Jeff’s Movie Reviews – Disney’s New Streaming Platform, Disney+
Posted: November 22, 2019 Filed under: Jeff's Movie Reviews, Movie Review, Movies, Opinion, Writing | Tags: Disney+, Jeff Bowles, Jeff's Movie Reviews, Streaming Services, Writing to be Read 1 Comment
Get Some Mouse In Your House
by Jeff Bowles
In the future, all forms of video entertainment will be called “Disneys”. I’m sure of it. Saw it in an old sci-fi movie once, and with the release of the brand-new video streaming platform Disney+, the House of Mouse is one step closer to future dystopian entertainment dominance.
Disney+ puts together an admirable and alluring package. But only if you’re a Disney fan. More or less, that’s the dividing line of the whole experience. Featuring many of the best films, shorts, and television series the company has ever produced or co-produced, the platform attempts to appeal to a wide swath of the general video-viewing population, which is to say, anyone who grew up with Disney. Which is more or less everyone living on the planet today.
Ubiquity serves the company well, of course, but it seems Disney isn’t taking anything for granted. For a startup streaming service, Disney+ offers an impressive cross-section of an almost century-long legacy of family-friendly entertainment. Boot it up for the first time, and you’ll find stuff going all the way back to 1928. Steamboat Willie, Snow White and Seven Dwarves, Old Yeller, Pete’s Dragon, Tron, The Little Mermaid, it’s all there. And if you happen to be an adult of the nerdy persuasion, the platform also leverages Disney’s recent acquisitions of Marvel, Lucasfilm, and to a lesser extent, 20th Century Fox. Right on the home screen, a set of helpful studio icons cuts out the middle man and gets you right to the saber swinging and web-slinging. They even have their own animations. Look! The Marvel icon plays that verbose movie intro we love so much! Hurrah!
Perhaps most amazingly of all, the price point is a good deal lower than other competing streaming services. For seven bucks, you get all this and more. It should give Netflix, Apple, and Amazon a run for their money, though Disney owns Hulu now, which I guess means they get to keep all their commercial-interrupted, cut-for-television Avengers movies. Hurrah?
Evidently, Disney+ is a big hit already. Not two weeks after launch and Disney has declared 10 million initial subscribers. Disney stocks have gone through the roof, and every major media outlet seems to have reported on it. It’s good news for a company that’s had plenty of ups and downs in recent decades. And it’s good for the consumer, too. Sure, the dream of non-segmented television services may be dead, but the golden age of digital entertainment surges on. Disney, in all its varied manifestations, has a lot to do with the direction Hollywood has taken in this regard.
Only thing is, some people don’t like Disney very much, and their reasons for not doing so are valid. Even in light of its impressive legacy, the entertainment giant has taken a beating now and then for cultural insensitivity, outdated gender politics, racial stereotyping, and if you’re a storyteller of any kind (like most people here on Writing to Be Read), pretty dull and repetitive cookie-cutter narratives.
There are some elements of the initial lineup—particularly a few of the older films—that stand out as uniquely offensive by modern standards. Even something seemingly innocuous like 1953’s Peter Pan contains elements that are, put simply, shockingly racist. Disney has added a short disclaimer to certain movies that suggests they understand their own culpability in this, but the disclaimer’s bare language may not go far enough for some. Unfortunately for Disney, it’s hard to embrace the beloved past without acknowledging there may be skeletons in the closet.
But it can’t be all bad, right? The good outweighs the bad? Right? Right? Ah, for Goofy’s sake, what about all the Marvel and Star Wars! And all the Lion King and the Aladdin and the Pirates of the Caribbean and the Fantasia and the… and the…
See how quickly that escalates?
Interestingly enough, Disney has really thrown themselves a little consumer party here. Some of the heaviest hitters in Disney+’s lineup are in full 4K HDR resolution, which is kind of mind-blowing considering Netflix charges more than twice as much for the same feature. To go back to Star Wars and Marvel for a moment, every single film in both catalogues is in ultra high definition. If you were to buy 4K blu-rays of the same movies, they’d run you thirty bucks a pop. Here’s another little secret. The original Star Wars trilogy has been covertly remastered and released on Disney+ before fans are even able to purchase it on disc. That’s a huge deal if you love the series… and if you can afford a 4K TV.
This serves to illustrate the odd dichotomy that defines Disney+. At the same time cheap and built for people with at least a little money, simultaneously as warmhearted and as calculated as anything else they’ve ever made. The basic user interface is fine, colorful and user-friendly, with additional improvements forthcoming. Designed by the same people who built the Netflix interface, it bears many commonalities to the much older platform, including the constant inability to find what you need at the exact moment you need it.
Would it kill you to stop recommending me The Mandalorian? I’m already watching it for cripes sake! He’s a more enthusiastic version of Boba Fett with a Force-using green infant as a sidekick. #BabyYoda – you’ll know what I mean when you see him.
BOTTOM LINE
If you’re a fan of Disney and all the many properties they own or co-produce, I do believe you won’t be disappointed in the service. It houses, after all, a pretty large assortment of movies and shows that are easy to digest and generally satisfying. And to tell you the truth, it’s way too cheap for what it offers. Look for them to jack up the price at some point, I’m sure, but for now it’s kind of a no-brainer. If you’re into this sort of thing.
Jeff’s Movie reviews gives Disney+ an 8 out of 10. Now where are my Mickey ears? Who’s got two thumbs and hasn’t seen Fantasia 2000 in exactly nineteen years? This guy!
Check out Jeff Bowles Central on YouTube – Movies – Video Games – Music – So Much More!
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Jeff’s Pep Talk: Roleplaying Games – Alternative Means of Expression Part III
Posted: September 4, 2019 Filed under: Inspirational, Opinion, Pep Talk, Writing, Writing Tips | Tags: Dungeons & Dragons, Jeff's Pep Talk, Pep Talk, Role Playing Games, Writing, Writing to be Read 3 Comments
Roleplaying Games – Alternative Means of Expression Part III
By Jeff Bowles
The first Wednesday of every month, science fiction and horror writer Jeff Bowles offers advice to new and aspiring authors. Nobody ever said this writing thing would be easy. This is your pep talk.
