Girl in a Cage

Indies, Save Thyselves

In honor of October, month of Halloween, here's a guest post from my favorite horror author, Seamus Cooper!  (author of The Mall of Cthulhu, which you should totally buy.).  Seamus is a well-known curmudgeon and, though I love him, kind of a dick.  His opinions are his own, and though I've given him a platform for his rantings, not necessarily mine.

Hey, both people who read Halpin's blog!  It's me, Seamus Cooper. with an interesting message about the importance of shopping indie!

I've been reading Big Box Swindle by Stacy Mitchell.  It's an excellent book. I knew, of course, that Wal Mart was evil, but the book spells out in pretty clear detail just exactly how all big box retail sucks the life out of communities.  (In brief--the money you save on toothpaste by shopping at Wal Mart or Target goes mostly to their corporate headquarters, and the higher price you pay for the same item at a local store allows more people in your town to have a decent standard of living, which means better tax base, more stable families, better schools and services, and a much nicer town for you to live in.  Pretty decent bargain for the extra fifty cents you spend on toothpaste.)

My only complaint with the book is that it doesn't address Halpin's excellent theory that the big box stores of the suburbs, their metaphorical wombs burgeoning with cheap made-in-China goods, are the suburbs' gynocentric rejoinder to the phallic skyscrapers of the city.

Still, the book made me think about a couple of things.  One is how guilty liberals like Halpin are quick to complain about the evils of Wal-Mart, but they get suspiciously quiet when you bring up Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Target, or other stores where they like to shop.  (Trader Joe's is so cheap at least in part because they don't have a unionized workforce like your local supermarket does. Whole Foods is about as anti-union as they come. And Target is Wal-Mart in yuppie drag.)

The other is how important it is for us literary types to support independent bookstores.

Here's the problem for me, though: it's damn hard to find my book (The Mall of Cthulhu, published by the good folks at Nightshade books, go buy several copies now) in an independent bookstore.  Most independent bookstores have pretty desultory selections of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror.  It's kind of like, "eh, here's your William Gibson and Philip K. Dick if you must read this trash."  And, ironically, it's pretty hard to find speculative fiction from independent publishers at independent bookstores.  They seem to deal with Tor (a division of Macmillan, which is a division of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck) and Del Rey (a division of Random House, a division of Bertlesmann AG) almost exclusively, leaving out all the independent publishers of this kind of fiction.

Indies are always asking for our support, and they're right, but here's the thing:  they, most of them, ignore a pretty big segment of the book buying public by not having better speculative fiction sections. 

They'll tell you it's because this stuff doesn't sell, but I know without any bookscan data that that is crap. 

Evidence:  The only commercially viable magazines that specialize in short fiction are speculative fiction magazines.  (Asimov's, The Magazine of Fantasy of Science Fiction, Analog, Cemetery Dance, and Weird Tales all publish regularly without the support of NEA grants or universities.) (And good luck finding them in your local indie, where you'll probably have no trouble finding every annoying pubication associated with Dave Eggers.)

The chain stores stock tons of this stuff.  Say what you will about the chains, but they are not libraries.  They don't stock stuff they can't sell.

Let's look at the Amazon top 50 as of this writing, shall we?  Here are speculative ficiton titles in the top 50 (Though it pains me, I'm leaving aside the obvious jokes about how books by the likes of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin qualify as either fantasy or horror):

9. A Touch of Dead by Charlaine Harris

12. An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon

28. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

29. Covet: A Novel of the Fallen Angels by J.R. Ward

36. The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

39. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

41.The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

46. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

So of the 23 works of fiction in the Amazon top 50 as of right now, 8 are works of speculative fiction.  So much for the idea that these kinds of books don't sell.

But it may well be that they don't sell well at independent bookstores.  I posit that this is because many independent bookstores haven't made themselves a very welcoming environment for fans of this kind of fiction.  I think this is because many independent bookstores value their position as a center of NPR-listening, New-Yorker-Reading culture, and speculative fiction doesn't quite fit that image.

