#also NO ONE TOLD ME this was a super low budget project that had to get done super fast or i would've hustled on friday!!!

[six-of-ravens]

today work is like:

my boss: how long do you think it'll take to do that site?

me: like two days, maybe two and a half--

boss: WHAT that site is supposed to be entirely based off of [existing site]??? it shouldn't take you that long!!!

me: well, you see. it simply is not.

[dlsocp]

Before We Start...

I am not related to or affiliated with the show Sister Wives, Kody Brown, any of his 18 children, 3 former wives, 1 current wife, anyone he may be courting currently, anyone he may have courted in the past, or TLC. Truth be told I haven’t even seen every single episode--though I have seen most of them and I doooo watch a ton of reality tv gossip on Youtube and I totally follow these people on social media. It’s my guilty pleasure. If you’re here, it’s because you relate. Everything you will read outside of this post will be a figment of my overactive imagination, and is meant purely for fun. In this case yes I’ll be using names of REAL people who DEFINITLY exist, but for all intents and purposes in this they will be characters. I will draw inspiration from the show, from Youtube videos, social media posts, gossip magazines, and website achieves (because once it’s on the internet, it’s always on the internet.)

I can not stress enough that none of this is to be taken as fact!!!! I hope this will all be taken with a grain of salt, as good fun. I can’t think of another family with kids who grew up on camera under unusual circumstances who have as adults not had a major scandal, and I don’t see it happening either. Like, none of these kids are drug addicts, or getting arrested or murdering anyone!!! The odds were against them, man, but they all seem like respectable and loved members of their communities. That’s commendable af.

I’ve been making fun of reality TV since survivor came out when I was 8 years old. Later on when I was closer to 16, my mom and I would go shopping and do accents pretending to be Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn....analyzing my outfit options as if we were critiquing them to see if they could make it to the final round. And before you say it, yes, my mom IS that great!

I have me a fancy Bachelor of Arts degree in Media & Communication Arts from Pace University. That degree had writing enhanced courses, a ton of journalism courses, writing seminars, and that’s always been my jam! I can express myself through written word so much better than speaking out loud, and I’ve always written. I was the kid who said “YESSSS!” when the teacher announced that the test would be nothing but essay questions.

I can argue any point in writing, even points I don’t agree with. I can go anywhere, and I’m not limited to things like gravity, money, time, the weather, or the laws of physics! I’ve always been drawn to writing, and have used writing to cope with whatever was going on at that time. Starting with writing short stories about flushing the school bully down the toilet, to a screen play about exacting revenge after I’d had my trust broken, to get my final credits for my bachelors degree.

It was only recently I realized I could put the two together. I’m not aware of any Sister Wives Fanfics, and I was recently commenting on a video by RealiTeaSquad when it hit me that I had a great idea for a totally non-sexual silly fanfiction. I’ll try to watch my language so many ages can enjoy this, but I swear like a sailor, so I make no promises.

I am also hoping to work on a few other projects:

Sausage Queen: A Royal Spicy Italian Sausage with super powers who saves the day in her underwear, pretty self explanatory

The Chonky Princess: An over-weight princess with an endocrine disorder doesn’t let her weight keep her from keeping up with the other princesses at princess boarding school. 

Low-Budget Laura: A Blog with tips for low-budget livin’! You know, ballin’ on a budget! Where to shop, coupons, deals, life hacks, recipes, “jazzin it up”, crafts, and more!

Hopefully I’ll be able to get enough of those done to start being able to link to them soon! And I’ll be starting to work on chapter one and publishing it soon! I’m really excited about this, and if anyone ever wants to contribute ideas or art work or whatever I’m so into it! Eventually I’d like to do a dramatic reading with different voices for different characters in a youtube video. Just bare with me as all of this will be done in my spare time and I do have a 41 year old man-child to care for and 2 dogs and of course a whole life--I mean who am I kidding I have no life lol!!! but I’m just throwing it out there I will try to release at least one chapter a week and keep it flowing regularly, but clearly providing for my loved ones will always come first as it should for you as well!

Anywho, make good choices and I’ll be publishing Chapter 1 soon!!! Stay tuned!!!

[its-chelisey-stuff]

I watched “Imitation” and it was surprising (... okay, I loved it!)

Full disclosure: If you haven’t the slightest interest in kpop, not even in the drama or juicy gossip that produces, this won’t be your thing. I know it’s not a drama for everyone. Stop reading. Just know that OTP (and most characters) had a happy ending but there was a bunch of drama to achieve it. Typical. And a death may or may not have been in the mix.  

Well well well... I'm pleasantly surprised, that's the perfect three word review for this drama. It would seem that when those little projects that come out of nowhere and you have no expectations about, turn out to be even a little big good, they made the strongest impression. And this drama is up there in my top 3 of favorite dramas of the year, it has my heart.

Yes, it was about kpop idols and 90% of the cast was made of idols (even one from the very first kpop gen hahaha), yet the acting was decent (and from some, truly great), yes sometimes it got a bit cheesy and silly and yes, there was a ton of drama concerning fans, reporters, dating scandals and bad and greedy CEOs of entertainment agencies BUT it was also sweet, really romantic, funny, lively, full of music (I'm OBSESSED with the last OST which was sung by the whole cast, it makes me FEEL things) and dancing, it had lots friendship and found family AND at times, it was heartbreakingly tragic.

I think this drama tried to tell the audience two important lessons, worthy of mention: the first, work hard for your dreams, don't give up on them but also, you never know what opportunities might come your way that could end up changing your direction and perhaps make you chase something that you never thought you would, so persevere, breathe and hang in there just a bit more; the second, one that we all know if you have a little bit of sense and even if you are mildly informed about the k entertainment which is that idols are just people(most of them teens when they debut some not even 18) who want to and deserve to have a pretty f-ing normal life, so f-ing let them! the consequences of putting these youngsters over a pedestal are catastrophic and there are real life, heartbreaking, examples of this.

Main characters

Ryok: the Golden Boy of kpop, from the most popular boy group, also a an actor (a decent one? Idk they never said). Perfect in every single aspect, except when he is nice to girls who aren't his fans, then they will crucify him. SUPER clumsy whenever his crush is nearby and does something he finds cute, otherwise super cool and chill. Also great at pining for his crush. A romantic, which means he chose the worst career path. My favorite character.

Maha: A bright and optimistic girl with a strong might of perseverance in going after her dreams. Loves dancing. Very sweet and very tiny. Despite appearances, she's not a pushover or weak FL. And that's why I loved her.

Yujin: Second ML by the book. Became an idol because he was pursuing FL (who in turn was pursuing ML). The only reason why I never hated him is because he was a great friend, knew he wasn't doing anything healthy and decided to end his one sided love and opened his eyes. Two words: Character development *chef's kiss*

LaRiMa: A soloist. A Queen. At the start, it looked like she was the typical and mean second FL. But she wasn't, and I adored her for that. She had a heart of gold. She deserved the world, and she knew that so she made decisions accordingly (a Queen chases no one, least of all a man!) lol best character in the drama and my second favorite character (sorry Maha!)

Also starring: The members of SHAX (the leader, SF9′s Hwiyoung, the maknae from Ateez and the funny guy who spoke random english) the group of Golden Boy. Tea Party members (bffs with FL, Riah and HyunJi), Maha’s group. Sparkling members (the very angry and frustrated leader and two members of Ateez whose names I don’t know), second ML group. AND in the longest and most important cameo (ala Go Kyung Pyo in My roommate is a Gumiho) SF9′s Chani, a former member of SHAX, who disappeared into thin air one day.

The story

On paper it doesn't sound like anything groundbreaking (and tbh it really wasn't lol): a story about idols who willingly chose their career path, trained for years while underage, got treated like products by ugly men in suits and realized it kinda sucked, especially when you don't become a hit group and have to protect your personal life like it's a dirty secret that could damage your image and maybe end your career this is why I said it’s not a show for everyone. But this drama is what Dream High 2 (2012) wanted to be and never could in the aspect of actually making you feel something for these idols and the situations they were facing while loving the musical side of the show and making it all believable.

Even if it's not exactly about teens in high school sort of thing, it does give you the same hopeful and uplifting feeling of a coming of age story, especially because the characters are still youngsters trying to be happy and realize their dreams for the future.

You can just stop reading here if you want to go watch the drama with no spoilers. And if I haven’t convinced you despite not being appalled by kpop themed dramas, then I guess you should keep reading lol or trust in my taste and judgement when I say the story is worth it (but to be fair the first two eps are a bit slow).

The romance (super spoilery!)

At the core, this show was a love story. What started the plot is the fact that main couple reunite in the same work field as idols, and they actually met and befriended each other years ago; so being older and able to spent more time together brings them closer to finally accept and give into their feelings, but soon enough their relationship becomes a ticking bomb threatening their careers and then this big mystery of how and why SF9' Chani disappeared and abandoned the group becomes really important in the last third of the drama

Because once upon a time, Chani had a gf but she was still a trainee so once their love was exposed (the truth of who exposed him is devastating) and their respective companies threatened them, it all becomes too much too fast and with seemingly no other way out, the girl makes a terrible decision, that ends up changing the lives of most of the characters.

I’m sure this is from a bts but their chemistry was really good and sweet. Also, height difference to die for!!

Yet, there is a happy ending for main couple but it's only achieved after certain people learn from their mistakes and support Ryok and Maha, which makes it clear that no matter how in love and willing you are to face adversities for and with your loved one, you still need a support system (and maybe the right people in a position of power) because sometimes two against the world isn't as romantic as it sounds, but sad and lonely.

And the main reason why I loved this is because of the way the show drew a parallel between the two most important couples in the story and tells the audience “had it been even a year before, under different circumstances and less luck, had they had no friends and no people to support them, main couple would’ve ended in the same tragic way” and I think that is a haunting realization. That also makes you appreciate things.

*cries* they were adorable

The bad (spoilers!)

I do wish this drama would’ve elaborated on some bits that were really worth diving into, or that it would’ve shown how some things came intro fruition instead of just skipping it and showing rigth away the outcome of conversations that were never had or reunions never shown. It is clear to me that they wanted to make the drama longer and could have told a better story had it been a 16 ep show. 

Basically yes, the main story, main romance and side couples' arcs got resolved but ugh a list of plot holes:

Why was LaRiMa so obsessed with Ryok for half the drama? The minute the girl knew he was dating someone he truly liked, she gave up right away, so I gotta believe the only reason she didn’t quit on him before, is because he did gave her a reason to hold onto him. Perphaps they dated before? Or maybe they like each other at one point? I can only do fanfiction in my head to explain this.

Why was the angry leader of Sparkling such a bitter bitch? How did he end up in another company?

I wanted to see SF9′s Chani reunion with his ex-members from SHAX.  It NEEDED to happen. At least they showed Chani with Ryok (which was really emotional) but arrgh.

Also, Chani deserved a kneeling apology from SHAX leader, I mean, come on!!

If everyone knew about Maha and Ryeok at some point, they needed to use that. You can’t just have a bomb like that in your drama and not use it. Is a principle of storytelling. You can’t just have the thing that your main characters fear the most, in your hands, and do nothing about it. But I guess it was not done because of lack of time.

Also, they never showed how they announced their relationship. Instagram post? Company statement? An exclusive to Dispatch? And how did the fans took it?? Answers, drama! Damn it!!

Final thoughts

Despite its many flaws, I loved it. It had heart. It seemed low budget and even more so due to the fact that it was done in the middle of the pandemic and a big part of kpop are the fans and concerts, you know what makes it all the more big and shinier. But the drama people and the actors put effort into it, and you could tell (and the fact that there were also original songs and choreographies made for this drama amazes me, and that they chose to promote the drama by having some of these fake groups perform on actual music shows). So there you go, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Before I finish, let me just say that the actor who played Ryok is a REVELATION in my eyes.This boy needs to stay in dramaland and get more main roles (and after some research I’m happy to say that he is thriving!!). Also, he has great timing for comedy. The actress who played Maha elevated the quality of every scene she was in. (Not for nothing she was God in DAYS). Jiyeon (LaRiMa) was excellent. It really showed at times that she’s not only an experienced idol but also an experienced actress. The contrast with most of the cast was noticeable, sadly. The drama wouldn’t have been the same without these three.

Also, watch AND listen to the last OST sung by the whole cast here. Beautiful song that just makes you cry if you’ve seen the drama.

[lunarr-rrose]

Our Latest Fix and Flip Deal - Fernando Angelucci, The Storage Stud

https://u109893.h.reiblackbook.com/generic11/the-storage-stud/our-latest-fix-and-flip-deal/

In this video, Fernando will talk about his Fix and Flip deal in Schaumburg, Illinois.

It is a very interesting and unique property because it has a lot of lessons built into it.

The property has been stuck in probate for more or less 7 years. When the owner finally moved the property from probate she decided to sell it. At the same time, she is also building a house in Florida and expected to move- in into that home on December 15, 2020.

Although before she could move in, the builder of her house in Florida required her to pay all the cost by December 14.

Thus for the need for Fernando’s team to sell the other property in Illinois.

The house was built in the 1970s. It’s a 3,000 sqm floor area property with five bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms. It has a full basement with a pool table and bar. It also features a spa room with a hot tub. It has an outdoor pool as well. It sits on 1.2 acres in the middle of forest preserves that gives a very secluded ambiance.

The only issue with the house is it’s super outdated and a lot of things are not up to code which brings a lot of safety issues. This gives Fernando’s team a lot of work to Fix and Flip this house.

If you want to learn more about how and how much Fernando’s team spent in fixing and flipping this house, just continue watching this video.

Fernando O. Angelucci is Founder and President of Titan Wealth Group. He also leads the firm’s finance and acquisitions departments. Fernando Angelucci and Steven Wear founded Titan Wealth Group in 2015, and under his leadership, the firm’s revenue has grown over 100% year over year. Today,

Find out more at

https://www.TheStorageStud.com

https://titanwealthgroup.com/

Listen to our Podcast:

https://thestoragestud.podbean.com/e/our-latest-fix-and-flip-deal-fernando-angelucci-the-storage-stud/

---------------------------------------

Hey! Guys and gals, Fernando Angelucci here, wanted to go deep dive on a few deals that we've done in the last couple of weeks. We've been getting a lot of requests for us to go a little bit further in detail on both our wholesale single family business, also our fix and flip business and some of the commercial assets we do. So, the first property I want to talk about is a fix and flip project in Schaumburg, Illinois. Very interesting deal, very interesting unique property, and has a kind of, a lot of lessons built into it. So, originally we had met with the seller and the property had been stuck in probate for something like seven years, something ridiculous. And she finally got it to clear through probate and was ready to move on with her life.

So, she wanted to sell it. And then, simultaneously she started building a home down in Florida and was slated to move into that home on December 15th. But to be able to move into that home, the builder required that she wired all of the proceeds by December 14th. So she said, Hey, Fernando, really like your company, like the options that you bring multiple investors to the table. But I'm telling you right now, I have to close on December 14th, no matter what. I said, okay, that's no problem. We've got plenty of time. So, we walk through the property. It's an old property built in the 1970's. It's gorgeous. It's 3000 square feet. It has five bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms. It has a full basement with a pool table and bar. It has a spa room with a hot tub. It's got an outdoor pool.

