Dorkgasm - Gonzo Is God

Summer Reading and My Next Novel

MRiedlinger — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 02:17:59 +0000

So... Summer classes are over, and I'm sitting here with the ability to read anything I like. That said, I have only until 8/28/11 to read everything I want, and it's quite a list. Here's the run down:

1. Ghost Story by Jim Butcher
2. A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
3. The Unwritten (Vols. 2 & 3) by Mike Carey
4. The Boys (50-56) by Garth Ennis
5. Northlanders (Vols. 3 & 4) by Brian Wood
6. DMZ (Vols. 8-10) by Brian Wood
7. The Hedge Knight II: Sworn Sword by George R.R. Martin
8. Batman: Conspiracy by Paul Dini
9. Batman: The Widening Gyre by Kevin Smith
10. Courtney Crumrin Tales: The League of Ordinary Gentlemen by Ted Naifeh
11. Fables (Vols. 14 & 15) by Bill Willingham
12. Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love by Chris Roberson
13. House of Mystery (Vols. 4-6) by Bill Willingham (et al.)
14. Invisibles (all Vols.) by Grant Morrison

Looking at that, I'm a little intimidated. It's a lot, especially A Dance with Dragons, but I'm hoping I can get some of it read at least. The 28th, classes begin again, and Ive only got three semesters left on my MA. Yikes! This semester is Web Design (VERY helpful, considering the plans I've laid for Dark Days, Summer Nights, my first YA novel), and Novel. Last semester I took YA Novel, but this is going to be a little different. The plan, right now, is to work on an idea called "Horror Show". It's a tentative title, of course, but its something. It's about a couple of cable access shows whose crews, in the face of consolidation, start picking each other off in the style of bad horror film tropes. It's a horror comedy, and I'm having fun plotting it out and developing characters.

Well, if I'm going to get anything read, I need to run. Keep your eyes open for site updates, because as soon as I learn how to transfer the articles from here to Drupal 7, I'll be making some changes.

Cheers!

Michael C. Riedlinger

The Problem With Titles | Blog

MRiedlinger — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 23:10:23 +0000

At first it was a psuedo-memoir called My Father the Monster Hunter: A Son's Tale, but that proved to be far more autobiographical than fantastical, so I set it aside. Then, I reimagined it as a novel for Young Adults, but that required a new title. That's when I shortened it to Monster Hunter, but that still felt weird. Today I've settle on Night Beasts, and while that might change, I've plunged into this project headlong and love writing it so far. The story is about a 15 year old named Matt Willoghuby who is forced to go live with his dad after mom winds up in rehab. Dad isn't around much though because of his job, and the two need to learn how to cope as father and son.

And oh yeah, Matt's dad hunts monsters for a mysterious organization call Malleus Dei. To be honest, we won't get too deep into Malleus Dei in this book, but that's more reason for me to write a second. I'm trying to explore both sides of the father/son relationship more than anything though, with the action and horror bits sprinkled in for flavor. Or maybe its the other way around, and the father/son stuff is growing out of the horror/action elements. That'll really be for readers to decide.

I'm also writing to music, as usual. For this I decided that Matt should listen to a weird assortment of classic rock based stuff. I know my own son has fallen in love with bands like The Who and The Eagles, so this isn't too far off from normal I think. With films, TV shows, and commercials using these songs all the time, there's no reason a kid couldn't be into this playlist. Throw in games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero and I'm shocked more teens aren't bigger Metallica fans than their parents. Give it a listen, and if you have thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

Writing writing writing | Blog

MRiedlinger — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 04:48:46 +0000

So, as the site slowly turns into a blog for my work instead of a general news and reviews site, I continue to write. Today I signed up for a site called 8TRACKS.COM. It's a strange little site where you can share mixes of your own music. It's music you own, mixed however you choose, and then shared. Sharing playlists is the new mixtape I guess. So, I joined and slapped a mix up today. The music was from a playlist I've been editing "Black Art" to, and it's pretty upbeat, with a bit of techno-infused R&B. Some of it is from Europe, some from the states, but it's fun either way.