Earlier this year, I wrote two articles about finding new writing inspiration in what I called alternate means of creative expression. In the first article, I talked about creating new non-writing projects to jumpstart your inspiration, and in article two, I shared the perspective that sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself in the face of writing burnout is to—get this—quit for a while. If you’ve read the Pep Talk before, you know I’m a huge advocate for treating yourself well as a precursor to good creative output. I’ve seen too many very talented, very capable writers hit a wall in their work and tear themselves to pieces because they can no longer commit to a regular writing schedule. Being an author can be a pretty tough gig, and it does most people no good to pretend burnout doesn’t exist. Be kind to yourself. Recognize human creativity is not an inexhaustible resource, but rather, is more like a battery that occasionally needs a recharge.
This month I’ve got some new ideas how to go about said recharge, all centered on a little thing many adults have a hard time engaging in: play.
I like to play. In fact, you could say I’m an enthusiast. When I was a kid, sometimes the only refuge from school, bullies, and the pressures of modern family life was in fun and games. The thing about kids is nobody has told them yet it’s not okay to use their imaginations. You may not believe me on this, but a lot of people learn to ignore their creative impulses because they’re not “practical,” “serious,” or “valuable” enough for the adult world.
But you and I are storytellers, which means we know better. I say the day you stop playing is the day you lose contact with your own heart and soul. When I was getting too old for make-believe on the playground, I got into playing video games. Later, I got into playing music with my friends. In either case, I refused to sever contact with that part of myself that required the emotional release of a rollicking good time. And since we’re all storytellers here, odds are you may be a lot like me, in the sense that some part of you still feels the need to bring to life concepts, characters, and worlds that previously only existed in your head.
In my very personal experience, video games are a good way of nursing a bruised and battered creative drive, and if you’re so inclined, or if you simply haven’t played a good game in years, you might be surprised to learn modern gaming offers so much more quality and variety than players had access to in decades past. Only problem with video games is that although they’re interactive by nature, they’re often no different than watching a movie or a TV show, at least as far as these things go. In gaming, I don’t get to create the story, not really. Some other storyteller is graciously offering his or her talents, which in itself offers a fine respite, but it doesn’t always help me find my own inspiration.
So may I offer an alternative, one that might shock you in its sheer unabashed nerdiness. Back in the 1970s, people used to have to—wait for it—use their imaginations if they wanted to play. On a whim inspired by fantasy literature like The Lord of the Rings, a small group of very talented and enterprising nerds created something brand new from some very old storytelling traditions. (Nerds is not a pejorative, by the way. Not in the year 2019. These days, I’m a nerd, you’re a nerd, the old lady down the street is a nerd, and so is her pet poodle.) In 1974, a man called Gary Gygax published the very first version of Dungeons and Dragons, and the world of tabletop roleplaying was born. Now I know what you’re thinking.
“Dungeons and Dragons? Isn’t that only for people with bad acne, social issues, and a penchant for dwelling in their mothers’ basements well into their mid-40s?”
I’ll admit, the stereotypes tend to cling to D&D like a shirt of fine mithril clings to the back of a frightened halfling. But here’s the thing, tabletop roleplaying games engage an individual’s storytelling capacity in some pretty surprising and dynamic ways. For those not in the know, roleplaying games (RPGs) involve a shared storytelling experience between players and a game runner—in D&D parlance, a Dungeon Master. The game is all pretend and dice rolls, slowly and joyfully co-creating and co-experiencing an unfolding adventure completely unique to you and your group of friends. And let me tell you something else, here in 2019, there are so many variations, spin-offs, and reinventions of the basic RPG schema it’d make your head spin. There’s fantasy roleplaying, sci-fi roleplaying, horror roleplaying, romantic roleplaying, and even roleplaying based on Saturday morning cartoons. And I’ll tell you another thing, these kinds of games have experienced a huge resurgence in recent years.
I’ll make a confession at this point: my wife convinced me to write this article. I didn’t grow up playing D&D. Like many of you, when I was a kid and teenager I scoffed at it. Sure, I collected comic books, wrote speculative fiction stories, played video games, and enjoyed the heck out of entertainment properties like Star Wars and Star Trek, but for some reason, tabletop roleplaying was simply a bridge too far. My prejudices continued well into adulthood, but very recently my wonderful wife turned me on to a new way of experiencing RPGs.
Round about the time internet culture discovered people like to watch others game electronically, it also discovered the joys of watching a group of strangers play D&D. The most successful example of this is Critical Role, which you can watch on internet apps Twitch and YouTube. Critical Role is a weekly show populated by a group of eight Hollywood voice actors who just so happen to be best friends and hopelessly devoted D&D enthusiasts. These guys aren’t your prototypical basement trolls, either. They’re charming, attractive, talented, incredibly funny professionals who are as dedicated in their own ways to the craft of storytelling as you and me. They play D&D like no one else, personifying their characters with impressive skill and gusto to generate an incredibly engaging and entertaining storytelling experience that shouldn’t be tons of fun to watch but is. And they show you what’s possible when you engage your imagination in a completely improvised way.
Admit it, sometimes the act of writing is lonely. It’s just you, your word processor, and your dedication to the craft. Fun is not at all required, as much as we’d like it to be. So here’s my advice if you’re dead tired of laying down one paragraph after another, one concept after another, one character, theme, or narrative arc after another, and your mind is aching for a bit of a vacation: go out and play a little bit. Not everyone has access to a group of people who like roleplaying. This much is true. It’s also true a huge chunk of the adult population considers such things frivolous at best. But look, roleplaying can be a hell of a good time, and as modern pop psychology often reminds us, sometimes you’ve got to nurture your inner child before you can fully embrace what it means to be a grown up.
RPGs force players to think on the fly, to produce results from nothing but their own creativity and random dice throws. It’s extreme storytelling, if you think about it, and if you’ve tried everything else to combat that nasty spell of writer’s block, it may be just what the doctor ordered. There are plenty of online resources that can help you find local games in your area, but if you’re still not sure, maybe just start with a little passive viewing. Do yourself a favor and check out some internet shows like Critical Role. There are a lot of options out there. See if it doesn’t spark something within you, and if it does, maybe consider giving it a try yourself.
We live in such a take-no-prisoners world. Is it really too much to ask of yourself to slow down every once in a while and just have some good, clean, creative fun for the sake of, well, good, clean, creative fun?
Until next time, folks, keep those storytelling skills limber and toss a couple d20s. That’s roleplaying parlance, by the way. It’s your adventure. Tell it how you want it.