It sits on 1.2 acres in the middle of a forest preserve. So it's, even though it's only five minutes from the highway, it feels super secluded. When you get in there, there's tons of huge growth trees, old growth trees all around the house. So as you know, this should be no problem. The only issue with the house was that it's super outdated and everything was kind of hodgepodged together. So, the person that originally built it was an HVAC contractor. So, they kind of did all their little, you know, twists and turns in it, dual zone, heating, dual zone cooling some things weren't really done up to code. And then, when the seller bought it, her husband was also very good with his hands. So they would do a lot of, you know, let's just say not up to code changes to the house running, you know, 120 electrical under the ground without a guide wire.

So, that's pretty dangerous if you accidentally hit it. When you're excavating, they had gas pipes that were running all over the property to heat the pool and, you know, to do the old lights when they're still gas lights. So that's also not very safe as well. We also found a ton of just safety issues. There was two major gas leaks that were going on in the house. One from one of the furnaces, another one from the garage heater, the property actually has three garages on it. So just super interesting house, very large lot, gorgeous areas, just outdated and needed a bunch of work. So I said, okay, we did the analysis on the property. And I figured that there'd be anywhere between a hundred thousand to $150,000 worth of work, depending on the level of finishes that you wanted to put into this property.

We ended up going under contract for 325,000. I originally offered her 300,000. But when she ran through her number and said, Hey, you know, for me to get this done today, I really need 325,000. I said, all right, that's no problem. So, we took a few things off of our budget. Got the property signed over. I told her, Hey, you know, there's a good chance, probably 80% chance that we're going to sign this contract over to one of the investors that we work with. All the terms will be the exact same to you. The closing date and timelines will be the exact same to you. But it's just going to be a different entity. That's going to be closing on it. And the reason for that is we either will partner with our investors. So they'll put up the funds or if the deal doesn't have enough meat on the bone for them, where they don't want to split the profits with us, then they'll actually ask to buy us out through an assignment and we'll make an assignment fee.

So, that was the original plan on this. Had a couple investors walk through that were ready to you know, fix and flip the house. I ended up getting an offer at 380,000, to take down the property, to do the rehab. The only issue was, this was, it was one of the highest offers I got, out of the seven or eight offers that are received on the property, all ranging from 335,000 all the way up to 380. So, it was the highest offer. So we decided to take a chance on these investors, because, you know, usually I like to to have a pre-established relationship, somebody that I've done business with before, however, it's a catch 22. I can't have a business relationship with you if I've never given you the opportunity to close on your first deal with us.

So, this was one of those types of situations, where I gave them the opportunity to prove to me that they're a good investor and they follow through on their work. So fast forward. It's about, I think it's around December 1st at this point. So we're 14, 13, 14 days from closing and the investors. They saw that we had the property under contract for 325,000. Originally I told them, I said, Hey, we're, we have an under contract below 380, and we're going to keep the difference. And they said, that's fine. But then when they saw how much we were making, they started to get a little greedy and started counting our pennies. Which, you know, I don't count if you're going to make 150,000 or $200,000 on a rehab project. I'm not going to ask you for a portion of that. So, I expect the same level of professionalism when you're working with me.

Why does it matter? I have it under contract. Well, they didn't see it that way and they want it to tarnish the relationship. So, on December 1st, they decided to redact their offer and resubmit an offer at 330,000. They thought that because closing was so close, I'd have no other way to go with a back up offer. And, that they kind of had me in a corner. And I said, listen, you know, I'm not, I'm not bluffing with you. Not only do I have seven other buyers behind you, but I'm also willing to do this project myself. And again, they thought that I was bluffing. So, they tried calling my bluff. I said, all right, you know, that's it, we're just going to cancel the contract. So, I ended up closing on the property myself on December 14th, we ran the scope, just hired the contractor today.

So, I'm super excited about it. And so here are the basic numbers. So, we have it for 325,000. We can spend anywhere between a hundred to 150,000 in rehab, depending on the level of finishes that we're going to put into the property. And then, that will allow us to sell it anywhere between 580 to 610,000 plus, depending on the type of buyer. I think that $600,000 number is going to be super fair. We're in a market right now, where there is super low inventory. Every property that I send out to my investors, every property that I list on the MLS is usually getting anywhere between seven to 15 offers within the first two weeks. So, truly is a seller's market right now, just because of the low inventory. I think that was because of, you know, the pandemic is really causing people to kind of hold back, slow down on any major costs, slow down on any transition.

So, to sell a property, you usually have to have another one lined up to buy as well. And because not a lot of people want to do that. There's low inventory, it's causing an artificial price increase. I think this artificial market's gonna last probably until the, probably the end Q3 to Q4 of 2021. And then at that point, I think we're going to start seeing things kind of normalize again, but because they're super low supply we're just in a perfect time to do this. So, get with the contractor, we should be able to finish this project in about eight weeks. He's a really good friend of mine. He does amazing work. He's actually one of my investors, that also buys properties from me. And so I know him really well. I have a great with them and I'm just super stoked, really excited to start working with him. In the end of that eight week rehab, we're going to go ahead and sell the property or listed at least with a whole set of professional photos, professional videos.

We're going to do a 3d virtual reality experience where you can, you know, on your computer or even put on these virtual reality goggles. You can walk through the entire house, look all around, look at the ceiling, look at the floors. You can measure things. It's going to be super cool. So, this was very like just opportunistic deal for us to take down. And again, like I said before, there was a lot of lessons learned in this, you know, number one, if somebody says that they are willing to close on the deal, if a wholesaler says that they're willing to close on the deal, number one on the wholesaler side, they better mean it because this seller had a drop dead date of December 14th. If, the money was not wired to the builder in Florida on December 14th, when she got down there with her rental truck that she's paying, gosh knows how much money for, I mean, it's a huge truck to fit 3000 square foot feet worth of house into, you know, they wouldn't have given her the keys and now she's got to pay additional holding costs.

Now, she has nowhere to live. She's down in Florida with nowhere to stay. It's just, it's one of those things that we see all the time, some of our competitors, you know, they're not equipped to close on these deals and they truly are, you know, just trying to flip contracts with no backup plan. And sometimes it causes sellers to be left in the dirt. It's really a shame. The next thing is on the buyer. And the lessons learned from the buyer end is, you know, when someone says, Hey, I'm not bluffing. I'll close on this myself. You know, you gave us your word that this, this number worked for you. And then all of a sudden, once you saw how much we were making on the deal, now it's no longer a good deal for you. That's, you know, when you allow greed to guide your decisions, you end up losing out on good deals and not only good deals, but, you know, future relationships, I'm never going to send this buyer deals again.

We removed them from all of our marketing list. And now they are going to miss out on one of the premier deal sources in the Chicago land area for deeply discounted real estate investment deals. So, that was another huge lesson learned on the buyer side is, you know, do what you say you're going to do, act with integrity and don't let greed get the best of you. Then at the same time, it was also a great opportunity for our equity partners. We had a few equity partners that wanted to get involved in the deal. They really like it. They're newer to real estate investing. So I said, Hey, here's what we'll do, whatever amount you want to invest. That's totally fine. I can cover the difference. So both me and my partner, Jason are also investing in the property through our individual, entities, as opposed to from our trust or our fix and flip business.

And what we're doing is for all those investors, we're offering them a 10% return on their money and that's 10% absolute. So, what that means is, you know, this is about an eight week rehab project. I'm assuming that we'll be able to get it on the market within three months. So, about 12 months in that it'll sell within a month after that. So, we're looking at about a four month project from check to check if you will, from closing table to closing table, but just to be safe, I decided to take out a fix and flip loan that will actually give me an entire year of leeway, it's interest only. And the nice thing is with that 10% absolute interest rate. If, we finish in 12 months, you get 10% on your money. If we finish in six months, you get 10% on your money, but once you apply that to an annual percentage rate, you're actually making 20% APR because we finish it so quickly.

And then same thing with, if we finish it in four months, now that number goes up again, and now you're going to be making anywhere between 25 and 30% return on your money from an APR standpoint. But again, it's just a 10% absolute. And the way we structured this with our investors is, you know, no payments, no debt payments until the property sold. And once the property sold, the investors get paid out first, after the investors get paid out first, then we go ahead and take the rest of the profits, into the fix and flip company. So super cool deal, really excited about it. Like I said, it's on, in the middle of the forest preserve it's 1.2 acres, five beds, two and a half bath, 3000 square feet in an area where properties basically never come up for sale.

It's a property in this little area, comes up for sale, once every 10 years. So super, super excited about that. So that's the first deal that I wanted to talk about in Schomburg. Now, let's switch gears and talk about some of our wholesale deals and how to work with a wholesaler to really get, you know, the fast lane, really to get the deals first. So the first one we're going to talk about was a property in South Holland. It was a small investment property. It worked both ways to either go as a buy and hold property, or as a, fix and flip. And let me go ahead and pull up those numbers so that we have them here in front of us.

[pomnavi]

Chapters: 3/?

Fandom: 血界戦線 | Kekkai Sensen | Blood Blockade Battlefront  

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Relationships: Klaus von Reinherz/Leonardo Watch

Characters: Leonardo Watch, Klaus von Reinherz, K.K. (Kekkai Sensen),

Tags: Christmas Presents, Sweaters, Knitting

Summary:

Leo wants to get Klaus a present for Christmas, but he’s not sure what to get him (and he’s woefully low on funds). Plus, would getting your (super hot) boss (that you may have a crush on) a present be coming on too strong? He’s not sure what to do, until K.K. gives him a great idea >:)

Chapter 1: Inception of a Bad Idea

Chapter 2: An Attempt was Made

Chapter 3: The Final Result

Leo stared at the work in his hands with worry. He had initially planned on making a sweater, and had even gone to the trouble of getting Klaus’s measurements from Gilbert secretly after explaining the situation to him.

There were only a couple days left till Christmas though, and he had messed up a few times and needed to undo and redo project at least twice. So far, he only had about 6 inches of the bottom of the sweater done, and hadn’t even started on the sleeves. Leo thought back on the past month; there just wasn’t enough time between Libra and his part-time job, especially when he couldn’t use the downtime at the office because Klaus was there.

It was clear to Leo that it was too late to try and finish it with the time he had left. He thought about scrapping the idea all-together and using what little money he had left to try and buy Klaus a present, but once he deducted Michella’s allowance, and his food and living costs, he only had about twenty dollars.

But he didn’t want to go that route. He really wanted this present to be special, and to maybe try confessing his feelings at the party. Even if he went Christmas shopping now, Leo didn’t have any good ideas about what he could get Klaus that would be special and within budget.

Also, what did you get a man that was so rich he had a private butler?

He groaned, rolling over in bed with the knitting supplies strewn about. The pattern book fell out of the supply bag, right next to Leo’s head.

Leo grabbed the book with one hand, and leafed through again, looking for ideas. Maybe he could turn it into something else?

+++

Leo stayed up late right before the day of the party, putting the finishing touches on his present. He wrapped it carefully with a goofy wrapping paper design that had cartoon reindeer and tiny santas all over it. He then sharpied on “To Klaus” on the little card attached to a red ribbon with the nicest handwriting he could muster, before setting it aside with his suit and passing out for the night.

Christmas day had arrived, and Libra’s hard work securing the city had paid off. There was little chance of a catastrophe big enough to interrupt the party happening, Steven made sure of that. Leo wasn’t needed at the office today, so he spent the rest of the day in a mild panic, going over what he would say to Klaus over and over again.

About an hour before the party started, Leo was mostly dressed and ready, but he was seriously debating just not showing up when he heard a firm knock at the door. Leo used his all-seeing-eyes and saw Zed, standing there patiently in custom formal wear, holding a discreet gold paper bag with tissue. He quickly opened the door.

“Zed? What are you doing here?” Leo asked. Zed gave a small smile before entering Leo’s tiny apartment.

“K.K told me to come get you for some reason. She didn’t say why, but I figured we could share the taxi to the party hall.”

Leo groaned but closed the door behind his friend. Zed walked in, and calmly sat on Leo’s only sitting area in his apartment, his bed. He motioned for Leo to come join him. Leo knew that Zed wasn’t stupid, and that the rest of the office had an idea of what his problem was. He sat next to his friend and buried his head in his hands. Zed patted him on the back.

“Today is going to be an important day for you right?”

Leo nodded.

“I don’t know how it’ll turn out, but as Huma say, ‘Sometimes you just have to man up and go for it’” Zed said with humor.

Leo smiled a little at that. “That’s something you definitely heard from Zapp!”

“Right, and sometimes that idiot has a point.” Zed sighed. Leo looked up at Zed and saw his face soften as he kept speaking. “Between the two of us, I thought I was going to be the one to make the first move. But that idiot knows just how to mess up my plans. He told me while we were walking to lunch one day, like he was talking about the weather! No preamble, no indication of any feelings beforehand, just the most ridiculous confession in Huma existence.”

Leo grinned. “That does sound like Zapp. What did he say?”

“He said, and I quote,” Zed put on his best Zapp impression. “Hey Zed, wanna date? I’ve got a movie and wine at my place, let’s hang out tonight.”

Leo laughed. “That’s literally the worst thing I’ve ever heard. But I guess it’s tame for him”

“Yeah, I know. But it was fun.” Zed readjusted his tie. “And I got my revenge later anyways.” Zed checked the time and then stood up. “Leo-kun, we really must get moving if we don’t want to be late. I know telling you not to worry won’t mean much, but it’ll be fine. The rest of Libra will have your back if you feel like drinking to forget later.”

Leo brightened at Zed’s words. “That’s right, the drinks are free tonight!”

Zed rolled his eyes and gathered both his and Leo’s presents. Leo stood up and put on his jacket, finally fully dressed and ready to tackle the ordeal ahead of him. They locked up his apartment and headed downstairs.

A/N: I totally missed the holidays as the deadline for this fic, but I'm still hoping to finish it lol.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 12 Mar 2020 (No health care for part-time TSA screeners, Akil Augustine on Radicalized, Wendell Potter rebuts Joe Biden, best Covid-19 explainer, Boeing's self-inflicted wounds, EU Right to Repair, virtual classrooms)

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Pluralistic: 12 Mar 2020

TSA boss doubles down on taking away health care from part-time screeners: They're touching your junk with diseased hands.

Akil Augustine on Radicalized: My book's Canada Reads champion lays out the case for Radicalized.

A former top Cigna exec rebuts Joe Biden's healthcare FUD: Wendell Potter is the prodigal corporate villain.

Ars Technica's Covid-19 explainer is the best resource on the pandemic: Beth Mole has outdone herself.

Boeing is even worse at financial engineering than they are at aircraft engineering: The $43B they incinerated through stock buybacks would sure come in handy about now.

Senate Republicans kill emergency sick leave during pandemic: Sick leave is cheaper than pandemics, but pandemics generate cost-plus contracts for the donor class.

The EU's new Right to Repair rules finally come for electronics: Snoods cocked at Apple and other US Big Tech monopolists.

