Romeo & Juliet (an opera review post)

I realize we had a rough opening act with the opera this season, but that ship has sailed (pun totally intended and, if you don't get it, you haven't been paying attention), but they've come back strong with Romeo & Juliet.

Romeo & Juliet may be my least favorite of Shakespeare's plays. At least of the ones I've read. Which is more than a few considering I've taken whole classes about Shakespeare. Look, I have a degree in English; what do you expect? But even as a teenager, R&J pushed all of the wrong buttons for me. My entire response could (and pretty much still can) be summed in, "Stupid teenagers." Yeah, that's how I felt about it when I was 14 and reading it for the first time. It actually put me off of Shakespeare entirely for more than a few years. I do have more of an appreciation for the play at this point in my life than I did when I was in high school but, still, stupid teenagers.

None of which is to say that I can't enjoy a good production of the story. It's not a bad story, though I don't get all of those gushy romantic feels from R&J that seem to be so common. For one thing, Romeo is a cad, but I'm not going to get into that right now.

R&J is not a commonly performed opera these days. It's French and, evidently, French is out as far as opera styles go at the moment. Honestly, I don't understand why. Maybe I just don't know enough about opera and music to understand but, having seen it now, R&J didn't seem much different to me than other operas of its time period. SFO, though, hasn't done R&J in decades until now (which seems to me to be another example of what I was saying in my SFO post about Shilvock). It's weird to me, though, that this opera in particular would fall through the crack. Because pretty much everyone knows the story, it seems to me that this should be a great opera to keep in rotation because it should accessible to people exploring opera for the first time. Even though they have supertitles, it still helps to know the story ahead of time.

I think this was a pretty decent production of R&J. Except for the set. They went for something which was barely more than a bare stage. I was unimpressed. Especially in comparison to many of the SFO sets. This one was just... kind of nothing. The costumes were good, but I sort of think the costumes and the set should complement each other, but maybe that's just me.

The performances were great. Nadine Sierra, whom I've mentioned before, played Juliet, and she was perfect. As with all good R&J productions, Mercutio steals any scene he's in, right up until he doesn't anymore, and Lucas Meachem (whom I've also mentioned before) did just that. The other real standout performance was by Stephanie Lauricella as Romeo's page, Stephano. She had a great scene where she taunts Tybalt and the Capulets that was a lot of fun.

I wasn't as sold on the Romeo, though my wife says that Pene Pati was a great singer. I don't disagree with that, and I enjoyed him in the production of Rigoletto we saw him in (see, I've mentioned him before, too!), but he never really grabbed me as Romeo. As I said, Romeo is a cad, and Pati never came off as such. It's got to be believable when all of his buddies are making fun of him that Juliet is just his flavor of the week, but Pati never rose above lovesick, which is almost right but not quite. I mean, he's trying to "meet" another girl when he discovers Juliet. Maybe it's a problem of the writing, though. It's difficult for me to tell since it's in French.

All said, though, I thought this was a fine production, and I think it's a great introductory opera for anyone who wants to find out what opera is all about.

SFO (an opera house opera review post)

Over the past few years, opera and going to the opera have become rather significant things in my life. My wife's life, too, probably, but I'm not going to speak for her as to how significant. I know it's an important thing for her and the fulfillment of a lifelong love, but I'm not going to put those words in her mouth. In short, we love the opera and going to the opera and SFO in particular. Therefore, it pains me to have to talk about some ways that SFO is really missing the high notes lately.

Some of this stuff is not new. I mentioned toward the end of last season's opera run that Matthew Shilvock, the general director of SFO, seems rather on the traditional side of things in how he's running the San Francisco Opera. I mean, he's British; it's probably in his DNA or something. And maybe it's not fair of me to speculate -- because what I'm saying is speculation -- buy that's how it feels to me (and I'm generally pretty good at intuitive conclusions). It feels like SFO is attempting to appear new and fresh by reaching back and putting on traditional productions of obscure or rarely performed operas, like the just reviewed Billy Budd and the soon to be reviewed Romeo & Juliet (yes, R&J isn't much performed, probably because it's a French opera and they're not really in style these days). However, that doesn't make something cutting edge; it means it's going harder and faster at being traditional. Like I said, the performance of Billy Budd we attended was the lowest attendance of any opera we've been to.

Here's what I'm going to say about the entire discussion I could have here (because I don't want to spend this entire post talking about all of the things that SFO could be doing to pull in new people): Hamilton is an opera, and it's insanely popular. One of those events that changes the public. SFO is doing nothing to approach what Hamilton has done. They're not looking at what works but trying to find ways to keep doing what they've been doing in a way that seems new when it's really the "same old thing."

And, look, I have nothing against "traditional" opera, as should be apparent from all of the opera review posts that I do. I like exploring all of these classic operas but, let's face it, there hasn't been a significant opera composer since Puccini (by significant, I mean popular with the masses and performed constantly). I want to make one thing very clear about Puccini: He wrote for the masses and frequently re-worked pieces after seeing the audience reaction to early performances of his works. I think opera has lost its way in appealing to the "common man," or however you want to say that. But it doesn't have to be that way!

The thing is is that it wouldn't really matter if SFO was making money. When you're turning a profit, you can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want, even if that means doing the same old thing over and over again. However, SFO seems to be suffering financially, at least somewhat due to a lack of attendance (probably mostly due to a lack of attendance judging from Billy Budd).

Here's how we found out:
SFO has, for years, offered something called operavision. You know how when you go to a concert there are often huge screens behind the stage which show the musicians performing so that people in the wayback can see what's going on rather than just seeing ants on stage? Opervision is kind of like that, except that it's smaller screens that come down out of the ceiling so that people in the balcony can see closeups of the performance and not be forced to use opera glasses. The screens also contained the supertitles, making them easier for people in the balcony to read. And just as an aside, if you're in the balcony and using opera glasses to see the performers, you can't also read the supertitles while doing that.

My wife loves opervision, and we always buy the season tickets that include operavision (because, actually, they would only offer that on one or two performances of any given production). Oh, and opervision nights cost more. So we went to see Billy Budd and... no operavision. There were, we thought, only two real possibilities of why there was no opervision: 1. My wife accidentally purchased the incorrect package. 2. They sent us tickets to the wrong performance.
During the intermission, my wife checked to see if the error had been hers because that would mean we would need to see if we could fix our tickets for the rest of the season.
The mistake was not hers. SFO had just failed to inform us that, even though they let us purchase the operavision package, opervision had been discontinued. Due to the expense. They couldn't afford to offer it any longer. There was a long list of reasons, none of which are really that important other than the underlying message that SFO is struggling financially right now.

This was further backed up when I called about the whole operavision thing and whether we had been charged for it. Oh, but wait! No, they had not charged us for it, but they also had not honored our seating choice (the cheap seats up in the top balcony) for some of the operas. For Romeo & Juliet and next month's The Marriage of Figaro, they had given us more expensive seats. And charged us for that, instead, which was quite a bit more than our cheap seats with operavision. I still am failing to understand the thought process that went into this decision.

Yeah, I was a little upset.

But, you know, we'd already paid for all of this and, sure, I could have known sooner if I had looked carefully at our tickets when they arrived in the mail but, hey, we'd never had any problems before with the seats being wrong, so it didn't occur to me check the tickets for every performance ahead of time, not until I saw that our tickets for R&J were for seats in a more expensive section. This is where I expressed my concern to the woman I was speaking to that all of this had been done without ever communicating with us about it. And, hey, I even stayed calm through this whole discussion. So, not only had they failed to inform us that operavision had been discontinued, but they also charged us for upgraded seats without asking us.

