of these characters, it’s going to be almost entirely random… or they’re just going to default to their own).

EDIT: #12 is the gargoyle. NOT Nightcrawler.

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Cartoon Character Gender Test was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

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In Order to Save the Village, We Had To Burn It Down... AGAIN!

So America is on fire… or at least parts of it are. Specifically, the city of Minneapolis is having a really bad time right now — in the wake of the murder of George Floyd a few days ago. But it’s not just there. There’s been protests in several American cities tonight, and some of them have turned violent. The CNN building in Atlanta was under siege earlier tonight. People have been gathered outside of the White House in DC in what’s been a pretty precarious situation. People are fed the fuck up. And they deserve to be. We got to watch a black man murdered live on TV and the Internet. AGAIN!

I thought about writing about this a couple days ago when I first realized this was going to get bad. I didn’t have it in me at the time. Frankly I was kind of busy with my dissertation. But also, I felt like it made more of a statement to just say “you know, I wrote about this six years ago with Ferguson and it’s still happening, so just go read that one.” So that’s what I did. I reposted the link to Facebook and Twitter, and then went back to my work, with the TV on in the background and checking in on social media every once in a while just to see what people were saying about it. And as I did it, I knew full well “this is just going to get worse and worse” especially with the idiot who occupies the White House.

(By the way… the idiot did not disappoint… If you’ve been paying attention you probably know about his dumbass threatening of shooting looters and trying to claim that doing so was to keep Floyd from not dying in vain. I don’t even have time to go into Trump’s fucking moronic ramblings right now… other than to say… as I tweeted at him “fuck you dude!” and also to say, about his explanation that he didn’t know of any racist history with the “when the looting starts the shooting starts” statement that the answer to that is “then you are too fucking dumb to be president… and frankly… too fucking dumb to even be a good racist”)

Anyway, if you’ve been watching TV or the internet in the last 24 hours or so, you know that it did get worse. It is getting worse. But one of the nice things is that this time around, I’ve seen more… let’s say “positive” reaction to the riots. A lot of people seem to “get it” this time. Part of that I think is just the cultural moment that we find ourselves in in 2020. Partly as a reaction to dumbass-in-chief, partly because of the efforts of the #BLM movement… and I think in large part because of the visceral reaction of sitting there and watching a cop very calmly crush the life out of a man without batting an eye while onlookers pleaded with him to stop. People just “get it” this time (which is why I think the viralness of the video is a good idea despite what some other people think. That’s another side point I don’t have much time for right now). And good. People get it.

But… not everyone… of course not everyone.

And the problem I have is that the people who are complaining… both on the left and the right are doing so in the exact same way. In a way that I find really troubling and so that’s what I need to rant on a bit here. I’ve had a few arguments… some longer than others… on social media in the last couple days (hell, years… since I wrote that original essay) about how effective riots are. Some conservative MAGA types like to claim “but Martin Luther King was against riots. He’d be disappointed in you. These are just a bunch of scumbags who want TVs.” Fuck those guys! On the other hand I’ve had some arguments with more liberal people who like to claim “but this is bad, because black people are just burning down black owned businesses. it doesn’t help anything. You’re destroying your own community” as though classism were not a thing conflated with racism in complicated ways and black people were a big monolithic profit sharing union which directly benefited from the enrichment of the few that are able to manage to own property and commerce in a tiny microcosm capitalist system that catered to other black people and even if they were that wasn’t still as problematic as fuck! I swear to God, the next white person who tries to explain to me that “you don’t understand, these people are destroying ethnic businesses. They’re destroying their own community. They’re only hurting themselves…” I’m punching you in the fucking throat. And you know what I may do it you’re a black person too…

Because, in either of those cases, it’s not that the decision to riot is a bunch of people got together and had a calm rational meeting and said “ok, well that’s it. I guess we torch the city!” No… it’s based on feelings that have boiled over from a continuous, systemic, dangerous and sometimes PURPOSEFUL ignoring of the struggles that they are going through. It is a decision of last resort.

For me, the straw here was Keisha Lance Bottoms, Democratic mayor of Atlanta, making a comment earlier tonight about the riots in her town. She’s upset. She’s rightly upset. But she said something that I hate. Something to the effect of (not an exact quote): “You are disgracing the memory of George Floyd. You are disgracing the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King. When King was killed, we didn’t riot. Go home!”

NO… She is wrong. This is the same bullshit that the dumabass-in-chief was trying to get across. Yes, she’s way more eloquent. She is way more studied. Frankly, she’s at least 10x as smart as President Dumbass. But… she is also wrong. I don’t know that Atlanta rioted when King was killed. in fact, I’m pretty sure they didn’t. The city was mourning. They were having his funeral there. HOWEVER. That’s very misleading. Everyone else rioted! There were nearly 200 retaliatory riots across the United States the week that King was killed. More than 40 people were killed. Thousands of people were injured. There were tens of millions of dollars (in 1968 dollars) in damages as cities got burned. They called in the military. Not just the National Guard… the Army and Marines were deployed to some cities. It was called the Holy Week Uprising. Look it up! IT WAS BAD! REAL BAD!!!

Of course a lot of people don’t know that. It was 52 years ago. And we don’t talk about it much anymore because it doesn’t fit the narrative that we like to tell about MLK…. that he was this cuddly peace loving teddy bear that brought America together and ended racism and everyone loved him and mourned him when he was gone.

If everyone loved King, he wouldn’t have been shot in the head. And that’s not just James Earl Ray. King was on the FBI watchlist. He was widely considered a terrorist by people. Any of your super MAGA friends (the same ones who hated the Colin Kaepernick kneeling protest) that are posting memes that say “this is a protest, and this is a crime” with MLK’s picture on the “good” side…. make no mistake, those are the assholes who would have been calling him “nigger” and screaming he should be lynched. For most Americans in 2020… especially white ones… you maybe learned two things about MLK in history class… he “had a dream” and he was killed. That’s it. If you’re lucky, you maybe learned a third thing. That on March 9, 1965, he marched across a bridge in Selma, non-violently! And that was the turning point for the Civil Rights Movement. It’s the event in the meme that everyone shares about how great he was at non-violent protest. What maybe you don’t know is that that march he was at… That was two days after the first time they tried to march across the same bridge and the cops beat the shit out of everyone. It’s called Bloody Sunday. Look it up! King was there putting himself in harms way in what could have turned into a much more violent protest. What made King great was that in face of being one of the most hated men in America, he kept his composure. He kept his non-violence stance. At considerable risk to himself he preached his message. And for all his troubles… he got shot in the fucking head. People seem to forget that part.

