Monthly Archives: January 2017

Announcements, Crossposted, Essays

Politics: Neither Fun nor Profitable

Schlock Mercenary is, in its heart of hearts, satire. It has always been political, but those messages are delivered in the abstract. It is sociopolitical satire framed in military sci-fi comedy. It invites the reader to laugh as they ask questions, but it does not commit to giving them hard and fast answers.

On rare occasion the blog posts beneath the comic have been a bit more explicitly political. Over the years I’ve determined that political punditry isn’t something I enjoy, and that the people who find it profitable seem to also encourage a widening of the spaces between us, driving both the left and the right to more entertaining¹ extremes. Mostly, then, my blog is about movies and merchandise.

Of late, however, my Twitter feed has been extremely political. This isn’t because I enjoy politics, nor because I’m seeking attention. It’s because important things are happening², and I believe they’re important enough for me to expend a bit of my social capital to boost critical messages. I still tweet the slice-of-life silliness I used to, but the mirth is diluted a bit.

The pattern described above is likely to continue:

  • Schlock Mercenary is going to follow the outline I’ve established for it, and won’t wander off into what would definitely be the weeds for the story I’m telling in order to take specific political positions.
  • The blog below the comic is going to focus mostly on movie review things, merchandising, and the occasional public service announcement.
  • My Twitter feed is going to reflect my personal opinions on matters of the soul, the State, and a scattering of other things. It’s going to remain on the side-bar here at schlockmercenary.com, but you’re neither required nor expected to read it.

Regardless of what is said in any of these spaces, each of them belongs to me. I’m under no obligation, legal or moral, to give equal time to positions other than my own³. I do feel a strong obligation to say things that are true. I aspire to the high levels of journalistic integrity currently demonstrated by people like Farenthold and Tapper, but I’m not a journalist, so I’m much more likely to get things wrong from time to time.

¹ “Entertaining” in the same way that watching a car accident is entertaining. I hold the modern pundit-provocateur in extremely low regard. 

² Political protest appears to be on track to be the American national pastime for 2017, displacing Baseball.

TakeMeOutToTheProtest

³ My personal political positions have changed over the years, and some have flipped nearly 180 degrees. You can peruse howardtayler.com/blog if you’d like (not everything there cross-posts to schlockmercenary.com) but only the most current stuff is going paint an accurate reflection of what I think.

 

Crossposted, Reviews

XXX: The Return of Xander Cage

XXX3ReturnofXanderCageXXX: The Return of Xander Cage took some time to get moving, and the first half had enough skin in it to have nearby Bond films politely requesting that Mr. Diesel not track sand through their garden. Somewhere around the mid-point the movie engaged for me. I think it may have been when I realized that they were going to attempt an ensemble piece, and that they might just pull it off.

And they did! By the end it really was an ensemble piece, giving plenty of camera time to Donnie Yen, Deepika Padukone, and Ruby Rose¹. It also repented nicely for the Ice Cube installment of the Triple X franchise with some of the smoothest ret-conning² I’ve seen in a while.

The second half of the film saved the movie from the first half, but it made me sit up and ask why they bothered with the first half, and imagining the ways they could have done Act I more entertainingly. That right there is what’s keeping XXX: The Return of Xander Cage from clearing my Threshold of Awesome. And that makes me sad, because the Deepika Padukone/Ruby Rose scenes¹ in Act III deserve to be above the threshold.

 

¹ I would watch an entire season of TV built around Padukone and Rose being gunslingers, perhaps headlining a full ensemble of ladybro³ wit, wile, and badassery.

² So smooth it might not even be considered a retcon, really. Spy movies can do this well by giving us the “you don’t have the whole story” moments, and it’s not even cheating when they do it right.

³ “Ladybro” is a term I first heard from editor Navah Wolfe, and I might not be using it correctly. I think it means “all X-chromosome buddy-cop-style relationships.” If it doesn’t mean that, then I need a different word that does.

Crossposted, Reviews

Lemony Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

UnfortunateEventsOrdinarily I don’t review television programs, but there have been enough exceptions that I’m not breaking a rule at this point, you’re just experiencing another edge case.

Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events is proving to be delightful. I’ve watched the first four episodes, and I’m hooked. The series has two of my favorite things in it: clever writing, and Patrick Warburton. Imagine Kronk, or perhaps The Tick narrating in the bleak tones of Lemony Snicket, and warning you at the beginning of each episode that you really don’t want to continue.

It’s a bold move. When your story, as part of the story, is telling people not to keep reading, or watching, you’d better be doing it in a manner so entertaining that the audience hopes the warnings will continue.

In this case it is, and they do.

There’s much more than just dire warning working in favor of this series. Malina Weissman and Louis Hynes are awesome, Presley Smith would chew scenery if given the chance, and over-the-top melodramatic performances are turned in by Neil Patrick Harris, Joan Cusack, Aasif Mandvi, Usman Ally, Joyce and Jacqueline Robbins, and Cobie Smulders, and I’m only halfway through.

Were this series available on Blu-Ray or DVD I’d cheerfully pay season-of-TV-series rates for it. It’s not, but by that math the series totally paid for two months of Netflix just by existing.

 

Journal

Call Your Representatives

In light of the current (Jan 11, 2017) political sitch¹, and given the fact that many people are uncomfortable cold-calling their Congressional representatives, here is a script:

Hello. I’m [ YOUR NAME ] from [CITY, STATE] in the [ZIP] zip code. I want you to take the allegations against Trump seriously, and make sure that he is working for America, not for Russia.

I find it easier to work from a script when cold-calling anybody. This includes my favorite Chinese food place. There’s no shame in having a crib sheet.

If you need contact information, it’s available on the internet. Here’s a full list for Senators, but I found the easiest thing for me to do was Google my rep’s name, and the words “DC Phone number.” Then I picked up the phone and dialed.

That’s actually the hardest part. Pick up the phone and dial.

¹Any political situation that has you concerned² may merit a phone call.  

²If you don’t trust your representative, the script may simply be “I don’t trust you. I want you to start doing things to make me trust you.” Congressfolk take that kind of challenge pretty seriously.