How to run a virtual classroom: Masterclass from the 14-year-old Stanford Online High School.

This day in history: 2010, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

TSA boss doubles down on taking away health care from part-time screeners (permalink)

TSA agents handles the personal belongings and touch the bodies of millions of fliers. Part time agents don't get health-insurance. If they think they might have Covid-19, they might not be able to afford to seek care.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/11/politics/tsa-health-care-part-time/index.html

TSA chief David Pekoske told Congress that the Trump administration's decision to take away health-care from part time TSA employees was a good one: "I have no intention of restoring health care coverage for part-time workers. I think that was a good decision."

About 100 TSA agents have been sent home after it was believed they came into contact with Covid-19. The TSA will not try to track down passengers who also might have come into contact with sick people.

Akil Augustine on Radicalized (permalink)

My book Radicalized is a finalist for the Canada Reads national book prize. Each of the five finalists is defended by a Canadian celeb: my champion is the amazing and articulate Akil Augustine.

Akil just appeared on the @CBC's Canada Reads podcast to give us a preview of his defense, which he will field during several nights of nationally televised debates next week.

http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1708600899815/

He did an OUTSTANDING job! Here's the MP3:

https://cbc.mc.tritondigital.com/CBC_CNDAREADS_P/media/cndareads-3NLwEPaV-20200309.mp3

A former top Cigna exec rebuts Joe Biden's healthcare FUD (permalink)

In a recent and important essay, Maria Farrell wrote about the road-to-Damascus conversions that ex-techies are having in which they recant the damaging product design work they did and begin to campaign against their former employers.

https://conversationalist.org/2020/03/05/the-prodigal-techbro/

Farrell noted that these techies had missed an important step in their transformation from venal attention mercenaries to noble attention freedom-fighters: they had yet to hit bottom, to truly repent their earlier sins.

They skipped like stones over the waters of privilege, and never sank, unlike so many of their victims.

Contrast those journeys with that of Wendell Potter, the former Cigna exec turned whistleblower, who has devoted decades of his life to revealing dirty tricks and lies. Potter campaigns tirelessly – and shrewdly – for Medicare for All, and is always at pains to point out that the anti-M4A talking points his adversaries parrots were all developed by him, when he was on the wrong side of history.

Take this thread, rebutting Joe Biden's FUD about M4A, delivered in the midst of a pandemic that has been worsened by the 77 million un- and underinsured people who can't get care or screening and disproportionately work in food-service and cleaning.

https://twitter.com/wendellpotter/status/1237438497218105344

As Potter points out, Biden's assertion that M4A costs $35T is just a lie. Once you factor in the savings of not paying for private healthcare, M4A SAVES at least $450B/year.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)33019-3/fulltext

Biden's plan to cap premiums on a public option at 8.5% of your income is more than double what M4A would cost you. The corporate plans Biden lionizes shackle good workers to bad employers, and put millions at risk of having their care arbitrarily withdrawn or limited. And, of course, private care doesn't cover much. Surprise bills, deductibles, co-pays, out-of-pockets… Our plan – a blue-chip employer's top-of-the-line Cigna plan – costs us $24K/year.

We're rationing our family's health care because in addition to the $20K/year we're paying out of pocket, Cigna refused to cover a pain procedure that my doc – the most-cited pain doc working in California, who runs a major university pain clinic – says I would benefit from. That procedure might let me get a good night's sleep for the first time in 15 years and allow me to live a more normal, pain-free life. But because Cigna won't cover it, it would cost $55K, which we do not have. So I'm foregoing it.

Ars Technica's Covid-19 explainer is the best resource on the pandemic (permalink)

I've been reading Beth Mole's outstanding science journalism for many years and I've always admired it, but even by the high standards of a Beth Mole explainer, this soup-to-nuts Covid-19 explainer is just spectacularly good work.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/dont-panic-the-comprehensive-ars-technica-guide-to-the-coronavirus/

Mole's calm and comprehensive coverage relies on the most reliable sources and turns the results of our best evidence-based studies into a coherent narrative, from the disease's origins to its spread to its symptoms to its resolution.

Just this symptom-by-symptom breakdown was enormously informative and filled in a huge gap that I had previously mentally signposted as "flu-like".

According to data from nearly 56,000 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 patients in China, the rundown of common symptoms went as follows:

88 percent had a fever

68 percent had a dry cough

38 percent had fatigue

33 percent coughed up phlegm

19 percent had shortness of breath

15 percent had joint or muscle pain

14 percent had a sore throat

14 percent headache

11 percent had chills

5 percent had nausea or vomiting

5 percent had nasal congestion

4 percent had diarrhea

Less than one percent coughed up blood or blood-stained mucus

Less than one percent had watery eyes

The sections on transmission, self-protection, and care during a social distancing lockdown or quarantine are likewise levelheaded, clear and informative.

This is a tab you should just keep open in your browser, IOW. Mole's updating frequently, too.

Boeing is even worse at financial engineering than they are at aircraft engineering (permalink)

Boeing is experiencing a potentially terminal slump. Between losses due to its 737 Max scandal (a self-inflicted injury), and the dropoff in travel during the pandemic, it has had to draw down its entire line of credit and institute a hiring freeze.

https://wolfstreet.com/2020/03/11/boeing-crashes-as-43-billion-in-past-share-buybacks-turn-into-existential-threat

Obviously, Boeing can't be blamed for the pandemic.

But you know what is absolutely the company's fault? Its financial engineering.

Since 2013, Boeing squandered $43 billion on stock buybacks, whose sole purpose was to goose its share-price.

As Wolf Richter writes, Boeing, this "master of financial engineering – instead of aircraft engineering – blew, wasted, and incinerated $43.4 billion on buying back its own shares."

The company just had to borrow $13.825B. Its shares are down 46% since March 2019.

The entire company – a jewel of American industry – might not survive, because it focused on short-term enrichment of shareholders, rather than safe aircraft or financial prudence.

Reality has a well-known anti-capitalist bias, part MMMLVII.

Senate Republicans kill emergency sick leave during pandemic (permalink)

Senate Republicans have killed emergency sick leave legislation, a move that will force millions of low-waged cleaning and food-service workers to choose between homelessness and potentially spreading Covid-19.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/coronavirus-paid-sick-leave-us-republicans-block-senate-bill-new-york-washington-a9395821.htm

The GOP says that paid sick leave will endanger the fragile bottom lines of employers and also that the feds have no money to pay for such a thing – despite finding it easy to blow $2.3 trillion on tax-cuts for the super-rich.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/28/tax-cuts-trump-gop-analysis-430781

They also found $20 BILLION in the senate's sofa cushions to give to the Pentagon, an agency whose auditor found more than a trillion dollars in off-the-books transactions in its financial records.

https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/12/19/pentagon-finally-gets-its-2020-budget-from-congress/

Refusing to help poor Americans stay fed and sheltered isn't just cruel, it's lethally reckless, and it demonstrates the moral hazard of oligarchic capitalism. Subsidizing sick-leave would merely afford survival to millions of Americans, after all.

Whereas the crisis that this will produce – a pandemic that is made worse and longer – will cost billions more, but that money will go to the donor-class, the Beltway Bandits whose cost-plus, no-bid contracts will transfer even more money from the poor to the wealthy.

It's disaster capitalism at its worst. The Senate GOP is dooming you and everyone you love to the risk of disease and death because preventing that risk would help millions of poor people, whereas creating the risk helps a handful of ultrarich people.

The EU's new Right to Repair rules finally come for electronics (permalink)

The EU Commission's latest "Circular Economy Action Plan" has enormous significance for Right to Repair and electronics.

https://ec.europa.eu/environment/circular-economy/pdf/new_circular_economy_action_plan.pdf

In addition to a host of eminently sensible, long overdue measures (bans on single use items and the destruction of unsold goods), there's a renewed emphasis on electronics, through the "Circular Electronics Initiative".

https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/11/european-lawmakers-propose-a-right-to-repair-for-mobiles-and-laptops/

The initiative mandates that components be reusable, repairable, and upgradable, and requires long-term software support to keep IoT devices useful for longer. These mandates – also long overdue – show that the EU is finally willing to ignore the priorities of Apple and other US Big Tech companies in favour of Europeans' rights to the long-term enjoyment of their property and the right not to drown in e-waste).

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/08/ghost-flights/#eurighttorepair

How to run a virtual classroom (permalink)

For 14 years, Stanford Online High School has been running fully virtual classrooms, with continuous, ongoing improvements in their tech and methods. They've just published a new guide to "the essential steps for preparing to teach online in a short period of time." They're also conducting a series of webinars on the subject.

https://ohs.stanford.edu/how

(I just realized that I've got a decade-old mail rule that autodeletes anything containing the word "webinar" that I probably need to turn off now that the term is being used by people other than hustling spammy grifters)

This day in history (permalink)

#10yrsago Leaked UK record industry memo sets out plans for breaking copyright https://craphound.com/BPDigitalEconomyBillweeklyminutes.pdf

#5yrsago Portland cops charge homeless woman with theft for charging her phone https://news.streetroots.org/2015/03/06/homeless-phone-charging-thief-wanted-security

#5yrsago How Harper's "anti-terror" bill ends privacy in Canada http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2015/03/why-the-anti-terrorism-bill-is-really-an-anti-privacy-bill-bill-c-51s-evisceration-of-government-privacy/

#5yrsago RIP, Terry Pratchett https://web.archive.org/web/20150312202353/http://www.pjsmprints.com/

#1yrago Security researcher reveals grotesque vulnerabilities in "Yelp-for-MAGA" app and its snowflake owner calls in the FBI

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Museums and the Web: March 31-April 4 2020, Los Angeles. https://mw20.museweb.net/

Currently writing: I'm rewriting a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm also working on "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel afterwards.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330_-_A_Lever_Without_a_Fulcrum_Is_Just_a_Stick.mp3

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

[riotatthemovies]

Today we have a true wildman, maverick of low budget film Joel D Wynkoop. Let's get in the mindset of an actor, an actor's actor. An American Brian Blessed without the beard you could say (imagine Joe D Wynkoop as Hawkman and let that sink in) . To you regulars here at Riot at the movies you will remember Joel from 2019s Terrible Two Day fest where he closed the weekends events by appearing in Clownado as the cowboy pilot. Then just before screenings shut down in the first week for March 2020 we saw him again in the first film of this year Terrible Two Day Fest with a small but high energy cameo at the very end of Dinogore.

Let's pretend we are a live audience talk show and give a round of applause for Joel D Wynkoop.

Riot: Joel you are known as a high energy guy, what do you think or even what do you hope are people's first impressions of you?

WYNKOOP:      Well I hope they like my performances.  There are some that just flat out say "He yells too much!" I even had an actress tell me "Stop yelling at me, you're always yelling at me" but what she didn't get is that was the idea in the movie, the Sheriff(Played by me was yelling) but she got her feelings hurt and asked me not to yell at her.  "But....I'm supposed too." I told her...anyway the director pulled her aside and explained to her "...this is not real life and we were pretending" and she still didn't get it, so the director told me "don't yell at her too much."  Aside from the yelling and the out of control antics of a lot of my characters, I also want to be known as the actor that can do serious stuff too.  I have done parts that when they were done or in the middle of where the audience was crying because I was going for that emotional touch.  I have done things that scare the audience, not to mention my co stars.                          My wife, before I knew her, we had just met and we did a very emotional scene when I was in her face yelling at her, later the director said to her "You were great you really looked scared." and she said "I was scared, he is a scary guy when he yells... I thought he was going to hit me."  But I can also do comedy where people may say "Man Wynkoop was so funny in that" or "Mannnn Wynkoop was so annoying in that" in each case that is what I was going for.                                In my latest movie "THE CRAIGLON INCIDENT" I think people are going to say the latter because the character I do is annoying....but funny...I hope.  If they don't like me right away or there's someone out there going "Wynkoop sucks, his movie's suck"  I hope people make their own decisions if they like me or not.

Riot: Let's look back at your early break into low budget films. Which character do you relate to the most, Steve Nekoda the religious, confused martial arts man of action from Lost Faith or do you deep down feel a little more fucked up like Dan Hess from Wicked Games or maybe even worse the officer in Dirty Cop No Donut? Or is that just crazy ? If you don't feel you personally relate to them, who was your favorite character to play?

WYNKOOP: Just doing Steve Nekoda, Dan Hess or Gus Kimble I think I am a little of all of them in real life.  One time... well more then once in my life...real life...I have had to step in and protect someone like Steve Nekoda would, other times I have been the smart ass like Gus Kimble and his brand of justice where I have said things like (When someone is too close to me, I mean right on my ass) I turn to them and say "Are you gonna propose?" and they say "No" then I say "Then get off my ass!"                        More than once I have stood up for somebody... one time I told two guys to leave the premises because the girl inside the store was scared of them.  The one guy then said to me.  "You got a problem with me?"  I said "No, I don't have a problem with you, but you're gonna have a problem with me if you don't leave now!"  He started to move towards me. I went into a striking stance and his buddy grabbed him and said  "Let's go man." and they left.  The cops told me later "Don't be the hero just call us next time, we have guns."                      Dan Hess pushed in his Truth or Dare world, is me when I get annoyed in traffic.  Someone cut me off I exploded in rage, he saw me in his mirror cursing him, he stopped his car and jumped out and came after me, I jumped out of my car and yelled at the top of my lungs "Don't FUCK with me man!!"   He got back in his car and left and I did the same.  Hey, I'm not perfect!  

                     Again Steve Nekoda. I am a Christian yes, I swear, I'm sorry, were all human. I will stop and pray with someone at the drop of a hat.  I have ran charity events for people struggling with medical bills.  I will offer you some money if they are hard up...not scammers!  So I guess I am a little of all of my characters.  Nick Hazzard, Dan Hess, Steve Nekoda, Parsons Cooper, Angus Lynch, Tie-Ree, Cope Ransom and a lot more.                         Favorite character?  I think all of them.  I loved Steve Nekoda cause he is like a superhero, Parsons Cooper is turned into a sci-fi superhero.                          Dan Hess is fun because he is an average guy with a messed up life.  Angus Lynch was fun to play because he was just psycho!  Same with Gus Kimble from the Dirty Cop movies.  They are all fun to play, I just can't lock one particular one down.  They're all fun...CLOWNADO?  I loved playing that character "HAWK" for Todd Sheets!!  It was a fun role to play and Todd really let me run with it.  Little easter eggs too in one line almost under my breath you here my character HAWK say "I'm just about to watch a Todd Sheets Joel Wynkoop double feature, those guys kill me."  Yeah I love them all!

Riot: I am honestly imagining you doing a remake of Falling Down (the Micheal Douglas movie) just so I can see you super red faced getting angry in your car and flipping out at the traffic. You have like a dozen, if not more projects on the go at any time. How's Covid treating you? Are you going stir crazy or getting some stuff done on the side? I hope the conventions come back and people can get copies of all these movies as well.