See, it’s not convenient. It makes it hard for America to feel good about itself if they dwell on the fact that the man we’re supposed to view as the 20th century’s greatest hero… GOT MURDERED FOR HIS TROUBLES. It feels icky. Just like it feels icky to remember that after he was martyred to the cause of non-violence… there was a solid week of rioting in his name. And it also feels icky to think about the fact that those riots are an important part of the Civil Rights Movement. Not just the Holy Week Uprising. I mean the riots of the ENTIRE Civil Rights movement.

You see… for all the rhetoric about King… he didn’t “solve racism all by himself.” And I mean, not just because he didn’t end racism. But also because he wasn’t alone. And I’m not just talking about Malcolm X either. I mean that his non-violence movement was not alone. Yes, he was a key figure during the Civil Rights Movement. Yes, his big thing was non-violent protests. But that was just HIS thing. During the hey day of the Civil Rights movement from 1954 until 1968, while King was staging these protests… there was a lot of rioting going on. Do you know what happened in Los Angeles only 5 months after the Selma march that everyone loves? A traffic stop escalated into a six-day riot that left 34 people dead and 1000 people injured and devastated 46 square miles of LA. It’s called the Watts Riot. Look it up!

This happened a lot during the Civil Rights movement. In fact almost constantly. There were literally 159 race riots over the course of like two months in 1967. 85 people died. Thousands of people were injured. Over ten thousand people were arrested. It’s called the Long Hot Summer. Look it up! Which was sort of MLK’s actual point. You know how you have that one black friend who keeps sharing the King quote that “Riots are the language of the unheard” and you mostly ignore him… I mean, if you’re an asshole MAGA type, maybe you tell him he’s wrong… but otherwise you maybe just say “oh yeah… good point” but you don’t really think about what that means? Well, what it means is actually super important. MLK was trying to use non-violent protest to get people to listen to him so that violent protests didn’t erupt. Do you know how I know this? I know because HE SAID SO. But he also knew that the inevitable result of NOT listening to him and not bringing racial change was that there was going to be rioting. And I quote:

“But at the same time, it is as necessary for me to be as vigorous in condemning the conditions which cause persons to feel that they must engage in riotous activities as it is for me to condemn riots. I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again.”

-Martin Luther King, The Other America (1967)

Over and over again… You see, because Martin Luther King was not the be-all-end-all of the civil rights movement. What he was, was Colin Kaepernick, 1960s edition. You know “that son-of-bitch that disrespects the troops and doesn’t deserve freedom because he won’t stand up when a bunch of white people tell him to and celebrate how great America is”? Yeah… him! You see… just because you don’t use the word “nigger” that doesn’t mean you don’t mean it. Kaep has done a ton of good for this world. He has caused a lot of change. But it’s not enough. Because he’s one guy… and the change doesn’t come… sometimes, there’s riots!

And sometimes, there’s not. Even if you’re one of the people who AGREES that #BlackLivesMatter, and you post your tweets with hashtags and maybe even donate. Do you remember Ahmaud Arbery? We were all super upset about his murder a few weeks back. We had video. It was right in our faces. People got mad! Good! You know… for like two days! And then everyone forgot and went back to the very important job of arguing with each other over whether or not masks worked to fight COVID-19 and if it was time to open back up the world up in a week or a month and can we meet in groups of 10 or 25 or 200? Black Lives Matter… but not as much as … you know… getting a haircut. We forgot, because he didn’t get a riot.

And THAT was the message of Martin Luther King. Riots are the language of the unheard. And they are unheard because no one is listening. And you’re not listening now. Not really. When you are more concerned with the methods or location of protest, then you aren’t listening. When you are more concerned with the destruction of property or whose property it is, then you aren’t listening. When you’re more concerned with whether it is appropriately a riot or a protest, then you aren’t listening. You aren’t listening to the people telling you black lives matter. You are not listening to the large segments of black society who do not have justice or equality or humanity. You are not listening to Kaepernick and why he was kneeling in the first place. And if this were 1965, you wouldn’t have listened to Martin Luther King. Not really. You would have paid a little attention… for a little while… until you didn’t. Until you needed a fucking haircut. “And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again.”

In Order to Save the Village, We Had To Burn It Down… AGAIN! was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

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New Idea: Nekkid Politicians

So I was doing some random Wikipedia surfing earlier, and I ran across a page detailing all of the political sex scandals on a federal level in US history. Of course I read it… DON’T JUDGE ME! And I know some of you are reading it too! Anyway, I got to the end of the list and it includes one that has been bothered me since it first happened last year. Katie Hill, Democratic congressional rep from California who was forced to resign last year after an extramarital sex scandal where it was discovered that she was having an affair with a congressional staffer. Now a few things have always bothered me about this. Obviously there’s a double standard going on here. If you think that Hill is the first person in the grand history of the 12,348 members of the House who has ever fucked a subordinate, you’re crazy. Hell, I refuse to believe that there aren’t other people in the House NOW who have done it. Hill was ousted because she’s a woman and she’s bisexual. I have issues with that. But that’s not what I want to talk about.

What I do want to think about is that what predicated this (and what I think the real issue is) is that the scandal came to light because of leaked nude photos of Hill… it turns out that Katie Hill is a human woman… with nipples… and a vagina… shocking, I know! I honestly believe that if these photos had never turned up, she’d probably still be in office now. Because really… I get why some people might offended that she cheated on her spouse. I get that some people might be offended that she did so with a same-sex partner… and sure, there is a question of the inappropriateness of fucking a subordinate… But let’s get real. She’s out because people have seen her boobies.

And it’s happened with men too… not just with the House… and not with only one party. Anthony Weiner(D), Adam Kuhn(R), and Joe Barton(R) all had their political careers ended over dick pics. And even though he clearly got through it, there was always the alleged sex tape of his Royal Orangeness that was an issue during his campaign and the fears that it surfacing would be ammunition for a foreign power to blackmail him. Again… I’m not getting into all the other multitude of horrible shit that he has done and that should DQ him or whether anyone believes it or not. I’m just thinking about the possibility of scandal should exposing pictures of him surface.

