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Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts

Mar 18, 2021

Twin Planets



The Stranger
Directed by Lee H. Katzin (1973)
Earlier this week, I spent some time watching old recordings of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes from the 1991 season.  The second one I watched featured Joel and his robot friends watching a movie called Stranded In Space, which is the re-released title of a work from 1973 that was originally called The Stranger.  The commentary was funny, as MST3K always is, but after the first 20 minutes, I found myself ignoring the jokes and focusing on the movie, which was very familiar.

It's been a long time, but I know I saw this movie before.  If my memory is correct, I saw it on television when I was living with my mother in our apartment on First Street in Hazleton, which would have been sometime in 1987 or 1988.  I didn't know what it was called and I hadn't seen or heard of it since then, but the concept was so creative that it stuck in my mind all these years.  It's about an astronaut crash landing back on what he thinks is Earth, but it turns out to be a planet called Terra.



Here's where it gets really interesting - Terra is the twin planet of Earth.  It is the exact same distance from our sun, and it rotates the same way around the sun as Earth, but it's on the opposite side of the solar system in the same orbit.  Because their shared sun is always in between, both planets are completely unaware of the other's existence.  They can't see each other through a telescope (because the sun is always in the way), and astronauts never would have seen it, because no mission has ever taken anyone that far away from the Earth.

The movie itself isn't fantastic.  It's certainly not bad, but it's not as developed as the idea deserved to be because it wasn't meant to be a movie at all.  It was filmed in 1973 as a pilot for a television series, but it was never picked up by a network.  It was released twice on VHS - once under its original title and again as "Stranded In Space".  The renamed version includes additional footage in the opening credits from a completely different movie - the 1983 low-budget film Prisoners Of The Lost Universe.  It must have aired on television a few times, because I know we didn't have it on tape.  It was just one of those things that caught my interest when I was flipping through channels one afternoon.

The idea of a twin earth is absolutely fascinating to me.  It's a concept that goes as far back as Aristotle, and it's been used a few times in other works of fiction, but none that I've watched or read yet other than this film.  The most prominent of these seems to be the Gor novels written by John Norman.  I only learned of their existence this week so I know nothing about them, but they appear to be written in a Game Of Thrones style of swords and soap opera sexuality - not exactly my cup of tea.  There are also two 2011 films that are said to have included a similar plot device - Another Earth and Melancholia.  I haven't seen or heard much about either, so I'm looking forward to watching them and seeing their take on the concept.  It's also sparked a few ideas in my mind for a story, like a futuristic world in which a twin earth is treated as a prison planet, or a place for the wealthy to escape a post-apocalyptic environmental wasteland.  Who knows - maybe this will inspire me to stop being so damn lazy and at least write a short story.

Feb 22, 2021

There's A Shadow Hanging Over Me



Yesterday
Universal Pictures (2019)
A few days ago, I watched a WhatCulture video called "10 Movie Characters You Didn't Realize Actually Survived", and it reminded me of this movie.  I heard about it when it first came out, but it must not have come to my local theater because I never saw it, and with all the craziness going on in the world, it had completely slipped my mind.  I finally sat down to watch it on Saturday, and it's an absolutely brilliant film.  It's about a musician who gets hit by a bus and wakes up to a world in which The Beatles never existed.  There are other differences too, but I don't want to give away any more of the story than that.  If you have any interest at all in The Beatles, or the concept of parallel worlds, or if you just want to watch a fantastic romantic comedy, I highly recommend that you check out this movie.

Back in 2002, I had an idea for a story like this, but mine wasn't about The Beatles or parallel worlds.  I was moving back home to West Hazleton after living in La Vista, Nebraska (a suburb of Omaha) for a few months.  It was nearly a 17 hour drive on I-80, alone in a hot car with no air conditioning, and not a whole lot in the way of distracting scenery, so my mind wandered a bit.  I had an idea for a story bouncing around my head for a few hundred miles, and I realized by the very end of this trip that if I didn't write it down soon, I was going to forget what it was.  If I waited until I got to my grandparent's house, the idea would be as good as gone, because I would have to unpack the car and they would want to sit down at the kitchen table and talk with me over coffee since I hadn't seen them for a few months at this point.  That is why on the last ten miles of the trip, I pulled the car over to the side of I-81 and wrote out the framework to a story that I swore I'd write, but never did.

I've long since lost those original notes, but here's the gist:

View from the stage during Mountain's 9:00 pm set at Woodstock
Saturday, August 16, 1969

An unsigned band have been playing local bars, clubs and festivals for a number of years.  They've attracted a small, passionate group of fans because they're excellent at playing rock covers from the 70's and 80's.  However, any time they try to write their own music, things go horribly wrong.  The band argues every time they try to write original work, and the few things they have successfully come up with have not been well-liked by the audience, in large part because so many compromises have been made to satisfy everyone in the band that the song comes across like a disjointed mess.  Finally, after years of trying and failing to make it big, they decide to call it quits.  They have one more big outdoor festival on their schedule that they have agreed to play as their farewell gig before going their separate ways.