WYNKOOP: Covid?  We are dealing with it.  If the law, Government or whatever wants you to wear masks just wear the mask.  It's not that big a deal.  Yes it annoys me but I wear it because it is the law and you're keeping people and yourself safe.  You know what?  I knew a guy that was a nudist and he told me "Joe, I don't know why we have to wear these, these clothes, I should be able to walk around unencumbered and free, there's nothing wrong with my body, I should be allowed to walk around nude, go into the store, go to the movies, I feel like I am being persecuted against because I cannot be free and naked."  Well guess what?   That is what everyone is saying about wearing their masks...are you comfortable with people walking around naked in your grocery store, pet store, church, movie theater, everywhere you go?  I'm not.     I think if we are told to wear masks then wear them.  It's "NOT" being sheep, you're being smart.  If you don't believe in it... go up to a stranger and say (With your mask on) "Please hack up all over me because I don't believe in the Corona Virus... try and let spit come out of your mouth too cause I don't believe in it so I won't get it!"  Then pull your mask down so you can inhale all that virus you think is "NOT" there.  People say more people die from the flu then Corona?  Really?  Personally I don't know any of my friends that have died from the flu...BUT I Have had at least 10 friends die of the CoronaVirus in the last two months.  As of writing this tonight I just found out two more of my friends caught the Corona Virus because they let someone in their home and now they have it.  If you don't believe in it then you don't believe the Earth is round.                     Stir Crazy?  Nah!  If we need to get out it is because of the news.  The world is really messed up now and it is all the same stories over and over again.  The riots were terrible!!!!!!  Anyway when it gets too much we go for a ride in the van.  I just want to make movies. I can't change anything, I'm not magic.   I'll  just continue to make movies.  Also I am editing my new movie now called THE CRAIGLON INCIDENT which never would have happened if it were NOT for the Corona Virus, I started this movie cause everyone was told to stay home, it was mandatory here! Curfew was enforced.  So I asked my wife Cathy, "Hey just shoot me talking to the camera."  Now spin it around so it looks like I am talking to myself as my counterpart and THAT is how The Craiglon Incident originated.  It is now like two hours long in my timeline waiting to be completed.  If there was no virus there would have been no CRAIGLON INCIDENT".                    But just editing the movie keeps me plenty busy! PLUS I ask people if they are interested in being a producer or executive producer of either or both my movies "THE CRAIGLON INCIDENT" or "BEAST MODE"(A movie we started with Debbie Rochon and Lloyd Kaufman but was shut down because of Covid) people can contact me and become producers and executive producers just by purchasing some of my movies...It's a great way to get some entertainment and build your IMDB!!!!                       Conventions YES!!!  Me too.  So many have been shut down at the last moment.  We even had Tampa Bay Screams here that was slated in August but it has been moved to March 2021 and we don't even know if that will happen.  Yes I miss it!!  More than selling the flicks I like meeting everyone that comes to the shows.  That's why I continue to do things on Facebook and make movies and sell online to keep my name out there so folks don't forget about me.  I don't think I would be comfortable doing a show right now anyway, not the way things are. I have had two shoots lately, one a TV show and one a rap video and I was nervous the whole time hoping I didn't get anything from anyone.  But yes it would be nice to get the world back to normal, well, not even normal... BETTER THAN NORMAL...hey that's a good name for a TV show..."Hey brother what are you doing next Wednesday night?"  "Me, oh not much I'm gonna check out that new TV show...what's it called, oh yeah...BETTER THAN NORMAL".

Riot: Let this be a reminder to my regular Canadian viewers and readers of just how freaking lucky we are up here. I love America for many things but for my health situation I wouldn't trade places with you Joel for the world. Thanks for being so open with us. Ok, How do you feel your films have dated over the years? The projects you've done with Tim Ritter seem to have just as strong a twisted fan base as always if not more these days.

WYNKOOP:     I think they hold up fine.  You have to remember when Tim Ritter and I started there was no CGI in indie movies.  It was all practical effects, if you wanted blood you made it and threw it on the actor you couldn't say "Hey put a blood splat there and make it look real with your CGI effects."  Nothing wrong with CGI it is just we didn't have that then. Also editing wasn't on your home computer with Movie Maker and Premiere... (They didn't exist when Tim and I broke into this, in fact some places have credited Tim and I  have been credited with the whole direct to video happening.)...  it was rent an edit bay with big 3/4 machines and shuttle the tape back and forth... In the beginning for Tim and myself, Tim and I use to edit on cutting boards with splicing tape.  You scratched your effects into the actual film.                           I remember putting "The Eight Million Dollar Boy Meets The Invisible Transport Boy" together, splicing it all together, it was an hourlong and it was hard to do that 50 feet at a time.  But yeah a lot of people are like "Yeah I remember TRUTH OR DARE man that was cool!" Even Elijah Wood on all the late night shows was talking about how much he loved "TRUTH OR DARE"!  "LOST FAITH" has got that same kind of attention, a lot of people really love it.  BUT like all our movies... some hate them, some love them.  I'll take the love over the hate... but you have to accept it all.       Believe it or not I learned this philosophy from Marvel Team Up.  Spiderman had just stopped the Basilik and was handing him over to the cops and Spidey said "Here you go officer, although I don't know why you would want him?" and the cop said "All part of the job wall crawler, you take the bad with the good."  And that is how I take everything, especially reviews.  You take the bad with the good.                               So yeah I think they hold up...I had a friend when STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION came out and he was like "Oh the original sucked the effects are much better in NEXT GENERATION"   Well "No Duh" I told him... it's like 30 some years later but STAR TREK is still a classic show!!  It still holds up today, the stories are great and I love the effects... yes the upgrades are awesome but always classic "Star Trek".  There is always gonna be a better format... pretty soon movies will be like holograms and we'll be being punched in the face by the characters in the movies. Technology changes everything so you have to give them credit for the era they were made.                                    The people that love Twisted Illusions movies and my movies are AWESOME.  I divide the two because Tim and I have done alot together as Twisted Illusions and I in turn have done a lot under Wynkoop Productions and joined the two over the years. I am still a part of Twisted Illusions with Tim and he with me in Wynkoop Productions it is two small companies just trying to entertain people.                                   We are BOTH very fortunate to have the nice people we do enjoying all of our movies and we will never forget that.  I get Facebook requests all the time and I ask them "What made you want me as a friend?" and they 90% always say "I saw your movies in High School" or "I saw you in Truth Or Dare"or "I loved you in Dirty Cop No Donut" and they all say "What are you doing now?".  In fact every time I think I am going to quit I get a Facebook from someone saying "I love your movies please don't stop making them." and I never will until GOD calls me home.  Even then when I am gone, I hope people keep watching all my movies I have done with Tim and the ones I have done and the ones we have collaborated on.  To the ones out there that watch our stuff I hope we are entertaining you because that is all we want to do, 'cause we sure arn't getting rich from it.

Joel Getting Tough in The Other Side

Riot: You do the whole package, acting, directing, producing. What makes low budget filmmaking still a passion for you and what are some of the things these days that frustrate you the most?

WYNKOOP: Frustrate me the most?  Editing.  I will have a whole scene in my timeline and the power goes out, I hit the wrong key and delete stuff, lightning hit the house and fries it, lightning turns out our power and I lose it.  It freezes up as I am editing and I have to wait an hour for it to fix itself.  When it says "SAVE" I hit no.  I make mistakes when I am tired while I am editing and boom I do something wrong and it is gone and I have to start all over again.  There have been problems when I was editing my TV show I was putting in the last minute touches and lost the whole thing and had to start over from the beginning again.  Frustrating!  I keep working at it no matter what.  I like to act in all I can.  When I don't have anything that is when I say it's time to make my own movie, although in this case of "THE CRAIGLON INCIDENT" it was because of Covid 19.  I'd like to make more money at it but doesn't everyone?

So as you can tell I sneak more then one question in at a time and I'm glad you took the time to shoot the shit with us. I hope 2021 means we get to go crazy and make all the weirdest and wildest movies we all can think of and I look forward to seeing what you got to throw at us. Thanks again. Stay Awesome.

Also Check out Joel in Lycanimator made by our Ontario buddy Seb Godin (also of Dinogore), get the vhs horror boobs made for Wild Eye Releasing , its better then the dvd.

WYNKOOP:  Thank you all for taking the time and showing some interest in this old guy!!!!  It is appreciated, thank you to everyone on your staff and everyone reading this article... thank you all so much and to see what I am doing please seek me out on Facebook under Joel D. Wynkoop.  Thank you!

[buzzdixonwriter]

Sci-Fi And The Sincerest Form Of Flattery

I know many of you prefer “science fiction” or “science fantasy” or “speculative fiction” or “sf” or even “stf” for short, but I ain’t that guy…

I’m a sci-fi kinda guy.

I prefer sci-fi because to me it evokes the nerdy playfulness the genre should embrace at some level (and, no we’re not gonna debate geek vs nerd as a descriptor; “geeky” implies biting heads off chickens no matter how benign and respectable the root has become).

. . .

A brief history of sci-fi films -- a very brief history.

Georges Melies’ 1898 short A Trip to The Moon is one of the earliest examples of the genre, and it arrived full blown at the dawn of cinema via its literary predecessors in Verne and Wells.

There were a lot of bona fide sci-fi films before WWII -- the Danes made a surprisingly large number in the silent era, Fritz Lang gave us Metropolis and Frau Im Mond, we saw the goofiness of Just Imagine and the spectacle of Things To Come and the space opera appeal of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.

And that’s not counting hundreds of other productions -- comedies and contemporary thrillers and westerns -- where a super-science mcguffin played a key part.

That came to a screeching halt in WWII primarily due to budget considerations and real world science easily overtaking screen fantasy.  Still, there were a few bona fide sci-fi films and serials during the war and immediately thereafter, but it wasn’t until the flying saucer scare of the late forties that sci-fi became a popular movie genre again (and on TV as well).

Ground zero for 1950s sci-fi was George Pal’s Destination Moon, which was an attempt to show a plausible flight to the moon (it was actually beaten to the screens by a couple of other low budget movies that rushed into production to catch Pal’s PR wave for his film).

This led to the first 1950s sci-fi boom that lasted from 1949 to 1954, followed by a brief fallow period, then a larger but far less innovative second boom in the late 1950s to early 1960s.

BTW, let me heartily recommend the late Bill Warren’s magnificent overview of sci-fi films of that era, Keep Watching The Skies, a must have in any sci-fi film fan’s library.

Seriously, go get it.

Bill and I frequently discussed films of that and subsequent eras, and Bill agreed with my assessment of the difference between 1950s sci-fi and 1960s sci-fi:  1950s sci-fi most typically ends with the old order restored, while 1960s sci-fi typically ends with the realization things have changed irrevocably.

In other words, “What now, puny human?”

I judge the 1960s sci-fi boom to have started in 1963 (at least for the US and western Europe; behind the Iron Curtain they were already ahead of us) with the Outer Limits TV show, followed in 1964 by the films The Last Man On Earth (based on Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend), Robinson Crusoe On Mars, and The Time Travelers.

But what really triggered the 1960s sci-fi boom was Planet Of The Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The former was shopped around every major Hollywood studio starting in 1963 until it finally found a home at 20th Century Fox (whose market research indicated there was an audience for well-made serious sci-fi film and hence put Fantastic Voyage into production).  Kubrick, fresh off Lolita and Dr. Srangelove (another sci-fi film tho not presented as such), carried an enormous cache in Hollywood of that era, and if MGM was going to bankroll his big budget space movie, hey, maybe there was something to this genre after all.

From 1965 forward, the cinematic space race was on, with 1968 being a banner year for groundbreaking sci-fi movies:  2001: A Space Odyssey, Barbarella, Charly, Planet Of The Apes, The Power, Project X, and Wild In The Streets.  (Star Trek premiering on TV in 1967 didn’t hurt, either.)

And, yeah, there were a number of duds and more than a few old school throwbacks during this era, but the point is the most interesting films were the most innovative ones.

Here’s a partial list of the most innovative sci-fi films from 1969 to 1977, nine-year period with some of the most original ideas ever presented in sci-fi films.  Not all of these were box office successes, but damn, they got people’s attention in both the film making and sci-fi fandom communities.

=1969=

The Bed Sitting Room

Doppelganger (US title:  Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun)

The Gladiators

The Monitors 

Stereo 

=1970=

Beneath The Planet Of The Apes [a]

Colossus: The Forbin Project 

Crimes Of The Future 

Gas-s-s-s

The Mind Of Mr. Soames 

No Blade Of Grass 

=1971= 

The Andromeda Strain 

A Clockwork Orange 

Glen And Randa 

The Hellstrom Chronicle 

THX 1138 

=1972=

Silent Running 

Slaughterhouse Five 

Solaris [b] 

Z.P.G.

=1973=

Day Of The Dolphin

Fantastic Planet 

The Final Programme (US title: The Last Days Of Man On Earth)

Idaho Transfer 

=1974=

Dark Star 

Phase IV 

Space Is The Place 

Zardoz 

=1975= 

A Boy And His Dog 

Black Moon 

Death Race 2000

Rollerball

Shivers (a.k.a. They Came From Within and The Parasite Murders)  [c]

The Stepford Wives 

=1976= 

God Told Me To [a.k.a. Demon]

The Man Who Fell To Earth 

=1977=

Wizards

[a]  I include Beneath The Planet Of The Apes because it is the single most nihilistic major studio film released, a movie that posits Charlton Heston blowing up the entire planet is A Damn Good Idea; follow up films in the series took a far more conventional approach to the material.  While successful, neither the studio nor mainstream audiences knew what to make of this film, so 20th Century Fox re-released it in a double bill with another problematic production, Russ Meyer’s Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, and holy cow, if ever there was a more bugfuck double feature from a major studio I challenge you to name it.

[b]  Other than Karel Zemen’s delightful animated films, Iron Curtain sci-fi films rarely screened in the US, with the exception of special effects stock shots strip mined to add production values to cheapjack American productions (looking at you, Roger Corman).  Solaris is the exception.

[c]  David Cronenberg made several other films in this time frame, but most of them were variations on the themes he used in Shivers, including his big break out, Scanners.  Realizing he was repeating himself, Cronenberg reevaluated his goals and started making films with greater variety of theme and subject matter.

. . .

The astute reader will notice I bring my list to an end in 1977, a mere nine-year span instead of a full decade.

That’s because 1977 also saw the release of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and Star Wars.

The effect was immediate, with knock-off films being released the same year.

1978 saw Dawn Of The Dead, a sequel to 1968’s Night Of The Living Dead, and Superman, the first non-campy superhero movie aimed at non-juvenile audiences.  

1979 gave us Alien, Mad Max, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

These films were not just successful, they were blockbusters.

And none of them were original.

Close Encounters served as an excuse to do a Kubrick-style light show; plot and theme are about as deep as a Dixie cup, and of all the blockbusters of that era, it’s the one with no legs.

Alien’s pedigree can be traced back to It! Terror From Beyond Space (and It’s pedigree goes back to A.E. van Vogt’s “Black Destroyer” and “Discord In Scarlet” in the old Astounding Stories) and Demon Planet (US title: Planet Of The Vampires) by way of Dark Star (Dan O’Bannon writing the original screenplays for that film and Alien as well).