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Treme: David Simon’s Masterwork about New Orleans
Posted: July 28, 2019 Filed under: Art's Visual Media Reviews, Opinion, Television review | Tags: Art's Visual Media Reviews, New Orleans, Post-Katrina, Television review, Treme, Writing to be Read 5 Comments
In early October, 2005 my partner and I were driving our new 38 foot motorhome from Ft. Lauderdale to Petaluma,CA. It was going to be a four thousand mile drive on I-10, the southernmost of our nation’s interstate highway system. As we drew into the outskirts of Pensacola we noted the ravaged condition of the trees, fences, billboard signs and the Interstate itself. The campgrounds were jam packed. We only found a site because someone had suffered a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital twenty minutes before we pulled into the Pensacola KOA.
We were in the zone of Hurricane Katrina’s wrath and the next four hundred miles would be like driving through a poorly kept secret. Along the highway were big plywood signs done in red magic marker: FEMA, they said, and sometimes an arrow pointed the way down a dirt road. These signs were emblematic of the slipshod management of a terrible disaster. Imagine, plywood planks with red magic marker: this way to the internment camp of white trailers.
Ahead of us lay New Orleans. We saw the city only a few weeks after it was submerged and torn all to hell. When we began watching the TV series Treme (trem-may), we had a visceral sense of connection to the experiences of the characters.
TREME is producer/director David Simon’s series about post-Katrina New Orleans. Simon is the creator of crime masterworks like HOMICIDE and THE WIRE. TREME is something different. It is a filmic mural that depicts conditions in a ravaged community. Suspense is not what draws the viewer into the show. It’s the characters that keep us watching.
One of the major characters of the series is New Orleans itself. There is a depth of culture in this city that is unmatched by any other American city. Treme is one of the neighborhoods in this town, an area where musicians live and form their community. They play at one another’s gigs. They do funerals, following wheeled black carriages in stately slow-march. They play at nightclubs where the patrons and musicians alike are having so much fun that it seems almost unreal, as if there can’t possibly be so much joy in this troubled world. But there it is: real music, dancing, carrying-on and everyone is having a freaking great time.
There’s nothing strident about Simon’s portrait of New Orleans. It’s a town trying to bounce back, but the bounce is a little flat. People want to rebuild their homes but the promised insurance checks and subsidies keep getting lost in bureaucracy. A man has spent three years rebuilding his home with his own money and his own skills. Suddenly a city inspector appears and cuts off his water and power. “The City” wants to see the original deed on the property. It’s a document whose origins go back two hundred years. It’s lost in history, lost in the flood. Can he PROVE that his family has occupied this parcel of land since 1824?
Photo by Art Rosch
He forgot a payoff to someone. He’s lost track of the fifties and hundreds he’s hemorrhaged to fees and penalties.
New Orleans has become a scene where politicians and developers gather like ghouls to create a theme park where there was once a city. If they have things their way, it will be resurrected as NewOrleansLand or Cajun-O-Rama. The citizens of New Orleans are fighting back. They know their city will never be the same. But the disaster has made them aware of themselves as an extended family. There is something special about being a New Orleans native. There’s a terminology, a language, a history and a lot of blood that goes into the making of a citizen of New Orleans.
TREME is strangely relaxing to watch. Real-life characters like musicians Carla Thomas, Kermit Ruffins and Allen Toussaint thread through the plot playing themselves, providing a sound track of amazing skill and vivacity. TREME is loaded with top of the line music.
“Let the good times roll”, or “Laissez le bon temps roulez” is the unofficial motto of Mardi Gras. The good times may roll but a new motto is emerging from the frustrated natives of New Orleans.
I will paraphrase the words of Sofia, the sixteen year old daughter of civil rights lawyer Toni Bernette, played by the fantastic Melissa Leo. Every day Sofia retreats to her bedroom, closes the door, aims the laptop camera at her face and uploads to YouTube a monologue of rage and bitterness.
“Fuck you, man, fuck you!” she says. “If you’re not going to help us, at least don’t hinder us. Just get the fuck out of our way!” THAT is the new motto of New Orleans.
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’s Visual Media Reviews segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.
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So You Think You Can Dance: Breaking New Ground
Posted: June 29, 2019 Filed under: Art's Visual Media Reviews, Opinion, Television review | Tags: Art's Visual Media Reviews, So You Think You Can Dance, Television review, TV, Writing to be Read Leave a comment
“What’s wrong with kids today?”
This lament has been uttered by every generation since Adam and Eve discovered they were pregnant a second time.
So….what IS wrong with kids these days?
They feel as if they have no future. The last few extant generations simply don’t. Futures come in handy when you feel as though the world will be unrecognizable before you’ve grown up. As a child of The Mushroom Cloud I know what that feels like, that amputation of the future. It made me really angry. My friends and I were more likely to commit petty crimes and indulge in drugs. Without a future, why bother? Why work hard in school? Why cultivate disciplines, interests, social connections? The oceans are rising and will drown your block or your whole neighborhood. The coolest animals will be extinct. No elephants, no polar bears. What kind of future is that?
Then I discovered a TV show called “So You Think You Can Dance”. You can knock me over with what these kids are doing! Their bodies must be INCREDIBLY strong and flexible. These kids are doing the impossible! Has the human race mutated? Do we have extra joints, super-human muscle memory? Who ARE these people?
They’re just kids. Their secret is that they found a passion, something that interested them so much that they said “fuck it” to the absence of the future and decided to live for this thing called Dance. It was better than being a thug. Thugs are mean, WAY mean and being mean doesn’t feel very good. Not as good as practicing B-moves, Krumping, flapping, sapping, tapping, robot-twitching, water-waving, learning your body’s capabilities and stretching them further, further, further!
This is IT! Sometimes it’s called ART. Don’t be embarrassed by the word ART. It’s cool to do ART. It’s okay. Even if it’s gay it doesn’t matter. Nobody cares about gay any more. You can be gay, you can change from man to woman or woman to man, nobody cares! If you want to know where it is, where the cutting edge in creativity can be found these days you can see it on “So You Think You Can Dance”. The judges aren’t scary. They aren’t there to cut you down. They want to show you The Future. Word up, Bro. There IS a future. Nobody can stop it. It takes some work. Everything good takes work. Making a future is hard work. It’s not like it used to be, when the Future was going to happen no matter what. Now it takes a little faith and a lot of work, but it’s there: you… DO…Have…A…Future. Do you want it to kick you in the nuts or do you want to dance with it?
When has anyone given a shit about choreoraphy? Are you kidding? Corey-who? Shazam! Choreographers are the composers of Dance. They arrange the time-space-music continuum in which Dance exists. On the TV show they are not only given credit, they are like stars! Now I know the work of Tice Diorio, Mia Michaels, Sonya Tayeh, “Nappytab”, Stacey Tookey and Travis Wall. Choreographers come from the elder population of dancers. They still dance but they are the keepers of the flame, the mentors of the seventeen through twenty two year old dancers who are living the dreams.