I'm exaggerating because I'm a dick, but you know what I mean.  People devoted to these genres buy a lot of books, and many independents have essentially ceded this market to the chains.  Why not go after it aggressively? 

So, by all means, book buyers, support your local independent bookstore because it's good for literature and your community.  But indies--help yourselves by trying to get fans of speculative fiction into your store!  Host a Charles Stross or Cherie Priest signing!  Have a steampunk night!  Have a Halloween party celebrating the best horror fiction you've got!  The NPR people will still come for the literary fiction about guys with writer's block, but you'll be welcoming in a bunch of passionater readers who are fiercely loyal and will tell the entire internet how awesome you are if they have a good experience in your store.  Why wouldn't you do this?

The strange economics of moviemaking

The new Kevin James movie, entitled zookeeper, is being filmed in Franklin Park in Boston, just up the street from my house.

Apparently they decided they needed a gorilla cage with a certain look, so outside the zoo, on the path where I walk my dog, they built one.
(i'm attaching photos of the set they built, but since I'm doing this from my phone, I don't know where in the post they will end up)

Anyway, the set was built over the course of three weeks. There was a crane and a fake waterfall involved. And a lot of fake rocks, trees, and slate. (check out the photos-- the gorilla sign was really made of concrete-- everything else was fake.)

About 30 workers built this set, some of them obviously craftsmen with an amazing ability to construct temporary things that look like other, more permanent things.

There was 24-hour security on the set for the entire time.

This set had to have cost $100,000 dollars. If you've ever had work done on your house, you can imagine the expense of employing 30 workers every day for 3 1/2 weeks.

And they shot on this set for 3 hours. From 9 to 12 one morning last week.

The last photo is the site as it looked yesterday.

Draw your own conclusions, but I was told this movie has a 20 million dollar budget, which makes it a small movie.

Why the Hyatt Matters

I am not going to be one of those guys who blogs endlessly about the same thing, but I did want to re-visit the issue of the Hyatt hotels firing all their housekeepers in order to hire contractors who will do the same work for about half the wage.

This morning on the radio, I heard a lot of people calling in to say "oh, it's a business decision, they can do what they want, a lot of those people will be hired back, blah blah." 

So I feel the need to explain the importance of jobs like this.  Steady jobs with benefits equal stability for families and therefore communities.  Imagine a kid who has to move from apartment to apartment, stay with relatives sometimes, change schools, and maybe not always have clothes for school or enough food to eat. Or maybe they do have a place to live but no parental supervision because their parents have to work two jobs in order to afford the rent. (This isn't some liberal sob story fantasy--anyone who works in urban schools or in urban healthcare can name actual examples of kids like this.)

Now imagine a kid whose parents can afford to pay rent and can stay in the same schools, who has enough money to get what they need for school, and who sees working for a living as an option that can pay off instead of a sucker bet that leads only to exploitation. 

Which kid do you think is going to have a brighter future?

Which kid would you rather have living next door to you?

Hyatt just went public, and the stock price may well go up as a result of this cost cutting move. But that increase in shareholder value is coming at a high price for the cities in which Hyatt Hotels are located. 

Hyatt hotels are being bad citizens of Massachusetts, and our normally hapless governor is right to call for a boycott because, all moral considerations aside, the social chaos caused by the loss of over 100 jobs that pays a living wage costs the Commonwealth of Massachusetts money.

Real Vampires Don't Sparkle

So, okay, the vampire myth is attractive because it's dangerous and sexy, and you've got sex at one end of the spectrum and predation at the other end, but recently it seems to me that the vampire pendulum has swung way too far to the sexy side. I mean, if you were scared by Twilight...aw, who am I kidding.  No one on earth was scared by Twilight.

But you might be scared by Chuck Hogan and Guillermo Del (Yeah, I did Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth, bitch!) Del Toro's book The Strain.  The beginning of this book was the scariest thing I've read in years.  It's action-packed, scary, and imaginitive, and you should read it yesterday.  It is absoulutely kickass, and I can't wait for the second one.