Mad Max, like 1981’s Escape From New York, differs from earlier post-apocalypse movies only insofar as their apocalypses of a social / cultural / political nature, not nuclear or biological weapons.  Mad Max, in fact, can trace its lineage back to No Blade Of Grass, which featured it own caravan of refugees attacked by modern day visigoths on motorcycles, and the original Death Race 2000, as well as an odd little Australian non-sci-fi film, The Cars That Ate Paris.

Not only was Dawn Of The Dead a sequel, but it kickstarted a worldwide tsunami of zombie movies that continues to this day (no surprise as zombie films are easy to produce compared to other films listed here, and while there are a few big budget examples of the genre, the typical zombie movie is just actors in ragged clothes and crappy make-up).

Superman was…well…Superman.  And Star Trek was Star Trek.

And the granddaddy of them all, Star Wars, was a cinematic throwback that threw so far back it made the old seem new again.

Not begrudging any of those films their success: They were well made and entertaining.

But while there had been plenty of sequels and remakes and plain ol’ knockoffs of successful sci-fi movies in the past, after these seven there was precious little room for anything really different or innovative.

1982’s E.T. was Spielberg’s unofficial follow-up to Close Encounters.

1984’s Terminator consciously harkened back to Harlan Elison’s Outer Limits episodes “Demon With A Glass Hand” and “Soldier” (not to mention 1966’s Cyborg 2087 which looks like a first draft of Cameron’s film)

All innovative movies are risky, and the mammoth success of the films cited above did little to encourage new ideas in sci-fi films but rather attempts to shoehorn material into one of several pre-existing genres.

Star Wars = space opera of the splashy Flash Gordon variety

Star Trek = crew on a mission (Star Trek: The Next Generation [+ 5 other series], Andromeda, Battlestar: Galactica [4 series], Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, Farscape, Firefly [+ movie], The Orville, Space Academy, Space Rangers, Space: Above And Beyond, plus more anime and syndicated shows than you can shake a stick at)

Superman = superheroes (nuff’ sed!)

Close Encounters / E.T. = cute aliens

Alien = not-so-cute aliens

Terminator = robots vs humans (and, yes, The Matrix movies fall into this category)

Escape From New York = urban post-apocalypse

Mad Max = vehicular post-apocalypse 

Dawn Of The Dead = zombies

Mix and match ‘em and you’ve got a nearly limitless number of variations you know are based on proven popular concepts, none of that risky original stuff.

Small wonder that despite the huge number of new sci-fi films and programs available, little of it is memorable.

. . .

It shouldn’t be like this.

With ultra-cheap film making tools (there are theatrically released films shot on iPhones so there’s literally no barrier to entry) and copious venues for ultra-low / no-budget film makers to show their work (YouTube, Vimeo, Amazon Prime, etc.), there’s no excuse for there not to be a near limitless number of innovative films in all genres.

But there isn’t.

I watch a lot of independent features and short films on various channels and streaming services.

They’re either direct knock-offs of current big budget blockbusters (because often the film makers are hoping to impress the big studios into giving them lots of money to make one of their movies), or worse still, deliberately “bad” imitations of 1950s B-movies (and I get why there’s an appeal to do a bad version of a B-movie; if you screw up you can always say you did it deliberately).

Look, I understand the appeal of fan fic, written or filmed.

And I get it that sometimes it’s easier to do a knock-off where the conventions of the genre help with the final execution.

But let’s not make deliberate crap, okay?

Oscar Wilde is quoted as saying “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” but he was quoting somebody else, and that wasn’t the whole original quote.

Wilde was quoting Charles Caleb Colton, a dissolute English clergyman with a passion for gambling and a talent for bon mots.

Colton’s full quote:   “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”

Don’t be mediocre.

Be great.

   © Buzz Dixon

[clunelover]

Privileged money whining incoming

So I have hardly told anyone this because I find it just dumb and embarrassing: when we were getting married even though we had a low budget wedding and tried to cut costs in every area, we ran out of money. We ended up borrowing a lot of money from a friend of Jeremy’s who is independently wealthy. We borrowed...ugh I don’t wanna say it...$10k. And I have no idea if we really needed all of that for wedding or if some of it went to honeymoon but in any case, wow a lot of money. I have lots of whining or self flagellation I could get into re: cost of wedding things but that’s for a different post. Anyway. The deal with the money from this guy was: obviously it’s a lot, but he wasn’t going to miss it or anything. Rich guy. It was definitely a loan, though, and as such we agreed on an interest rate. That rate was...8%. Me now is kind of like “wait that’s super high, was he being a jerk?” But honestly I think that’s not much worse than we would have gotten for a private loan back then with our shitty credit and no jobs, and there were no repayment terms or minimum payments or anything which one would not get from a bank, and I also bet he didn’t think we would BE TOO BROKE TO PAY ON IT AND THEN ESSENTIALLY FORGET ABOUT IT for EIGHT FREAKING YEARS. It’s the sort of thing where we’d remember it occasionally, contemplate starting to pay him back, then decide that other debts or savings projects were more important.

Anyway, I just suddenly out of nowhere woke up last night with that loan on my brain and calculated how much we must owe by now and almost had a stroke. In my mind it’s been “eh about $10k” but no, dumbass, if you let that sit with an 8% interest rate for 8 years you’ve almost doubled it. Holy shit. So, I got some inheritance money this spring as I think I mentioned here. We paid off the car and Jeremy’s student loan. Inheritance nowhere near enough for MY student loans. Now the rest of it is sitting in a betterment investment account. There is enough to pay this guy and have a teensy scrap left over. I feel super resentful that we do owe this money and he’s our friend and he doesn’t need it so shouldn’t he just say never mind but OKAY SELF that would make sense if it was, say $100. Not this much money though.

So anyway. I had Jeremy reach out to him today and, at my urging, ask if we could knock off some of the accrued interest as a sort of discount if we were to give him the whole amount. He agreed and now we will pay $15k instead of $18.5k. It still feels just terrible. Bleh. Oh well, karmic slate will be kind of clean, and I won’t have to have sudden panicked rememberances anymore.

*insert lengthy disclaimer here about how having had a loan like that in ther first place, plus having inheritance, plus etc etc makes me a privileged creature who needs to get over itself

[supericonblog]

Super Icon - The Long Slow Death of an Indie Studio

Our History So Far…

I began developing games back in the late nineties; Xtreme Racing on Amiga was my first game, and ever since then I have only ever worked at my own development studios.

Starting with Graphic State; initially a sub-contract artwork studio, later moving into handheld game development on the Gameboy systems. This then evolved into Icon Games; focusing on small-ish console games on PlayStation and Wii.

You can view a full list of all the ‘Icon Games’ releases here:

·        IconGames_Catalogue

And ‘Graphic State’ releases here:

·        GraphicState_Catalogue

I founded Super Icon in 2012; an ‘evolution’ of Icon Games; like the transition from NES to SuperNES! At Super Icon the focus was on creating the games that we wanted to make, rather than trying to ride the coattails of current popular games or casual games. The focus was always trying to make great games, as good as we possibly could – games that people enjoy playing.

Our first proper release was Life of Pixel on PlayStation Mobile. We released a second PSM title around that time too, called MegaBlast.

Back in 2016, after the release of Life of Pixel on Steam and our Battlezone type shooter Vektor Wars, we decided that it would probably be best to partner with a publisher going forward. Our sales numbers were low, and we failed quite badly at building any sort of interest in the games. They didn’t completely tank, but the numbers were poor, and not enough to sustain a business.

At the time we lived in London, and during that period (we were there for about 4-years), we had tough times. I say this as possibly the world’s greatest understatement!

I attempted to document that period a couple of times in the past couple of years, and in the interest of completion I have finally released an account of our time there, which you can read here:

·        RHW_MentalHealth

 In addition to the financial difficulties, it covers mental health issues and was very difficult to write. 

Following the above period, we moved to Cornwall – which is where we are today. Just after the move we ran a Kickstarter for another game; Best Buds vs Bad Guys. It was successful, and we managed to get funds to help complete the development. During the Kickstarter I started chatting to a great bunch of guys at a studio called Whitemoon Dreams.

The upshot was I explained we were not having much success at selling/promoting our games, and they agreed to act as a publisher on Life of Pixel and Best Buds going forward, to take them over onto PlayStation and Switch.

We worked together with them, releasing Super Life of Pixel onto PlayStation 4 and Vita in December 2018. Also, during the development phase, we pitched another title we were making, called Platform Maker. After a fair few rejections, we finally found a publisher in pQube. We renamed the game to PLATAGO, and it was released onto Steam Early Access in 2018, with a full Steam and Switch release in June 2019.  

Current Development Phase – 2017 to 2019

Unfortunately, despite most players seeming to enjoy Super Life of Pixel, the sales have been poor. So bad, in fact, that Whitemoon decided they were unable to continue publishing for the time-being. As such, in the first quarter of 2019, we saw our income pretty much completely grind to a halt.

I haven’t been given any PLATAGO figures, but I suspect they are poor – it probably didn’t help that we released a couple of weeks before Super Mario Maker 2 on Switch!

We also developed Vektor Wars for Switch and PS4. Switch is out, but sales were low – since July just under 300 units. PS4 is complete and in Sony QA.

Again, my family and I faced a spell of homelessness this summer, our landlord decided to sell – and we were given 8-weeks to move out. We came closer than ever to not having a home this time, as it coincided with us also earning no revenue at Super Icon. We got lucky in the end and found a small place that we have for one year (the owners are selling early 2020), but it was scary. Added to that we have no savings or fall-back money; it was a tough time. I’m 46 this year, with three great kids who are now that much older, and it is tough for them. I think being a penniless indie develop is a younger person’s game!  

Speculative development

I did have a plan though, and it seemed a good one…

In addition to the games we released above, I developed a game called They Came from Beyond (TCFB), which off and on took about 18-months (it is pre-Alpha currently). I pitched to a few publishers, and while there was interest, I didn’t manage to secure a deal. I worked on this while Steve handled code on our other projects.

Hand-on-heart, I thought it was a strong concept, and the best game we have created so far. I was certain I would secure a publishing deal to fund the completion and release, and perhaps finally have a popular game out there. The plan seemed solid – ongoing releases generating income, with a new deal secured in the later stages for our biggest project so far.

I still f#&king love TCFB too, I really do. I KNOW there are bits I need to revisit, and it needs plenty more love and content before it is ready to release, but it appears my faith was entirely misplaced.

You can read an overview document of TCFB here:

·        TheyCamefromBeyond_Overview

 I pitched TCFB to a lot of publishers, several of whom replied that they really liked the game and the concept, but it wasn’t a good fit for them. I would say the most common comment was that many of the publishers told me that they are shifting away from smaller indie releases like TCFB to larger scale, bigger budget projects – those with budgets up to about half a million dollars. More ‘AA’ than indie really.

So, the lower than expected sales, in combination with failing to secure a deal on TCFB has really proved to be a terminal blow.

I have also developed another title over the last 6-months, called Gates of Hell; which is a sort of follow-up FPS to Vektor Wars. Arcade action, short bursts of high score chasing.

You can read a brief overview here:

·        GatesofHell_Summary

 Even now, I am still developing; working on a new 2D game. A NES plus visual style shooter; with several game types in there – top down, zoomed out top down, platform run and gun. I had planned to call it ‘The Lost Carts’, but everyone I asked says that name is a bit shit!

The concept is as follows:

Some experimental NES carts have been found, which were created using a custom ‘SuperPowerFX’ chip – which allowed a 1000% increase in enemies, effects, bullets and mayhem. Unfortunately, because of the sheer numbers of enemies and arcade action these games put out, the chips used to overheat, and production had to be cancelled. Only now have the carts been unearthed, and machines are now just powerful enough to handle the gameplay without melting! I had a small series of a few games in mind.  

And… one failed concept

Not long after we moved to Cornwall, I also spent about a year (off and on) on another speculative game, called ‘The Tower’.

I pitched to various publishers, and it was a no. I stopped work on The Tower, as without funding it was just too ambitious. There is a blog for it (updated until I stopped working on the project):

https://thetower-game.tumblr.com/

And you can read the pitch doc here:

·        TheTower_PitchDoc

  Studio Limitations

One of our key strengths as a studio is a proven track record of creating and completing games, often with very minimal budgets. In an ideal world, we would love to expand our resources so we could fully realise the vision we have for our games.

Personally speaking, I love creating games. I love the whole process; from the initial research and prototyping phase, through to making the various ideas a reality, adding little touches and cool ideas, putting it all together and trying to make it all as good as I can.

Continual restriction on resources limits what we can achieve. The result is that we make good games, but not quite great games, and unless you are very lucky, a game needs to be great to really stand out.

It also means that certain elements take longer than I would like, such as graphics and level design. These are typically the bulk of project time, and I create most of them myself, which has several drawbacks:

Quality – I am good at some things, less good at others, and I know I can find others out there who can produce far better-quality graphics than I can alone. When I do commission art, I usually have to request the minimum amount of animation and number of enemy designs. Reviewers and game players notice this instinctively they notice the quality dips, the sometimes overly generic art and lack of animation.

Limiting Factors – often our games are good fun to play, but lack that something to make them stand-out. Throughout development, there are so many ideas for cool visual & gameplay elements – bosses, new enemies, set-piece background art, cut-scenes and story artwork – that we don’t do because we can’t afford to commission artwork.

Level Design – I also handle the level design for every game we do; 2D and 3D. This way of working is probably the single most limiting factor, as you are getting ideas from just one person, and when you play the game, it shows. Most games are the product of a combination of ideas, usually from a range of different people with different tastes and experiences. Without that combination of thoughts and suggestions, a game can lack that special something to make it stand out.

Why did we not try and expand?

Both Steve and I have gone without income at times, to fund development, and when we do take income it is minimal to allow us to fund development as far as we can.

I didn’t believe we had a strong enough track record to secure financing to expand, so I didn’t pursue that option. As a studio we have developed and released more games than most; they haven’t really been successful enough financially. Also, I am on the Autistic spectrum, and this does play quite a pivotal role; I have amazing drive and focus, determination and resilience but saying I lack people skills is an understatement! I mention this because it has been the cause of without doubt the studio’s single biggest downfall; promotion.

I seem to have a complete inability to successfully promote our games, to create compelling game presentations/store pages/social media posts. I have tried many times, and never seem to get anywhere with it. Additionally, when I pitch proposals to third parties, I don’t do justice to the game and vision. As a person, I am very honest, down-to-earth, quiet and reserved – almost the opposite of someone who achieves great things through self-promotion and building a strong network of contacts.

In the past, I have sought advice from several people in the industry, showed them our proposals, asked for feedback – I have tried to improve this aspect. Most recently, when I pitched, They Came from Beyond, I managed to confuse many of the publishers who had no idea what the game was about from the proposal! I revised and adapted based on their feedback, but usually, you only get that initial chance to show the game, publishers don’t tend to revisit once they have said no.

That said, I have pitched quite a few games over the years, and secured several publishing deals – but usually for smaller amounts that are just about enough to get a game completed.  

The End of an Era

From day-one, Super Icon has been a rough ride.