The band decides that they want to go out on a positive note, so they give the audience what they want by playing covers, starting with Bon Jovi's 1988 hit, Bad Medicine.  The crowd goes wild, and the cheers get louder with each of the nine songs that they play.  Not long after they walk off of stage, they learn that when they took the stage, they have stepped back in time to Saturday, August 16th, 1969, and they had just played a setlist of classic hits on the stage at Woodstock to an audience who had never heard them before.



Over the years, I kept a few notebooks with different ideas for how the story could progress.  Each of them involved the band signing a recording contract and releasing albums that would essentially be a greatest hits collection of the 70's, 80's and 90's, but passing it off as their own original work.  For a brief time, the members of the band had come back together and rekindled the friendship that led them to form a band in the first place, but their differences in opinion over how to handle this unexpected jump back in time eventually caused them to go their separate ways.  One idea that involved a laptop computer that the drummer kept in a backpack that he brought out on stage, and how he would use it to navigate the past.  Another idea involved the bass player trying to find her grandparents who passed away when she was 13 years old.  The main story arc would have focused on the lead singer using what he knew about the future to invest in the right companies at the right time to become rich and powerful (and dangerously unhinged).

One of my many problems is that while I'm halfway decent at coming up with a story idea, I'm horrible at following up on it.  I get distracted very easily, and I procrastinate, and then I eventually tell myself that I'm not a good enough writer to have it published anyway, so I should just let it go.  Then, in 2010, I saw Hot Tub Time Machine and thought to myself that my idea was dead in the water right there.  Even if I was disciplined enough to finish the story, everyone would just think that I'm ripping off the end of the movie where Lou Dorchen goes back in time to become the lead singer of Mötley Crüe and become wealthy by founding Google.
 


I came up with a few other ideas in the years that followed, most of which involve time travel, but they never got past the stage of being a list of ideas in a notebook.  Seeing Yesterday reminded me of this notebooks and the idea that started them off.  I'd like to say that it inspired me to finally put pen to paper and at least come up with a rough draft, but if I haven't written it by now, I doubt I'm ever going to.

Dec 3, 2017

Circle-K Reality Check


I’m in El Paso on business, so I’ve been checking out all of the different places to eat that we don’t have back home. The back seat of my rental had a Chicago Pizza from Peter Piper’s and a bag of food and sauces from Taco Cabana. On the way back to the hotel that I’m calling home for four weeks, I spotted a Circle-K convenience store. We don’t have those back home either, and I was hoping to take a cheesy selfie to post with references to Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

As I pulled in, I saw a homeless old man with a long grey beard. He had kind eyes, and was hunkered down between a garbage can in front of the store and a cart of things that he owned.

I suddenly felt like the world’s biggest asshole.

Here I am, a guy with a back seat filled with more food than I could eat and a warm bed waiting for me a few miles away even though I don’t even live here. Who the hell am I to have all of this while this man tries to keep warm in front of a convenience store?

I went in the store even though I really didn’t need anything. I managed to find our Spicy Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups, so I bought a bunch of them for my class, and I did a quick inventory of my wallet to see what I could offer this man.

When I came out, he looked a bit frightened at first, but I gave him some money. I had no idea what to say, so I asked if he was ok. What a stupid question to ask. But his eyes met mine and he thanked me and wished me a happy holiday in a voice that made tears come to my eyes.

Yeah, sure… I’ll have a happy holiday, but what about this man? Why the fuck can’t we muster up enough compassion for each other to treat people with kindness and to make sure that everyone has a safe place to sleep and enough food to eat. Why the fuck can’t we do that?

I never got my selfie. I got a much better look at myself than any photo could provide, and I felt ashamed that I’m not a better man who could figure out a way to truly help people.

Dec 2, 2017

December Thoughts...


I was at Whataburger buying a burger that I really didn’t want.  While I was waiting for my food, two people sitting at a table started laughing.

I should know that they’re not laughing at me.  The logical side of my brain knows that it’s just a bunch of friends hanging out, having a good time, laughing at some inside joke or something funny that one of their friends said.  But the emotional side of my brain is putting a knot in my stomach and an intense desire to get out of there so that I won’t hear them laughing at me.

When these moments happen, the song “People Are Strange” plays in my head.  It forces its way into my consciousness like an old friend that barges into your house without being invited.  I’ve never heard or read anything in my life that captures the way that I experience that moment of isolation, sadness and anxiety as the words that Jim Morrison sings on that track.  I wonder if he felt it too.

