Month: February 2016

8:06–Okay, watching the “opening ceremonies.” Guys? Saying hi to people as they arrive on a red carpet is NOT an opening ceremony. It’s not ANY kind of a ceremony. It’s just people getting there and talking to you. Stop calling it an opening ceremony because it sounds stupid.

8:31–BB8 unveils an Oscar. Yeah, that’s about as close to an Oscar “Star Wars” is gonna get.

8:34–And Chris Rock’s first jokes are about the great debate. Smart.

8:35–The Kevin Hart joke is a keeper.

8:38–Only dead black people in the In Memoriam. Well, if they leave out Leonard Nimoy, at least there’s a good reason.

8:43–Clooney should totally wear that outfit. Ultimately, I think Rock handled that brilliantly.

8:45–“We think you’re all hot. A writer wrote that.” Cute. God, please let “Compton” win. What a great opening statement that would be.

8:47–Oh well. On the other hand, it also would have been cool if “Inside Out” won just because it was so wonderful and original.

8:49–Whenever we see “Best Adapted Screenplay” I can only think of what Orson Scott Card said: If you do a fantastic novelization of a screenplay, it’s called talented hack work. If you do a fantastic screenplay of a novel, they give you an Oscar.

8:51–Rooting for “The Martian.”

8:52–Oh well. Two for two.

8:59–Well, now I’ll never see “The Danish Girl.”

9:06–That was interesting: that was the entire song. In previous Oscars sometimes they’ve forced them to do aborted versions.

9:12–Didn’t see any of those films so didn’t care.

9:14–They played her off with “The Ride of the Valkyries” and then segued into “You’re the One That I want?” Who the hëll is doing the music selections? Bugs Bunny?

9:20–How come Marvel Comics movies never get costume nominations? YOU try designing seven different Captain America ensembles.

9:21–Seriously, guys? The moment she says, “I have something important to say,” THAT’S when you kick in to play her off? Couldn’t give her ten seconds more?

9:23–Good call. “Furiosa, Guest Starring Mad Max,” had a hëll of a production design.

9:25–I CAN’T READ the stupid little comments on the screen. They’re too freaking small.

9:26–So I’ve been doing this for an hour and no one’s commented. Is anyone reading?

9:36–If “Mad Max” is nominated for this, just announce it won.

9:37–Christ! The one time I said “Mad Max” would win and it DIDN’T. I’m sucking at this this year.

9:39–Interesting. They’re doing this in the order that movies are made. I never noticed that there’s no Oscar for “Best Producer.” Heh.

9:40–Well, thank God “Mad Max” won because at least my initial “Star Wars” joke remains intact.

9:49–Good lord, is it possible that “Mad Max” could win all these Oscars for production and not get the Best Picture? Because I’m betting yeah.

9:51–Okay, I bet Mad Max wins again.

9:52–Yay. Finally got one right.

9:54–How about that! They won’t nominate Andy Serkis, but at least he’s there as a presenter. Or something.

9:55–Whoa! “Ex Machina?” Seriously? I mean, I haven’t seen it so I can’t comment, but it was more impressive than Mad Max? Or Star Wars, for God’s sake?

10:01–That was VERY smart directing, to cut to the kid reacting to the arrival of the ‘Bots. Adults are just smiling but the kid is like, “It’s the droids! It’s BB8!”

10:06–Just for the record, you can still buy Caroline’s girl scout cookies. I’ll put up the link at the next commercial break.

10:08–Ðámņ. Rooting for Sanjay.

10:11–Yay! Disney won something.

10:15–The song is from “Fifty Shades of Grey?” Seriously? Ooookay….

10:17–Well, that was unmemorable.

10:18–Okay! Commercial break! Go order cookies from Caroline! COOKIES!!

10:22–Ordered cookies yet?

10:23–I don’t like this showing trailers for the films. I far prefer when they actually show a scene.

10:24–You know, I’m wondering: if blacks had been nominated for acting roles and “Compton” or the director of “Creed” had been nominated, what in the world would Chris Rock have talked about this evening?

10:28–Come on, Sly.

10:31–Crap. I’d have loved to hear Sly’s speech.

10:39–That was the best presentation speech of the program. Possibly the best of the century.

10:45–Boy, the Price Waterhouse reps are getting younger and younger.