The woman got my point, at which point she gave us upgraded seats (to some of the really expensive seats) for the rest of our season! So, yeah, I'm not complaining because the new seats are quite nice, but it underscores that SFO is having some... issues... right now.

The other thing I brought up was their opera cd. Ever since we started buying season tickets, at the beginning of the season we would get a cd with an introduction to each opera on it. Our tradition has been to listen to the portion for any given opera we were seeing on the ride down to that opera. This year we didn't receive a cd. Guess what. They discontinued that, too. Why? They needed to cut costs. That's what she told me. So I got it straight from someone there.
And, you know, fine. We don't have to have the cd, but it is something that they actually advertised as part of buying season tickets.

Clearly, they made all of these cost-cutting decisions after printing all of their materials with all of the season information from which people purchase tickets, but they really need to be better at communicating if they're going to make changes like that. And, actually, I feel like if they sold season tickets with operavision included then they need to honor that. But maybe that's just me.

They're also only doing eight productions this season instead of the usual nine, and there's some speculation that they couldn't afford to do more than eight. I wouldn't know if that particular thing is true or not.

Now, I'm not going to go so far as to say that Matthew Shilvock should be replaced as general director; I don't know enough details of the problem or how long it's been going on to make that kind of statement. What I do know, though, is that someone needs to be working on how to make the opera more appealing to the masses rather than trying to convince the masses that they need to like the opera the way it is. That's a recipe for disaster that will end the opera rather than people coming to see something they don't want to see.

And we love the opera and we love SFO, and we don't want to see SFO shut it doors due to a lack of funding.

Billy Budd (an opera review post)

Here we are at the beginning of a new opera season, and, man, is there going to be a lot to talk about. As I mentioned, last week was a shitty week, but we were having our first opera and were really looking forward to it as a break from the shitstorm at home. [No, I’m probably not going to quit making shit jokes anytime soon. I mean, I’m still cleaning up shit stains in the bathtubs, so it’s not like I’m going to get past it right away.] After all, we love the opera! We’re always looking forward to getting back to it after the summer break.

However, the first opera on our schedule was Billy Bud, and my wife was feeling a bit trepidatious about it. I suppose that’s understandable; however, I was looking forward to it, being a Melville fan, so to speak, and seeing how it had been adapted from the… I don’t know what Billy-Bud-the-Melville-story is categorized as. I’ve always thought of it as a short story (it’s been a long time since I’ve read it), but the guy doing the pre-opera talk kept referring to it as a novella. I don’t remember it being long enough to be a novella, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter. At any rate, the pre-opera speaker was so enthusiastic about the opera that, by the end of the talk, my wife was looking forward to it.

What we both should have learned by now, though, is that we really just do not like modern operas.

Let me make it clear before I continue that the term “modern” here has to do with a style and is not referring to when it was written. Of course, knowing that it’s “modern” also tells you that it was written within the last century since the modern style developed in the early 20^th century sometime (I’d tell you exactly when, but I’m working away from the internet (I know! Right? It’s weird!), so you’re stuck with the stuff that’s already in my head). Billy Bud debuted in 1951.

Now, for a long time, I’ve held the Usher opera up as my standard for worst opera, and it probably still holds that position, but it’s now a close call. We actually left Billy Budd before it was over. That's never happened before but, yes, it was that “modern.” Budd does have some redeeming moments, musically, but it’s also incredibly long, more than three hours. Usher was the length of act one of Budd, so it, at least, had its brevity going for it. What I can say is that I would never want to sit through either of these again. It wouldn’t surprise me if the devil is taking notes so that he knows what opera rooms to lock me in in Hell.

So... Why was Billy Budd so goddamn awful?
You know all of those things that I've mentioned in previous opera posts that are things that are wrong with opera? Well, all of those things are in this opera.
Before I go on, I want to say two things:
1. Evidently, the critics loved Budd. We always look up reviews on our way home from the operas we see, and Budd had pretty excellent reviews. I have to think this is one of those occasions where critics "like" something because they think it makes them more sophisticated than everyone else. Like wine snobs liking to drink shit-tasting wine because it's expensive. Or whatever.
2. I say that about critics because Billy Budd was the most lightly attended opera we've ever been to. There were no other people on our row with us, only two in the row below us, and only a few people behind us. It was like a matinee performance of a mediocre movie.

Did Billy Budd have droning, non-melodic music?
Yes.
Was the performed completely recitative?
Yes.
Did Billy Budd have performers who just stood in place while they sang?
Yes.

Just to expand on those thoughts a bit:
The music did have a few -- it seems incorrect to call them "high points," but there were some bits that were better than others -- less bad parts. Because it's a sailing story, Britten wrote some parts that resembled sea shanties. Those bits of music when the all of the sailors were doing shanty bits were not quite good, they also weren't exactly bad. Other than the shanties, the entire opera is done recitative, including a "monologue" from the villain about how evil he is which must have lasted at least 20 minutes.
To make matters worse, there's no action during any of this. When the villain sang his song, the stage was darkened with just a spot on him while he stood there and droned on about being a bad guy. Even during the big "battle" scene, the sailors just stand on stage and sing about it.
And to make matters even worse, there are sections, long sections, when the performers just stand in place on stage while the music... well, while it does whatever it's doing. It felt like parts of watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture, except without any cosmic yawn to watch.

By the time we'd gotten to the intermission, my wife was ready to go. I never would have imagined that we'd find an opera she wanted to leave. I was hesitant, though, because... well, you know me, I hate to quit things. If you've been around for a while, you know the kinds of books I'll make myself finish reading, no matter how torturous they are.

So we stayed.

As soon as act two started, though, I began regretting it. So I made decision:
There's a murder that takes place in the story, so I decided I would give it till the murder so I could see how they handled that. Could they manage to put some action into this thing with the murder? If so, maybe it would be worth staying through the ending.
Ah... But no... The "murder" amounted to the one guy punching the other guy in the face (yeah, I'm keeping it vague in case you haven't read the story (and maybe you don't want to, now, after hearing all of this, but you shouldn't let a mishandled opera keep you away from the source material)) and managing to kill him that way. That was it. The entire piece of action in the whole opera, one punch to the face boiled down from a scene of rage and loss of control in the story.

So I leaned over and told my wife we could leave. That that was the highlight of the whole opera and that it wasn't going to get better.

We left.

Remember, this was supposed to be our enjoyable evening away from all the shit at home. All of the literal shit at home, which we drove back to to find the kids angry about the plumbing situation. I couldn't really blame them, but it wasn't the best thing to come home to.
At least there was the pleasure from finding a thing that my wife and I can hate on together. That was her thought, but it's true. It's great to like something together or to hate something together; it's never much fun when only one of us likes something.
But we don't want to ever see Billy Budd again.

Orlando (an opera review post)

After having said, just this week, what I said about the general director of SFO and more traditional productions of classic operas, here's one that's... not. Which does not change the validity of my statement; the productions have still been trending toward "traditional" rather than "experimental" or "updated" or whatever you want to call anything that isn't set in its traditional setting. But, yes, Orlando gets a more modern setting, and it's a very good thing. I'm not sure how I would have felt about it if it had been done as written. As it is, I'm still conflicted over it.

Orlando is by Handel. Yes, that Handel, the Messiah one. Which means it's pretty. It's also everything that people who have never seen opera think opera is: people singing one line over and over again for five minutes. Okay, maybe three lines, but Orlando is really like that. This could be reduced to a not-even-very-long short story, even shorter if it was dialogue-based.

All that, and it makes use of one of my least favorite writing devices: the deus ex machina.