I’m not sure there is any more difficult art form than what is now appearing as Dance. It’s not enough to specialize. You can’t be a ballroom dancer, a hip-hopper or a Broadway hoofer. One of the messages of So You Think You Can Dance is that you must be trained in ALL the dance styles. Choreographers wont’ hire you if you don’t know all the styles of dance. Choreographers are the Gate Keepers, the bosses, the ones who hire dancers. Get tight with the choreographers who work at SYTYCD and you will be employed for years to come. In time, you will become a choreographer.
The most amazing thing about the dance numbers on this show is their purity. We’re not seeing arrangements for pop superstars. We’re not seeing choreography for Taylor Swift or Michael Jackson (RIP). These dance routines are created for the television audience. For US! Sometimes magic happens on that stage. Those of you who watch the show know what I mean. In more than a decade this show has lifted the art of Dance so that each season is more amazing than the last. The mutations continue. Evolution is visible year to year. Dancers get more flexible, their muscle memories become more detailed, malleable, imprintable. This happens in front of our eyes. Sure, it’s a TV contest show aimed at a teenage demographic. That’s how things work. Consider the difference between the egregious karaoke of American Idol and the drama and high art of So You Think You Can Dance. Big difference, yeah?
Big big difference.
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’s Visual Media Reviews? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.
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Jeff’s Pep Talk: Back in the Saddle
Posted: April 3, 2019 Filed under: Fiction, Opinion, Pep Talk, Writing | Tags: Editorial, Inspiration, Jeff's Pep Talk, Opnion, Writer's Block, Writing to be Read 3 Comments
Back in the Saddle
By Jeff Bowles
The first Wednesday of every month, science fiction and horror writer Jeff Bowles offers advice to new and aspiring authors. Nobody ever said this writing thing would be easy. This is your pep talk.
If you’ve been following the Pep Talk, you know I’m big on writers cutting themselves some slack. Burnout kills creativity and breeds writer’s block. So while I’ve always been a fan of the idea that we need to keep working in order to evolve, grow, and succeed, I’m incredibly cognizant of the ever-present reality most writers hit a wall every now and then, and that it’s okay to admit and even embrace that.
Now, a bit of an admission. The past two years or so, I’ve been struggling to rebound from my own slowdown. This decade has been intense for me, particularly on the creative front. I went from earning my MFA in a very hard and fast environment, to publishing short stories at a fairly decent rate, to suffering some unfortunate circumstances in my personal life, to not writing a single word for several years.
Really, this has been the worst burnout phase of my life. I’m in my mid-thirties now, so it stands to reason that ten years of working, practicing, and publishing finally caught up with me. Furthermore, we can’t stop living very human lives under very human circumstances. If I hadn’t experienced such a shake-up on a personal level, I might have been able to keep working. But things being what they were…
So this Pep Talk is not about showing yourself some love when you’re slowing down. It’s about being eager and ready when you’re speeding back up. I recently started a new writing project, a novel, and I’m pleased to report I’m about 9,000 words in. If that doesn’t sound like much of an achievement to you, it’s probably because you’re a hard-nosed writer who puts in your time, come rain or shine. And before my productivity started to drop off, I was right there with you. But the truth is we all need a break sometimes. All of us. Actually, very often life forces us to take breaks, and we can bemoan, resist, and condemn them, but it doesn’t change the fact that a career in the publishing industry is—in its most ideal form—a long-term project. As such, detours are something of an obligation.
For several years on end, my average yearly wordcount was around 120,000. And that was after a few years of maybe 75,000 to 100,000 words. Really, I was ramping up to something big. I’m a short story guy with some long-form publications in the indie realm. Not precisely a best-seller, but not a newbie either. And as I said, grad school was intense. I think a lot of people who go after an MFA have a similar experience, right on down to needing time off after graduation. The sad and torrid fact of the matter is I haven’t attempted a book-length project since I completed my thesis novel four years ago. That’s a huge dry spell for me, so I’ll take that nice 9,000-word head start, thank you very much.
If being kind to yourself in the face of writer’s block is about realizing you’re not a story machine (no matter how much you want to be), booting up your systems after some downtime requires acknowledging any fears or insecurities that might come up. It’s scary getting back in the saddle, or at least it can be. It’s also pretty exciting, isn’t it? Maybe, like me, you started wondering if you’d ever be productive again. Am I finally done with this whole writing thing? Where are my abilities?! Why don’t I feel like telling stories!? WHY, GOD, WHY!?
Got a flair for the dramatic? Well step right up, ‘cause this next one could be a doozy: in almost any case, we need to be able to accept the fact we might be rusty. Now I took a break of a few years, but I’ve known authors who went ten, fifteen, or twenty, and who were startled to encounter really crummy writing on their part. I know, it’s disappointing. Turns out none of us is a miracle worker. So a little piece of advice, maybe start slow, a short story or two. Heck, start writing blog posts or flash fiction or maybe even try your hand at a new genre, like creative nonfiction or poetry. That’s actually a good place to start. Writing truth is, in my experience, almost always easier than writing fiction. The point is you need a jumping on point, something you can sink your teeth into that doesn’t require you to … well, break your damn teeth.
And respect yourself enough to know when it’s time to work and when it’s not. Again, I really do appreciate the workhorse model of writing. That’s how the beast feeds itself. It’s the lifeblood of what we do. I just think it’s a bit self-deluded and unkind to think you can go on like that forever. Maybe some of us can, but for the majority, it does no good to crash and burn. Don’t knock yourself for it, man. And don’t let colleagues or friends and family make you feel bad or lazy or lost.
When it’s time to get back to work, it’s time. You’ll know you’re ready because—hey, here’s a nice big no-brainer for you—you’ll actually feel like it. Don’t push yourself too hard too soon. It’s a pretty organic process when it comes down to it. You can’t get blood from a stone, though I’m sure if you hit yourself in the head enough times with said stone blood would ensue. Never imagine yourself to be something you aren’t, a literary god, born of good fortune and the primal mud from which warriors emerge, Achilles of the word processor, Odysseus of plot structure and acute character psychology. Nah, you’re just a humble guy or gal who likes to crank out some good writing every now and then. Maybe you thought this day would never come. How do you feel now that it has?