On the movie tip, I recently caught Black Sunday on hulu.com. No, not the stupid thriller from the 70's about terrorists, a blimp, and the superbowl, but the horror movie from the 60's.  I have a soft spot for black and white horror movies, and this one delivered the goods--okay, not exactly scary, but definitely creepy and engaging and starring horror royalty--Barbara Steele herself, who was either the most beautiful ugly woman or the ugliest beautiful woman on the planet when this was made. 

It's not so much of a vampire movie as a demonic possession movie, but they do use the term vampire in the movie, and what's more, it's a clear influence on Coppola's Dracula as well as Polanski's Fearless Vampire Killers (which is the best vampire movie ever and which you should also see). 

You can watch Black Sunday for free on hulu?  Why wouldn't you?  Oh, too lazy to click over?  I understand.  Okay, watch it here, then:

Season of the Witch

Yeah, I know it's not even October yet, but I'm in a Halloweenish mood already. What the hell, if they can start the Christmas crap in November, we can start the Halloween season in September. So here's everybody's favorite Scottish hippie with a genuinely creepy sound o' the season. Enjoy!

Play on, Playa!

As I may have mentioned, we watch a lot of movies via the Netflix streaming on Xbox Live service. 

As I may have also mentioned, the selection on this service is strangely limited--some new releases, some indie films, some classics, and a whole lot of gaps where there should be movies.

Still, we're usually able to find something to watch.

And the strangely limited selection often leads us to watch stuff we wouldn't otherwise watch.  Like, for example, the other day, when the boy cued up Ping Pong Playa.  All I knew about this was the title, and I figured it was some kind of goofy, over-the-top spoof like that horrible ping pong movie with Christopher Walken.  Balls of Fury? 

So I walked into the room with zero expectations and was pleasantly surprised to find a real movie going on.  Ping Pong Playa is a movie about a young Chinese man who can't quite make it as a basketball star and is a consistent disappointment to his parents.  The plot winds up fairly predictable, but in the meantime, this movie creates real characters and has a lot of interesting things to say about identity and culture.  And it's very funny.  In short, definitely worth watching, and something I never would have discovered if Netflix Watch Instantly had a better selection.

One complaint, though--this movie as we watched it on Netflix was censored--ping pong and basketball sound effects were played in place of many of the swear words.  There was no advance warning about this bizarre censorship.  We had the same problem when we tried to watch Fear of a Black Hat (a wonderful and terribly underrated rap mockumentary)--all the swear words were bleeped out with funny sound effects.  This was tolerable in Ping Pong Playa because there wasn't that much swearing, but in Fear of a Black Hat, in which about every third word has twelve letters and starts with "m", it made the movie completely unwatchable. 

Netflix, Starz, whoever the hell is doing this:  what the hell is going on?  And Netflix, don't you owe your customers some kind of warning that the movie they're getting is bowlderized?

Attention Rock Stars

I work right around the corner from the Hyatt on Rue de Lafayette in downtown Boston.  

Said Hyatt recently laid off its entire housekeeping staff in order to outsource the work to a contractor that pays minimum wage. Here's the article with the details.

My late wife Kirsten Shanks worked in a program at the International Institute of Boston that trained immigrants and refugees for hotel industry jobs because hotel jobs are some of the few jobs that pay a living wage to people with minimal education. Housekeepers generally are expected to clean 16 rooms in an 8-hour shift.  Before starting work, they have to demonstrate that they can lift 40 pounds because that's how much their bundles of bedding can weigh. (When staying in a hotel, please tip your housekeepers 5 bucks a night.They work hard for the money.)

When I ride past this hotel in the afternoon, I frequently see those big rock star tour buses parked outside.

My request to all of my rock star readers is this: when you come to play a concert in Boston, please stay at a hotel other than the Hyatt, which is run by douchebags trying to deprive hardworking people of a decent standard of living. 

Thanks, rock stars!

On Literature and Video Games

It's back to school week, at least here in Boston, and I'm sure educators nationwide are already fretting about the popularity of video games and how it negatively impacts their students' study habits, reading ability, etc. 

So I've come up with a perfect solution for killing kids' love of video games.  Here's the best part:  this method is proven and time-tested and guaranteed to work.  Schools could implement it as soon as Monday.