However!
This production is set during World War II rather than it's original setting, and the opera becomes something much more interesting than having the problem solved by "god" coming down and making everything right. In this case, it's solved by a rather pompous psychiatrist and electroshock treatment. Of course, the electroshock treatment does seem to affect everyone involved, not just the receiver of the treatment, but it's much better than Zeus waving his hands around and making everything good again.

Here's something fun:
My brother, who is six years younger than me, sang in a boys' choir when he was probably about six or seven. Due to his association with that particular choir, I picked up a few tidbits of information about choirs of that sort, the main being that in the not too distant past, even, it was not uncommon for the best of these singers to be castrated before puberty so that they could retain their high-pitched voices into adulthood. Yeah, I'll just let that sink in a few moments...

You ready to go on yet?
Good.

So... Handel had a favored lead male singer who was one of these men who had been castrated to retain his voice, and Handel wrote the part of Orlando for that specific singer. Needless to say, it is, at best, a difficult role for a male to play these days, so SFO cast a woman in the role, which seems to be the norm. I don't know; I haven't done any research on the history of Orlando and at what point it became commonplace to have a woman in the role.

Anyway... None of that has any bearing on the actual opera production. It's just free trivia for you.

It took me a while to get into this one. It starts with this whole thing with the doctor/wizard Zoroastro trying to convince Orlando that he should forsake love and get back to his duty in the war because, you know, he's a war hero, and there are still Nazis to kill. That's probably advice Orlando should have taken because the woman he was in love with was in love with someone else, and so we have a conflict. It's a much more complicated conflict than that, though, more like a love tangle than a love triangle. After awhile, the story got interesting enough to draw me in. It just takes a while when it takes half an hour to cover a few sentences of story.

The set was pretty interesting. They set it in a hospital because Orlando has been wounded and this is where he had been making his recovery. It was, on the surface, a fairly simple set, just a spinning wall that could be different rooms as they turned it from one side to the other. It was very effective.

In the end, I liked it. A lot more than I expected to. It's sort of a stand-in-place-and-sing kind of opera, but the director turned it into a piece that plenty of movement and action. It was good. It helped to pull the audience, or, at least, me, into the performance.

Christina Gansch, who played the nurse Dorinda, really stood out. She was clever and funny and, really, made her role the center of the performance.

I don't know that I'd want to see this opera again, but I'm glad I saw this production of it.

Aida (an opera review post)

No, the cat is not part of the review, but the cat insisted on being in the photos. Every single one of them. He just followed me around and sat on or next to the book every time I tried to frame the cover in the picture. Maybe he's trying to tell me something about Aida? Or wants to read the program? Or just likes the pretty picture? I guess we'll never know.

Aida is not the worse opera I've seen, but this presentation of it was far (FAR) from the best. I say "this presentation" not because I've seen some other presentation of it but because Aida is one of the most prominent operas in the world, and I have to assume there's a reason for that. [After each opera we see, my wife and I check the reviews to see how our views match up with the people who do that sort of thing for a living (so far, we're doing pretty well), and the reviews of this presentation of Aida  tend to say that it was below expectations and that it was mostly due to the musical director.]

So what was the problem?

It was too slow.

I don't mean there wasn't enough "action" in the traditional sense of "action," but this opera had a lot (a lot!) of that standing in place and singing thing that removes any potential action from a scene. Even to the point where one guy, Radames, the Egyptian general, is singing about how much he wants to be made commander of the forces while all of the other soldiers are just standing still watching him. Seriously, no one was moving. And it just went on and on like that. If the soldiers had been doing stuff in the background, like they were working or something, while he was singing, it would have added some life into something that was about as entertaining as watching someone take a nap.

Which is not to say that the quality of the singing was not as great as it always is -- the performers were all great as far as the singing went -- but there was obviously a directorial decision made that had the performers being rather static during the performance.

The other thing of note about this production is that the set was... disappointing. They made a big deal about working with Los Angeles artist Retna on the set design (he did the art for the cover of the program book in the picture above), and the art was cool and interesting, but, other than the art pieces worked into the set, the set was rather bare. It was very minimalist, so not even the set added interest to the performance.

The other thing that bothered me is something that may not be fair; I actually don't know enough about opera and the opera world to know. The setting of Aida is during a war between Egypt and Ethiopia, yet the cast was nearly all white. It's possible that there may not be any way around that as far as the primary cast goes; opera tends to be pretty white. However, it seems to me that they could have done something more diverse with the chorus characters and the few dancers. It would have been nice to have a something that looked like representative of a war between Egypt and Ethiopia. But, again, I don't know enough to say that definitively, and it's not like there is a tradition of Aida being performed any other way (despite the fact that it was commissioned for the opening of the Cairo opera house in 1870(ish)).

Still, and I sort of hate to always go back to this, it was better than last year's Usher House. At this point, I'm pretty okay with any opera I'm seeing as long as it's better than that.

Don Pasquale (an opera review post)

Don Pasquale marks the second opera by Donizetti that I've seen, the first being Lucia di Lammermoor, which was actually the first opera I saw. [Okay, not the first opera I've ever seen, but the first one since my wife and I started going to the opera.] So, if you look back at my review of Lammermoor (click the link), you will see that I was not blown away by it; however, Lammermoor is generally considered Donizetti's best opera, or, at least, it is his most performed. This is just going to highlight the difference the production can make, because Don Pasquale was incredible. Of course, Pasquale is a comedy, and I think I'm probably partial to them. So far, I have not seen one that I didn't like.

So, yes, I laughed a lot. So did my wife. I have to say, even with subtitles, it speaks a lot to the quality of the presentation that I can spend so much time laughing at something being performed in Italian. But, then, the story is just funny, about an elderly man who decides to take a very young bride in order to teach his nephew a lesson. And I'm going to mostly leave it at that other than to say that there is a reversal of the plot as there is an endeavor to teach Don Pasquale, the elderly man, a lesson in return.

As with most of the productions at SFO (San Francisco Opera), the set was amazing. They made it part of the representation of the story, a metaphor, if you will, of a portion of what was happening, and it was pretty brilliant. Mostly, it was brilliant because it allowed for a lot of physical comedy, which brings us to the actors.

Ernesto, the layabout nephew, was played by Lawrence Brownlee, who made his SFO debut in Don Pasquale. Not only was he a fantastic singer, but he provided some great physical comedy as well, everything from trying to carry too many suitcases when his uncle kicked him out of the house to trying to get through an upside down doorway (no, I'm not explaining that). He wore his expressiveness in his whole body, not just his face, and he was rarely still when he was on stage, meaning he did none of that standing and singing that can really drag an opera down.

Lucas Meachem, who played Figaro in the presentation of The Barber of Seville we saw last year, returned to SFO as Dr. Malatesta. He was just as good in this one as he was in Barber. I'm going to go out on a limb, here, and say that I would happily see anything that Meachem is in. Wait, does this mean I'm developing favorite opera performers, kind of like saying "I'll watch anything with Harrison Ford in it." I think that's what it means!

Wow... That's kind of weird.

Not to be left out, the other two primary performers, Maurizio Muraro as Pasquale and Heidi Stober as Norina, were also really great. Stober had just the right amount and kind of attitude to pull off her role realistically, and it was difficult not to watch Muraro throughout the entire performance, because he was always doing something, even when he wasn't the one singing. If you weren't watching him, you were missing something funny going on.