I believe that life is almost always a matter of two steps forward, one step back. It’s how we progress as human beings. So two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward: hey look, the math checks out. You’re one step ahead of where you were last time. It’s like a Jacob’s ladder, right? You zig left, zag right, but you’re always climbing higher. Don’t feel like writing today? Consider, if you will, investing in some fun. Watch a few old movies that always manage to inspire you. Read a good book. Listen to some music, or try your hand at painting, sculpting, songwriting, video production, anything that engages your creativity and that doesn’t have all that unbearable weight built up behind it.
This is a fun job. Remember that. It’s fun. We get to tell stories and entertain people with our words. If you’ve been at this a while, and you’ve done silly things before, like attempting to quit but finding it quite impossible, then consider the possibility you’re meant for this life. You shouldn’t shirk being meant for something. Any way you slice a lifelong love affair, it’s fate, my friends. It’s kismet. Maybe you aren’t a literary god, but rest assured, the real gods up on Mount Word-lympus have plans for you that go back eons. One last time, do however much you actually feel you can do, and get excited about the prospects. If, lord forbid, you someday end up in a terrible driving, skying, skydiving, or rogue spelunking accident, you’re going to want a surgeon who can put you back together with slow and steady hands. Do yourself a favor and be that surgeon for your writing.
Until next time, everybody. The straightest line between two points is … wait, you guys are using straight lines?! So that’s why my writing is so crooked.
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Jeff’s God Complex
Posted: August 9, 2017 Filed under: Articles, God Complex, Opinion 2 Comments
Video Games and the Lost Art of Storytelling
by Jeff Bowles
I’m an avid gamer. I’ve played everything from Pac-Man and Halo to Zelda and God of War. As a child, I spent countless hours on the first home console my family ever bought, the original Nintendo Entertainment System, and I’ve owned just about every major gaming platform released since.
I’m also a storyteller, which means I take keen interest in certain gaming industry trends. I’ve heard it suggested video games represent a great opportunity for writers today. Even in an industry dominated by online arena action shooters that feature little plot and the use of impersonal avatars instead of fully developed characters, writers are said to be very much in demand.
Independent job and project posting sites such as Upwork feature by-contract work for games from time to time, and small indy video game developers, which have flourished in recent years, are often much more receptive to unknown or burgeoning writers. If you’ve been stuck hawking short stories and one failed novel after another, it can be a great place to ply your talents.
Landing that kind of gig may be harder than it seems, however. The big developers like Bethesda Softworks, EA, Ubisoft, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo tend to retain and reuse writers, so unless you’re a well-established author looking to diversify, you may be out of luck. It’s kind of a niche profession anyway, writing for video games, especially since more and more developers have eschewed classic storytelling techniques in favor of more style, more flash, and way more explosions.
Should this surprise us? Like Hollywood, the gaming industry seems to have recognized the public’s slackening attention span. Many of the most popular games released in 2016 featured incredibly robust multiplayer and not much else.
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Battlefield 1, the top sellers of the year, both have single player campaigns that are more or less afterthoughts. Another top seller, Blizzard Entertainment’s highly popular Overwatch, exists entirely online, so if you’ve got a poor internet connection or you just don’t want to play against other people, the message seems to be man up or look elsewhere. Overwatch, by the way, is a hell of a lot of fun. Too bad I didn’t care about any of its characters or situations.
Not so long ago, all of this would have been unthinkable. Before high speed internet made online gaming feasible for the broader market, game developers rarely ever shipped titles designed just for multiplayer. Home consoles had at most four controller ports back then, which meant you either played a deep, engrossing single-player campaign or you challenged a few of your friends to combat right there on the couch. Gaming was a much more personal, sociable experience then. Lord, how I pine for the good old days of just ten years ago!
As the gaming industry advanced into the current generation of home consoles (the Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch, respectively), an undercurrent of dissatisfaction among consumers became evident. Players were demanding new experiences, expanded horizons, creative and interesting mechanics they’d never seen before. The result, I take it, is that the major developers decided en masse the premium they’d placed on storytelling would no longer serve them going forward.
I found some of the biggest games of the last five years nearly unplayable, simply because competition, blood and guts, and fierce rivalries tend to turn me off. Let’s be honest, in the new millennium fewer and fewer people appreciate good stories. The point for most gamers is not the dialogue or plot so much as the bullets and blood.
I think that’s unfortunate. Good developers recognize their medium is unique. The games that work best allow players to inhabit strange worlds and the skins of other people. Long-standing series such as the Deus Ex franchise, for instance, let players explore innumerable options and solutions to any given scenario or character interaction, thereby assuring a unique experience for everyone. As a point of reference, the latest Deus Ex game was a commercial failure, as were other similar titles. A lot of players feel they don’t have time to invest in long, drawn-out narratives anymore. They just want to drop in, shoot their friends a few times, and drop out.
Classic American gaming, by the way, has not gotten any less violent or offensive in light of this new direction. In fact, divorced from good storytelling, many modern games feel like slaughterhouses, inducing the kind of fight-or-flight panic usually reserved for life and death emergencies. Recently, after playing a frenzied bout of For Honor, a game that simulates medieval sword-based combat in full gory detail, I told my wife I didn’t know if I could take it anymore. A round of that game is like squeezing your heart through a meat grinder fifteen minutes at a time. The experience is intense, but is it particularly fun?
Congress of course has railed against the gaming industry for decades. Too violent, too distracting, and far too addictive. I admit it, I’m hooked. I’m a grown man who hasn’t gone a week without video games since I was five years old, and for the amount of money I’ve spent on all those discs, cartridges, and controllers, you’d think they’d chip in for a limited-edition headset for me or something. When it comes to it, I suppose good storytelling never did anything to offset the more depraved aspects of the medium. They did, however, induce in us the feeling we were part of something exciting and creative.
Now every time I pop a new game into my PlayStation, I have to consider the odds of actually enjoying it. Will I spend the whole time hunting other human beings? Will it contain anything resembling a story? Perhaps the indy movement has opened new doors for the creative potential of the industry—doors which may have otherwise remained closed, especially to writers—but the dominant trends today have adhered very closely to a pretty simple principle.
Like all forms of entertainment intended for mass consumption, the real test of a game is in how it makes us feel. A well-told story feels like nothing else on earth. Unfortunately, so does an hour of mayhem, death, and bare-knuckled survival. Hey gaming industry, bring back the good old days! I guess I don’t mind killing my friends needlessly, but do I have to kill my sense of story, too?