So… I want to suggest a solution. I hereby am pleased to propose the National Undressed Defense of Extortion Statute. I think that heretofore, holding a federal office (legislative, executive or judicial… all elected offices and everything that requires congressional approval) should mean that you are required to submit a full frontal and rear nude photo to the National Archives that may be accessed by any American at will. It doesn’t have to be raunchy or anything. But genitals must be clearly exposed. Feel free to submit multiples with good lighting, and maybe a soft focus if you want… Hell, hire Annie Leibovitz and get some really nice stuff to add to your file. But before taking office, and no less than once every two years of holding said office, the archives must be updated with a current mug shot style, passport lighting, front and back shot just standing there so that constituents can access at will.

Do I want to see most of Congress nekkid? Nope! Do I want to see the president nekkid? Hell no! And honestly, there are tons of federal office holders that I even LIKE and don’t really want to look at the photos of. And no one should be forced to look. BUT, My thought here is that this takes any stigma out of the photos by requiring EVERYONE to do it. There’s no blackmail possibilities. There’s no embarrassment. Oh, look Daily Mail has photos of so-and-so’s cock… well, who cares… so does everyone else. Oh no, dumbass 8chan losers are threatening to release photos of candidate’s boobs… who cares… they’re already on the web. Oh look someone has supposed photos of the president fucking someone on the desk in the Oval office… are they real? Well, easy enough to tell, let’s check the file footage of his dick.

I realize that there might be some people no longer willing to run for office because they don’t want to photograph themselves naked. I realize CERTAIN politicians and their followers even get very upset about FAKE photos of themselves starring lookalikes like the brilliant work of Alison Jackson. You know what? I don’t care. Yes, American’s have the right to privacy… but just as I think that maybe you should give up some of that right to say… your finances… if you decide to run for president… I think this is a good litmus test too… Ok, fine… you think your tax/healthcare/environmental plan is imperative for the American people? Do you believe in it enough to show everyone how little your dick is? Well then, you must not care that much.

I’ve been thinking about it… and I’m not sure I can come up with a downside. Thoughts?

New Idea: Nekkid Politicians was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

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An Open Letter to Senator Lindsey Graham

Dear Lindsey Graham,

While I continue to hate the usage (on both sides) of headlines like “_____ SLAMS _____” or “_____ DESTROYS _____” on pretty much anything… you’ll be happy to know that I actually agree with you on the importance of nurses working during this pandemic. Yay, common ground!

HOWEVER!!!

If you can stand there and say with a straight — albeit rather punchable — face that you’re legitimately worried that the fucking EMERGENCY UNEMPLOYMENT STIMULUS package might pay NURSES… you know… the very people that YOU and I both agree are responsible for saving lives during this whole global pandemic that we’re all in the middle of… more money to NOT work (and save your and my miserable lives) than it will to to do so… then… yeah, I think maybe you have kind of identified the problem.

Just maybe not in the way you think!

The South Carolina poverty line is $25,750/year. The SC average income is $50,570. Your theoretical $15/hour nurse makes $29,250. You’re afraid of paying her $46,800 (and not really… because it’s 4 months not 12… but fine… I’ll even give this one to you)… which is literally STILL below the median income. Sooooo… your literal argument here is “I don’t think it’s fair that these greedy ass bitches want more than $3500 over the poverty rate to save my life. Fuck those bitches!”

So… like… you know… If that’s the hill you want to die on… it looks like we’re gonna have our chance.

-Love, Mav

An Open Letter to Senator Lindsey Graham was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

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on the dawn of SuperMundanity

I’ve been batting around an idea in my head for an academic paper/conference presentation (probably for next year’s PCA/ACA) and I’d like to do something that I’ve done before that has worked out pretty well for me. I want to outsource some of my thinking and brainstorming to the internet. What I’m looking for here is comic book stories (or other media if you can think of them… but I’m not sure if there’s good examples of movies or TV shows… yet… Disney+ is coming… Lois and Clark maybe counts a little bit) that focus on the mundane aspects of being superhuman. That is to say, I don’t just want to think about superheroes that happen to have secret identities. I want to think about stories which primarily deal with superheroes trying to lead normal lives where the superheroics of the story are secondary, tertiary or even altogether nonexistent.

Tom King seems to basically be the master of this right now, with Vision being a definitive example. But also his work on Mister Miracle and Batman (particularly issue #37 with the Batman & Catwoman double date with Superman and Lois). Other examples I can think of are some stories in Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye series and Chelsea Cain’s Mockingbird. Maybe Robert Kirkman’s Invincible and Austin Grossman’s text novel Soon I Will be Invincible (adjective coincidental) count here… I’m not sure yet… and that’s part of what I am trying to work out.

It’s actually a little hard to explain exactly what it is I’m looking for here… that’s part of the idea of the paper. For instance, even though there’s a lot of “normal human” stuff in Watchmen I don’t think it quite counts. I think I’m arguing we may be on the cusp, of a new sort of post-modern age of comics and I’m trying to figure out what exactly is going into that. One part of that might be the embrace of the mundane… not so much just the deconstruction of superheroes the way stuff like Watchmen did, but the reconstruction that occurs when we look at the building blocks of what the post-modern superhero is. And part of that may be a look at the mundane aspects of their humanity… the strive to be mundane even outside of the struggle to be superhuman. That is to say, that in a way, much of Silver age Spider-man stories dealt with Peter’s struggle to be a superhero with real life problems at home. Bronze Age was more about solving those problems through superhuman means. Modern was keeping the superhuman and human lives in balance… or figuring out who is the real person (is Superman the costume or is it Clark) and now maybe we’re looking at comics that have an inverse of the Silver Age problem. How does the superhuman struggle to be human when the superhuman is the norm… Even though it isn’t directly as obvious as some of the other stuff I dealt with, I think a lot of Into the Spider-verse was dealing with this problem… particularly in the Peter B. Parker storyline. Or something like that…

I’ll figure that out later. Right now I’m just looking for ideas. Tell me good stories (from any medium) that you think deal with this issue and why, and if you think you have thoughts that deal with the question I’m struggling with please feel free to share those too.

on the dawn of SuperMundanity was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

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Sex and the Digital Assistant...