My first thought about Pasquale when it was over was to think that my younger son (the one who recently finished high school at 15) would have really loved it. He's never seen an opera, but I think he would have appreciated the humor of the story, and he's a facile enough reader that I don't think the subtitles would have hindered him. I tell you that because I would like to be able to recommend a DVD performance for anyone who is interested but, alas, upon a bit of research, unless you want to buy it, it doesn't seem as if there are any you can rent or stream. At least not from the normal places. Oh, well. I can only speak for the SFO presentation, anyway, and that one isn't available unless you came to see it. Which you certainly should have!

Andrea Chenier (an opera review post)

How do you really know that fall is here? Because opera has started! Yes, the new opera season has begun, and my wife and I have begun our opera pilgrimages. We decided to become season subscribers for the 2016-17 season because that makes the opera fairly affordable. Honestly, as long as you don't mind sitting up where the air is thin, the opera actually is fairly affordable. Guess where we sit. Yeah, we take oxygen tanks.

It's not really that bad, being up in the top of the balcony, and, actually, doing the season subscription got us better seats than we could afford if we were buying seats for individual operas.

But I digress...

The first opera up was Andrea Chenier by Umberto Giordano. Chenier is the only opera of Giordano's more than a dozen pieces that is still ever performed, and with good reason, evidently. Not that Chenier wasn't good or watchable -- I'll get to that more in a moment -- but, if this is the best of his works, it's understandable why this is the only one that's still being done. I'm assuming it's being presented now because of the setting: the French Revolution, the ultimate disagreement, let's say, between the 99% and the 1%.

The problem with that as a reason is that the revolution is just a prop for the love story, so the class division is barely touched on. It's unfortunate because what could have been powerful social commentary is undermined by a rather ineffective love story.

Of course, looking at this love story, which was first performed in 1896, does at least slightly inform us as to why insta-love in stories is such a thing. The opera opens with a party at the home of Maddalena di Coigny (the female lead) at which Andrea Chenier is present. Now, Chenier is an actual historical figure, a French poet who got himself into trouble during the revolution and was executed for it. So Chenier is at this party in 1789 just before the revolution gets started, and our leading lady, Maddalena, makes fun of him for being a poet in front of all of her friends, all of whom get a good laugh out of it. Chenier responds by improvising some poetry on the spot, putting Maddalena to shame and causing her to flee the room.

Five years later, Chenier is an important figure in the revolution and Maddalena is in hiding. She decides to seek him out to help her, which she does initially by writing him anonymous quasi-romantic letters. However, when she finally comes face to face with him, she opens with, "Hey, do you remember me? I've always thought of you like a brother, so I was hoping you would help me." In my head, the responses go something like this:
"Sure, I remember you. You made fun of me in the middle of your party and made everyone laugh at me."
"I met you one time! What do you mean you think of me like a brother?"
"Ew! You think of me like a brother, but you've been writing me love notes? You're sick, lady!"
Again, "I met you one time! You're part of the aristocracy that we're fighting against. Why would I want to help you?"
All of those make sense, right? What we get, instead, is this:
"I love you!"
And she responds with, "I love you, too!"
Thus, we have a love story. That part was hard to swallow. And the two leads are about as interesting as their love story.

However, the opera is saved by the character of Gerard, who is also in love with Maddalena, and who is a fully formed and complex character. The actor playing Gerard, George Gagnidze, does a great job with the role on top of the singing. The two leads are fairly flat in their performances, but Gagnidze puts obvious emotion into Gerard and was well worth watching. His pseudo companion, The Incredible, played by Joel Sorensen, is also very good.

The ending is also difficult to accept for reasons I'm not going to go into other than to say that the character who shows that his love is true in the sense of wanting what is best for the other person is not Chenier. To say that the ending was unsatisfying doesn't really say enough about how empty it is, although I think it was supposed to be some "love conquers all" kind of statement.

So, yeah, there was some issues with the story, but opera is not all about the story. The singing was great even if it was almost all of the stand-in-place-and-sing variety. The sets and costumes were magnificent, especially the sets. I mean, the sets were impressive.

It wasn't a great opera, but it wasn't bad, either. Certainly, it was much better than last year's Usher opera. My wife and I have already decided that if this is the worst of the operas this season that we won't be disappointed.


[Make sure to check out yesterday's recipe post!]

"Risk"ing Your Feelings

I have, as long as I can remember, always liked games. Seriously, as far back as I can remember. Like, when I was less than five, my cousin, who was three years older than me, and I walked three miles from my great-grandmother's house to her (mostly unused) house to get Mouse Trap ("You roll your dice, you move your mice; nobody gets hurt."), because that's what we wanted to play. I'm not sure anyone knew where we went, and I'm not sure anyone knew we were gone. But, you know, it was the East Texas countryside, and we were rarely where anyone knew where we were most of any given day.

As it turned out, though, when we got there, we discovered that about half of the pieces to the trap were missing and all of the cheese. So, yeah, we got to walk back empty-handed.

At any rate, well before the age of ten, I began having... issues... finding anyone willing to play anything with me. Except, maybe, Battle. Or War. Or whatever you call it. You know, the card game where you just flip over the top card and the player with the high card wins. That one was pure chance, so I could still get people to play that one with me. Then I discovered Risk.

I was in middle school. I'm not really sure how I got introduced to the game, though it may have been at school or, maybe, it was just a present or something I got for a birthday. At any rate, Risk became the game that people were willing to play with me. My brother and my friends and his friends and such. The reason? They could team up against me. Seriously.

Of course, it didn't just start out that way, but it didn't take long for them to realize that that is what it would take for them to have a chance to beat me, and it became the way every game started. Every game. It was just accepted that everyone started out with the goal of beating me and they would worry about each other later. Actually, it was not uncommon for them to just quit playing once they'd defeated me.

I lost a lot of games that way. BUT I still won games, too. Probably something like 1/3 of them. Sometimes, it was upsetting, the whole thing with having everyone always set against me. It's tough when you're 12 to deal with the fact that everyone wants to see you lose. Actually, it's difficult to deal with that at any age, but middle school is already the worst, and always having everyone team up against me made it the worst of the worst.

And it didn't stop there. I started getting into other strategy games in high school and carried that on into college and, pretty much, that became the routine I had to deal with in any group game. Everyone's goal was always to take me out as quickly as possible. The catch was, and I had known this since middle school, if I wanted to play, I just had to deal with it. And I wanted to play.

And that's the way a lot of things in life are. Not the having everyone team up against you but the balancing of the potential of having your feelings hurt against doing the thing you want to do. That's especially true in writing. You have to know going in that you're going to get your feelings hurt at some point. The question is, "Is it worth the Risk to get to do that thing you want to do?" (Look, another version of Risk!)

So I'm going to focus on the writing part since that's what I do, but you can apply this to, well, anything.

When you set out to be a writer, a published one, you really need to go into it with the mindset of having everyone teamed up against you, everyone wanting to see you lose. Which is not to say that everyone actually wants to see you lose, but everyone is playing their own game, and they are all trying to win, so it's not like anyone is on your side, not in any real sense. You're not part of a team like the guys who always teamed up to make sure that I didn't win. You are on your own.

And, then, there are the reviews. Mostly, it's the lack of reviews, but it's also the negative reviews, and you have to go into it knowing that that's going to happen, so you have to go into it willing to put your feelings aside in exchange for getting to do the thing you want to do: writing. You have to put your feelings at Risk.
(Look! Another version of Risk!)

There was one time in college where we were playing a game of Risk down in the lobby of the dorm, five or six of us. One of the guys was really exhorting everyone to go after me. He started in on it as soon as we were setting up. It's not like anyone needed that much convincing, but he just wouldn't stop going on about it, so I decided I would make sure that he, at least, went out before me and started working on his armies. As I got pushed back, I pushed into his territory and slowly took him out of the game. The more he started to lose, the louder he got about everyone taking me out of the game, right up until I broke his last major stronghold, at which point he flipped out, flipped the board up into the air, thew the table over, and stormed out of the room. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon for authors to act the same way over a bad review.
(And look again, another version of Risk!)