As covered above, our biggest issue was always been getting our games noticed and finding an audience. The actual development process is always smooth, and our game reviews are usually reasonably good. In general, everything works quite well, especially given the lack of resources we’ve always battled with.

However, we are not making money, and it has now got to the point where we need to make an urgent decision about our future.

I considered quietly closing the studio down, but I thought I’d see if there was any possibility I could sell or perhaps find a partner/investor. We don’t have much debt, a few hundred, and everything is in good order. We have accounts for each year since incorporation, prepared by our accountants EXCEED based in Surrey.

I spent the last few days reaching out to some contacts of LinkedIn; some amazing, talented and successful people – kind of a last attempt to salvage the studio as it is.

I put together a couple of docs which covered the various aspects of Super Icon, the way the studio has worked, the whole development process. You can read them here:

a.      Studio profile doc: LINK

b.      Overview of our development process: LINK

 This morning though, I have reached the conclusion that we are done. The feedback has been that our games/studio is essentially pretty much worthless. I expected this, but there is always a small glimmer of hope – perhaps that has always been my biggest failing?

Years of fighting tooth and nail just to survive, just to live. Messing up my family’s stability and security, mentally breaking down, and so often treated like shit by landlords, accountants, etc.

I have tried so very hard to make it work, and I always had that hope I could one day do it. Unfortunately, I am now middle-aged with zero pension, no savings or home and a very uncertain future. Time has a way of creeping up on you, one day you think – I still have a long time to turn things around - then suddenly you think, shit, I’m nearly fifty now; an Autistic games industry fuck up with terrible people skills, crippling self-hate and an on-going mental health battle.

I have made A LOT of games that aren’t worth shit, I have an impressive inability to self-promote and perhaps I am now rather out of touch with the industry as a whole?

The main practicality though is that we just can’t afford to continue. Super Icon can’t afford to get the accounts done or pay the monthly studio bills. I don’t really earn much beyond a few hundred here and there, and every week we are running out of money to even buy groceries and essentials for the home.

We just notified the company accountant that we were unable to do the accounts, and this was their typically hugely helpful response: 

“My colleague will issue the P45 for Richard and will close off the payroll. As the accounts will not be submitted, there will be some penalties and we also believe Companies House will strike off the company at some point (you may apply for strike off but not sure whether they will allow you to do so and also depends on possible buyer you are looking for). In the given situation, unfortunately we have to terminate our services till this has been resolved.

If you manage to find a suitable buyer and manage to pay the debts, we will be more than happy to reinstate our services.”

 So, whatever the future holds, I think Super Icon has run its course. I feel a lot of different emotions, but ultimately, there isn’t much more I can do.

A huge thanks to everyone who bought and/or played our games over the years, and to the other indie developers and indie peeps who have helped us over the years.

Special big thanks to: Jay Koottarappallil, Christian Phillips, Matt Spencer, Rusty Buchert, Jack Littlejohn, Harry Holmwood, Jools Watsham, Garry Williams and probably several others that my currently frazzled brain has forgotten! 

Richard Hill-Whittall

Email: rich@supericon.co.uk

September 14th, 2019.

END

[sojournlist]

If you’re a blogger or writer or aspiring writer and have low page views and a bit of flexibility in your time. Read this. It’s long but I also wanted to get my backstory in to describe why I’m doing this.

I started out adulthood pretty clueless. Like a lot of clueless 18 year olds, I figured I’d join the Army. I spent 5 years as a Photojournalist in the Army.

While in, I traveled the world, met famous journalists and celebrities, received a letter of commendation from the president. I was pretty confident things were going to turn out okay.

I got out and failed miserably at becoming a freelance writer, so miserably in fact, I lost my truck, my apartment, my girlfriend and became homeless for a short time.

A friends mom put me back on my feet, and I worked in a factory that produced pipelines for oil rigs making 6 dollars an hour. I was the only white guy and 6 months later I found out I outlasted the betting pool that all the immigrant workers had put together on how long I would last.

I never wanted to sleep on the streets again.

I eventually went to college, figuring if I couldn’t make a living in Journalism and English, I’d make a living in Math. I started out planning on majoring in finance, buying into the whole Gordon Gecko greed is good mentality. But wound up switching to accounting. There were ethics that appealed to me. We were protecting the investor and it paid good.

I had been diagnosed with ADHD years before and college was a struggle, not because I didn’t understand the material, but because I hated the length and work of it all. I graduated, became an auditor, I worked for large CPA firms and small ones, primarily in governmental accounting, but specializing in low income housing audits.

Bored yet? I was.

One day a recruiter came knocking and said that he had a CFO position at a small magazine publisher. I was excited. I took the job, and dove super deep into it. I learned as much as I could. I redesigned the books, I got involved in analytics projects regarding sales and projections and budgets, was introduced to how Advertising sales works, and all of that. I also learned I had high functioning autism. I kept that a secret. I also learned exactly why journalists get paid so low and who benefits.

I also had a pretty volatile boss. He would yell and scream and throw fits. We actually got along fine. But because I mostly towed the line.

Then he hired a new sales manager, felt he needed to impress her or something by flexing his power and in a meeting loudly demanded that I collect 50k in A/R or he would withhold my paycheck. He looked smug and asked “How do you feel about that.”

I replied, “I feel like that would be the last day I work here.”

He flipped the fuck out and disappeared for a few days. I usually let stuff fall of my back, but I was pretty angry. The next week, he had me talk to his consultant. It was a good meeting, It was supposed to be confidential. I told her about the autism diagnosis. She immediately told my boss.

The next day, we had a closed door meeting to go over our conversation. Then he got mad at something and the argument renewed and he brought up my diagnosis. I was a bit shocked that the consultant told him despite the promise of confidentiality.

He then told me, “I knew you had a low emotional intelligence when you brought donuts to work and didn’t clean up after everyone. When you bring stuff into the office, it’s your responsibility to clean up after yourself.”

I replied, “I didn’t eat any of the donuts. I brought them in for everyone else.”

“Yeah, and a person who has emotional intelligence would know that they need to clean up after them.”

I was also under the impression that at work you clean up after yourself. Plenty of signs at plenty of workplaces illuminated that for me.

He also got mad, that an IT project of setting up a better WiFi system that I was halfway through resulted in a box filled with half the stuff I hadn’t finished setting up the day prior on a table.

“I don’t need some fucking autistic guy fucking up my office,” he shouted. “You have two weeks to help me find your replacement.”

I told him I’m not helping find my replacement. Packed up my stuff and left. It was April 12, 2019.

Stewing over it for the next few days I devised a plan. I was going to mix the low income housing business model with publishing. A model where by separate entities sharing responsibilities risk is reduced, expenses are decreased and profit is maximized for everyone involved from the reader to the writer to the advertiser and to us.

Why? My boss had regularly mentioned that publishing has a low cost of entry. I also had shitty bosses at small firms in Public Accounting. I never understood why bosses in industries, where their employees could easily up and become competition would be cheap with their employees pay and treat them like shit. Especially since they could walk out the door and become competition.

My boss would often tell me that our magazine didn’t really have any competitors.

I wasn’t eager to go back to working for someone else and I really wasn’t eager to go back to accounting.

So I decided I would try and become a competitor. The business did have a low cost of entry, however, I had 18 dollars to my name on April 12th.

A few days later, I told my wife my plan, she was impressed and thought it was a good idea.

I told a buddy I was in the Army with my plan. He left Army Photojournalism and remained in communications. He thought it was genius. He’s now our editor.

I threw together a rough business plan, told a friend and he entered us into a University of Washington business plan competition.

We didn’t win, I had lots of positive feedback. A guy who informed me he was an angel investor and his wife was formerly a journalist loved the idea. A developer looked at me like I was an idiot and told me my idea was impossible.

I pushed ahead anyways. Another friend from high school who is a website developer offered to help, and the website started and went live on July 15th.

A month later, we had racked up 10k visits and 50 or so profiles, 15 writers submitted material.

The site was slow and it was bothering me. I had also been practicing building websites on the side.

So I hired a guy from Fiverr to optimize the site, he did, but he also destroyed our log in process, which is kind of necessary. I broke the site in an effort to fix it.

So I took it down. Spent a month rebuilding it by myself, and it returned live a month later.

I spent pretty much next to nothing on the site. Maybe a few thousand. But I wound up building a travel and tourism blog / social media site that does a 75 percent revenue share and profit share with content contributors. We have an ad server where advertisers can go in order, schedule, manage and track their ads.

We have close to thirty writers now, nearly 70 submissions from amateurs and professional writers, a unique bucket list feature, basically a system that is designed to help writers make a better living, keeps our costs low, allows us to charge less for advertising, and has the potential to get readers free stuff for simply being members and interacting and reading material.

The site is 95 percent complete. Just need to make a few more additions to the bucket list, update our achievement images and make them shareable and once again fix the speed issues. It’s an impressive piece of work and we’re proud of it.

This last month, we’ve cleared 12k page views and now have over 130 profiles.

I accomplished this with no website building experience, no marketing experience, no SEO, no backlinks, and I think our DA score is zero.

I did it by taking research on the effectiveness of micro influencers and reversing it and applying it to small Facebook groups and it’s been rather successful.

We’ve even gotten some interest in our first hosted ad sales. 3 1/2 months in.

So please, join the site. We are strictly geared and dedicated to helping writers.

http://sojournlist.com

[epsilonlaylay-blog]

Why I Hate The Paranormal Activity Franchise

I hate the Paranormal Activity franchise. Someone actually accused me of hating them just because they are popular, which I can’t tell if that’s sarcastic or what. If I hated found footage movies just because they were popular then I wouldn’t like Blair Witch or REC or well there’s countless others. I don’t hate movies based on how popular they are or not I hate movies based on how bad they are, popular or not. I like movies based on how good they are popular or not. Doesn’t matter. A lot of people hate Blair Witch. A lot of people hate the new IT movie. A lot of people hate a lot of things that I like and are also GOOD movies. A lot of people like really BAD horror movies like It Follows and It Comes At Night and A Quiet place. How popular a movie is or isn’t will never, EVER be how I judge movies. That being said, since someone does think I hate those movies just because they are popular which is a stupid idea, I’ll explain why they are, in actuality, very bad movies.

Paranormal Activity One:

Now, the very first one isn’t SUPER bad I mean it’s passable. Though 99% of the scary moments in the first one are jump scares, it was at least a somewhat original concept for the time. The acting isn’t super horrible, at least not from Katie. Everyone else seemed kind of just idiotic or stiff on camera I don’t know. For just a single, stand alone, found footage movie I can say it’s decent. I don’t hate it and I don’t love it. It was a novelty more than anything and had it just been that one movie then I wouldn’t hate the idea so much but it wasn’t just that one movie. It is the best one of the franchise other than the fourth one, I think? The Marked Ones? Which has nothing to do with any of the rest of them (seemingly) and though I wouldn’t call that one awesome either it was far easier to get through than the ones that dealt with the overall story.

Paranormal Activity Two:

This is where it already starts to fall apart. Especially since this family rigged up their entire house with super HD awesome security cameras with sound? Why? Then they have them running constantly to somewhere? Like where is all this footage being recorded and saved? The police found all of it, clearly and kept it. Not only did they keep it, they edited it down to support a full storyline narrative like in the first. All of the movies do this and start (or end) with some message that this is police archive footage or something like that. Why though? Like, if the police did have this footage and it was archived they wouldn’t have edited it into an actual movie that told a story. They may have the events in order but they’d literally only have the events. Stuff that actually happened. They wouldn’t have 90 minutes of pointless fooling around and stupid conversations that don’t pertain to the events at hand. They’d just have what was relevant to the case. If they would even hold onto it at all. The most important footage in each of these movies is when the people are murdered and that’s about it. The rest of it is irrelevant and it even seems by the events of the second movie Katie is wanted for the murder of Micha. Not a ghost. The police would have no need to keep hours and hours of pointless footage archived and edited in such a way that it tells a story to this level. We also start to get into the problem of them having to make shit up to cover their asses because they didn’t think there would be a sequel so a lot of stuff just doesn’t make sense compared to the first movie.

Paranormal Activity Three:

This is the one where they flash back all the way to the 80s with Katie and Kristie as kids. The mother seems utterly unconcerned with most of it and the boyfriend or step father, though he has a crap ton of stuff actually recorded on camera to prove to the mother what he’s saying, he just never shows it to her? Like he brings up, repeatedly that something is going on in the house or there are ghosts or demons or something but he never shows her the footage of what he’s talking about. He always just shows her something else. Plus, it’s the 80s but he has like 8 different cameras, they are recording all the time, the quality is HD, I mean come on. He’d literally have boxes and boxes and BOXES of tapes if he was recording that much and if he was recording over other stuff that he already filmed the quality of the footage would in no way be as good as what was presented to us. Then we have that stupid ending where the girls are like getting married to the demon or something? And there’s a witch coven? Like you lost me there. It’s just getting dumber and dumber. At least the kids were decent actors (usually children can’t act for shit) so…I mean it was kind of watchable but it was more unintentionally hilarious than scary.

Paranormal Activity Four:

So then we have this one which starts out with a random family that seems to be totally not connected to the main story at all. Until you find out that the main girl’s brother is adopted and he actually is Hunter or something. The baby from the first or second movie, whatever, that Katie kidnapped from Kristie. For some reason. Like I guess he’s the Toby ghost or supposed to have Toby inside of him or get possessed by Toby or…whatever the case may be you can rest assured that it makes no sense. Once again we have the problem of cameras recording ALL the time, with no feasible way to save the footage. Then we have the problem of the family knowing this is the case and just NEVER CHECKING THE FOOTAGE. I mean at a certain point they just stop checking it. There, that’s it. They know there’s a ghost, the girl knows she has proof on camera, she just decides to NEVER show her dad and the dad NEVER wants to listen even though they all set up the cameras in the first place to catch this fucking ghost. Then at the very end the dad tells the girl to go get help and she literally carries her fucking laptop, while filming her, across the street, to get help…like UGH none of these people even act the way normal humans would act in this situation. Especially not carrying a fucking laptop with them to film something while they get help. Give me a damn break.

Paranormal Activity 5 (The Marked ones):

Okay to be fair I only saw this one once, like the others, and I don’t remember it having freaking anything to do with the main story. If it was a prequel or what. I don’t feel like looking it up either. It was about some hispanic (possibly Mexican) kids who were getting possessed or paranormally attacked by I guess the same ghost or demon or whatever that’s part of the main story. Works well as a stand alone and other than the first movie it’s the most decent one to watch but that’s not really saying much I just hate it the least out of all the rest of them. Moving on. If this does have something to do with all the rest of them and the main story, feel free to remind me or explain how because I really don’t remember them being connected to each other in any way and I fully admit right now I might be wrong.

Paranormal Activity Ghost Dimension:

This is the last one in the series, hopefully forever. I don’t even know how they got to 6 movies but this one did make the least amount of money and then Oren Peli (the guy who created this abortion of a franchise) claimed that this was how it was supposed to end and what he had planned all along and what he wanted and blah blah blah bullshit lip service. Which can’t possibly be true. If it is true then he’s admitting that he had a shitty nonsensical open ending planned the ENTIRE TIME. I think they just ran out of funding and the movies were tanking at the box office and he had to pretend this is the ending he wanted.