I don’t think to post to my own blog that much lately. Actually, I do THINK about it, but I don’t get around to it as much. Mostly because any time I have a long form thinky pseudo academic thing to say, it ends up going into a VoxPopcast post/epsiode (so make sure you go subscribe to that if you aren’t)… or maybe it ends as a part of my actual dissertation or some other academic thing that I am working on. Anyway, every once in a while I still have half-formed things that are rattling around in my head and I want to work through them… not sure if it’s a VoxPop episode yet, or an article or nothing. This is one of those days… I’m just working through some concepts.

So, first some backstory. I’ve become somewhat addicted to voice activated personal digital assistants. Not just the Siri on my phone. I also have three TVs in my house, two HomePods, and, I I think eight Amazon Echos of varying types. Plus my iPad and my watch (and Steph’s iPad, watch and iPhone… and I guess my laptop and desktop computers). Yes, yes, yes… I know the thing that people worry about… lack of privacy… how do I know that Amazon and/or Apple aren’t listening and watching to everything I do. I don’t know that. In fact, frankly, I just assume they are. I’m quite certain that some dude is in a data farm somewhere just giddy with excitement over listening to recordings of me having sex. You know what… good for him. I hope he enjoys it. So long as I can check the weather, ask for music to be played, set reminders of what I need to pick up at the grocery store and turn on and off my lights with my voice, I really don’t care! And you know what… if you’ve got a smartphone, they have recordings of you fucking too. Get used to it. Siri has heard you fuck! It’s the price you pay to be able to text emojis and gifs to people. And I’m sure that some of you think that you’ve cleverly saved yourself by turning off voice activation and location services and putting a little post-it note over the built in webcam. That’s cute… whatever helps you sleep at night. Anyway… more on this later.

Ok, now that that’s out of the way… For those that don’t know, my dissertation is about all about how sex and gender and sexuality are represented in comic books and other superhero narratives. So I was working on that today and I was thinking about the ways in which gender I’ve gotten to the part of my dissertation where I am thinking about the ways in which comic characters are granted gender when they have no specific need to have one. I’m thinking in particular about robots, androids and cyborgs here, for instance. Basically, we assume robots are male by default… and if we want to make them female… we give them boobs. Because boobs means female. It doesn’t matter how humanoid or not the robot is. If we want it to be female… throw some boobs on it! Seriously, girl robots have boobs! Almost all of them! And the more female we want the robot to read as, the sexier it has to be. In fact, when constructing a female representation of of a robot, it’s more important that she read as female than robot. Typical cues like being metallic, are way less important than boobs. The male gaze is very powerful!

Sometimes this makes sense… obviously it makes sense for the cyborgs that were born women like Ghost in the Shell‘s Major. And it makes sense for robots like Sarah Connor Chronicles‘ Cameron, who need to masquerade as human. But for other’s like Arcee in Transformers, who is not only not human, but also a giant from another planet… why’s she got boobs? Richie Rich’s robot maid, Irona, also has boobs. It’s not clear why. Rosie, the Jetson’s robot maid, and essentially the same character, does not (one of the few female robot examples I could think of who didn’t actually) so it’s not clear why Irona does. But she’s my favorite, because not only did she have boobs, but apparently when they decided to do a live action Richie Rich on Netflix, someone decided “Irona is not fuckable enough. Let’s make her more human looking and get her wardrobe from a french maid lingerie shop. Yeah, that’s the stuff! The kids will love it!”

And that’s the thing. I think you’re supposed to want to fuck Irona. You’re supposed to want to fuck all the female robots. That’s why they’re sexy. R2-D2 isn’t sexy. C-3PO isn’t. Optimus Prime isn’t. Nor is Johnny-5, or Gort, or Wall-E, or even Vision really. Ok, fine… Gort is a little sexy, but he has swagger. But we sexualize the female robots… even in kid’s content. Not just Irona… a major plot point in Solo: A Star Wars Story is Lando fucking L3-37 (how did this movie not to better? I wonder).

And obviously, that’s how many female robots in sci-fi are used. From Number 6 in Battlestar Galactica to the Fembots in Austin Powers to Ex Machina to West World. There’s a long history of robots being designed for the sexual pleasure of men. And of course, there’s people building fuckbots now… the next level or real doll. Honestly, they’re pretty damn creepy! But I’m sure good ones are around the corner. Because if, film, DVDs, the Internet and VR headsets have taught us anything… it’s that any new technology really takes off when someone figures out a way to make porn with it.

And thinking about all of that got me to where I was thinking about the digital assistants. I currently have two main problems with them. First of all, I want to rename them. I don’t want to be forced to talk to “Hey Siri” or “Alexa” (and I sure as hell am not triggering something with “Ok Google…” that’s the main reason I don’t have one of them. Seriously, fuck that!). I want to set up my own trigger word. One, because I want the TV to stop triggering them with commercials, but also, I like having them have their own customized identity. If nothing else, I would like to be able to use my own trigger word for my assistant and let Steph call her assistant with a different name. They can both “live” in all the devices. I don’t care. But I want to be able to access my calendar when I say the name I choose (Lorelei, has a nice digital assistant ring to it) and she can access hers with whatever name she chooses… (probably Depp, or Orlando or something… I’m just guessing).

The other problem I have with it is that it’s still a little weird talking out loud to “no body” to make my TV or my lights turn on or set my calendar or make a phonecall or whatever. What will really fix this is that sooner or later someone is going to make little holographic projects that I can stick around my house just so that I can have a floating head that appears when I say “Hey Lorelei.” I really don’t need anything complicated. My first thought was just the floating wireframe bald head that is Gideon on Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. Really, that’s good enough. I just want to feel like I’m talking TO someone instead of myself. Except obviously, I can’t have that… because ubiquitous hologram technology is farther away from being a reality than sex robots are.

But then I realized, that’s the answer! Porn drives technology. What will get me my hologram technology is someone figuring out a way to fuck it! What I need is for PornHub to get into the digital assistant business!

Of course they won’t be happy with just creepy floating wireframe head that I was imagining. In order for this to be viable they’d clearly need a fully rendered 3D beautiful woman. We need full Star Trek holodeck tech. And there’s precedent for this. Star Trek is the only reason we have cellphones or iPads in the first place. And there’s precedent for digital assistants to be holograms of beautiful women too. In the comics, Iron Man’s F.R.I.D.A.Y is this… as is Spider-man 2099’s Lyla. Joi, the best character from Blade Runner 2049, one of my favorite recent movies, is this. S1mone from the 2002 movie of the same name, is actually an actress rather than a PDA. And Microsoft literally actually named their digital assistant, Cortana, after the naked woman hologram they designed for the video game HALO (seriously… this is true). If they’re not planning to do this, then seriously, what was even the point. And if anything is going to inspire some lonely geek somewhere to crack the “believable hologram” problem, it’s figuring out a way to have sex with it. Or at least watch 3D porn they can’t quite interact with in front of them.