Step 1: Create a required video game course that all students must pass.  This can fit into current schedules in the place of English Class.

Step 2: Create a curriculum that stresses the classics.  And of course, by classics, I mean titles like Joust, Punch-Out, Golden Axe, and BattleZone and probably some SNES and Atari Titles.  Of course some teachers will always want to be avant-garde and will insist on teaching more recent games such as those that appeared on the Nintendo 64 and Playstation 1 consoles, so we'll have to make some room in the curriculum for that, though it doesn't make me happy.  By the way, what constitutes video game canon shall be determined by informal agreement of a bunch of 40-year-old white guys.

Step 3: Lots and lots of homework.  Students will be forced to play through the video games chosen by the instructor at the pace chosen by the instructor.  So, for example,  a teacher might require all students to beat the "Bowser in the Fire Sea" level of Super Mario 64 by tomorrow.  Some students who play video games for fun will probably find this homework easy, while for others it will be almost impossibly challenging.  Some who play video games for fun but prefer, for example, first-person shooters to whimsical jumping adventure games will be able to drag through this game, but they certainly won't enjoy it.  Good!  That's how we know they're learning!

A Note On Cheating: Of course, playing through all these levels of all these games can be challenging.  Some students who find themselves too challenged or who are simply too lazy to do the work they should know is good for them will turn to places like this on the internet.  Shame on them.  Shame, I say. They're really only cheating themselves out of the good that would accrue to them from playing through the game themselves.  Teachers should stress early and often how essential it is to play video games and how exposure to classic video games is good for students.

Step 4: Ad nauseam discussion and purposeless writing.  Having forced students to play through games they don't like for their own good, teachers should then force students to analyze the video games in both class discussions and 5-paragraph essays.  It is crucially important to kill whatever enjoyment anyone might have gotten from playing the game by forcing them to write bullshit about themes and motifs.

If you simply follow my guaranteed program, students'  love of video games will evaporate in a single semester.  Who the hell would want to do something for fun that is dull, difficult and good for you when there is something else fun to do where you get to follow your own interests and really immerse yourself in an experience that's interesting?  Who knows, they might even start reading! 

Lost Masterpiece Recovered!

In honor of Poe's 200th birthday, there's a Poe parody contest happening here.

Years ago, I wrote a parody of the Raven, and I thought it was lost forever.  However, with the help of Halpin Library Electronic Archivist Eric Theler, my lost masterpiece, entitled "The Arnold", has been rescued from obscurity. (Along with some joke about dousing oneself in Brut like Joe Namath that neither Eric nor I can make heads or tails of at this juncture).

I was going to use it to enter the contest, but then I saw that they're claiming ownership of the parodies, and given that this is quite possibly the best thing I've ever written, I simply couldn't sign over ownership to anyone else. 

So I post it here for your edification and amusement (all rights reserved!).  Those of you who are not Poe scholars can probably still appreciate my genius, (here's the original poem if you'd like a refresher) but those of you who are unschooled in the American Classic Diff'rent Strokes might do well to do some preparatory research.

The Arnold

 

While inside my limo thinking, from a crystal tumbler drinking

While my ice cubes they were sinking in a tumbler of Jim Beam

Suddenly I heard a rapping, just a gentle little tapping

Like two fingers gently snapping, snapping at my limo door

"Tis some vagabond," I muttered, "tapping at my limo door--

                                                                           Only this and nothing more."

 

Yes I do seem to remember, it was sometime in September

I was thinking back on she I was without

Eagerly I wished to borrow from Jim Beam surcease of sorrow

Sorrow for that Mrs. Drummond, who with death had lost her bout

For that radiant Mrs. Drummond who was all I thought about

                                                                            She who had died of the gout.

 

And the tiny little rapping, just a feeble little tapping

Set my poor heart valves to flapping, so I opened up the door

I looked where the poor bum should be, but no vagabond did I see

Just a little child who couldn't have stood much over 4'4''

I picked him up--light as a feather, sat him down upon the leather

                                                                            Just to talk and nothing more.