Once again this is seemingly a random family that has nothing to do with anything that they vaguely connect to the main story. It was also in 3D and I will admit the 3D effects were cool but that’s about all it had going for it. Like if you don’t see it in 3D and you don’t see it in the theaters I can’t imagine it’s any good. Like literally ALL of the rest of the films it relies heavily on jump scares and only on jump scares and of course the really cool 3D effects which only actually are cool if you can see them in a theater and in 3D and then there’s some stupid ending about the main little girl Leila and her mom going back in time and getting married to Toby the demon or something, the END.

So if it isn’t apparent why I hate these movies I’ll give it to you in summary:

1. They rely on the very cheap gimmick of found footage because they don’t want to work on an actual plot or really hire good actors. Low budget means higher box office profit.

2. 99% of every scare in every movie is a jump scare. They even use this low frequency vibration noise that is somewhat undetectable by most humans and makes them “uneasy” except if you’ve seen 1000 of these movies that only rely on jump scares then you can pretty much tell when a jump scare is about to happen so you are probably immune to that trick. I guess most regular movie going idiots aren’t so they are basically tricked into thinking it’s scary because of an involuntary response that their body has to low frequency noises. Yeah, if you need to jam that into your horror movie? It’s not good.

3. The only reason the first one got so big in the first place was the old “This movie is too scary for general audiences you can’t see this movie” trick where they made people DEMAND to see it via some website. Except that was all just a gimmick, as I said. The movie was scheduled for a wide release anyway. Once again, if you are relying on gimmicks to get people in the seats instead of the quality of your actual movie it’s not going to be a good movie.

Though the first movie is decent that’s about all it is. Decent. People complain that nothing happens in The Blair Witch project and that’s why it “Sucks” but even less happens in these movies and they’ve had 6 of them now. These are objectively worse than the first Blair witch and has much larger following. Why? I have no idea. The story lines in all of them are dumbed down for audiences to a high level. It’s clear that each time they got green lit for a new sequel they shat their pants and forgot what they even did in the last one and had to quickly make up for it by doing an awful rush job that barely held the movies together via a very paper thin plot.

I’m not even against telling a story in flashbacks if it’s done right and attention is paid to details and it makes sense. I mean as bad as the Saw movies can be in some areas and I will admit that, they at least tried a fuck ton harder to try to make them connect WAY more coherently than the Paranormal Activity movies. Whoever they hired for continuity for the Saw movies did their job. Whoever they hired for the Paranormal Activity movies was either high or didn’t give a fuck. I doubt the studios did either as this was a cash cow for them so as long as people went to see these movies they didn’t care how good they were.

At the end of the day, these are just really bad movies. They rely on gimmicks and jump scares. That’s it. If you need to be TOLD how scary a movie is, literally in the advertising, and once you get in there 99% of the scares are loud noises, then what has been accomplished? What have you just spent your money on? Long running franchises can be good and profitable if people actually put some kind of care into making them. That’s what makes the first 6 Saw movies really good together (and literally nothing after that they should have ended at 6). It is not impossible to make a good horror franchise that people love if you take your time and make sure everything makes sense. That was not done with these movies, and it’s obvious. I’m glad they are over now and have no foreseeable future because they don’t deserve it.

[thelyonsempire]

Once a Single Mom with a Dream, Taraji P. Henson is Now a Hollywood Headliner

Want to know what it feels like for a woman to be a commanding presence in a man’s world? Just ask Taraji P. Henson, who might be the greatest motivational speaker we ladies have at the moment. 

“I feel like a boss bitch,” she says, flashing her megawatt grin. “I’m grabbing my nuts, like, ‘Yeah!’ ”

Could we consider this an apt metaphor for the current push-pull of power dynamics? Perhaps. As Henson knows, there’s no time to mince words anymore. From the #MeToo movement to the midterm elections, we’ve seen what happens when women stake their claim. Henson, a single mother from Washington, D.C., who has worked in the industry for over 20 years, is among those finally getting their due — and she’s not afraid to say it.

Her latest film, What Men Want, explicitly explores these themes. Out in February, it flips the script from the Nancy Meyers-directed What Women Want (2000), which starred Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt. Henson plays Ali Davis, a cocky (for lack of a better term) sports agent. After getting passed over for a big promotion, she visits a psychic (the singer Erykah Badu) who provides her with a special tea that allows her to hear men’s thoughts.

Henson stars and also serves as an executive producer. It’s the first time the 48-year-old actress — who has nailed every dramatic role that has come her way — is getting a chance to flex her musical-theater-trained muscles as the lead in a full-fledged comedy. And Henson is clearly in her element, engaging in the kind of “I’ll do anything for laughs” physical antics emblematic of her heroes Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball.

“I’ve always been the funny girl,” Henson says emphatically. “Not that I was pigeonholed. They were all great dramatic roles, but I’ve been dying. I just felt so honored and grateful to get a comedy where I could let it all hang out. My best friend was like, ‘Lord, they don’t know what they have unleashed.’ ”  

“Taraji is old-school funny,” says someone who would know, her What Men Want co-star Tracy Morgan. “She is willing to take a pie to the face or stuff a bunch of candy in her mouth to get a laugh. She cuts the monster but doesn’t cut too deep because she knows we need the monster comedy.”

This past November Henson also voiced the animated character Yesss (which Henson pronounces as “Yesssssss” in her sweet drawl) in Ralph Breaks the Internet, Disney’s big-budget sequel to Wreck-It Ralph, which grossed over $400 million worldwide. It was another chance for her to show off her comedic chops, but this time for the kids. And after years of struggling to make it in Hollywood, she’s acutely aware of how doing a family film can help her bank account.

“You know, that’s [audiences buying] four tickets instead of two,” Henson says. “That’s generally going to be the largest-grossing film in anyone’s repertoire.”

To attend InStyle’s shoot, she took a 24-hour break from the Chicago set of Empire and her most significant character to date, the cutting and campy Cookie Lyon. Henson admits that the silver-tongued ex-con and matriarch of the Lyon family was the one who really put her on the Hollywood map. Despite all her successes — in the Oscar-nominated films Hidden Figures and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — Henson has never had a movie studio bring her overseas to do press. But Cookie has.

“Hollywood executives would tell me that I don’t have fans all the way over there,” Henson says, shaking her head. “I said, ‘You’re lying because they can reach me any time. I’m a finger tap away, and they let me know every day.’ ” And while the international box office plays a big role in getting lead parts in feature films, it was Cookie who let Henson know she was appreciated. “Then we go to Paris [to promote Empire], and it’s standing room only in a room with 1,500 seats. I cried. If you believe what people tell you … you can’t let people tell you shit.”

Henson’s strong sense of self comes from her parents. She was an only child until she was 17 (her half sister, April, now works as her “a-sister-ant”). Her father, Boris, was a Vietnam War vet who battled PTSD and alcoholism throughout her childhood. Despite his mood swings, Henson says, he instilled in her a no-fear attitude that has stuck with her to this day. From her mother, Bernice, she inherited her endless drive and passion.

“I was like the Punky Brewster of the hood,” Henson says with a laugh. “I was a well-rounded kid, but I could also scrap if necessary. But I wasn’t that hard. I still had Strawberry Shortcake wallpaper in my room, and my friend Tracie and I were doing Shakespeare in the Park … and we were in the f—ing hood.”

Though it was clear from an early age that Henson was a natural-born performer, she spent her nascent college years attempting to follow in her father’s footsteps by studying engineering at North Carolina A&T State University. With her colorful outfits and spirited attitude, she earned the on-campus nickname Hollywood, yet it still took failing math classes for her to realize the sciences were not where she belonged. When she called Boris to tell him, he was not surprised.

“Good,” he said. “Get your ass back up to D.C. and enroll in Howard’s drama department. Do what you’re supposed to be doing.”

While attending Howard University, Henson became pregnant with her son, Marcell. After graduation the single mom and her baby boy moved to Los Angeles with $700 borrowed from family and friends so she could pursue her dreams. Between casting calls, there were stints as a substitute teacher for kids with special needs. Eventually she landed an agent, and guest spots on network television shows soon followed. But it was her roles in films such as Baby Boy and Hustle & Flow that really made Hollywood take notice.

Now that she’s got the mic, Henson is putting it to good use, choosing impactful projects like this spring’s The Best of Enemies, about civil-rights activist Ann Atwater and her unlikely friendship with C.P. Ellis (portrayed by Sam Rockwell), a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. She is also starring in and producing a movie about Emmett Till, the teenager who was lynched for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi in 1955.

“I don’t care if you’re young or old or what color you are, art is so powerful,” she says on the topic of representation. “You can show things to people you’ve never met and you broaden horizons. I don’t take for granted what I have, and I try to use it in any way I can, positively.”

The fact that Hollywood continues to preach about the importance of diversity but then casts predominately white males in lead roles is not lost on the actress. “Here’s the deal: When you talk about money, don’t you want to make money? I want every walk of life [in my films]. If I could put an alien in, I would. I want their money too. Come on, it’s what the world looks like. That’s what people want to see, representation. That’s all. You can make money doing it. It’s a no-brainer.”

She also recently established the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation (named after her beloved father), which encourages African-Americans with mental-health issues to seek the help they need. “It was born out of necessity,” she says. “You know, traumatic stuff happened to me and my son. [Her ex-boyfriend, Marcell’s father, was murdered in 2003.] You can’t just pray it away. I don’t care how strong you are. It gets to you, and if you don’t deal with it, it manifests itself in ways you don’t even know.

“My white friends have standing appointments with their therapists,” Henson continues. “I was like, ‘Why aren’t we doing that?’ In our culture, it’s taboo.” The first people to sign on? Her male friends from the industry, all of whom wrote checks on the spot. “The black men stepped up. Snoop Dogg, Xzibit, Tracy Morgan, Chance the Rapper all stepped up. I called, they answered. Snoop told me, ‘Baby girl, that’s important. What you’re doing is important.’ Tyrese said, ‘You’re making it cool to seek help.’ ”  

Another supportive figure is her fiancé, former NFL cornerback (and Super Bowl XLI winner) Kelvin Hayden. The two were quietly dating for three years before Hayden proposed last Mother’s Day. They are planning to wed this summer in a private, low-key affair, and though her designer friends are offering to make her a dress, Henson is opting for the most efficient route.

“I’m not going to go through 10,000 dresses,” she says. “How does it fit? How do I feel? Does it complement me well? Let’s just go with this one. I know what looks good on me. I’m not going to spend 10 hours on a fitting. I hate that.”

The wedding itself will probably take place in July, once Henson figures out if Empire is going to be picked up for a sixth season. Fortunately, it is filmed in Chicago, where she and Hayden reside with Marcell — now 24 and an aspiring rapper and music producer — and their miniature French bulldog, K-Ball, which was Hayden’s nickname when he played in the NFL.

Their life is a healthy one. Hayden runs his own gym, and she’s always cooking new vegan treats for her tribe. She made the jump to veganism after suffering massive stomach pains while filming The Best of Enemies this past summer. “It took a doctor in Macon, Ga., to say, ‘If you don’t change what you’re doing, you’re going to get stomach cancer.’ I said, ‘Say no more.’ So I switched everything up out of necessity. I want to live. Thank God, because I feel so much better.”

Now that she’s in love, at the top of her game, and clearly adored by the world at large, Henson is ready to expand her repertoire even further. “The older I get, I want to work smarter, not harder,” she says. She’ll answer that superhero hotline if it rings — “DC, Marvel, you all can call me!” — but for now she’s content being the funny girl.

“I want to show you this,” she says, grabbing her phone to play a video that was sent to her by What Men Want director Adam Shankman. It’s footage from an early screening, and the audience is roaring with laughter.

Henson admits to having goose bumps as she cradles the device like a proud mama: “Listen to them cackling!”

[amostexcellentblog]

IYO, which Golden Age stars had the most interesting "will make degrading cameo for food" phases?

Sorry this is so late, but whoa boy that’s a loaded question. Honestly, a lot of silent and classic Hollywood stars had money troubles in their later years because residuals weren’t really a thing until the 50s. Before the television market nobody thought there was a way to consistently make money on old movies so everyone was content to be paid upfront. Then add on a lot of stars grew accustomed to lavish lifestyles and never learned responsible spending and most of them had some degree of financial difficulties after their careers declined. Some of them had a sense of humor about it, for others it was humiliating and there can be a vague sense of exploitation about the whole thing that makes some fans reluctant to talk about these periods.

We should probably begin with Orson Welles, who made what was/is considered the greatest movie of all time, and yet had to take some pretty demeaning work to pay the bills. Like, he really did do a frozen peas commercial. That’s not something the writers of The Critic made up. It exists, it’s on youtube!

Bette Davis famously placed an ad in Variety asking for work when parts dried up. She spent most of the 60s starring in horror movies of declining quality, primarily because she needed money to support he family, but also because she was desperate to work. By the 70s though the Hag Horror fad had passed and she became even more desperate. A 1971 film Bunny O'Hare had her playing an elderly woman who dresses up as a hippie to rob banks on a motorcyle, it was so bad she sued the studio claiming it had damaged her future employment prospects. During this time she also filmed 4 sitcom pilots, and not good ones either. they were for Aaron Spelling, the man behind “Jiggle-TV” (although Davis herself did not jiggle, she still had some pride). The tv show Feud treated this as a sort of tragic time where the woman who once sued Jack Warner for better scripts was so desperate for work she stopped caring about quality. I look at it more as Davis realized that no matter how much dreck she did the public would always consider her a Hollywood Legend, so she was free to stop worrying about her image and just take whatever paid work she could get while playing the movie queen in interviews. 

Another low point was the Disney-sequel Return From Witch Mountain in 1978 where she and Christopher Lee (who took the part just to work with her) played the villains intent on using mind control devices on two super-powered alien kids. To say Davis’s character was as flat as cardboard is an insult to cardboard. She finally got a decent script in the 1980s with The Whales of August opposite Lillian Gish, so she was able to remind everyone how good she could be a few years before her death. Not every star would be so lucky.

Joan Crawford, who must be discussed alongside Davis by Hollywood law, has become, along with Welles, the poster-child for late career humiliation. Like Davis, Crawford spent the 60s doing low budget horror shlock, but somehow her movies always seemed shlockier. She teamed up with William Castle twice, for his Strait-Jacket he let her act like the movie queen she’d once been and she took full advantage. She demanded a limo to drive her to set each day, a role be given to a vice-president of Pepsi (she was on the board) and refused to let him be fired even when it became obvious he couldn’t remember his lines. She insisted on portraying her character as in her 40s despite turning 60 the year it came out, and also played the character as a 20-something in flashbacks. The air conditioning on set was cranked obscenely high because she believed cold air kept her skin from wrinkling.