There are two shields that I have to protect myself from this world: humor and work.  At work, I have a purpose.  I have a reason to be there.  I have a role to play and a job to do.  When that is taken away at the end of my shift, all that’s left is me - with no purpose and no reason why anyone would want me to be there.  On good days, I muddle through with awkward silence and eventually disguise myself as a normal person.  Other times, I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop, where I say or do something stupid and everyone present thinks that I’m an idiot.

My other shield is humor.  It’s usually self-depreciating humor, cheesy puns or old man jokes that come to mind.  These are like laughter absorption shields.  It’s as if my subconscious is saying that as long as I keep them laughing with me, they won’t start laughing at me.  I wonder if that’s why so many comedians seem to be clinically depressed and turn to self-destructive behavior or suicide.  Did they just get to be so good at being funny to protect themselves that they were able to turn it into a career?  I wish I could have met Robin Williams over a cup of coffee to talk to him about this.

So, if you’re someone who knows me and you’ve cared enough to read this far, please know that I am trying.  If I act strange, or I look down, or I rant about something stupid, it’s not deliberate.  I am trying every day that I leave my house to just be normal and to get along with people and fit in, and it hurts like hell when I feel like I’m not, but please know that I am trying.  And if you don’t know me and you’ve stumbled across this little collection of thoughts and you feel the same, please know that you are not alone and that you can’t give up.  You just fucking can’t.  Fight through it and move on, and do what you can to help others.  You may be the only person that someone else can relate to about this.  It’s like being able to speak a secret language.  You can help someone who isn’t coping as well with this and keep them from giving up.

Take care…

- Will

Oct 21, 2015

Video Games in Back To The Future


Today is October 21, 2015.  Every blog, message board, social media page, newspaper, talk show and office water cooler in the country is talking about Back To The Future II.

If you're reading this on the day that it was written, you are very likely sick of hearing about this movie for one day, and that's ok.  I'm doing nothing to promote this, so nobody's going to read it today anyway.  If you're seeing this at all, it may be because I post a lot of things you want to read in the future, and so you decided to go back in time and check out the archives.  Or, it could mean that this point in time inherently contains some sort of cosmic significance; Almost as if it were the temporal junction point for the entire space-time continuum. On the other hand, it could just be an amazing coincidence.

What isn't a coincidence is the video games that appear in Hill Valley in the Back To The Futurnaverse.

Wild Gunman
Nintendo - 1985


Perhaps the most often cited video game from the Back to the Future franchise, a Wild Gunman arcade unit sits at the Cafe 80's.  It is being studied by Elijah Wood, who went on to become Frodo Baggins, and John Thornton, who went on to become that guy who can go the rest of his life saying "I played Wild Gunman with Frodo Baggins and Marty McFly."

While the NES edition of Wild Gunman never had its own arcade unit, the 8-bit classic is actually based on a 1974 arcade game of the same name that used a 16mm projector,  The original was created by Nintendo visionary Gunpei Yokoi - the man who invented the Game & Watch series, the Game Boy and the traditional d-pad from the Famicom and NES (he came up with the Virtual Boy and R.O.B. too, but they can't all be hits).

As for the version that Marty played back in the Hill Valley 7-Eleven, it was one of the original 17 games that launched the NES on October 18th, 1985, and one of only 10 games for the NES that require the use of the Zapper.  While the technology isn't likely to impress the 8-year-old kids of 2015, I don't think any of them would mistake it for a baby's toy.  It's a fun gun game that anybody can pick up and play without a tutorial.

If you want to play it today, you'll need the cartridge and an NES with a working Zapper for now, but that may change very soon.  It's being released by Nintendo Europe on the Wii U Virtual Console tomorrow, so a US release is probably not far behind.


Pac-Man
Namco - 1980


If you blinked, you may have missed it, but the godfather of modern gaming makes an appearance at the Cafe 80's.  It sits at the opposite end of the restaurant from Wild Gunman, behind two exercise bikes, and under a sign that reads "PRICELESS ARTIFACT - DO NOT TOUCH".  That's a bit of a stretch.  An original Pac-Man arcade unit will cost between $500 - $2,000 on eBay in 2015, not counting the various knock off "Multicade" machines.

Incidentally, why would a business owner put a "priceless artifact" in a restaurant that seems to have no human employees to look after it?

If you asked someone to name one video game that virtually everyone in the free world has tried at least once in their lives, there's a pretty good chance that they would choose Pac-Man.  To this day, no matter where I am or what I'm doing, if I see a Pac-Man machine, somebody is making a quarter off of me.  It's a timeless classic that has challenged and entertained millions for the past 35 years.  Few other entertainment entities have had half as much success.

The rest of the video games that can be found in Hill Valley are in the display window of Blast From The Past - the antique shop where Marty finds a copy of Grays Sports Almanac.  I find that this store is the most realistic prediction of 2015, and the most fascinating part of the film.  In fact, the items in this store have inspired a group of collectors from TheRPF.com who are trying to collect everything that can be seen in the shop, but that's another story for another time.