So clearly this technology is going to exist soon. Probably in our lifetimes. We already have VR porn headsets and this is the next logical step. But this makes me wonder about the ethical concerns with what it is. How do we view it. Will it be like porn and sex toys where no one talks about it, but we all know that we all use them for masturbation in private? Or is there a level of realness that it eventually reaches where suddenly people are uncomfortable with it because it doesn’t “feel like masturbation anymore”?

And what about social issues surrounding sex? If you have sex with your hologram does it count as cheating on your SO? I mean, there’s not anyone else “really there.” And if not, what happens when you link your hologram to the control of some other person you’re “gaming with” on the other side of the world? Is bringing a hologram into your otherwise monogamous relationship a threesome? If there are several is it an orgy? What about when some of them are controlled by real people and others are AIs? What about projecting a hologram of a different person over your regular partner… or your regular partner over a different person? Does the existence of this technology eliminate the idea of monogamy as we know it and forcibly normalize polyamory?

When are you “too young” to fuck your hologram? I mean, sure you can put a parental lock on it, but whether we’re talking about 1989, 1999, 2009, or 2019 obviously your 13-year-old is smarter with technology than you are so there’s no reason to expect any different in 2029. Clearly they’re going to unlock it jack their brains out, and wipe the browser history every time you’re out of the house. And what about DeepFakes? Obviously, the second it’s possible to skin your digital assistant, people are going to be developing lookalikes of every celebrity living and dead from Marilyn Monroe to Beyonce. It’s not really “them” of course… It’s HoloSiri, who just happens to be wearing a white dress that blows up and shows her panties a lot when you talk to her… so is that ok? And does it stop being ok when you decide to make her makeout with HoloCortana? Does it matter if the celebrity skin is of a person who is alive or dead?

I have so many philosophical questions here!

Sex and the Digital Assistant… was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

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On the trailer for Cats...

I just watched the trailer for Cats.

I have some thoughts… but first some caveats:

When I was a little kid, I actually loved this musical. I don’t know why… but Rum Tum Tugger was just one of my favorite songs.

I have this movie as one of my picks in the VoxPopcast Box Office Fantasy game. It’s not that I expected it to be good… in fact, I was pretty sure it would suck when I picked it… but I also believe that if Taylor Swift said she was making an art film that was literally 2 hours of her sitting on the toilet, her fans would flock to it in droves… so my thought was “even if it’s a trainwreck, it will make money”

That said… WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!?!?!?

About ten seconds in I had an actual involuntary physical reaction of “Ewwyyeeewww!!!” and shuddered….

It’s as though someone watched my PCA presentation on the part of my dissertation where I talk about the interaction of the uncanny valley and sexiness and said “Oh, you think there can’t be sexy in the uncanny valley! We’ll show you! We’re going as deep in as we can just to prove it can still be HAWWWT!” and then they got this and were like “oh… oh no… we’ve made a big mistake….”

I’m certain this happened. I’m certain this was some producer trying to teach me a lesson.

I know that sounds egotistical. And I’m sorry…. it’s just there are only two possibilities here… either this was a direct attack on me… OR some living, breathing, human being, with actual money, thought this was a good idea… and that second alternative is just…. so much worse… Occam’s Razor says that this can only exist because for some reason Taylor Swift wants to hurt me…

On the trailer for Cats… was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

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On "the Arya Scene" in GoT (SPOILERS)

(as the title says, herein be spoilers… you know… and dragons… though given the show, way less dragons than you might expect)

So I’m having weird thoughts about the reaction I’m seeing online to last night’s Game of Thrones (s08e02). First of all, I want to point out that I really liked the episode. Some of the initial reaction I’m seeing is that some people found it boring. This part doesn’t surprise me. It was a very talky episode. Those are my favorites. I’m also the guy who’s favorite episode of Netflix’s The Defenders was s01e04, wherein all the heroes sit in a Chinese restaurant and have dinner. I get that I’m the guy who likes character building episodes more than just seeing a a bajillion people in one CGI army smackdown with a bajillion people in another CGI army. Granted, it feels like that’s what we’re going to get next week, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy that too. But, this is what I like better. So that sets some framing, I guess.

That out of the way, what I’m seeing a lot of today is negative reaction to Arya’s sex scene from last night. I’m going to assume 99.999% of people reading this post are fans of the show and have already seen the episode, so they know what happened. But for the 0.001% who is reading this because they are curious what I have to say even though they haven’t seen the show so don’t know what’s going on… one of the main characters, Arya Stark (played by Maisie Williams), has spent the the last eight seasons growing from an elevenish-year-old tomboy into an accomplished badass eighteen-year-old godless killing machine. On last night’s episode, while she is waiting for the the impending war with an undead army that is scheduled to start in the morning, she suddenly decides that “hey, I might die tomorrow, and I’d rather not do so a virgin.” So, she finds Gendry, a boy that she had a crush on when she was twelve and fucks the shit out of him. And the internet went nuts. This surprises me… a lot. Doing a quick, and completely non-scientific glance at the inceldweebosphere seems to imply that there is a pretty large reaction to the general tone of:

“this is horrible… they shouldn’t have done this. This is so unnecessary. Yuck! Disgusting! Oh god my eyes! Don’t do it! It’s like watching my little sister fuck! So uncomfortable. No no no!!! Noooooooo!!!!!”