 

"Prophet!" shrieked I, "Li'l devil--prophet still, if good or evil,

Tell me news, you little weevil, of the woman I'm without!

Will we meet again in heaven, O, thou little child of seven

Shall I see in the beyond that shapely bod and sexy pout?

Will angelic Mrs. Drummond have recovered from the gout?

                                                                            Quoth the Arnold, "Whatchutalkinbout?"

 

"Madman!" screamed I, "I am talking of the memory that's stalking

every step that I am walking of the woman dead from gout!

Now tell me, thou clairvoyant, if my spirit can be bouyant

At the thought of sweet reunion with the wife I live without

Is there balm in Gilead--tell me--is there aught to hope about?"

                                                                            Quoth the Arnold, "Whatchutalkinbout?"

 

"Wretch!"  I said, "My late wife Phyllis--" but he only hollered,"Willis!"

And a thug I thought would kill us soon materialized without

They started playing in my auto, so I drank till I was blotto

And they helped my chauffeur Otto tend to me when I passed out

Into my life Dame Fate had dropped them, I decided to adopt them

                                            Each week Arnold asks me "Whatchutalkinbout?"

About That Catching Fire Review

A while back, I delivered my impressions of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  (Find my review here). 

On Friday, the new issue of Entertainment Weekly arrived, featuring a review of Catching Fire, which is the sequel to The Hunger Games. (Here it is!)

This review, as you'll see if you click through, has occasioned a certain amount of consternation in the comments.  It's also provoked some anger on the young adult librarians' listserv.

The review is not complimentary, but I must confess I've been a bit puzzled by all the hate it's inspired.   Most of the anger has been directed at this first paragraph, so let's look at that:

Last year, Suzanne Collins published The Hunger Games, the first in a projected young-adult trilogy about Katniss Everdeen, a heroic adolescent girl who crushed on a sexy hunter. In between romantic daydreams, Katniss shot strange beasts, dodged force fields, and battled murderous zombie werewolves — usually while wearing fabulous glitzy outfits.

This reviewer didn't even read the book, the loyalists cry!  Well, let's take a closer look.  "Crushed on a sexy hunter".  Well, she certainly did have a crush on a kid who hunted.  I guess it's up to the reader to decide whether he's sexy.  

"She wasn't wearing glizty outfits while she fought!" Well, okay.  But the outfits are described in loving detail.  She does fight, and she does wear glitzy outifts , but yeah, okay, not at the same time. 

There's little distinction between the two thinly imagined guys, other than the fact that Peeta has a dopier name.

Well, I'm sorry, I mean, I liked The Hunger Games kind of a lot, but this is a fair criticism. 
The boys, at least in the first one, are pretty thinly imagined.  And, I mean, yeah, the dopey name thing is a cheap shot, but it is a convention of science fiction and fantasy.  I understand why the authors do it--the unfamiliar names help create a sense of unfamiliarity in the setting--but it is silly.  I mean, even one of the greatest SF classics, The Left Hand of Darkness, features a protagonist with the stupid name of Genly Ai.  It is a convention of the genre that those of us who enjoy the genre simply have to have a sense of humor about.

So why is this review causing so much anger? 

Well, I think, ultimately, it's not about what the review says. It's about the tone.  The tone is snotty and irreverent.  Why, it's almost as though the person who wrote the review set out to piss off people who revere the first book by describing it in an irreverent fashion.

I sympathize.  I'm irreverent by nature, and when people revere something, I have this impulse to make fun of it just to piss them off. Even if it's something that I like too.

In the end, I'm planning to buy and read Catching Fire anyway, but I think the fanatical opposition to this review is a bit over the top. 

Ultimately, I think authors shouldn't respond to reviews because it makes us look like the review really hit home--if it bugged you enough to respond, it must be because something in the review stung.  I can't quite figure out what stings so much in this review, unless it's that people feel  a certain amount of insecurity about their love of a young adult science fiction novel, and this snide review reminds them of their own feelings that they really should be reading some adult literary novel that is boring as shit. 

Let the haters say what they want!  Read what you want, and proudly!