So, I mentioned I'm polishing "Black Art". It's a short story that a few friends have read, but otherwise it's not been seen by anyone but my professor. That professor is Ann Angel, who is herself an award winning author and full of great insight. So much so, in fact, I'm taking another class with her this semester. She's been a great encouragement to me, so check out her work.

I also submitted another short story, this one called "Gotham", to a contest. Playboy Magazine has an annual fiction contest for college writers, and me being in college AND a writer, well... The prize is $3000, and honestly, as much as I want that, the publication of "Black Art" is more important to me. You see, if I sell that story, I can join the Horror Writers Association. From there, I can seek out advice from even more people who have "made it" in this industry. I know I'm chasing a dream, but damnit, I refuse to give up. I keep setting goals, and this is the next one. Hell, the class I'm taking with Ann this semester is on Young Adult Novels, and I already have a lot of plotting done, character descriptions written, logline, and even a symbol from the book that won't come into play until near the end. I'm also planning on doing this as a multimedia thing, where the internet is used as a way to convey more information to young readers. The weirdest part for me is that the book doesn't have a firm title yet, but I'm strangely okay with that.

So, here's the early logline:

"During the summer between freshman and sophomore year, Matt Willoughby’s mom goes into rehab and Matt is forced to live with a man he barely knows: his father. "

What I'm not talking about in that line is what Matt's dad does for a living, mostly because Matt doesn't know at the beginning either. That said, I've also written a firm set of "rules" for this universe, which includes how to kill werewolves, and what warlocks are actually up to in the world. That's my big project for the next few months. I'd say "starting Wednesday", but it's pretty obvious that I've already started working on it. I'm also still working on stories for Haunted America from Publications International, LTD. It's another Armchair Reader book, but some of these articles are kicking my ass. Turns out, the less REAL info there is on something, the harder it is for me to research it. I got stuck for a few weeks (yes, weeks) trying to track down info on FAMOUS ghosts from the Hotel Chelsea. I have five, but I need three or four more still. There's a lot of ghosts from there, sure, but it would be weird to jump from Sid Vicious to "The Ghost from room 134", so I've been looking at gathering stories about the famous ones, and it's not been easy.

Why We All Need Kevin Smith's "Red State" To Do Well | My Two Cents

MRiedlinger — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 04:03:28 +0000

Let's face it folks, times are tough for everyone. I know this all too well, and if you've been following Dorkgasm over the years, you know we've had our ups and downs. This last year has been a down. I finished college and found a job market that was in the shitter. In times like this, a lot of folks get scared. Hell, I'm scared. My phone just got shut off, and rent is due in a few weeks. This site has fallen into disrepair because I just haven't had time for it. I started going to school for my Masters because, as much as I love it, being a freelance writer isn't paying the bills. Student loans help fill the gap for me and my family of five. Other people, also scared in these hard times, turn to things that scare me more. They hate. They blame. They start seeing enemies that aren't really there.

And then Kevin Smith comes along with Red State. At first I thought he was making another comedy. Shit, all of his movies have been comedies, so that assumption made sense. Then I saw the first trailer, and I was blown away. Now, don't get me wrong. Red State doesn't look like the next Citizen Kane or anything, but it is good to see a departure from Kevin Smith because it means that in tough times he did what most don't: he changed. He could have easily made a cheap dick-and-fart joke comedy about rednecks and called it Red State, but instead he made a horror movie. When people are freaking out about jobs, immigrants, terrorists and all sorts of shit, Kevin Smith made a bonafied horror film about the things that SHOULD scare us the most, but we choose to ignore.