When you act like that, no one will want to play with you anymore. I have to tell you, it pissed me off, because it was my Risk board that he sent flying all over the room, and it took hours to find all of the little army counters. Oh, no, wait a minute, I didn't find all of the army tokens. I never asked him to join a game again and, guess what, no else ever asked him to play any other game with us again. Ever. All it took was that one moment of poor sportsmanship and no one wanted to Risk another explosion on his part.

You make your choices going in, but you have to be willing to take the consequences. You put your feelings aside in order to get to play the game or you explode to find that no one wants to play with you. Or work with you. Or be around you. Or all they want to do is push the big giant button you've shown yourself to have and they spend their time provoking you just because it's fun.

Personally, I wan to play the game, and I've had, I suppose, pretty good training in dealing with situations where I have to fight the odds to win. Of course, when you do win, it makes victory so much better.

By the way, I still love Risk. I don't get to play it very often, but I love the game.

The multiple versions could be a giveaway, I don't know. This isn't even all the versions I own; these were just the ones conveniently accessed. Right now, my kids are lobbying for this one:

Maybe Christmas...

Encouragement Does Not Equal Support (an IWSG post)

We have a very supportive household. Mostly, it's my wife's doing. She's the one that instituted it, at any rate, but I think it all came out of a discussion we had years ago about the lack of support I had when I was growing up and the abundance of support she had. So, back then, I couldn't really see the importance of support because I'd never had it.

We'll skip over the parts where I wasn't allowed to play sports or learn a musical instrument and go straight to high school. During my junior year, I talked a buddy into learning some Abbott and Costello skits with me for some thing or other we had to do at school. Initially, it was just "Who's on First?" but, we were so good, we got asked to perform at some function or other and did that, too. Which led to other performances and learning other skits (including my favorite, "Costello's Farm"). We had quite a number of performances during our junior and senior years. And my parents didn't come to a single one.

During college, I was in a drama group and we frequently performed in the area, and my parents never came to any of those performances, either. In fact, the only performances my parents ever came to were when the youth choir at my church sang at church because, well, they were already there and, actually, they often missed those, too.

So... We, my wife and I, made an actual decision, a conscious decision, to support our kids in their endeavors. Even when it's not easy. Even when giving them a little "Break a leg!"-do-a-great-job encouragement would be so much easier. So that means we go to things. We go to lots of things. We go to softball practices and softball games. We go to accordion lessons and accordion performances. We go to choir concerts. We go to plays and musicals. We go to improv shows. We spend money on tickets to a lot of these things. We make the effort to show our kids we're there for them, supporting them (and the organizations they're with), even when we'd rather say, "Okay, that's enough. We hope you do a great job tonight, but we're staying home." And trust me, when you have a week like this one where you're only home one night of the whole week because there are performances and games every other night, it can be tempting to skip the support and just go for the easy dose of encouragement.

And that's the thing: Encouragement is easy. It's the support that's hard to do.

Encouragement is nothing more than patting someone on the back and saying "good luck." It really doesn't take anything to do. There's no real effort involved. Now, don't get me wrong; encouragement can be nice: It feels good, but, really, it's completely insubstantial. It doesn't do anything real.

Support requires an effort. To put it in another context, support is more than just wishing fellow authors "best of luck" with their releases. Support is more than just cover reveals and blog hops. Support is more than just adding someone's book to your "to read" list on goodreads.

Actual support is buying the books of your author friends. And, sure, I get that not everyone can buy every book by every person just like we don't go to every performance of the same show (but we do go to at least one performance from each show); most of us just don't have the money for that. But I make an effort to pick up at least a "book" or two a month from someone I know (even if I know that I'm not going to have time to read it soon) and, really, with so many people using the $0.99 price point, it's hard to legitimately say you can't afford it (skip one Starbucks latte a month, and you can support three or four different authors!).

Actual support is reading the books that you've picked up from your friends. This is kind of a big one for me, right now, because I've been being tired for a while now of seeing on the blogs of indie authors the constant chatter about traditionally published books like Divergent and The Hunger Games. When you're an indie author but can only ever talk about traditionally published books -- and not just books but best sellers -- it really sends a wrong message. It's an unintentional message, but it's there all the same, and that message is "only traditionally published books are worth talking about." I make an effort to always have at least one indie book that I'm reading. [In fact, I just ordered a Kindle (my first portable device) to facilitate, specifically, reading indie books, because I haven't had time lately to do that while sitting at my computer.]

Actual support is, after having read someone's indie release, leaving a review. A real review. Not just a "yea! I loved this!" (which I've actually seen left when it's apparent the person didn't read the book at all (my favorite being "I went to high school with this guy and he wrote this book. It's good. You should read it."))
Just to say it, I review every book I read. I believe in supporting the authors.

This stuff has been bothering me for a while, the fact that there is kind of this constant talk about how "supportive" the blogging community is when what it actually is is encouraging. The blogging community is great at encouragement. There's no lack of "good luck!"s to be found. But actual support has proven to be few and far between. Since this is a "support" group, I thought I'd mention that encouragement does not equal support.

Independent Day

Those of you that have been around here for any length of time will know that I don't promote books I haven't actually read. Ever. I don't do cover reveals or blog tours or any of that stuff, because I'm not going to back a book that I wouldn't actually recommend to someone to read. It's just not the way I work.

However, I do want to support other independent authors as much as possible. That's why I do reviews, and that's why I'm including stories by other writers in my books. And that's why, today, in the Spirit of Christmas (or something like that), I'm going to highlight some indie work that's come out in the past year or so. Many of these books are on my list of things to read (but I've been really behind on reading, lately, so I haven't gotten to them) and will get reviewed at some point. Others are books I know of, but I haven't made the decision to actually read, yet. They are all, however, independently published by people whose blogs I follow.

So, while I'm not actually recommending them in the sense of, "Hey! I read this and it was great," I am saying, "Give some indies some love and check these out." And, really, they are in no particular order.

1. White Walls by Australian author Hayley M Clearihan

2. Butterman (Time) Travel, Inc. by Pk Hrezo

3. CassaStorm by Alex Cavanaugh

4. Green Eggs & Weezie by Cathy Olliffe-Webster

5. A Hero's Journey and other things by PT Dilloway (seriously, he has so many books out, I can't list them all, but the Scarlet Knight stuff is from this year)

6. The Faerie Guardian by Rachel Morgan

7. A Flock of Ill Omens (part 1 of her serialization of A Shot in the Light) by Hart Johnson

8. Moonless by Crystal Collier

And this one I have read and get to include because, well, it's my blog and it's good:
9. Shadow Spinner -- this link is for the physical book

• "Collection 1: Tiberius"
• "Collection 2: The Man with No Eyes"
• "Collection 3: The Garden"
• "Collection 4: The Undying" -- coming soon

So there you go. It's Christmas. Support an indie author! It's like shopping locally, which you all do, right?

Oh... and, after you read, leave a review!

Unexpected Applause: "Memories"

Note: This review will be full of spoilers. The work is short enough that there's no practical way to talk about aspects of it without actually talking about those aspects of it.

In "Memories," author Alex Hurst has given us a bitter-sweet story of love and its importance no matter what kinds of gender boundaries may exist. From that perspective, it is well worth reading, this look back through the important moments of two lives that have come together. It's sweet and it's sad, and it could, really, be the lives of any two people that have come together in love and lived out their lives that way, which is where the power of the story comes from.

