Dime Store Riot

Now that the most recent season is on Netflix, we've been rewatching  American Dad .  Hearing Scott Grimes voice Steve Smith really makes me want to watch  Critters  and  Critters 2  again.

The most interesting thing about the TRENDING ticker along the side of your Facebook feed? Clicking a topic, pretty much any topic, and seeing how many people share and comment on an article while clearly never having read it. Pretty much sums up one of the biggest problems with how we process, share, and deal with information on the internet.

I came across this list by the extremely talented but woefully unprofilic T.E.D. Klein. I have not read a couple of these, so it looks like I have a lot of new stories to track down: THE 13 MOST TERRIFYING HORROR STORIES Casting the Runes by M.R. James   The Novel of the Black Seal by Arthur Machen The Willows by Algernon Blackwood The Dunwich Horror by HPL Bird of Prey by John Collier Who Goes There? by Don A. Stuart (John W. Campbell) Antarctic horror, the genesis of The Thing. They Bite by Anthony Boucher Stay off the Moon! by Raymond F. Jones Ottmar Balleau X 2 by George Bamber First Anniversary by Richard Matheson The Autopsy by Michael Shea The Trick by Ramsey Campbell To Build a Fire by Jack London

I was watching a show the other night and was just totally put off by one of the characters. Couldn't put my finger on it for the longest time. Then it hit me...the character reminds me of Karen from Californication who I absolutely positively hated. The problem with disliking Karen (and I’m not alone in this) is that you were supposed to like her. Her relationship with Hank was the big arc of the show. As much as you wanted it to resolve and Karen to just go away, she’d always come right back (which is why I often ended up hate-watching the show more often than not).  That's left me thinking a lot about characters in TV shows and books that you were supposed to love but don't. Wondering why that happens? What goes wrong? And why, more often than not, the writer doesn't adjuster their program or series accordingly.

Think it's about time to rewatch Life . Alongside Terriers , it's probably one of my favorite recent shows that never got a fair shake thanks to the networks and some terrible marketing.  "I want to be the unwobbling pivot at the centre of an ever-revolving universe. I want to be still." --Charlie Crews Honestly, too, it's a same that both shows didn't come along just a little bit later. I think one of the streaming services would have taken them over in a heartbeat.

Shinsuke Nakamura's acquisition by the WWE is probably the smartest move they've made in years. Let's hope they don't waste him or completely blow the opportunity.

Showtime finally remembered they used to air The Red Shoe Diaries and greenlit a show called Submission written and directed by the talented Jacky St. James . If you were intrigued by 50 Shades of Grey , Submission tackles similar material but is both far better written and far sexier. If you were, rightly, put off by 50 Shades of Grey , Submission does NOT portray BDSM as something messed up and dark or attempt to pass off an abusive relationship as an “alternative lifestyle.” Submission is also just fun and sexy smut.

I have a lot of thoughts about the Captain America Agent of Hydra controversy (especially re: “fan entitlement” as an insult to blow off critique) that’ll I’ll get to later but for right now, there are a couple of things that are in the forefront of my mind. First, I think some of the conniption fits like this would just die down if the media wouldn’t turn them into a big deal. But unfortunately, real journalism is dead so things like Captain American secretly being an agent of Hydra get reported widely. And a big part of the problem is we still haven’t worked out all the kinks in our relationship to the internet/social media so no one seems to understand: the internet/social media makes it easy for people to complain, the asshole and the jerk will always open their mouth, and not every complaint is valid or even worth acknowledging. However, I think part of the problem is that we have a screwed up relationship to “art.” I think, we need to view the entire thing more bro