Back in my undergrad studies, we talked about this thing called "Unheimlich". Without going all academic on you, the gist is that we instinctively fear that which seems different from us. Unfortunately that also means we don't fear the really dangerous shit that seems familiar. That's what Smith's film is about though. Scary motherfuckers that look just like you, me and grandpa who take all their misguided, poisonous beliefs and throw them at unsuspecting victims. Look at the trailer for Red State:

See, just like us, but not. We NEED this film right now I think. We need a movie that puts us all in our place and reminds us of what MIGHT happen. The best horror and sci-fi movies have always done this anyway, and Smith, well, he's a dork just like us, so he knows that. Think about Planet of the Apes. That movie ends on the shittiest of down notes. Heston rides off into the sunset, but the camera stays with the hero, and we discover that this nightmare we just watched him live through is all our fault. Pretty deep stuff for a film about talking monkeys. The thing is, the "message" of Red State isn't the only reason we need this film right now. We need it because Kevin Smith is one of our fallen heroes, and our generation needs a fucking phoenix.

Yeah, I said fallen. Sure, Cop Out and Zack and Miri made their money back, but they were barely there. These films didn't make an impact like they should have. Before that, Smith, bless his heart, pandered to us shitheel fanboys with Clerks 2 and Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, even though he proverbially closed the book on the View-Askewaverse. This was the guy who came from humble fucking beginnings and gave us Clerks and Chasing Amy for fuck sake, and we looked up to him because he made it. I looked up to him because he was a fellow fat comic nerd who loved movies and he fucking made it. But then he fell. Not that he's been hurting, mind you. I'm sure he hasn't worried about his phone getting shut off like mine just did, but he hasn't been invited to all the big shows, has he? This guy didn't get into filmmaking just to be the dick-and-fart joke king, he wanted to make important films as well. The evidence of that is all over his work if you know what you're looking for. And now, here he is, reinventing himself, and I say HELL YES!

See, if Kevin Smith can do it AGAIN, then it isn't over for our generation of ne'er-do-wells. It isn't over for me. If Red State can make an impact on us, then he still has it. Go back and watch that trailer again. That's a film put together with some god damned conviction if I ever saw one. It isn't just some slick blood-and-gore fest being foisted on us by a marketing machine, it's a work of passion, and I think that will show. I WANT it to show. I want to believe again that the end is NOT fucking nigh, and that the real boogeymen can be just the evil weirdos on a silver screen. Get up, go out, and see this when it comes out. Do it for Kevin Smith, he needs a real win. Do it for yourselves, because we all need a win to, don't we?

Death Walks the Streets comics 2011 | Trailer Park

Sysop — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 02:28:24 +0000

Hey, it's new to them, it's new to us, now it's new to you.

The fact is, we've been waiting so long for this project to come to fruition, we'll take what we can get. We understand, and have even covered the issues faced by the production on our site, but suffice to say, we're going on 6 years now. We wish Jim and company the best of luck, and can't wait to see more!

Offline | Site Maintenance

Sysop — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 23:22:31 +0000

Sorry for the down time folks. We had a few issues with spammers and I had to pull us down for a bit. From here on out, if you're a user from China or the former Soviet Union, I'll enjoy blocking your IP when you create user names like "buymoreuggboots771", and to the dude in Germany who tried to brute force his/her way into our database:

Adidas Star Wars Commercial | My Two Cents

MRiedlinger — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:30:06 +0000

Far, Far Away
By
Michael C. Riedlinger
Editor-In-Chief

Anyone who has met and spoke with me for any length of time has typically been treated to two of my favorite subjects: Star Wars and Soccer. Hell, I even confuse people here in the States by calling it football. If the subjects don’t come up somehow, then usually tattoos have in some way, and I’ve got one for each, on each shoulder. On the left is a Mandalorian emblem, and on the right is the crest for Manchester United. These facts are well known to my friends, so last week they all started sending me the same video, over and over. Even my ex-wife sent it to me in a rare show of “no one loves soccer and Star Wars more than this guy”. So then, why don’t I love the new Addidas World Cup commercial featuring Chalmun’s Cantina in Mos Eisley from Star Wars?