Interested in my writing? Check out my latest short story collection, Fear and Loathing in Las Cruces — https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Loathing-Las-Cruces-Stories-ebook/dp/B06XH2774F
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Jeff’s God Complex
Posted: July 26, 2017 Filed under: God Complex, Opinion, Publishing, Writing Leave a comment
Nonfiction as Catharsis
So I’ve been trying to decide what my next major writing project will be, and my mind keeps circling back to the last couple years of my life. I’ve had a crazy run of things recently, and like any writer worth his salt, I’d like to capture these events.
Primarily I’m a fiction writer. I could probably disguise all this stuff and get a halfway decent novel out of it, but something’s telling me the true circumstances need the kind of veracity one can only achieve through nonfiction.
It seems to me many short story writers and novelists shy away from nonfiction. Perhaps the truth hits them too close to home, or more likely, it’s out of their purview. Which is fine of course. Nonfiction sells to a completely different segment of readers, different publishers, different literary agents. It may not make sense for an author to skew into a different genre altogether. In fact, some might see it as a waste of time.
But there is one thing nonfiction has on your average novel or short story, an element of the art form that has nothing to do with craft or overall viability. Not everyone deals with incredible, tragic, surprising, or uplifting events in their lives. Some people are born to breeze through this existence, though perhaps these people are fewer and farther between than we might otherwise surmise.
For the rest of us—for those with the linguistic and artistic capability to do something about it anyway—telling our personal stories can be extraordinarily cathartic. After all, psychologists have long advocated journaling as a means of self-healing. Writing about the key events which have shaped us can be both uplifting and enlightening, and it can help us make sense of an otherwise threatening or chaotic world.
Some might argue that the leap from journaling to penning an entire memoir leaves quite a bit to be desired. Only authors think this way, I suppose: “Well something terrible happened to me today. Guess I better write it down and try to sell it.”
The truth of course is that one needn’t publish such material in order for it to be of benefit. Good stories exist everywhere, and the will to look at yourself and your life unflinchingly is a skill more people should cultivate. I can only speak for myself and my recent history, but if I never told my own story, if it just receded into the background of my mind, only to resurrect itself in moments of repose and contemplation years later, I know I’d be doing myself a disservice.
The world of creative nonfiction is wide. Write about societal injustice, pop culture, the plights of your friends and neighbors. Tell stories that reduce the global perspective to something more personal, and in so doing, help us understand ourselves better.
Or, conversely, write about things only you know. Consider it an act of good will if nothing else. You’re doing this for yourself, and there’s not a damn thing wrong with that. Recognize, however, that you may uncover things you’d have otherwise preferred hidden. Know Thyself; is there anything scarier? Is it perhaps more dangerous to remain ignorant? If you’re so inclined, only time will tell.
Contained in every human life is the seed of expansion. We are not static beings, but nor are we entirely free to pursue our futures unhindered. Rather, many of us (if not most of us) find ourselves chained to our pasts. If I were to actually sit and pay attention to my thought processes throughout a single day, I’d likely discover I think about my past way too much. I’d likely also discover I tend to dwell on all the negatives, all my mistakes. Truly, we can never go home again, so why is it my mind is hell bent on constantly reminding me off all the crap I’ve done?
The truth is most of us don’t want to forget. We feel this unconscious pull to relive and recycle, even when it means the here and now is distant and vague by comparison. Perhaps we do so because we worship our identities, the classic psychological concept of the “ego.” These otherwise random events, if they were fully revealed to us, they’d make a mess of our flawed and often one-sided self-conceptualization. Recollecting rather than looking forward is commonly a hindrance, especially when all you’re really doing is reopening old wounds. I think this is me more often than not, though I have no way of knowing if it is also you. Imagine getting your story out, putting it down on paper, reading it, understanding that past is past and that there are certain things you don’t need to hold onto anymore.
Now extend your imagination a bit further. What would happen if you recognized your story could help others, too? Maybe you’ve learned from your experiences. Perhaps you could help prevent others from falling into the same pitfalls as you.
All of this is not to suggest everyone needs to write a memoir and sell it. You might say, “But, Jeff, my story just isn’t interesting enough. And anyway, it’s nobody’s business but mine.”
Which is fair enough. Some might also suggest attempting to profit from personal struggle is the opposite of altruism, and in fact, borders on exhibitionism. This attitude, it seems to me, comports with a general unease and discomfort with getting too close to the truth, which is another way of saying digging down deep on a personal level makes some people squeamish.
My writing mantra has always been if it’s worth writing, it’s worth reading. Write your story under a pseudonym, or in a pinch, write the damn thing and then bury it in your sock drawer. But as you’re doing so, do me a favor and look inward. Notice how you feel different, perhaps a bit freer. Recognize that in telling your story, you’ve performed a neat bit of alchemy. Maybe we can’t turn lead into gold, but through nonfiction, we can transmute pain and tragedy and allow them to release us.
If all else fails, write because your story is both unique and universal. I mean this. If in a hundred years all that could be said of us is that we strove to understand ourselves, that in itself would be a minor miracle. Don’t be afraid to quest. Maybe the answers you’re looking for can help your readers, too. Anything and everything is possible, right?
Interested in my writing? Check out my latest short story collection, Fear and Loathing in Las Cruces — https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Loathing-Las-Cruces-Stories-ebook/dp/B06XH2774F
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Jeff’s God Complex
Posted: May 31, 2017 Filed under: Action/Adventure, Comic Hero, God Complex, Movies, Opinion | Tags: Comic Book Heroes, Feminism, God Complex, Movies, Super Heroes, Wonder Woman 1 Comment
Wonder Woman vs. The God Complex
by Jeff Bowles
Here in the United States, we’re just a couple of days away from the release of the first big-screen adaptation of Wonder Woman, the legendary DC Comics character who’s been trading punches with bad guys since 1941. Early reviews of the film have been overwhelmingly positive, and I couldn’t be more excited to see it for myself.
Wonder Woman is one of my favorite comic book characters of all time. She’s strong, noble, and much like Superman or Captain America, she always seems to do the right thing. Diana Prince, otherwise known as Diana of Themyscira, is a Greek goddess who abandons the only world she’s ever known in order to fight for meek, flawed human beings. The island of Themyscira is home to the proud Amazons, a group of startlingly gifted women who’ll stab your eyes out just for looking at them the wrong way.