(don’t read Reddit threads… I do it so you don’t have to)

And this is echoed outside of said dark corners of the internet by more reasonable people. Apparently moments after she dropped her clothes and mounted him, Google searches for the age of the actress SKYROCKETED (for the record, she’s currently 22. She was actually 14 when she was playing an 11yo). And even the next day, I see a lot of people still talking about how incredibly uncomfortable they found the scene. Now this surprises me. For starters, I’m decidedly not in this camp. When the scene went down, I was very much on the side of “hell yeah, you get you some girl!!!” This is a sentiment which was apparently echoed by Williams co-star Sophie Turner who posted the following entirely NSFW reaction to instagram while watching the show:

why is no one on my tl talking about miss sophie referring to gendry as an easter bunny hop hop hopping into that PUSSAY? pic.twitter.com/aA9budFhwz

— maia (@maia419) April 22, 2019

So I’ll note that Turner has done approximately a bajillion interview over the last several years sort of playfully implying if not outright suggesting how much she wants to fuck her TV sister in real life. This is par for the course for her. It’s totally her hobby. That said, it’s also what I expect out of the inteldweebosphere. For the last several years, Maisie Williams has been like the number one celebrity whose likeness has been appropriated for deepfake porn videos (don’t look at me like that… I just know stuff!). What I expect for her … let’s say “fanbase” … is something more akin to the reaction people had for Lindsay Lohan or the Olsen twins… countdown timers til their 18th birthdays because “that’s totally the day where it will be ok to hit that” or whatever. Not that there’s any indication that any of those women would have been even the slightest bit into any of the middle aged dudes drooling over them. Especially not for Arya, whose entire character is based around the fact that she’s just as likely to cut your throat for offending her as anything else. But, that is the reaction is what I expected.

And for those who don’t necessarily just want to fuck an underaged TV character, but are still superfans of the character on the show. I expect the reaction that I and Turner had. I did not at all expect such a vocal rejection to her getting laid. Not at all. I figured there’d be some. Sure. But I expected a lot more posts of “OMG! FapFapFap!!!!” than there are. I mean, for HOVA’s sake, you got to see her actual sideboob. People have been CGIing her head onto naked bodies for years just to be able to pretend this was a possibility. I mean, even aside from the deepfakes, she has over 9million instagram followers, and she posts sexy photoshoots of herself regularly. I honestly just expected the Internet to be full of people who were overjoyed.

For me, the scene made absolute sense. For much the same reason I believe Harry Potter and Hermoine Granger fucked in the tent in the woods during the last Harry Potter book (see the “Sexy Ships and Head Canon” episode of VoxPopcast for more details… had to get the cheap plug in). To me this is the natural extension of the Arya character. She is an 18-year-old young woman (HBO actually “randomly just happened to tweet” her current age a few hours before the show, as if to say “hey, she might be fucking tonight, so you know… she’s legal”), who has lived a life of trauma. She’s seen her almost her entire family die, some in front of her eyes. She has been kidnapped. She has been homeless. She’s been betrayed by people she trusted. She has straight up just murdered like five dozen people. And for all she knows she will likely be dead in the morning from an approaching army of ice zombies. If this is the case, “I’ve got 8 hours of downtime and I’m still a virgin. Hey, maybe I’ll fuck the dude that I’ve had a crush on since I was 12” is a completely reasonable course of action. And in fact, she LITERALLY says almost exactly that in the scene where she does it for explaining her reasoning.

My friend Max suggests (and I’m inclined to agree) that earlier in the episode she was considering fucking The Hound, another character that she at least has some level of trust in. But he’s gross and old (50ish) and someone interrupted, so she thought better of it. I feel like if this had gone down, everyone would have still been grossed out by it. You’d think that the inceldweebosphere would be all into it… after all, isn’t that the dream? That nubile young Arya comes to you and asks you to show her the ways of carnal love? I personally think The Hound would have turned her down. For one, he realizes that she IS too young for him. While not exactly a father figure (he’s her former kidnapper, the show is complicated) he does have something of a mentor relationship with her. Plus… she likes to slit people’s throats, and I feel like he’d say “yeah, there’s no upside in this for me.” Gendry however, who has also always had a crush on her and is closer to her age, couldn’t resist her.

That said, there was maybe a moment where you could see on his face, some concern. There was a bit of “I really like this girl. But she’s scary. She kills people. And she’s being really aggressive. And waving a sword around. And I feel kind of emasculated here. Is this a trick? Is she going to stab me in my slee… oh shit… TITTIES!!! Ok, I guess I’m in.”

Another friend, Nat suggested to me, that that might be a part of the problem. Maybe some people are put off by a young woman displaying sexual agency. He does have a point. She’s certainly not laying back and thinking of EnglandWinterfell. This is a woman who is basically saying “look, I’m horny. I need it now. Service me, and make it good!” And maybe there’s some of that involved here.

But I really don’t think it’s that simple. I feel like it’s more than her just being scary. Or even more than the idea that women might have agency. And despite what people are saying, I don’t think they JUST think of her as still underaged, even though the character has literally grown up before their eyes. I feel like there’s just a little something extra there with her. After all, the show has had no shortage of underaged characters having sex. Even ignoring the rapes on the show, Jon and Ygritte are at most 17, the first time they have sex (yes, I get that he’s a boy… but she isn’t… so even with the double standard). In fact, in the book versions the characters are younger from the start and bang… or are raped… on the regular. For Arya it feels like there is something extra where people want her to continue to be more “innocent.” Despite the fact that she’s probably one of the least innocent characters on the show. She certainly has one of the highest bodycounts, and she’s pretty much been a sociopath since BEFORE she even started going through trauma. She just hadn’t had a chance to have sex… mostly because she’s been so busy with all the murder and all.

I kind of wonder if that’s the key. Despite all the murdering, Arya is — at least in her on way — one of the most pure-of-heart characters on the show. Despite all the murder, pretty much everyone she’s killed kind of deserved it. She’s a righteous sociopath. So that’s what I’m wondering. Were you one of the people who was put off by the scene or no? And if so why? Is this a thing where sex is seen as more impure than her murders, and last night’s show somehow moved her too far along the madonna/whore spectrum? Did it humanize her too much? Do you just want her to somehow be beyond carnal needs? Or is there something I’m missing?

Oh… also, I want Lyanna Mormont to sit on the Iron Throne.

On “the Arya Scene” in GoT (SPOILERS) was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

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21st Century Swearing... for the kids!

I have a weird question for people who know children… that is either you have your own or you just hang out with anyone… I dunno… age five through fifteen or so… often enough to notice the way they speak (nieces, siblings, just random friends, whatever). I was just talking with some friends about the language constructs that are specifically natural with your Generation Z kids than previous generations. Specifically speaking in internet lingo as a substitute for swearing. That is to say, I know twelve year olds who literally say “oh emm gee” instead of “oh my god” or “dubya tee eff” instead of “what the fuck?” the same way that when I was a kid we might have said “oh my gosh” or “what the frick” or whatever… at least when we were around adults that we might get in trouble for cursing in front of.