You can't see it too well in this screencap, but there's a Pac-Man lunchbox in the window between Marty's arm and the bust of John F. Kennedy.  However, there are a few NES games (complete-in-box) that can be seen more clearly.

Jaws
LJN - 1987


While the 3-D shark from Jaws 19 gets all of the recognition, it's not the only appearance of the deadly great white in Hill Valley, 2015.

Jaws from LJN can be seen sitting in front of the VHS of Jaws 2 and on top of a Betamax. LJN had a large catalog of NES games that were inspired by major motion pictures (including a Back To The Future game that was released in 1989).  Unfortunately, most of these games are pretty bad, and Jaws is no exception.

A large part of the game has you controlling a character that dives off of a ship to shoot jellyfish and stingrays.  You also get to shoot at the shark, but in the words of The Angry Video Game Nerd, he dies "slower than hairs grow on a moose's scrotum."  This isn't just a step down from Pac-Man and Wild Gunman - it's a massive drop to the ocean floor.

Burgertime
Data East - 1987


The original Burgertime was released by Data East as an arcade game in 1982, and it is rightly considered to be a gaming classic.

One of the many food-inspired games of the early 80's (a genre of sorts that has a surprising number of fun games), Burgertime stars Peter Pepper, a chef who makes massive hamburgers the only way he knows how - by climbing ladders and walking across the ingredients on scaffolds.  Standing in his way are Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle and Mr. Egg - three very grumpy food items which are much smaller in size than the hamburgers, but equal in size to our intrepid chef.

The NES version isn't a perfect translation of the original, but it's not bad.  That being said, the music will drive you absolutely insane.




Now, if you thought Pac-Man was difficult to spot in Back To The Future II, the final game on this list is ridiculously difficult to see.  I assure you, it's there.  In fact, you've already seen a picture of it.  Look closely above the letter "A" in the Jaws photo.

Need some help?


That, my friends, is a copy of R.C. Pro-Am for the Nintendo Entertainment System.  If you don't believe me, have a look at this Continuity Polaroid from the now defunct Outatime.co.uk fan site:


I think maybe that I'm the one who needs some help.  But it's in the film, so...

R.C. Pro-Am
Rare - 1987


Rare is one of the most successful game designers in the industry, and R.C. Pro-Am was the first big hit.  I can tell you that every kid that I knew in third grade either had this game, or they frequently played it at a friend's house.

As a kid, it reminded me of a game that I played at Aladdin's Castle called Super Sprint, but when I play this game in 2015, I see the grandfather of the Mario Kart series.  It's got weapons and power ups, it has red speed boost arrows, and you earn trophies. Also, despite the missiles and bombs that you'll frequently use (if you're lucky), it's a non-violent game because you're racing remote control trucks.  We had to have something to distract Mom from the blood and guts of Castlevania.

R.C. Pro-Am was re-released earlier this year for Xbox One on the Rare Replay compilation.  Whether you opt for the modern console or the original recipe, this game is definitely worth your time.  If you haven't played it before, check it out.  If you have, I'm sure that you're already thinking about doing so right now.  Just don't travel back to 1987 and play against your younger self.  The consequences could be disastrous.

Mar 23, 2002

The Door Went "Creak"



Standard Speaker
March 23, 1987 - Hazleton, PA
I wasn't much different as a little kid than I am now.  I liked to read and write and I loved anything spooky.  My favorite things to watch were Ghostbusters, Scooby Doo, and whatever ghost or monster stories that my family would allow, and my favorite place in the world to go was Dracula's Castle in Wildwood.

Most weekends were spent with my grandparents back in those days.  Every Sunday morning, we went to the Wyoming Valley Mall in Wilkes-Barre or the Schuylkill Mall in Frackville.  It was about a 20 minute drive and my grandfather spent most of the ride telling me stories that he'd make up on the spot.  Most of them involved me and my two cousins going to an old haunted house (where Dracula lived) or to a pyramid (where Mola Ram from Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom lived).

My first grade class had a creative writing activity where we could write about whatever we wanted.  With my mind filled with memories of all the spooky stories from kids books, stories from my grandfather, and countless tv shows, movies and cartoons, I came up with this story.






It may not be Shakespeare, but I guess it wasn't too shabby for a six year old.  It was good enough to win first place in the Hazleton Area School District's creative writing contest anyway.  The grand prize was a five dollar gift certificate for the school store, which was redeemed for a Thundercats View Master gift set.

I wish I could say that this inspired a young boy to grow up and become a writer, but no such luck.  Every so often, I'll come up with what I think is a good idea for a story, but the closest I've come so far is a few pages worth of ideas in a notebook or an extremely rough outline.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that these four pages from first grade are the closest I've ever come to finishing a story.  Maybe someday...