However, I found the vehicle for that story to be... distracting. And, actually, unconvincing. But, first, there is a brief introduction for the audience that spells out what's going on which I also thought detracted from the story. The story itself is really one of discovery or, actually, re-discovery by  the story-teller. I think introducing the story to the audience by telling us that she has entered a shop of memories takes that journey of discovery away from the audience, removing some of the power the story could have as we figure out what's going on. It removes rather than adds to the tension of the story.

The real issue for me, though, was the artificial limitation of "you can choose only one thing" which just made me want to know "why?" I get that the author is using that limitation as a vehicle to stroll the memories of the character and examine them while contemplating the importance of each, but that didn't stop the question of "why" from bouncing around in my head. It reminded me of those silly games people do:
You're stranded on a desert island and can only take one book, movie, food with you; what do you choose?
And I want to know, "Why am I stranded on a desert island?" and "If I am stranded on a desert island, what good is one book going to do me?" And "how am I going to watch this one movie while stranded on the desert island?" And "What? There's going to be a pizza tree there?"
So, yeah, this idea of the narrator only getting to pick one memory from her life before going on to wherever it was she was going really got in my way of enjoying the story itself.

Which may or may not be fair to the author and may or may not affect anyone else, but it did effect me.

Also, there is the issue of the ghostly store clerk, which I couldn't stop thinking about in terms of a static-like TV image after the description of it being like bad radio signal. If the memories are the narrator's and it's her store, so to speak, why is there a sales clerk following her around? And, if she has all the time in the world to choose, why does it keep interrupting with "have you chosen, yet?" Yes, I'm sure some of that is just my own issues. But I was annoyed on behalf of the narrator and wanted to tell the clerk to "go away and leave me alone! I'll call you when I'm ready."

And here's the problem with such a short piece: what I'm saying here makes it sound like I liked the piece less than I did. I enjoyed it well enough. It's well written. There are only a couple of grammar issues (which I can't even remember now, so they couldn't have been that big a deal). And it has a message that, probably, more people need to get. Okay, not probably, certainly. This is the kind of piece that might be able to give people a connection to how a real person feels about the issues being dealt with in the story, and, for that, it's worth the read.

Vampire Karate Witches

As those of you that have been around for a while will know, I frequently mention the difference between what is good and what we like and that they are not necessarily the same thing. For you newer people, you can go back and check this post in particular to get the background). People like to think they are, because people want to think "I like this, so it is good" or "I don't like this, so this is bad." Whether we like something or not has no bearing on its quality of "goodness."

I have a direct experience of this to relate.

Over this past weekend, I went to see Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. Let me just start by saying that we didn't go see this so much because we wanted to see it but because we were willing to see it. I was going with a friend and there weren't that many options of movies that he hadn't already seen, so that left us with less than a handful of movies to pick from (I think the actual number was three), and this was the one that rose to the top of things that we were both most willing to go see. For me, it was mostly about Jeremy Renner.

To say that this movie was bad is an understatement. The dialogue was horrible. The story was full of more holes than Swiss cheese. What's really big? Hmm... let's say a planet. But not a small planet like Pluto that gets downgraded from being a planet; let's say something around the size of Uranus, yeah, that one works for this. The plot holes were so big, Uranus could orbit right through them. The movie was absurd. Ludicrous, even. Actually, the movie was at Ludicrous Speed.

And I loved it for that. Okay, well, maybe I didn't love it, but I love it in concept. I enjoyed most of the heck out of it despite how bad it was.

I can imagine how the concept for this movie came about:

#1: Let's make a vampire movie!
#2: Vampires are too done, right now. People are over vampires.
#1: Well, let's make it vampire hunters, then!
#2: No, that's still vampires.
#3: What about witches? No one is doing witches.
#2: Ooh! We could do Hansel & Gretel! They fight a witch.
#1: Witches are lame. They're old hags that can't fight. You'd just have witch hunters walking in and killing all the witches.
#3: We can give them powers.
#1: Like vampires! They can be super strong and super fast.
#2: And know karate!

And, so, we get these huge fight scenes of pasty faced witches that look like vampires and act like vampires, except for the biting, where everyone smashes through trees and boulders and flings spells and never get hurt. It was kind of awesome. I mean, it was completely unashamed of itself in how bad it was. It was like watching a four-year-old rolling around in a mud puddle being all self-satisfied. In fact, it was exactly like that.

I mean, it was like watching kids play an imagination game where they keep making stuff up as they go.

It starts out in a pretty normal Hansel & Gretel setting with some peasant abandoning his children in the woods. The look of the movie is as if it's set in the 1600's. All hovels and burning at the stake and all of that. But, then, as they become witch hunters, there's a scene of newspaper clippings of all the witches they kill as hunters. Newspapers which, of course, didn't exist. All of the "photos" are sketches. The movie is full of anachronistic things of that nature. The movie just doesn't care if it fits the time period or not, which is part of what made it fun. It's also part of what makes it ludicrous.

Kid #1: We're being attacked by a witch!
Kid #2: I pull out my crossbow and shoot at her!
Kid #1: She's too fast for your lame crossbow.
Kid #2: It's a double-barrel machine crossbow!
Kid #1: Fine! I pull out my gun!
Kid #2: You can't have a gun! They didn't have guns!
Kid #1: They didn't have machine crossbows either.
<silence>
Kid #2: You can have a gun.
Kid #1: It's big shotgun, and I shoot at the witch!

The whole movie is like that, and, really, it does just wallow in it, and it made it a lot of fun.

Unlike, say, Van Helsing (with Hugh Jackman) which is much  the same but took itself much too seriously to be enjoyable. In fact, Van Helsing is one of the worst movies I've ever seen, which is unfortunate, because I thought Jackman did a more then fine job with what he was given. Hansel & Gretel never takes itself seriously, and, so, I never had a problem with it. Despite all of the horrible inconsistencies. Even as I sit here writing this, I'm thinking about some of the stupid things in the movie, like the witches being, basically, a separate race and the fact that they don't actually look human at all, so why is there ever a witch problem to begin with? But I kind of also don't care even though my brain is yelling at me that I should care.

Seriously, it's up there yelling, "That's so stupid!" And I'm shrugging and responding, "But it was fun."

Which is not to say that I'd actually recommend the movie to anyone, because I wouldn't. Unless you like mindless action, because that's what this is. Mindless action with a vague setting. Total cotton candy. If you like that kind of thing, this movie is just for you.

Too Many Positives Equal a Negative

I was listening to the radio the other day in the car, because that's almost the only time I can just listen to music. However, as the kids and I headed home from grocery shopping, we hit that time on Sunday night where they have their little talk show. >eye roll here< (I'm not going into why I'm rolling my eyes, but let's just say that it's when they gather together a bunch of men that are basically out of touch with the real world and discuss issues that are meant to help us out. It's a mostly worthless program.) ANYWAY... The topic was stress and how to get rid of bad stress and only have good stress, whatever that is, because they sort of skipped over that other than to say there's good stress and there's bad stress. Whatever. To the body, stress is stress.

They're babbling along, and I was only half listening, because I didn't want to be listening at all, because I wanted there to be music, but I caught one of the guys saying that one of the best ways to deal with stress is to avoid negative people. Yes, yes, surround yourself with happy, bubbly people, and all of your stress will just melt away. And that's when I reached up and turned the radio off.