10:50–Okay! So let’s beat that Girl Scout total for Caroline!

10:52–Wait, the PRESIDENT of the Academy is a black woman!? Oh, she must have just loved the controversy this year.

10:59–They kept Leonard for the end. Wait to keep me holding my breath, guys.

11:08–I know I should care about this stuff, but I just don’t.

11:09–I think we’ve only heard two songs. How many were nominated?

11:10–I love how it took them twenty seconds to get to their feet. It’s the VP, for God’s sake.

11:12–Well, that answered my song question.

11:15–Wow. Helluva song. Too bad I never heard of the movie it’s from.

11:16–There is no freaking way this gets done by 11:30.

11:17–WHAT THE HÊLL IS KOHL’S DOING?! I mean, I get it, they’re taking Oscar acceptance speeches and putting them into completely irrelevant scenarios. I understand that. But WHY are they doing it? What am I not getting?!

11:21–Is Mad Max up for this?

11:22–Well, my Star Wars prediction has held up.

11:25–Hëll! Why didn’t they perform all the songs?

11:27–With all deference to Lady Gaga, “Writing on the Wall” is the one that stays with you.

11:38–Aw, come ON. George Miller’s team wins practically every award and he doesn’t get best director? That’s messed up.

11:40–Uhm, orchestra? He’s not paying attention to you. And they noticed! They actually shut up in the face of his speech! Excellent.

11:44–This thing’s gonna wrap just in time to switch to “The Venture Brothers.”

11:48–Really? I thought the actress of “Brooklyn” had it locked up. Hunh.

11:49–That was nice. No one ever thanks the movie goers.

11:56–Good. That makes up for ignoring him for “Titanic.”

11:57–Notice the orchestra isn’t even trying this time.

11:59–WTF?!?

12:01–Seriously? I mean, I’m sure it’s a good film and all, but holy cow. That just came out of nowhere.

Join me at 8:30.

PAD

The fact that Iron Fist is Danny Rand, a white guy, is integral to the character. As I recall, he even gets push back from Asians because it’s felt that a white man has no business acquiring the fist in the first place. To cast an Asian as Danny Rand 100% changes the character. He’s no longer Iron Fist, at least how he was created.

Basically, let’s look at it this way: We have had in more recent years another story about someone who seems incredibly unlikely to become a kung fu master who winds up mastering the traits and becomes a mighty warrior. It’s called “Kung Fu Panda.” To declare that an Asian should portray Danny Rand is like saying, “We should have a tiger portray Po.” Any reasonable individual would say, “But wait…if you cast a tiger, it’s no longer Kung Fu Panda. It’s Kung Fu Tiger.”

Exactly.

Now you can chalk up his origins to white imperialism or privilege or whatever you want. But ultimately he’s been around for nearly forty years; he is what he is. To take modern day sensibilities and layer it onto a character created in the 1970s in order to completely change the character is ridiculous. Especially when those sensibilities are so narrowly curtailed along racial cliches that the thought is, “He knows kung fu; therefore he must be Asian!” Why did no one protest when Ant-Man or Peter Quill or Doctor Strange was not cast with an Asian actor? And for the record, my sifu is Greek.

Personally, I’m hoping Iron Fist runs into Shang Chi. How cool would THAT be?

PAD

So while we were driving to the comic book store today, we were discussing how Paramount/CBS was coming down like a ton of bricks on “Axanar,” the new fan-made Star Trek film, and the circumstances that had resulted in it.

And Kath said, “Its become a major conflugration.”

And I said, “What? A what? A ‘conflugration?’ What the hëll is that? That’s not a word.”

(It’s not. I ran it through Merriam Webster and the Urban Dictionary. It doesn’t exist. So don’t tell me about some instances you found on Google because I don’t care.)

But the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. It’s a combination of “confluence” and “conflagration.” It’s when a series of things comes together to create a metaphorical inferno of screw-ups.

So everyone start using it because I want this to become a real word.

PAD

So it was brought to my attention on Twitter that Scans_Daily is still talking about me. Or perhaps more accurately, talking about not talking about me.

To recap: Seven years ago, someone decided to post half of an issue of X-Factor which I openly begged people not to spoil. Because it was so much of the issue, I brought it to Marvel’s attention. As a copyright defender, I felt obliged to do so (just as people inform me when they discover my books on pirate sites.) I didn’t approach the mods myself because I wasn’t the copyright holder and thus didn’t have the right to.