Actually, that’s beside the point. They are warriors, fierce battle-hardened females who’ve rarely glimpsed men and the world they’ve brought to the brink of destruction. DC Comics has done an amazing job curating and expanding upon the adventures of Diana Prince and her supporting cast of characters in the last fifteen years or so. Issue after issue of the comic has dealt with divinity, family and politics, and of course, myriad hot-button topics that have in some small way pushed the boundaries of what typical comic fans expect to see.
The upcoming film looks to do the same, though to what degree remains to be seen. As a character, Wonder Woman was created by a male psychologist who was inspired by early feminists. The guy was way ahead of his time, and over the intervening decades, Diana of Themyscira has been portrayed all kinds of ways. For instance, in the 1970s she was both a television sensation and a hard-hitting exploitation-style street vigilante, minus the tiara and bracelets. Comic book characters rarely stray far from their roots long, however, and elements such as her Lasso of Truth, her invisible jet, and her long-time on-again, off-again love interest, Steve Trevor, have come and gone.
I find it difficult to speak about the impact Wonder Woman has had on young girls and women across the globe, not just because I’m a man, but because it seems like far too large a topic. I think she’s been good for people over the years, and I hope this film delivers the kind of role model kids need nowadays. She’s important to me because growing up on comics meant a steady diet of homogeneous male heroes, and though I don’t consider myself overly political, it always gave me a pleasant feeling digging into that latest issue of Wonder Woman and reading about a damsel who was not in distress, who could handle her own, and who could in fact put the likes of Batman to shame.
Some people out there, I take it, don’t feel the same way. In the news just this morning, some theaters across the country are choosing to run a small number of female-only screenings of the film the day it comes out, distributing advertisements that make clear boys are not allowed. I think this is kind of cool, but right-wing commenters have already made some hay.
Modern America is fraught anyway. If you’re not fuming about the man in the White House, you’re screaming at the other side for their assault on your guy. Very rarely anymore can we have civil conversations about simple things like movies and comic book characters, not without the whole thing devolving into an ideological ant-scatter.
It’s important to point out Wonder Woman is in the minority as far as these things go. Nobody was creating strong female characters back in the 1940s. It just wasn’t done. I read Wonder Woman comics as a kid not because I was interested in feminism but because she was so strong, so very essential to the DC Comics mythos. Every comic fan knows the holy trinity of DC characters: Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman. Lose any of the three, and the books DC puts out every month just aren’t the same.
And of course, comic book movies in general are big business these days. Love them or hate them—and indeed, many people hate them—they’re a mainstay of cinemas and will be for some time to come. Though early word seems good, the naysayers will quickly poke holes in Wonder Woman’s cultural legend just because they can. Yeah, she’s a strong female character, but she still solves all her problems with her fists. And anyway, the male-driven conglomeration that is Warner Bros. will most likely try to pitch her in a way that doesn’t scare off men and young boys, the latter of which buy DC action figures and other tie-in merchandise by the bucket-full.
Such is the state of discourse in the modern world. Everything is an issue worthy of argument, even a symbol of strength and femininity who’s been around the better part of a century. I can’t say what Wonder Woman means to you. Maybe she means nothing at all, and when you go to the theater this weekend, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by her story. I hope that’s the case, because Wonder Woman has had a place in my heart for a very long time.
If, like me, you do have positive memories of her, perhaps it will be a treat to see Diana depicted in big-budget terms, regardless of whether the end product is actually any good or not. If Wonder Woman is more to you than some silly cultural icon, and if you feel like she’s never been more relevant than she is today, by all means go check the flick out for yourself.
I eschew politics when I can. I also have no children of my own. But if I had a daughter, and she was old enough to see an action film like this, I’d proudly take her down to the multiplex. Maybe afterward, I could turn the excursion into a conversation about standing up for what you believe in no matter what the cost. That’s who Wonder Woman is to me. She doesn’t know discrimination or inequality because she comes from a place where everyone is treated with respect and dignity. She stands up for the little guy, especially when that little guy is actually a girl.
I hate the need some people feel to turn her into a controversial figure. Is her story more than simple entertainment? Yes, I think it is. All the Wonder Woman comics I’ve read over the years are all the proof I need. Yes, she is a strong female who kicks butt and takes names, and yes, whether they want to admit it or not, this makes many people feel uncomfortable or even angry. But if you ask me, the politics is a cover. Wonder Woman is not and never will be just for girls. I love Wonder Woman, and I’m man enough to admit it.
There are so many ways to celebrate the world as men have made it. Is it too much to ask to celebrate the world of women? Even just for an afternoon?
Interested in my writing? Check out my latest short story collection, Fear and Loathing in Las Cruces — https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Loathing-Las-Cruces-Stories-ebook/dp/B06XH2774F
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A Writer’s Eye View of Social Media Promotion
Posted: May 29, 2017 Filed under: Books, marketing, Opinion, Promotion, Publishing, Self-Publishing, Writing | Tags: marketing, promotion, Time, Writing 2 Comments
Social media is great. Or is it? From a writer’s perspective, maybe a little of both. On the one hand, promotion on social media can and often does bring readers to your blog, or book, or article, or whatever you are promoting. Some sites are more helpful than others in this regard. There is no doubt that social media promotion draws attention, but then you have to figure out the other side of the equation.
Promotion on social media takes a lot of time. And I mean a lot of time. Think about it. First you have to share a link on your timeline, or page, or wall, or whatever. That doesn’t take long. But then you have to share it in groups, and for me, there are a lot of groups to share in. Okay, so after you’ve spent between thirty to forty-five minutes or even up to two hours, (depending on how fast your internet connection is operating, how fast the site you’re sharing on is operating, and how many groups you are sharing the post with), and the post is shared everywhere you wish to share it, you’re still not done.
No. Because you see, social media is set up for social networking. You don’t want to drop into each group and post your promotion, then go about your business. No. When you join a group, you are expected to participate, rather than just promote. If you want people to like, comment, or share your posts, you’ve got to do the same for them. That’s how social networking works. And let me tell you, it is easy to get caught up thanking folks for liking or sharing your posts, responding to comments on your posts and liking, commenting on and sharing the posts of others, and before you know it, several hours have elapsed. This part of networking needs to be done each day, even when you don’t have any promotional posts to make.
So, now consider that I spend up to two hours promotion, two or three times a week, which is what I do for Writing to be Read. You need to socialize daily. I try limiting myself to one hour of socializing online on days I’m not promoting, so I can promote my work, but not appear to be a self-absorbed spammer. Just doing that adds up to ten hours a week.