My son, as he is wont to do, immediately asked me why I did that, and I found myself needing to explain to him that that view, the view of cutting negative people out of your life, comes from an illegitimate arm of popular psychology called positive psychology which, by and large, is worthless and completely made up. This is not me saying this, although I agree with it, positive psychology has no basis in research. It is a series of hypotheses that adherents have made without any proof. I think it was the guy that founded the movement that said something like, "We are hoping that one day the research will prove our claims." Great.

Going with the theme of pointing back to old posts on Shadow Spinner release days, you should all go back and read this post talking about the excellent book Bright-sided by Barbara Ehrenreich. After you read my post, you should probably pick up that book. I think it will be quite an eye opener. On the other hand, if you're totally bought into all of this positive thinking crap, you should just ignore everything I just said.

But don't ignore this!

Today is the FREE! release of "Part Six: The Man with No Eyes." It will be FREE! all day Thursday, October 4 and Friday, October 5. Make sure you go pick it up as it is the first appearance of Michael in the pages of Shadow Spinner. If you want to know more about  him, you'll have to check out "The Evil That Men Do." It's only $0.99. Oh, as a special bonus, you can also get for FREE! "Part Five: The Police Car" today only. I'm pretty sure I said FREE!, so don't miss out!

And remember, because, well, honestly, I'm begging, especially if you've picked up previous installments and liked them, please click the "like" button when you download. You could always go back and click "like" on all of the other ones, too. It's not hard. Just a slight twitch of the finger on your mouse. A little more time consuming would be a short review and a rating. It doesn't even have to be a long review. I think Amazon requires something like 20 words, so, you know, you could write something like "This was the most awesomest story ever written, and everyone should read it!" and you'd be more than half way there. And there are even some words left over so you could personalize the review in some way. Seriously, every review helps.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Be Vewy Qwiet...

...I'm hunting wabbits.

One night last week, when we were out on the evening walk with the dog, we came across a rabbit in a field off the trail. Actually, it was a hare, but people always get so confused when you talk about seeing hares or wild hares, so, you know, we'll keep it simple and just call "him" (because I'm deciding it was a him) a rabbit. I'm sure he doesn't really mind, because, well, he can't read. I hope. Because, if he can read, humanity may be in trouble.

Anyway...
We were out walking; my wife and I were way ahead of the pack of kids that were lollygagging with lizards and naked ladies behind us.

This kind of naked lady. Yeah, I know what you were thinking...

Out in the field on  the other side of the fence, was a rabbit. It was sitting up with its very long ears sticking straight up, and we stopped to watch it. The tall grass in the field beyond probably starts about 60' or so away from the trail, and the rabbit was about midway between us and the grass. (and I wish I had a picture, but I wasn't carrying the camera) The girls, my daughter and her two neighbor friends, were making a lot of noise, so, as they got close enough, I called out to them that there was a rabbit. Now, this was meant to be the signal for them to approach quietly, you know, like Elmer always says; however, it actually resulted in a mad dash toward us and even more noise, and, of course, the rabbit scampered away. It did stop just before hopping into the tall grass, so they did get to see it, but it's not like they got to observe it the way my wife and I (and dog) had been before they crashed in on us. Even the dog knew to be quiet.

The problem with the girls is that they all want to talk at once, and I don't mean just to each other. They all want to talk to me at once, and it makes my head feel like it wants to explode. I have flashes of that scene from the Grinch with all the noise all the noise all the noise from Whoville every time they walk with us.

So, last night, there was a squirrel. I love squirrels. I've probably mentioned that before. He (yes, he gets to be a he, too) was sitting up in a branch on a tree eating and chattering away.

Unfortunately, he was too far away for my flash to do any good.

My daughter was, again, lagging far behind, because she was looking for lizards, but my wife and I had stopped (with the dog and the younger boy), so she came running up making a ton of noise, and the squirrel dashed off farther up into the tree (so I didn't get a chance to try and get a better picture). She got to see the squirrel, but she was sad she only got to see it running away.

Is anyone seeing a pattern here?

At that point, my daughter wanted to go ahead of everyone else to see if we could find the rabbit again. I left the dog with my wife and younger son, and my daughter and I went off ahead wabbit hunting.

But not quietly as she was talking talking talking and not with an "inside voice," either. So I told her that if she wanted to see the rabbit, I mean, if she wanted to get a chance to see the rabbit and not just watch it running away, she would need to be quieter. She got mad at me. In fact, she told me I was being mean.

Yeah, seriously. She told me I was mean for telling her that she was being too loud to see the animals. So I explained to her about how the rabbit had run off when she and her friends had come up because of all the noise they were making, and I explained how the squirrel had run off because of all the noise just she had been making. Really, she knew that stuff, but I had to remind her of it. After that, I asked her what was more mean, to tell her that she was being too loud or to allow her to keep being too loud which would mean that she wouldn't be able to see the animals. She mumbled out something about wanting to see the animals and that I wasn't really being mean to tell her she was too loud. She just didn't like it.

I'm hoping that some of the more astute of you are seeing where I'm going with this, because I was immediately struck with the similarity to the way that people react to bad reviews and negative critiques. The reaction is almost always that the reviewer/critiquer is "being mean." The act of telling someone that they are being "too loud" is seen as some malicious act when, really, it may just be that the reviewer person is trying to help the reviewed to "see the rabbit."

Yeah, sure, I know some people are just being mean, but those usually aren't accompanied by the "why"s. In a review, if all you get is "this piece sucked! It was the worst piece of crap ever written!", you might be able to say that the reviewer was just being mean. Not always, though. However, when a reviewer takes the time to say, "I didn't like this and here's what didn't work for me," you can probably be pretty sure that s/he is not being mean but trying to point out some issues with the writing that legitimately need to be improved.

Just like me telling my daughter she was being too loud. She had a goal; she wanted to get to observe the animals, but her goal was not being achieved because she was being so loud she was scaring them away. It was an act of kindness borne from the desire to help that prompted me to tell her that she would need to be more quiet if she didn't want the animals to run away.

In the same way, if I give a review that points out mistakes in the grammar or story structure, it's not out of any desire to "be mean" but is meant as an assistance to the author so that s/he doesn't scare the readers away with the noise of bad grammar, poor punctuation, and weak plots. No, I can't speak for everyone, but I would imagine that anyone out there that's taking the time to say, "hey, this story didn't work and here are the reasons," is not doing that out of spite or any desire to be mean or to hurt someone.

I think it's time we, as a culture, stopped being so adverse to being told we're doing it wrong, to having our feelings hurt, to taking correction. It's the act of being told what we're doing incorrectly that helps us to get it right so that we can achieve our goals.

And, no, we didn't see a rabbit that night, but, if we had, my daughter was being quiet enough that it wouldn't have run away.

Is It Better To Be "Nice" Or Honest? Part Two

I'm guest posting today over at Arlee Bird's Tossing It Out on the topic of reviews for "Indie" authors. We agreed that the topic was big enough for more than one post, so I'm continuing what I started over there over here. You should really pop over and read part one, first, though, before reading this one.
[One a completely separate note, I also have an interview up today over at the A to Z Challenge blog, stop by and check that out, too.]

To bring the impact of the “nice” review down to a more personal level, when the the independent market suffers the effects of undeserved good reviews, so do you.

Let me put this another way: The only way you can ever become successful as an independent author is if the larger audience of readers begins to buy your books. It's all well and good for your blogging friends and a few of their friends to buy your book, but, really, that's just a handful of sales. To make it, to really make it, you have to break through the “friend” barrier out into people that don't know you. That is a hard thing to do.

You want to know why it's a hard thing to do? Because the larger audience of readers doesn't trust the independent market. They don't even really trust the small publishers, so how do you expect them to trust you, some anonymous author with a sign saying, “Buy my book! It's really good!”