But… it at least feels to me (with casual observation that I haven’t thought about for more than the last 5 minutes). That the adoption of those terms is nigh complete and automatic. Like I have certainly said those things intentionally, but when I do, I’m doing it on purpose and totally consciously. I know I’ve heard my niece say “oh emm gee” spontaneously where I don’t think she’s really thinking about it. I don’t think she’s cleaning up her language. I think texting has just existed since she was born and that’s just how she talks. It’s also natural for her to say “Lols” like it’s a normal word and that’s not even replacing profanity.

So I’m wondering… do people in general notice kids talking like this? “Oh emm gee” and “dubya tee eff” are the two that immediately came to mind for me. But there may be others.

Also, since I know a bunch of academics. I’m wondering if any of my friends who study language, linguistics, psychology or semiology have thoughts as to at what point this becomes natural and ingrained in the normal speech patterns. Like, I don’t really say “gosh” or “frick” anymore… because I’m a grownup and no one fucking cares if I swear. I certainly don’t do it spontaneously. But in 2025, are we going to have a bunch of adults who literally yell out “oh emm gee!!!” when they bang their knee or have an orgasm? Can it become that much a part of natural expression for the generation who is just raised to speak that way?

Maybe there’s a paper in this… or at least maybe and episode of VoxPopcast.

21st Century Swearing… for the kids! was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

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On Captain Marvel and Incelhypocrisy...

I haven’t seen the new Captain Marvel movie yet, so this is not my review… it’s more of a pre-review? I guess? Preview sounds weird. Anyway, I think one of my favorite things lately is reading the pre-release buzz about Captain Marvel. In particular, I’m loving the one very particular type of criticism. In the nerdiest, dudiest, broiest, inceliest corners of the internet I keep running into people whose main claim is “This movie will suck, Brie Larson is awful for the role of Captain Marvel because she isn’t hot enough!” Seriously… I love this complaint… more than anything else in the world right now, I love this complaint. I love this complaint SOOOOOO much… because I’m sure it’s totally born of COMPLETE AND TOTAL honesty… I’m sure that if Brie Larson knocked on any of these dudes’ doors tomorrow and said “Hi, I’ve always wanted to fuck a 40-year-old virgin in his mom’s basement” every single one of them would totally say “No! Hie thee to a nunnery, ye wanton harlot. I will not sully my mother’s basement by fornicating with any less than a D-cup! Away with you, hideous troll!” and slam the door in her face as she runs away crying in shame at the lack of their approval. Yep. That’s going to happen.

Because yeah… I mean look at her… she’s…uh… vile?!?! No, you don’t think so? Huh….

Yeah, so the funny thing is, I’m not actually as down on the idea of the male gaze as some people might think I am (especially in light of the episode we did about it on my VoxPopcast — cheap plug!) or as other feminist critics might be. Hell, Laura Mulvey, who came up with the concept, isn’t actually that down on the idea of the male gaze. She was never trying to “get rid of it.” Her original criticism was that movies ONLY allowed for it and nothing else. And this movie… given what it is… and what it wants to do… is not that.

And there’s the rub. I’m actually totally ok with a bunch of dudes wanting to not see this because they “don’t want more of Marvel’s feminazi, SJW, libtard BS shoved down their throats.” That’s actually a completely valid criticism. If you don’t like what a movie has to say, don’t see it. If someone made a superhero movie that was pro-Klan and all about the natural superiority of the white man, I probably wouldn’t be too keen on seeing it either… because I don’t care for that message. Ok, actually… *I* would probably see it anyway… because I’m weird and I like thinking about what cultural artifacts like that have to say. It’s my job after all. But, I’d totally support anyone else who wants to not see it because of that message. So if you’re against the idea of a movie that’s main theme is “women can be powerful” and that’s your main reason for not seeing it. Fine. I’m also fine with a bunch of dudes wanting to boycott it because they don’t like Larson’s public feminist politics. Fine! That’s just as valid as not wanting to support say Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, R Kelly, or any of the other problematic artists that we also talked about on the most recent episode of my podcast (another cheap plug). And seriously, if you’re anti-feminist and that’s your reason for not wanting to see this film then I applaud your honesty. Seriously. I mean that.

My problem is the hypocrisy of saying that you won’t see it because she’s not hot. Are you fucking kidding me? And no, I’m not saying that you can’t be uninterested in a movie because you think the stars are ugly. Most big name Hollywood stars (male and female) are “pretty” for a reason. And if your main reason for going to a movie is to build up a visual library in your brain for you to go and jack off to later… that’s a perfectly valid view. Fine. Seriously… I’m not mad at you for wanting that. Masturbation is a perfectly healthy thing for you to do… you’re a growing boy. Your body is going through changes. I get it. But I mean… don’t insult our intelligence by pretending you don’t think she’s hot. She is. And you know it!

I think a lot of the “controversy” was born of a set photo that was leaked where we could see that Brie’s got… well… a white girl butt. I’ve seen a bunch of “newz” articles claiming that they heard Marvel is looking for a butt double for her because they can’t possibly have a movie with a woman who’s ass isn’t perfectly round. As proof people have even mocked up comparison photos which show Larson’s butt next to Scarlett Johansson’s butt in her Black Widow costume. Because, OBVIOUSLY, “ass” is the number one thing that DISNEY thinks about when it comes to casting. Seriously, I had no idea that white boys (yeah, they’re mostly white boys) were that in to ghetto booty! Surely, they’d be far happier if J-lo or Beyonce were cast as Carol Danvers than Larson, right? You don’t think so?

At first, I thought part of it was that they don’t understand how modeling and posing works. The photo of Scarlett’s ass is a promo photo. Posed for in order to say “hey, here’s my ass… hopefully your dick is now hard and you’ll go see my movie.” That is literally the point. Again, I have no actual problem with it. Brie’s on the other hand is a picture of her not posing… she’s receiving direction on what to do in the next scene. It’s a true candid. So maybe the incels just don’t get that. BUT, then I saw an even more miraculous thing. I saw people making the same comparison they made between Scarlett and Brie with Tom Holland and Brie! Yes, I’ve legit seen people complaining that Brie Larson isn’t hot enough to play Captain Marvel because her resting ass isn’t as nice as Tom Holland’s. And that’s fair… Holland does have a nice ass!