Pretty much the coolest idea ever

First off, the sport doesn’t really feature in the commercial at all. Sure, it’s about how everyone comes together for Earth’s greatest sport, but only because they tell us so. David Beckham features prominently in it, but he’s playing Brit ex-pat hanging in a strange world, which he’s done quite well while being useless in Los Angeles. Then there’s the duo from Daft Punk. I love Daft Punk, but they don’t scream “FOOTBALL” to me. Nor, for that matter, does a light saber wielding Snoop Dogg. All of these disparate elements come together like this:

Funny, I admit, but not something that has ANYTHING to do with soccer, let’s be honest. The second major issue I have is that the folks at Adidas seem to have given up on capitalizing on American passions for the world’s favorite sport and have decided to use the same tactics Hollywood has used to sell us loads of crap.

Who loves 'splosions? This guy loves 'splosions!

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Alice | In Case You Missed It...

JSobczak — Sat, 15 May 2010 23:19:25 +0000

Down the Hole Again
By
Jenny Sobczak

Syfy likes reimagining books and turning them into mini-series. At the end of 2007, The Wizard of Oz became Tinman, with Zooey Deschanel as DG and Neal McDonough as Cain, also known as the titular Tin Man. Last December 6th and 7th, Alice in Wonderland became Alice, the story of a black-belt who accidentally follows her boyfriend and his abductors through the looking glass and into another world. Once there, the viewers recognize that they’re not in the Wonderland from the novel. Written and directed by Nick Willing, Alice shows us what Wonderland might look like in modern times, almost 150 years after the novel was written.

The miniseries is full of visual twists and turns. The venture to bring Wonderland from the 19th to the 21st century must have been a large undertaking, but the artists involved do it well. From the houses of cards, to the Queen of Hearts’ throne, almost everything is reminiscent of objects from earlier film adaptations of this set of novels. It also makes an active effort to tie “The Walrus and the Carpenter” into the story, rather than keeping it as a story within the story. It introduces the concept of the citizens of Wonderland calling the humans “oysters,” which is one of the better tie-ins in the mini-series.

The performances by the lead actors, particularly that of Kathy Bates as the Queen of Hearts, were very good considering it was a TV miniseries in two episodes. Bates made a very royal queen, somehow, even though she was dressed in what looked like a floor-length muumuu. There were fewer decapitation sentences than there might have been, but it hardly registers as a problem with the movie. Caterina Scorsone, as Alice, was very convincing. She didn’t overact, which can be a problem in made-for-TV films like this. And Andrew Lee Potts, as Hatter, was considerably less mad than the traditional Mad Hatter, but a more interesting character with a bigger purpose than in any previous movie version of the story.

Click image to visit the official site. Image Copyright SyFy.

It may be difficult to imagine the Wonderland mythology without an appearance by the Cheshire cat, but – spoiler alert – he hardly makes an appearance in Willing’s version. Fortunately, both episodes do just fine without him. With the plot falling in how it does, I have a harder time finding a place for the Cheshire cat than I do with accepting his absence. Even with how iconic the character of the Cheshire cat is to the original story and all other film adaptations, the rest of the events in Alice don’t really make me miss this one character. All characters in Willing’s miniseries are human, even the ones that were animals originally. For a science fiction version of the story, it works well.

Alice in Wonderland seems just as strange a choice for reimagining as The Wizard of Oz does, but Syfy makes it work. This mini-series originally aired at a time when most people had heard about Tim Burton’s adaptation of the same story and were eagerly awaiting its arrival in theaters. It is as though Syfy anticipated this waiting period and created something with the same familiar story in order to distract us: like they, along with Nick Willing, decided to take advantage of the public’s desire to see one Alice in Wonderland tale and hoped people wouldn’t mind seeing two. It’s an effective tactic, though. Plus, the commercials showed just enough of Tim Curry to get Rocky Horror Picture Show fans pulled in. I watched mostly because I saw Tim Curry was in it, and even though his character plays a very small role, I still found myself interested in the rest of the story. If the SyFy Channel airs this one again, tuning in wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Fuck You, Alan Tudyk | My Two Cents

MRiedlinger — Sat, 15 May 2010 22:52:34 +0000

Fuck you, Alan Tudyk
By
Michael C. Riedlinger
Editor-in-Chief

Transformers 2 was the biggest piece of soulless cinematic crap this side of the centennial divide. The film was poorly written, poorly directed, and all too often “we’ll fix it in post” was used as an excuse for making a film in the same way Ed Wood used to make his “masterpieces”. Now comes word that genre favorite, Alan Tudyk, famed for dying on screen far too often, has signed on for Transformers 3. I guess he looked at it as a way to finally kill his last shred of dignity on film too.

