What Is the Flavor of Soul? (a FREE! book day)

For someone who grew up not really liking Halloween, I seem to write a lot of Halloween flavored stuff. There's the whole disastrous trick-or-treating escapade in The House on the Corner and, then, there's "Soul Cakes." Not to mention all kinds of other creepy stuff I've done or am doing.

But back to "Soul Cakes"!

If you pay attention to the cover for "What Time Is the Tea Kettle?", you'll notice that "Soul Cakes" is included. Yes, it's a pair of novelettes, and they are some of my favorite stories. In my mind, they're just fun. I won't lie, though, and try to say that some people haven't been unsettled by them.

Oh, well.

Anyway...

Just in time for Halloween, "What Time Is the Tea Kettle?" is FREE! And, hey, you can't beat FREE! Seriously, pick them up and give them a read.

And be ready for the man and his cat to be back very soon. Very.
And with an actual name.
Sort of.

What are you waiting for? Click the link and go get your FREE! book!
Creepy days are here, but they're almost over.

The End of 'The Affair' (a review post)

My wife and I don't watch a lot of TV. In fact, we don't actually watch "TV" at all. Everything we watch is after the fact on DVD. This allows us to vet the shows we're going to watch, at least to some extent. The Affair was one of those shows that was getting a lot of buzz, and my wife wanted to check it out, so we spent a few weeks and watched season one.

I never really took a liking to the show (Well, actually, I just didn't like any of the characters. Any of them.), but I can't say it wasn't interesting. If you don't know anything about it, the first season is told by viewing the same incidents from each of the main two characters points of view. So you would watch everything through Noah's eyes and, then, watch the same events through Alison's eyes. The differences were intriguing and, from a psychological standpoint, I found it interesting enough to engage in.

Plus, there was a murder.

There's no resolution to the murder plot at the end of season one, so we decided to move on to season two. Now, here's where it gets tricky. The characters are pretty well established by the end of season one, but we don't get exactly those characters in season two. In season one, the plot flows out of the characters and their motivations; in season two, the characters are made to flow out of the "needs" of the plot, and that always makes characters behave in unbelievable ways.

It's actually one of the biggest failings of episodic television; at some point some writer will want to do a particular story that requires a character (or characters) to act out-of-character. When it causes the audience to say, "Wait, that character would never do that," you have a problem, because, the truth is, people tend to act in very predictable ways. Which is not to say that there aren't times when people don't act "out of character," but, when they do, it's not sporadic and generally has a pattern all of its own. However, when you are busy bending characters to cause plot points to happen whether those things are appropriate to the characters or not, you end up with an unbelievable show.

So we spent season two feeling out of sorts with the characters and the things they were doing. It's not that I don't understand, especially as a writer, wanting specific things to happen, but, if you can't figure out a way to have those things happen from the character's motivations, you need to find another way around.

Or, you know, be writing a horror story. Because, in a horror story, if you want to make one of your characters start eating spiders, you can totally do that, even if that character had been the most arachnophobic person on the planet. There's always a way to explain erratic behavior in a horror story!

Not that it's not kind of a horror story when your characters start getting all unbelievable on you. Creepy, I would say. And, well, actually, Noah is kind of creepy. But, then, he's a writer, and writers were rated in the top 10 creepiest professions for men. Oh, wait, I'm a writer...

...

...

Um...

So...

Yeah, okay, I don't recommend The Affair. It's obviously one of those shows that was went with the initial idea before they'd thought it all the way through, and, now, they're just making it up as they go along. Plus, it's full of horrible people.
Did I say horrible? I mean horrible.

A Pretty Dead Thing (pictures I like)

It only looks alive...

...like so many things in the dark days.

A Dead Thing (pictures I like)

Not even the beach is safe from the days when the light grows short.

Foxcatcher (a movie review post)

I think this might be a year where the performances are better than the movies they're in. Foxcatcher is a great example of this. I really can't say that watching Foxcatcher is an enjoyable experience. Disturbing is more like it. And kind of fascinating, but that's all about the actors.

I went into this one with no idea of what it was about. I mean, I had no clue at all other than my wife saying she thought it had something to do with boxing, which turned out to be wrong and only matters in that it explains that I had no expectations whatsoever. Even having no expectations, what I got was completely unexpected.

The movie was kind of like watching a scorpion or a large spider crawling over your kids, and you can't do anything about it. It gives you the shivers and makes your skin crawl watching that... thing... creeping over your kids, and you just keep hoping it keeps going and doesn't stop to bite or sting. Watching spiders and scorpions and how they move can be pretty fascinating. It's just not enjoyable when they're on you or someone you care for.

That said, the performances are amazing. I mean, seriously, they are fantastic.

You can barely recognize Carell, and it's not because of the nose and makeup. His whole bearing is changed. The way he holds his head, the way he talks, his mannerisms. There's nothing Carell-ish about him, none of that frenetic energy he so often has. And he's creepy. He's a creepy, rich, old white dude, and he acts like it. I might not have known it was him if I hadn't known it was him. That Steve Carell was in it was about the only thing I knew about the movie going into it.

Speaking of bearing, Tatum and Ruffalo were incredible. I don't know if I can even describe what they did. So they were playing Mark and David Shultz, wrestlers who both won gold at the 84 Olympics, and they had this way of moving their bodies around that more closely resembled chimpanzees than humans. It wouldn't have even surprised me if they had put their knuckles to the floor and moved with their arms instead of their legs. And it's not just about the way they walked; it's everything. Tatum even had this jutting lower jaw, and it wasn't some fancy prosthetic thing. If he was doing that himself, it must have taken incredible concentration to keep that up through filming. The overall effect, especially with Tatum, was that of cavemen. Or, at least, how we imagine cavemen.

And Ruffalo? Well, I wasn't even sure it was him some of the time during the movie. I mean, I thought it was Ruffalo, but, every once in a while, I was doubtful. I thought it was just someone that bore a striking resemblance to him. With the beard and the odd way he moved around, I was never quite sure, not until the credits rolled. That's just impressive.

To top it all off, at least as far as I can tell by doing a cursory investigation of what actually happened, the movie got it pretty spot on. The only issue I could even raise is that there is a lack of clarity about the time frame on some of the events, but that doesn't have any actual bearing on the movie or the plot; I was just surprised to find out how far apart some of the events actually were. That's a very small thing for a movie like this.

I think this is definitely a movie worth seeing as long as you're not looking for something that's going to give you that feelgood buzz when it's over. If you want to see some stellar performances, though, this is really a must see movie.