My expectation was that Marvel would have the pages taken down. Instead Livejournal, who hosted the site, shut down the entire thing because of copyright violation.

Did they blame themselves for causing the site to be taken down? Of course not. They blamed me. And to get back at me, once they reconstituted the site elsewhere, they declared my works were to be banned from the site forever. (They also sabotaged my Wiki page, cried out for boycotts, and flooded my website with diatribes, but that’s neither here nor there.) The ostensible reason was that it was out of respect to my wishes, even though it in fact flew in the face of my wishes. I specifically said that if they remained within the constraints of copyright, reproducing a couple panels or pages, I’d be fine with that. That if they wanted to reproduce more of something to which I owned the copyright, they simply had to come to me and ask. Nope. No go. No Peter David on Scans_Daily ever again, in order to “respect my wishes” that I never made.

So now it’s seven years later, someone asked about posting something of mine, and it’s thirty seven replies. Some people are being reasonable, and some are being dìçkš, which is pretty much the most that one can expect from the Internet.

Do I still believe I did the right thing? Of course. I did what I had to: I reported a copyright violation. If it had been ten pages of “Fallen Angel,” I’d have handled it myself, but I didn’t hold the copyright to X-Factor, so I told the folks who did. Was I expecting the site to be taken down? Good lord, no. I was quite new to it and had no idea that they were in violation of Livejournal’s term of service, which would result in them getting the heave ho.

If I’d known that they would get shut down, would I have done it differently? Yeah, maybe. I might have violated procedure and contacted the mods directly (although honestly, considering the amount of hostility that was fired off at me when I actually interacted with them, I’d have had no idea if they would’ve listened.) That’s always the oldest question, isn’t it. “If you’d known then what you know now.” It’s really a meaningless question because we all have to make our decisions based on the information we have at the time.

Do I regret anything? Yeah; I think I overreacted to the idiot who said they wanted me to die in a fire. That really pìššëd me off at the time. But I shouldn’t have let that get to me. That’s probably because the level of discourse on the Internet, and the world in general (*cough* Trump *cough*) has deteriorated so spectacularly that it’s hard to get a rise out of me anymore. I mean, when I had a stroke, one jerk declared that he was happy and hoped I’d die in a sea of my own šhìŧ. And I read that and just laughed. I’m 59 and insults from random jáçkáššëš just don’t bother me anymore.

In any event, if Scans_Daily still feels the need to keep punishing me for the actions that they took and refuse to accept that they caused, then fine. Whatever.

Hope that answers it.

PAD

ADDENDUM: Just for the record, if any of the Scans_Daily moderators wish to contact me directly at padguy@aol.com to see what can be worked out, I would be happy to speak to them. And for the record, I obviously don’t think everyone on Scans_Daily are idiots. The whole of no group could be idiots. Except Trump supporters.

This attempt to stonewall the SCOTUS for eleven months is the most blatant example of the GOP refusing to do their job since they shut down the government over a decade ago. I wonder how it would be if they had their own jobs on the line.

I wonder how they’d react if we got a petition going that said quite simply, “If you do not have a new justice on the Supreme Court within three months, then come November, and every election November after that, we, the people, will vote you out of office. We will hand Congress back to the Democrats because you are unable and/or unwilling to do your job.”

If we got a million people or more to sign it, from both parties, I wonder how that would go down?

Hëll, ten million.

PAD

So you’ve just had a meeting in which you decided that you definitely would not have ANY hearings for a new Supreme Court justice until after Obama leaves office (clearing the way for Obama himself to be nominated should a Democrat win, but never mind that.)

The excuse, given by the Majority whip John Conryn–when asked if Obama would be allowed to select the next member of SCOTUS–was: “No, after the next president is selected. That way the American people have a voice in the process.”

Please understand that I say this will all due respect:

WE ALREADY HAD A VOICE IN THE PROCESS, YOU ÃSSHØLÊ! WE ELECTED OBAMA IN THE FIRST PLACE, REMEMBER?! WE ELECTED HIM TWICE! NOW GET OUT OF HIS WAY AND LET HIM DO HIS GØÐÐÃMN JOB, YOU FÙÇKWÍT!

Thanks for listening.

PAD