Dime Store Riot

So after finishing the third season of Stranger Things , I’ve been thinking about Season Four—  Hopper is the American . Grigori, the Russian Terminator, refers to Hopper repeatedly as "the American." Nameless Soviet scientists enter the room before the explosion. The camera cuts away from Hopper but shows us the scientists going splat. When Joyce and Murray enter the room, the scientist splat is there but the grating where Hopper was standing is clean. Using the song "Heroes," I think, is another clue. That song played in the first season when we thought Will was dead. The last clue comes from the message you can hear if you dial Murray’s phone number (618-625-8313). The answering machine message is for Joyce and says they need to talk because he has news. (I think he’s been trying to track down Hopper).  Kamchatka Kamchatka as the location of the Soviet base is significant. It’s an isolated peninsula in the Siberian wilderness—but close enough

The last episode of Stranger Things S3 punched me in the gut with the feels and I totally teared up. Especially Hop's note: "The hurt is good. It means you're out of that cave..." I'm working on a long ramble about how much I appreciate how the show handles different types of people, but talking with a friend, he and I agreed -- the thing the show does best is empathy. I mean real empathy. No lecturing. No sitting you down and telling you how you're supposed to feel about something, but SHOWING you real empathy in action.

When I first started Stranger Things, I would have never believed Steve would be one of my favorite characters...

So Chuckie Schumer has asked for a probe into FaceApp.  Sigh... I'm actually laughing as I write this because I called it. Literally called it. FaceApp is not stealing your photos and sending them to Russia.  It doesn't ask for any other permissions than any other app that does anything with your photos and/or shares them on social media-- that's the only way for something like that to work . (Don't believe me? Look at the terms for every other app you're using.) The company has been around for a while. FaceApp has been around for a while. The only photos the app actually accesses are the ones you select and it gets uploaded to the cloud. The user who started this whole allegation on Twitter (that the app was uploading all their photos to their servers--deleted those tweets when he realized he was WRONG).  A couple of days ago I noticed the first "security concerns news story" from big media. All the stories were structured and written the

I like the Harry Potter series, but, man, those Cormoran Strike books just sound terrible... I picked one up at the library book sale yesterday and thumbed through it, reading random bits, and yeah... Also, Cormoran Strike is dumb name for a non-Potterverse character.

Couple of days before Season 3 dropped, I started a rewatch of Stranger Things from the beginning. In no particular order, couple of things struck me about the show in general during this rewatch and starting Season 3: I love Sheriff Hopper. I really do. I like how human he feels. How honest and real he is. How he’s not perfect--he's struggling with his past--but he tries to be a good man. The fact that he stress eats is such a nice touch (take note crime writers – people deal with stress other ways than the bottle in the desk drawer, it’s not 1950 anymore). And little things like him shaving his beard but keeping his mustache and then seeing him watching Magnum, PI. Those are things so many writers and so many shows miss out on. Those make a character real. Joyce is one of Winona Ryder’s best performances. And maybe it’s because she was the first actress I ever had a crush on (Lydia in Beetlejuice ), but even as a poor and tired single mom—she’s still hot. I know it’s

So The Last Czars on Netflix...is a hot mess. The studio behind it aimed to create a new genre: what they call "the megadoc.” A high end documentary with taking heads and an action-driven drama. Kind of a good idea, right? Imagine watching a premium cable period drama that cut to people explaining things. But it just doesn’t work. It’s weird and it’s jarring and the cuts between scripted actors, talking heads, and real-life footage break your attention. You combine that with random modern phraseology that’ll pop up in the re-enactments and random sexy bits for no good reason and the whole thing becomes kind of weird and off-putting and working against itself—here’s a sex scene with the Czar and his wife aaand--cut to a talking head telling you about poor economic conditions. You can't have Lenin's tomb BEFORE he's dead. The show is full of all sorts of little errors and just kind of lazy sloppiness (see the pic on the right for what I'm talking

If you don’t mind subtitles, I recommend the Russian historical crime-drama Fartsa (go ahead and laugh, it’s a funny name but it's a slang term that developed from the English phrase "for sale") on Netflix. It's set in the Soviet Union in 1961. It follows four young friends who get involved in “fartsovka” to help their friend who owes a large gambling debt. Farsovka was the secondary black market economy that centered on foreign goods (especially clothes you could sell to stilyagi—think hipster) and the difference in currency exchange rates (the official one versus the black market one). It’s well acted. Well written. Beautifully shot. Character driven—the friends struggle to deal with normal problems like love and happiness while navigating a criminal underworld. And it gives you a peek into what normal life was like in the Soviet Union. Plus, there’s a lot of fun rock and jazz music you’ve never heard.

If there were a publisher who was interested in follow-ups to Hoods, Hot Rods, and Hellcats (which I still move copies of), there are two other anthologies I have planned in my head. The first would be crime stories about Teddy Boys (picture 1) and the second would be crime stories about Soviet stilyagi (picture 2). Or maybe I should just get my act together and crowdfund them...