Most recently, I participated in a Book Release Event on Facebook for the promotion of my recently released western, Delilah. I was one of many authors who did either half-hour or hour long takeover slots in a two night event. In a takeover slot, the author makes posts aimed at both promotion of their own book and entertainment in the form of silly, but fun, party games and giveaways. My investment was several hours in planning and preparation, plus one evening and a partial, and another afternoon responding to comments and contest wrap-up, and it’s yet to be seen if there will be a significant rise in sales which might be attributed to the event.
Of course, it isn’t just Delilah I must promote. I also promote my short story that I have on Amazon, Last Call, and writing that I have in online publications such as Across the Margin and Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry. And of course, I spend a good deal of time promoting this blog, Writing to be Read. It’s not that I don’t like social media promotion. It allows me to interact with my readers others in the business, and I truly do enjoy that, but it takes a lot of time. That’s time that is not spent writing.
Promotion is a necessary evil to me, and it must be done on top of writing queries and cover letters and submitting completed novels to publishers or agents, and articles, stories and poetry to the publications they might appear in, checking and responding to emails, searching the web and applying for freelance jobs, in addition to holding’s down a full-time day job. And then, I have to find time to live some resemblance of a life. Oh yeah, and somewhere in there, I have to actually sit down and write, both for my freelance jobs and my own stuff, for blog and for sale. And I must find time to read the books I review. So, you see than ten hours a week can be tough.
This isn’t the first time I’ve brought this subject up. In Today’s Authors Wear Many Hats, which I posted back in October, I wrote about the different roles an author must play and how they’ve expanded because of the digital age and the rising trends in self-publishing. Promotion and marketing are just two of those hats, but they’re important ones. Most of us are among the starving artists, and can’t afford to hire someone to do it for us, or spend a lot of money boosting posts to reach more people, and social media is an avenue of promotion which is free, or at least fairly inexpensive.
Bottom line – Promotion and marketing do require that we spend at least a minimal amount of time on them, but as writers, it’s a necessary part of the job. Like the artist, who must sell her own paintings, or convince a gallery owner to display her wares, we must peddle our creations, whether we publish them ourselves, or are picked up by a small press or traditional publisher. And social media is a big part of that in today’s market. Social media drives traffic, and we need traffic, because traffic leads to sales, at least theoretically.
Christmas Isn’t What it Used to Be
Posted: December 22, 2017 | Author: kayelynnebooth | Filed under: Commentary, Opinion | Tags: Christmas, Christmas Spirit, Merry Christmas | 2 CommentsI can remember as I little girl going to the mall with my mother and my grandmother to do our Christmas shopping and sit on Santa’s lap. All the stores played Christmas music, the buildings were all lit up with beautifully colored Christmas lights and there were Salvation Army Santas on every other corner shaking their bells. It was a happy time, but not any more.
These days it seems like everybody is in a hurry, and Christmas spirit is often hard to find. People in the stores will run you over, or snatch an item right out of your hand. A minor bump in the aisle is likely to result in violence. Christmas shopping is no longer a pleasant experience, if you’re not too timid to venture out at all. Christmas is supposed to be a time of peace on Earth and good will toward men, but folks won’t hesitate to deck the aisles with anyone who gets in their way.
The other day I was in the store, and I saw an older man bending down to get a case of soda from the bottom shelf. A kid came barreling around the corner with a shopping cart and plowed right into the man, knocking him to his knees, pops splaying out of the case and scattering across the aisle. The man reacted, turning to say, “Hey, watch it!” Then, the boys mother came around the corner and told the man he was rude. Store employees appeared, offering to help the man up and cleaning up the mess in the aisle, and the lady and her son disappeared into the crowd.
The boy’s actions were disrespectful, not even offering an apology, but the mother’s response, to my view is incomprehensable. If I had done something like that as a child, or for that matter, if my children had done something like that, there would have been apologies, not only from the parent, but the parent would have made sure the child apologized as well and there would have been a couple of reddened butt cheeks when we got home. The woman didn’t see anything wrong with what her son had done, she felt no regret or guilt seeing the man on his knees in the aisle. She didn’t even take the time to see if he was alright. That’s not Christmas spirit. I’m not sure that’s even human.
Later, same store, same shopping trip. I watched a disabled woman with a pronounced limp move down the aisle leaning heavily on her basket. As she passed behind another lady, who was standing in the aisle examining the products on the shelf in front of her, the disabled woman jerked, causing her to bump the other woman lightly. She passed on by, apparently not realizing she had bumped the other woman, but the other woman jumped at the contact and glared after her. But it didn’t stop there. The woman turned and headed toward the disabled woman, coming up behind her. I don’t know what she planned to do, but it appeared that she might even mean the disabled woman harm. The disabled woman had no idea the irate woman was behind her or how close she had come to finding out the hard way. Fortunately, she looked up and saw me watching, and turned, heading back down the aisle the other way. Yep, Christmas spirit just oozing there.
These days everyone is angry and distrustful. We don’t trust our fellow man. How can we when road rage is common place, as are mass shootings and bombings of public events? You have to take care when opening emails or answering robocalls, because scammers are everywhere, trying to get your personal information to take your money or steal your identity. And mothers are afraid to let their kids sit on Santa’s lap for fear there might be a child molester hiding under that beard. This is the social climate that we live in today and it’s very different from the simple world that I grew up in. And it just doesn’t feel like Christmas anymore.
Through all the changes, it seems that many of us have lost sight of what the true message of Christmas is. Christmas is about giving; not about getting the best deal, or buying the most popular toy. Jesus was God’s gift to mankind because he loves us. That’s why the first word in Christmas is Christ. It’s sad to think the term isn’t deemed politically correct these days, because that term is meant to remind us of why we celebrate Christmas and what it’s all about. It’s about Love, plain and simple.
I have to smile when I see stories on the news of Secret Santa, the man who goes around giving money to complete strangers each year, or the man who drives around with a trunk full of basketballs, which he gives to needy kids, not just at Christmas time, but year round. Not all of us have forgotten what Christmas is about. There are those out there who still know about the spirit of giving and love for your fellow man. I think those folks were more abundant when I was growing up, but they can still be found if you look.
So this holiday season, I challenge all of you to renew your Christmas spirit: go out and do one nice thing for someone you don’t know, say ‘thank you’ when someone shows you a courtesy, or just give a smile to someone who looks like they’ve had a hard day. Call up a friend or releative you haven’t seen or heard from in a while and wish them a Merry Christmas. It doesn’t have to be much. Just enough to make you aware that you’re still a part of the human race and let you feel the love.
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