SO!!! I have a solution! I’ve decided to maybe take them at their word. Does anyone want to support the idea that it’s not an anti-feminist agenda thing… the real problem with Brie as Carol Danvers really is that she has a white girl butt. And that’s just too distracting to watch a superhero movie because it’s hard to jack off to. SO, I’m willing to fix it for you! What I’m prepared to do is make a NEW version of this movie. I’ll do it on kickstarter, just like those idiots who want to refilm the Last Jedi taking out all the women. What I’m looking to do is raise $150M for my fan cut of Ms. Marvel! That’s right. I’m going old school. I’m putting her back in the black bathing suit and sash costume. High cut hips… thong back… thigh high fuck me boots! And instead of Brie Larson, I’m going to cast a very masturbatable crossdressing Tom Holland! He’ll do it too! If you don’t think so, you’ve never seen him cosplay as Rhianna. It’ll be SOOOO fucking hot!

So who’s in?

On Captain Marvel and Incelhypocrisy… was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

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(Un?)Breaking Split Expectations (a no spoilers Glass review)

So once again I’ve been too busy to post movie reviews. I’ve sen a bunch, but I just haven’t gotten to writing them up. I do talk about films (in a different way) quite often on my podcast, VoxPopcast (cheap plug), so you should totally be listening to that. But if people want me to keep writing up more in depth thoughts here, let me know. In any case, a couple people specifically asked me to talk about the new movie Glass which I saw this weekend.

I have complicated feelings about M. Night Shyamalan. I’m the weird person who didn’t like The Sixth Sense. My big problem with it is that I figured out the twist in the first ten minutes. We talked about this on the show a while back (again, another cheap plug). And I don’t mean that as a thing to brag about. The thing with fans of The Sixth Sense is that they all say that the magic of the film is that on the second or third viewings, once you know the twist, it’s amazing how well crafted the subtle hints are and that it’s cool to watch it unfold. I disagree. When I watch the movie, knowing the ending, everything in it seems PAINFULLY obvious and just annoying. And I feel the same about a lot of Shyamalan movies. In fact, for the most part each successive one is worse because you EXPECT a twist. They’ve become a whole game where you sit there in the theater with your arms crossed going “ok, when’s the twist coming?”

Unbreakable and Split are actually the exceptions for me. In fact, Unbreakable is without a doubt, my favorite of his films. Not because it’s a superhero movie. But because it’s NOT. That is, it doesn’t “do superhero stuff.” It sort of reimagines superhero stuff through the lens of superhero stuff. It’s not so much a film about a twist. The twist is the deconstruction of the idea of what it means to tell a superhero story. In a lot of ways it’s sort of ruminating on the ideas that I am thinking through in my dissertation. So it’s not really a surprise I like it so much. In fact, I’ll probably talk about it in my dissertation at some point before I’m done.

Split is kind of the same thing. I’m actually not a big fan of horror movies. I generally don’t care for them at all, honestly. There are a few exceptions, mostly of the more suspense than horror variety. But I felt like Split did the same thing as Unbreakable. It wasn’t so much about trying to have a “twist” per se (which is how I felt about a bunch of other Shyamalan films, include The Sixth Sense). It was more about rethinking what it meant to be a horror movie. I didn’t love it the same way other people did. But I appreciated what it was trying to do. It was certainly worth seeing and thinking about. And the bumper at the end of it, got me invested in seeing the next film because if he was going to try to merge these worlds together, I was interested in seeing how they would play off of each other.

And so… Glass. Well, I didn’t hate it. That’s actually a good thing. I wasn’t sitting around waiting for it to be over. But I didn’t love it either. I think mostly, it was about managing expectations. I already got a Shyamalan movie that deconstructed the superhero genre and I got one that deconstructed the horror genre and what I was expected was one that… I guess… SPLIT the difference. The two previous films do a great job of stripping the essentials of the two genres down into their barest parts. What I wanted of this one was a film that took those pieces and reassembled them into something new. But it didn’t really do that.

The thing I was afraid of was having the movie lean too heavily on Split. It’s the more recent film. It’s the bigger hit. It’s where Shyamalan is as a filmmaker right now. But really, just the opposite happened. For all intents and purposes I felt like Glass was a sequel to Unbreakable. It cared more about continuing that story. It cared more about building on that world. The lore of Split was represented, but it was more just window dressing. You didn’t really need to see that movie or understand it. Essentially this film just lifts James McAvoy’s Kevin and Ana Taylor-Joy’s Casey out of their horror movie and drops them into the sequel to Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson’s superhero movie. It is very much a sequel to Unbreakable and not so much to Split at all.

The problem is… I don’t think Unbreakable really needed that sequel. As much as I loved that first movie I’ve honestly never found myself saying “hey, they should revisit that world and see what else is going on there.” That was kind of the great thing about Split. To the extent that it was a sequel to Unbreakable that was more or less unexpected. That was the twist. “Here is something that you weren’t really looking for… and now you can enjoy it!” It was unexpected.

But this movie didn’t have that benefit. It was… a sequel to Unbreakable. In some ways, I think a lot of people will find what it is unexpected. The trailers are… not doing it justice. It is not the kind of movie that it looks like. It is much more understated. It is… a lot like Unbreakable. Too much. What I liked about it was the tone. I liked living in that world the first time. I enjoyed seeing how things played out. How things progressed. And here… you get to see it all happen again. It’s the same kind of movie. I liked the tone, but it felt pointless. It felt like it wanted to say something at the end.. the same way Unbreakable did… but what it said was something that I already knew… from the first time… 19 years ago!

So that leaves me in a weird place. The reason I decided to write this review was because several people said they wanted to hear my thoughts. They wanted to know if I would recommend it. I can’t. But I also can’t not recommend it. It all depends on what your expectations are. If you want to go in and get more of something you’ve seen before… you’re going to get that… But if you’re looking for something that’s going to blow your mind. That’s not going to happen.

I get why the critics are down on this. It really is more of the same. That’s not a bad thing, I don’t think. But it’s not good either. But what are good and bad? That’s kind of what the movie wants you to think about.

★★½☆☆+ (2.5 out of 5 stars)

(Un?)Breaking Split Expectations (a no spoilers Glass review) was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom