Today in fictional murder sprees:

So at 439 kills across four movies, Wick
more than doubles history's worst serial killer.
Which is weird, because he's the good guy?

So I kind of liked John Wick. I mean, as a movie. It was mind-numbingly violent and while puppies are inarguably adorable, and the Russian mob as portrayed in the film--and probably in real life--is monstrous, but killing seventy-seven people is well beyond a proportional response and puts it firmly into war crime territory. And while I've never really bought the idea that movie violence breeds real-life violence, that it sells the way it does is, I don't know, unsettling? But again, despite my qualms about all the murder, I thought it was a good movie.

I mean, at this point, just call it Fast & Furious:
Narratively Linked Content and be done with it.

But then there was another movie. And then another movie. And then--wait for it--another movie. There's also a spin-off series called The Continental, and oh, another movie. This one is also a spin-off and it will be entitled John Wick Presents: Ballerina. Which is both a lazy, and a clumsy way of making sure you know that it's connected to the series, but isn't a direct sequel. Sort of like that time Fast Ampersand Furious Presented some other movie.

"Must...voice...unqualified opinion..."

-me, evidently

I mention all this because there's another, other movie in the Wickiverse just announced today. This one starring Donnie Yen as his character from JW4 (which is what all the kids call John Wick 4*). And no, I've not seen JW4, or JW3 for that matter. Or the TV show. And I don't really have any interest in the movies themselves, I'm just having opinions about things I have no connection to because the internet exists and I find myself thinking about the stupefying proliferations of various CU's. That's cinematic universes I'm acronyming there.

An era inn which everything was in
black and white, and Glenn Miller's
In the Mood played on a constant loop.

This phenomenon wherein all visual narrative media (is that a thing?) has some connection to some other, previously successful piece of visual narrative media. And we as consumers (a term I hate), now use phrases like IP's and Franchises like we're marketing people or something. I think it's generally accepted that this is all Kevin Feige's fault. He didn't invent the idea, like, Universal Studios was doing this back in the days of war bonds and fedoras with their monster movies, but he did, you know, steal it and use it to make twenty eight billion--with a b--dollars. Yes, of money. Can you believe it?

Yup, it takes a real visionary to take a thing someone else did before and apply it to other people's creative works. 

Movie executives are like remora, except the sharks are grossly underpaid.

Pictured: the role Sir Keanu
Reeves was knighted for (source?).

But then I guess that's just business which I suppose is what I'm talking about. Like, we don't need another John Wick. That's not a knock on the movie or the writer and it's certainly not me ragging on Keanu Reeves who, by all account, is the single nicest human being who has ever lived and truly shined in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. But it is an observation--and not an original one--that popular entertainment is, or at least feels (I don't have statistics or anything), more driven by financial factors than creative ones. 

There're not four or five John Wick sequels, or half a dozen new Star Trek and Star Wars streaming shows, or another season of whatever because these are stories that must be told. They exist because an algorithm told the marketing people: "thing=money, so more thing=more money." Is this a bummer or just an it is what is it thing and I should just up and binge X-Men '97?

A secret, unseen world that coexists with our mundane reality and has its own rules,
terminology, and even currency? Is John Wick just Harry Potter with assassins?

*no it's not.

Nobody asked you JK, nobody asked you.

Before moving on to exclusively hate-
filled tweets, Rowling previously
wrote children's fantasy novels. 

Recently, noted transphobic shitshow, and self-appointed arbiter of everyone else's genitals, JK Rowling decided to lay into the manager (that's British for coach, I think. I'm not sure, I didn't really watch Ted Lasso) of the Sutton United women's football (that's soccer to those of us who call lifts elevators and live with crushing medical debt) club (team? It's both British and sports-related so cut me some slack) in Britain for daring to be trans. And, I mean that's whatever. Of course she did. 

What exactly did she say? Doesn't matter. It was mean-spirited and she sucks. What I do want to talk about is these headlines:

I remember when a Double Down was a
sandwich with chicken in place of bread and
not a phrase meaning "leaning into vitriol."