Look, Alan is making the right decision for his career. Even with the second film being a steaming pile, it MADE a steaming pile of cash. Audiences were roped in by the familiarity of the characters and forgot to give a crap that the story had plot holes a mile wide or that they were cheated on the visuals. So what if Prime’s resurrection scene was mostly a close-up shot of a flag waving in the desert wind, they got to see him get up and kick ass. For most of us, it was one of those films we used to imagine as a kid when we played with our toys and beat up younger siblings for running off with Prime’s trailer right before we used it. Our versions of Prime coming back to life (especially after Transformers: The Movie came out) were mostly stuck in our brains too, so we didn’t give a crap about being cheated by Michael Bay. Instead we saw the film twice, because 2009 was one of the shittiest years ever for movies.

Now replace the words of the Winnie the Pooh song with "Shia LeBouf"...
You can hate me later for it

That’s exactly what Alan Tudyk is giving a crap about right now. He knows he’s died a thousand times, and that he isn’t likely to break out of his place in Hollywood. They’ll always need that likeable character actor that everyone recognizes as the likeable sidekick because it makes audiences gasp in surprise when he is killed off… again. If I were Alan, I’d probably take the money and run too, but all too often, we idealize these actors based on the characters they’ve played. Alan Tudyk is no different than any of us. He wants to pay his bills and buy cool shit, and in order to do that, he can’t scoff at Bay’s money just because we think it’s beneath him or that the film he’s making will likely be on par with Robot Jox, but with recognizable iconography.

Still, I’ve judged him. I’m bummed that Tudyk has signed on and drank the Michael Bay Kool-Aid. But that drink is green and more intoxicating than my petty flights of fancy about artistic integrity. The fact is, Alan has very little to worry about except maybe paying higher taxes. After all, look at Forest Whitaker. He played a role in Battlefield Earth on of the worst films, sci-fi or otherwise, to be released to the public. That was in 2000, and six years later he won Best Actor for his role in Last King of Scotland. Integrity be damned, the man was able to collect a paycheck and still pull off an amazing performance in a dramatic role later on. Hell, Forest is even in the new remake of Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 2001 classic, Das Experiment… Wait. What? Oh man, fuck you too Forest Whitaker!

D&D through 4E AD&D | RPG Review

ManyFacesSejah — Sat, 15 May 2010 22:08:06 +0000

A History
By
J. Blaze Ward
Temple of Conflict

My Gods… what have I done. This review is going to be insane.

DnD was what I cut my teeth on. It’s how I discovered roleplaying. I went over to a friend’s house one night in the wild outback of Washington State, and I woke up chewing on his book. I was about 8 years old.

I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a group of four 7 to 9 year olds play Dungeons and Dragons, or any tabletop game, but they don’t precisely follow rules. We would roll up characters, and then roll a die randomly to determine what level we were, and then just pick a bunch of spells that were cool out of the book and hurl ourselves relentlessly at random stuff included in the books.

For those of you that don’t know what DnD one looked like, here’s an archeological reference:

We didn't read this

See how it says “Read this book first” up at the top? With a fucking exclamation point? Yeah, obviously that didn’t apply to us. We picked through, tossed out all the bullshit rules (anything our 7 year old brains couldn’t comprehend) and started playing.

I remember half way through our first combat round we suddenly realized that we didn’t have hit points on our sheet. The monsters all had hit points.

Instead of looking at the rules, we deduced, by simple logic, that this meant that we couldn’t be damaged, and we pushed forward.

After about six months of regular playing, we shackled down my mother one night. She decided to make a witch… which broke our poor young brains. Well, she couldn’t be a witch. She had to be a wizard. There weren’t any witches, so she couldn’t be one.