In 1968 Crawford guest starred on The Lucy Show as a version of herself who liked being out of the public eye (Ha!). Lucille Ball by this point was a terror to work with and she bullied Crawford relentlessly over everything from her dancing to her drinking (which of course just made Crawford drink more). Later that year her daughter Christina was hospitalized, meaning she wouldn’t be able to film her scenes for the daytime soap opera she was in. Crawford, 64 years old, convinced the producers to let her fill in. And they said yes, so for four whole episodes Crawford appeared as a 24 year old girl. And on top of that, she was so drunk she could barely remember her lines. A year later Crawford had what I think is her most interesting TV role. For Rod Serling’s Night Gallery she played a ruthless, blind heiress who will stop at nothing to be able to see. It’s a standard Serling morality play right down to the ironic twist. What so fascinates me is that it marked the professional debut of one Steven Spielberg, although by his own admission he shot the thing like a European art film and had it taken away in editing so it could be re-worked into something presentable on network TV. So you have Crawford, who started her career in the silent era, came to embody the studio system, and remained a movie star into the 1960s, being directed by Spielberg, one of the key directors of the New Hollywood era who went on to create the era of the blockbuster tentpole we live in today. It’s such a fascinating meeting in the middle moment of the woman who ebodied the first half of Hollywood’s history, and the man who embodied its second half.

From there she went on to her final film, 1970′s Trog. She played a scientist investigating a ape-cave man hybrid believed to be the missing link. She was so drunk she had to use cue-cards to read her lines. The movie was so low-budget she had to wear her own clothes and change in an old van. Roger Ebert once said that the difference between Crawford and Davis was that Crawford would agree to make Trog. He wasn’t wrong. She made a handful of TV appearances after that, but then the tabloids published some unflattering pap photos. In the 1930s when she’d been the most beautiful woman in Hollywood she famously told an interviewer “I never go out of my house unless I look like Joan Crawford the movie star, if people want the girl next door they can go next door.” Decades later she lived up to her words, convinced she could no longer look like the glamorous movie queen she cancelled her public appearances and spent the last years of her life in Norma Desmond-like isolation. She died in her New York apartment in 1977 with only her maid and a loyal fan by her side.

This is getting long, but I have to mention Aldo Ray, a big macho man action hero of the 1950s who made a porno in 1979 and spent the 1980s working mostly with cult exploitation filmmaker Fred Olen Ray (no relation). Ray Milland was a hunky leading man in the 40s, spent the 1970s alternating between genuine A-list hits like Love Story and shlock like Frogs and The Thing With Two Heads where he played a racist whose head is grafted onto a black man. Yeah:

Bela Lugosi’s fall from grace has been much covered. He had a huge hit with Dracula but feuded with the studio and soon found himself confined to B-level shlock, eventually finding himself a member of Ed Wood’s stock company. Fan still debate if Wood was exploiting him or helping him. Boris Karloff fared better. He made plenty of low budget dreck for Roger Corman, but he also endeared himself to younger audiences, most notably in How the Grinch Stole Christmas and went out on a high note with Peter Bogdanovich’s directorial debut Targets.

Lastly, we must speak of Veronica Lake. She was a glamour queen of the 40s, famous for her hair style where her long blonde locks were styled to cover one eye, studio publicists dubber her “The Peek-a-Boo Girl.” She made one genuine 4-star must-see classic, Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels, and some well regarded noirs and comedies, but she was washed up by the 1950s. She was discovered working a a waitress in the 1960s and subsequently told her story on the talk show circuit and later in an autobiography. She decided to use the money she’d earned from various public appearances to produce a comeback vehicle. For some reason, perhaps known only to her, she decided the best movie to relaunch her career was Flesh Feast. A no budget Grade-Z catastrophe where she played a mad scientist developing a breed of flesh eating maggots while moonlighting for an underground organization of escaped Nazis in possession of Hitler’s body. She is charged with reanimating their Führer so they can take over the world. Turns out though, Lake is only doing this to avenge her mother who was subjected to Nazi experiments in the concentration camps. Once old Adolf is alive and kicking again, she throws her flesh eating maggots in his face and laughs maniacally as he dies a second, painful death. Honestly, Lakes delivery of the line “Don’t you like my little maggots?” deserves to go down as one of the all-time camptastic line readings in the history of cinema. But seriously, this movie raises so many questions I can’t even start. Like, if she just agreed to star I could understand, but she was a producer on this, she went all-in on this project, why? Why this of all things?

[ricardotomasz]

Such is life! Behold, a new Post published on Greater And Grander about Marc Rossman

See into my soul, as a new Post has been published on https://greaterandgrander.com/marc-rossman

Marc Rossman

This article was originally part of the Insider Cinema guide to Hollywood, a website from the mid-2000s. We are reposting it here as both a writing sample and a guide for those seeking to get their foot in the door in Hollywood.

Why did you get into the entertainment industry?

Well, I always wanted to tell stories visually.  I started with still photography as a young kid.  I took pictures in a way that told a story, and I quickly got into making super 8 movies, and kind of knew from the time I was in middle school that I wanted to get into the business and be a director.  I just really enjoyed the process and enjoyed telling stories in a movie medium.  And I did grow up in Los Angeles and was around movie companies shooting all over the place.  Whenever an opportunity came up to hang out on a movie set I would do that.  None of my family was in the movie business, but I always had a fascination with it, and made more and more complicated projects in high school, started to make some 16mm with sound movies.  I decided to become a film major and went to UCLA, and there you apply to become a film major in your junior year, and so I took my general courses, and then applied, and did not get into the department which I was upset about, and ended up going to NYU for my last year of college, and it turned out to be a great experience.  Then I got out of school and worked on a movie called “Home Movies” that Brian DePalma directed.  I was his first assistant director because it was a very low-budget film that he wanted to have students fresh out of school in the key crew positions, and it was great working with him, and seeing how a film is put together.

How did you find out about Home Movies?

At the time I was finishing up my last year at NYU, and my girlfriend at the time was working for Frank Yablans as an intern.  Frank Yablans had just finished being an executive at Paramount, and was now a producer, and produced Brian DePalma’s last film, The Fury, and he and Frank were going to make this little low-budget movie.  He and Frank were meeting at Frank’s, and my girlfriend said to me, ‘Why don’t you just drop in?  There are like 13 film students Sarah Lawrence Colleg.’  And even though nobody knew me, I was the only kid from NYU, I quickly fell into this groove and became First Assistant Director. 

What were your goals?

I think I always wanted to be just a working feature film director.  I never saw myself as an academy award-winning director, I just wanted to be kind of a journeyman feature film director.  I wanted to make very accessible movies that would entertain and move people, and just keep working.

Film School?

I found film school very rewarding.  I had already made some short films in high school, but being in film school allowed me to have exposure to some good teachers that really opened my eyes to techniques with camera and editing, and you get to be in every different position, which in the film business, you end up doing one thing, you enter as a P.A., but in film school, you get to do sound and lighting, so when you do move on to directing and writing, you have a better understanding of all the pieces of filmmaking, and you also get a better understanding of the craft, and making films for a community of students and teachers makes you better.  And lastly, the people at film school are really going to be the people you come up with in the industry.  I’ve met a number of great people at film school, a few of which are still my very closest friends, and we’ve hired each other, and helped each other in our careers.  We’ve certainly been there both emotionally and creatively for each other.     

Common mistakes?

Well, film school is a place to try things.  People need to take some chances and make as many movies as they can as opposed to those who didn’t try directing, or kind of stuck to one position.  That’s the biggest mistake I saw, which is kind of quickly choosing one thing and losing the exposure, and not taking advantage of what film school has to offer.

Came back to L.A.?

How did you come up with the idea for HOSR? Well, I was always interested in the idea of thrillers, Hitchcockian suspense stories, Twilight Zone, and that was kind of the area I wanted to get into.  At the time of the early eighties, there was a horror craze with Friday the 13th, and all the horror movies that are being remade now, and I wanted to get into that area, and it would be commercial, I’d have a good shot at directing it, so I tried to come up with an idea that would combine the horror genre (which I wasn’t a big horror fan) and also combine the suspense elements.  I had been in a fraternity for two years at UCLA, so I kind of knew something about that area, and wrote the script, and wrote a bunch of drafts.  It was the first screenplay I’d ever written, so I wrote a bunch of drafts and got a lot of really good books on screenwriting.  Syd Field’s book in particular was really helpful.  Then, when the script was done, I took a long approach to get the financing.  I put together a few budgets, a high budget was around $1.5 million, a medium budget was $800,000, and a low budget was around $50,000.  I put a packet together of what other successful horror films were, and I found a veteran director, a guy named Jack Arnold, who had directed Creature from The Black Lagoon, and The Incredible Shrinking Man, and found him through a friend of a friend of a friend, and I got together with him, and asked him to write a letter recommending me, and that he would back me up as a producer, and he agreed, so I had that as part of my packet.  And I went around to various studios, but that didn’t get me anywhere, and I met with various people that I heard wanted to invest in movies.  Finally, after about 6 months to a year, I decided to just go and make a short version of the movie, sort of like a trailer as a showpiece for the movie.  So, I wrote ten pages for that and then financed that myself, and suddenly, a friend of mine whom I had gone to high school with, was part of a company in Washington D.C. that made industrial short films, and he called me, and said, ‘This company is trying to get into movies, do you have anything?’ So, I sent them the script, and they liked it.

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[thefederalistfreestyle]

‘Hamilton’ Doesn’t Define Anthony Ramos, King Of The Side Hustle (HuffPost):

People tend to assume that the original stars of “Hamilton” walked away from the groundbreaking musical with a hefty paycheck. After all, the average ticket price for their acclaimed show eventually hit well above $1,000. And everyone from President Barack Obama to Beyoncé and Meryl Streep attended performances, beginning all the way back in 2015. It was, and still is, a phenomenon of a theater production.

In actuality, actor Anthony Ramos ― who originated the roles of statesman John Laurens and Hamilton’s eldest son, Philip, in the Tony Award–winning show ― said he and his co-stars made just enough money to cover their rent, bills and daily expenses.

“On Broadway, we had to negotiate with our producers to share some [earnings]. That was an ongoing process, but everybody came to an agreement,” he told HuffPost. “But we didn’t ... the show didn’t financially make any of us rich. It provided for us and helped open doors to create other opportunities that helped us make money. But the show itself didn’t necessarily change my life or most people’s lives in the cast [financially]. The checks we get after that long negotiation for profit share have helped us after.”

Ramos didn’t divulge exact salaries. The typical minimum salary for a Broadway star, he said, is around $1,800 a week, though people can reportedly negotiate up to $10,000 or even $20,000. Off-Broadway rates are anywhere between $300 and $1,000 a week, depending on the number of seats in a theater. Like in any other industry, Ramos believes success in the theater world hinges on an ability to fight for what you feel you deserve.

“People don’t take into consideration that you won’t be in the show forever. You’re doing it eight times a week. You don’t get paid when you get hurt. You have to earn every single dollar,” he said. “Plus, when you leave the show, you don’t get any of that money. That’s it. You pay out your agent, your manager ― 10 percent, depending on what you’re doing. After paying taxes, and after it all adds up, you’re making good money, but you’re making just enough to live in New York City.”

At the end of the day, Ramos said he can only hope that the projects he takes on now create “an opportunity to do something better that will hopefully pay you more and also be just as creatively fulfilling or more creatively fulfilling than the last thing. A lot of the times that doesn’t happen. It can take people years to get another great job. This entertainment game is a gamble.”

[. . .]

“I went to audition at [talent agency] Telsey for a show that was at a signature theater,” Ramos explained. “In an email, after I finish that open call, the casting director’s like, ‘We’re about to call you in for this thing called “Hamilton’s Mixtape.”’ And I was like, ‘“Hamilton’s Mixtape”? OK, cool, yeah, sure.’”

Ramos auditioned for musical supervisor Alex Lacamoire and director Tommy Kail. Clearly, it turned out well.

“They gave me the part that I eventually originated on Broadway,” Ramos said. “We did the four-week lab and then we had six months off. I worked at a bakery and a preschool. I shot my first super low-budget indie film in that time, too. Then, we were off-Broadway for six months, had a month off, and then we went on Broadway.”

All in all, Ramos played his dual roles at the Richard Rodgers Theatre for 17 months before taking his final bow on Nov. 20, 2016.

Ramos was still acting in “Hamilton” when Spike Lee ― who apparently saw the Lin-Manuel Miranda creation seven times ― approached him about “She’s Gotta Have It.”

“Spike came to the Public Theater [where the production ran off-Broadway] and after the show, he stands up, in the second row, and is just clapping really aggressively and pointing and clapping and pointing,” Ramos described. “And my boy Chris Jackson, next to me, whispered through the side of his mouth, ‘He ain’t pointing at me!’”

[. . .]

Ramos himself is attempting to say something in his own art. He’s gearing up to release an EP of songs he wrote directly following the 2016 election. The “vibe” he was sensing from people around him inspired tracks including “Freedom” and “Common Ground,” which touch on graver topics like immigration. Sitting with me in the cafe, Ramos spoke his lyrics: “I was told that a life has no price, you see / but the hate in your eyes put a price on me.”

He’ll drop the record on the one-year anniversary of President Trump’s inauguration later this month.

“You can’t just think that things will get better — it takes work,” he said. “Hard things bring great humility and we need humility in this country. I’m grateful that we’re having hard conversations and dealing with each other. Even if it doesn’t seem like we’re dealing with each other well, we’re dealing with each other. We’re actually hitting things head-on.”

This kind of faith has helped the actor progress in both his life and career, and has allowed Ramos to envision himself as something more than just a “Hamilton” star.

“It’s tough to get out of that box,” he said, explaining that he must “take the chains off” in his own mind before anyone else can see him in a new light.

“My identity doesn’t lie in ‘Hamilton.’ My identity is not in Mars. It doesn’t lie in ‘Godzilla’ or whatever else I’ve been blessed to be a part of. People can label me however they want, but I know who I am at the end of the day and anyone who cares to come on the journey or get to know me will get to know me as an individual, and that’s all I really care about.”

Thankfully, Ramos has a great support system, which includes a partner who understands exactly what he’s going through. Jasmine Cephas Jones also starred in the original cast of “Hamilton” as Peggy Schuyler and Maria Reynolds, and Ramos says she’s there for him every step of his post-show journey.

“She keeps it real,” he told me. “You have someone who you can bounce off of who’s there constantly or someone who understands your point of view or where you’re coming from or can rebut your point of view. Having someone who is supportive is number one.”

As our nearly two-hour conversation came to an end and we got up to leave, Ramos informed me that he’d be heading to Puerto Rico to help out in any way he could after Hurricane Maria devastated his family’s homeland. He’s since returned from that visit, calling the experience “the most overwhelming, inspiring and beautiful thing I think I’ve ever seen.” Alongside Miranda, who’s reprising his role in “Hamilton” for a three-week run on the island, Ramos also took part in the all-star single “Almost Like Praying,” which raised money for relief. He said he’ll “do anything” he can to let Puerto Rico residents know they’re not alone.

“The only thing you leave in this world is a legacy,” Ramos said. “Eventually, your money gets spent. Eventually, your house gets sold. So what is your legacy going to be?”

much more in his incredibly in-depth interview