See, when we just do the “nice” thing and give good reviews to our peers, the independent market suffers, as I said, but, also, you, specifically you, as an independently published author, suffer. You are not immune to the overall perception that people will have of a market place full of good reviews that don't mean anything.

 You want to know how I know this? Because I don't buy independently published books except from people I know or that have been strongly recommended to me by people whose opinions I trust. Why? Because I can't tell what's good and what's not. And, even then, half the stuff (and I'm being generous here) I've read from people I know or has been recommended to me shouldn't be out there available for purchase, anyway, so why would I expect that other stuff is any different. But, yet, I can browse through the "indie book shelf" (yes, I just made that up) and find plenty of books with a stack of good reviews (on Amazon or on blogs) that I know to be... dishonest, for lack of a better word. In some cases, I don't think the person giving the review even read the book, because the review is about the author not the work.

A review beginning with “this is a great guy” or “I went to high school with this guy and he wrote a book” or “this girl spends all of her time writing” does not inspire me to buy the book or give me any faith in the independent market. If you didn't read it, don't go click 5-stars on it! Just don't do it.

To make this as clear as I can, it doesn't matter if you genuinely have written a great book, the best book ever, even, if no one can find it. It's like being the one apple tree in the middle of a forest of crab apple trees. The only way to be seen in all of that other mess is if reviews, all reviews, are honest reviews and are clearly labeled “crab apple” instead of “apple.”

So far, we've been pretty self-centered and only talked about how all of this stuff affects ourselves, but let's look at how the “nice” review affects the author in question. Does the “nice” review actually help him/her? Again, I'm going to say “no.”

Sure, as I said in Part One, getting the “nice” review may gain the author a few sales, but, if the book is really not good or not ready or not whatever, it's going to hurt the author more in the long run.

First, people buying the book are going to find “oh, this book sucks” and decide to never buy another book from that author again. It doesn't matter if, later, the author does put out something good, why would a buyer (that doesn't know the author) come back and try again after getting burned once? Most people are just going to remember to not buy anything from him/her again (like I won't buy any more Goodkin or Hamilton, I don't care how good people say they are).

But what's the likelihood that the author is going to improve if everyone is just being nice? The author, at that point, believes that the work is fine and s/he can continue in the same manner. I've seen a lot of this out there, too. Authors that whip out some 40,000 word "epic" in a couple or few months, get some nice reviews and continue on doing the same. Over and over again. Their friends are all giving them good reviews and telling them how great they are, so they never bother to actually look at the work or how much (little) time they're spending on it. They don't edit beyond spell check or have anyone with any kind of skill read the manuscript before they hit the publish button.

These authors think everything is just fine. “Look at how all my friends love what I'm doing!” But no one is buying their books. Why? Because they're no good. But no one is brave enough to tell them that. No one wants to damage the friendship by saying, “Hey, you need to work on this some more.” Again, it's a short term gain, but it's kind of like allowing your friend to walk around with a huge booger on his/her face. Sure, s/he'd be embarrassed if you told him, but how mad at you is she going to be when she finds out that you didn't.

Doing the “nice” thing doesn't help anyone. It doesn't help the market, it doesn't help you, and it doesn't help the author in question. Not in the long run. Yeah, I know, it can be really difficult to see past the short run to the long run, but, if we want independent publishing to survive, we have to do that. Right now, the big publishers are out there banking on one thing, that this lack of quality among independently published books will drive people back to only buying from them. The sad thing is they may not be wrong. Until we, the independent authors, have the courage and fortitude to be honest about what we're flooding the market with, people will continue to orbit the big publishers as their main source of reading material.

Are You Brave Enough?

As all Pixar movies, Brave is a beautiful piece of work. The landscapes are gorgeous. The animation excellent. The characters interesting. Despite all of that, I was left slightly unsatisfied at the end of the movie.

It's not that it wasn't a good movie; it was. It was very good. But, I guess, I was just expecting something a little bit more from Pixar, because, in the end, it turns out to be a pretty typical kid-oriented fantasy movie. It's the kind of thing where the kid makes a bad decision but gets rewarded for it anyway. Basically, parents are always wrong and if they would just open their eyes and take a look at you and how deserving you are to have your way then they would just see that that's true and let you have your way. Of course, it's not that simple in these kinds of movies, and the kid has to make a big mistake for the parent to actually take a look at the kid and, instead of the kid having to deal with any consequences of his/her actions, s/he's able to put everything right which enables the parent to say, "Oh, you were right all along. Here, have everything you always wanted."

And this is the unfair bit, I suppose, because, if this movie had been from anyone but Pixar, I would have been fine with it. Not that I would have thought it was a better movie, but I wouldn't have been left with a feeling of disappointment. As it is, though, Pixar has been pretty good about taking that next step in dealing with personal responsibility. They've had characters that have worked through difficult issues, looked at their own behavior, and come out stronger and more mature individuals on the other side (with the exception of Wall-E, which I thought was cute but a bit heavy handed with its message and lacking in the personal growth department (even Cars 2 had a strong dose of personal growth)). The character of Merida does not come out a stronger and more mature person on the other side. She may appreciate her mother a bit more, but, in essence, she's the same at the end as she was at the beginning.

To make matters worse, the whole movie revolves around the question, "Are you brave enough?" Are you brave enough to change your own fate? It's a good question, and it sounds like a Pixar question. So I went into it expecting the heroine to do just that, to be brave and change her fate. But that's not what happens. At no point does she take the brave stance to change her fate. Instead, she runs away and makes a bad choice. It felt very The Little Mermaid to me.

I find it more than a little ironic that Pixar, a movie company known for their "bravery" in movie making, took the less than courageous route in a movie about being brave and taking your fate in your own hands.

Which makes me wonder about the influence Disney is having over them. Pixar kept their own studio headquarters up here near San Francisco when Disney bought them. The idea behind that was so that they could keep their autonomy. Do their own thing. Continue to make the movies they'd been know for. But I'm not sure that's happening. Last summer's Cars 2, which I liked, is considered Pixar's first failure for its overt merchandising. A movie short on story for the sake of being flashy and selling a lot of stuff. That's so very... Disney. And, honestly, even with the stronger than typical female lead, Brave felt much like a typical Disney "Princess" movie. Even Toy Story 3 was pushed through by Disney. Actually, because Disney owned the rights to any Toy Story sequels, they were going to make the movie without Pixar's involvement at all, but after their Pixar acquisition, Pixar took control of it and started completely over on the project (and thank goodness for that!).

Maybe it's just the lack of John Lasseter. With the acquisition by Disney and his expanded role as chief creative officer for both Disney and Pixar (along with a handful of other duties (which included the creation of the new Cars theme park at Disneyland)), he's had to be much less involved in the individual projects at Pixar, and it was always Lasseter that was the real heart of Pixar. It was his vision that created Pixar, took it from a failing animation department that George Lucas sold to Steve Jobs and Jobs was considering selling off to Microsoft (or anyone that would take it, really) and turned it into the most profitable movie studio ever (they currently have the highest average box office take across all of their movies of any movie studio). Is it that Lasseter's vision for Pixar has been removed or diluted, or is it that he's finally bought into Disney's way of doing things? I'm hoping with his more direct involvement with next summer's Monsters University that we'll see a return to what is more expected from a Pixar movie.

All of that said, my kids loved Brave, and that's really what matters. As I said, it is a good movie. If it had come out under the Disney banner rather than Pixar, I wouldn't have thought a thing about it. In fact, I would have applauded them for providing a female lead that did not need a man to "complete" her, but from Pixar... well, it just fell short of expectations.