Then she said that she’d play a wizard, but she wanted to be an elf. She couldn’t do that… elves were another entire class. You could either be a wizard, or an elf. Not both. That would break the world. She had, in under a half hour, completely screwed our collective pooch with her pursuit of "Things Which Could Not Be". This was my first lesson on how evil women are.

This broke down into about four hours of her actually reading the rules, and telling us how horribly wrong we’d been playing the game so far.

This has come to be known as My Fall from Grace. My PC had hit points, and therefore could now die… which I did. Over, and over. And over. And over and over and over and over. I’m pretty sure, somewhere, there was an entire nation of undead beings created from the bodies of my fallen characters.

Basic DnD is just that. It’s very basic. It’s a very swift system, with very little in the way of situational modifiers to confuse beginning players. Unfortunately, it also has a staggering amount of loopholes and situations that are not covered by modifiers which will confuse the crap out of beginning players. Basic DnD is the Catch 22 of the gaming world. It’s a great place to start, but only if you have someone who knows what they’re doing to show you how to start. The very nice thing about the system is that if you do have a DM who is experienced at just running games in general (not even DnD) that they can usually cover most of the situations with some off-the-cuff modifier or role-making decision. This makes a terrific game for a casual weekend with friends.

Basic DnD gets 6 crits out of 10.

And then the damn system evolved (or a new one was created, depending on your particular religious idiom) which just went further with the pooch screwing.

I hauled my bitter, broken, angry ten year old butt down to WarGames West one mid-summer afternoon, and ran face to face into this book right here:

Ogres + Halberds... not a fun combination

I was stunned. ADVANCED Dungeons and Dragons? What the FUCK!? Were they trying to say I was some sort of feeble newbie? Were they trying to suggest that I, in all my 10 year old glory, didn’t have a flying clue what I was doing? I immediately ran shrieking to my father (who was bored, as he hated gaming stores) and informed him that he had to buy this book for me because the fate of nations depended upon it. Realizing the truth in the statement, he did just that.

I spent the rest of the vacation pouring over the various monster descriptions and thinking of how totally awesome they were, even going so far as to chatter my dad’s ear off about stuff he could never conceivably care about… like otyughs. He did his best feigning interest until I got tired of talking and went back to reading.

It wasn’t until I was back in Washington State that I realized I actually needed the rule books too. Yep, somehow, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was more Advanced than normal Dungeons and Dragons, and you couldn’t play ADnD with the old rules. I think it was two or three months before I actually got the rules.

I was blown away. Was this the same game? It had HARD COVERS! On all the books!? No longer could we fold the cover back and show how right we were to Player X or DM Y with vicious stabbing motions of our pre-pubescent fingers. Now our game was Official. Now we treated the books like tomes of ancient lore, handling them with the utmost of care, and being careful to never put a single mark in them. Yeah. Right. Within a month, all the books looked like they’d been covered in meat and thrown into a pool of water filled with sharks that had pens and pencils for teeth. Rough doesn’t begin to cover it.

Everything fucking made sense. Races were races. You could be an elf AND a wizard! Classes were classes, and you could even, if you really kicked ass, be more than one! Monsters were even more super-deadly, the pictures were more super-awesome, and the modifiers were more super-modifier..ing. If you were carrying 90 lbs worth of gear on your back and you had to jump over a 15 foot chasm which was covered in oil on the other side… you could figure out exactly what you needed to roll in order to die horribly.

This, obviously, was the game for me. This was the ultimate in the gaming experience. I could never find anything better than this, and I played it faithfully for a long while... until this came out:

This taught me the meaning of "Losing My Shit"

I completely lost my shit.

Up until current day, with all the editions, and rule changes, and errata, and random bizarre weapons out of Dragon Magazine, NOTHING has topped the Dark Sun setting in DnD. Nothing. Ever. Anywhere.

When it came out, I picked up a set. Many of my gaming group thought it was ‘too hard’ because of such rule tomfoolery as “You have to carry enough water to not die.” I could go on for hours about Dark Sun, but I won’t. Because I’m focused on (A)DnD right now. And also because the asshats at TSR came out with this:

Surely this would be the last book I ever had to buy...

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