"JK Rowling row continues after she doubles down on mocking trans football manager Lucy Clark"

-The Hindustan Times

"JK Rowling is accused of cruelty as she mocks transgender football manager by comparing her to a 'straight, white, middle-aged bloke"

-Daily Mail

To be clear, even Elon Musk thinks she's gone
off the rails. And he came up with Cybertruck.

"JK Rowling accused of bullying transgender women's football manager"

-The Telegraph

Notice anything about them? That maybe they all, in general, frame the party who starts tweeting hateful nonsense at a complete stranger as being the aggressor and in the wrong?

I ask because this is the Fox News take of the story:

Suddenly Fox News cares about soccer?

Pictured: Lucy Clark, football managing.
Not pictured: Literally anyone asking
JK Rowling what she thinks about it.

JK Rowling leads criticism? Wow, not all heroes wear capes I guess. This kind of makes it sound like the celebrating of Lucy Clark's position as manager warranted not only comment but criticism and only JK Rowling was brave enough to look at something that was in no way her business, or really anyone's business but Lucy Clark and I guess her boss, and give her take. Her unprovoked, shitty take that basically took the form of a funny funny joke about how trans women are just dudes.

"More on the woke agenda turning your
kids gay after these commercials for gold."

-Fox

Beneath the headline is a subheading reading "Lucy Clark, who manages Sutton United, fired back on X." Like this is a dispute or a debate when really Rowling just started tweeting at this woman. It's almost like Fox News deliberately tailors their headlines to appeal to a particular type of person who feels threatened by change and by the increasing visibility of people different from them. And just reassures them and reinforces their worldview instead of asking them to think critically or question their values.

Now, I know what you're thinking, is this--huh? No, it's a figure of speech, I have no idea what you're thinking. Although, you might be wondering if the other news outlets quoted above are editorializing when approach the headline from the position that Rowling is out-of-line in making her comment? Maybe? I don't know. But I don't think so. You wouldn't describe an armed robbery with a headline like: Mugger liberates wallet as random passerby walks down the street. Unless you were like, pro-mugger, so...

Although, in a sense, Fox News kind of is pro-mugger.

Always read the room, specifically the floor.

Did you know why you shouldn't walk past the line on a bowling lane? I didn't. I'm a forty--cough--something year-old adult, and until yesterday, I didn't know this.

"Yeah, we knew."

-everyone in the world, evidently

Why anyone would willingly agree to
not only watch, but entertain fifteen kids
that aren't even theirs is beyond me.

I was attending a friend's child's sixth birthday party at the bowling alley/family fun center and--huh? Yes, I did a sport yesterday. I even knocked down most of the pins each, uh turn? Period? Whatever a bowling match is divided up into. Let's say quarter. Doesn't matter, the point is I acquitted myself quite well and ate three entire slices of pizza I knew to be terrible and yet kept coming back for more. Anyway, back to my humiliating discovery of a fact that literally everyone in the world knew but me. 

No, I don't know how much they make,
but it's a safe bet they're underpaid.

So we're bowling, when one of the kids--I don't know who's, kids all look alike--anyway, one of the kids got their ball stuck in the gutter. The bowling alley has these automated bumpers that can be deployed to eliminate the frustration and entire point of the game, and this particular number was damaged and causing the bowling ball to get stuck. We kept having to call the underpaid bowling alley attendant whose job it was to retrieve it and I felt badly for them and took matters into my own hands. "I'll get it!" I said, heroically striding up to the stricken bowling ball.

Above: some dumb idiot haplessly
attempting to cross into the forbidden zone.

To be clear, on the floor there is a line that separates the place where one approaches the lane and the lane itself. It's known as the foul line, and beyond it is a forbidden zone where none may tread for fear of incurring a penalty. There is even a warning not to do so, but there was this kid whose bowling ball was helplessly stuck in limbo so I figured I could just grab it and we could all resume the game. I figured it was just against the rules of the game to cross that line, I didn't realize there was an actual slip hazard.

Pictured: me, yesterday.

Interestingly and in the defense of the bowling alley proprietors, the aforementioned warning reads: SLIP HAZARD--DO NOT CROSS THE FOUL LINE. Ok, what followed may have been at least partially on me. Upon crossing into the zone and triggering an unimpressive alarm buzzer, I, as the kids might say, wiped out. My feet flew out from under me and I comically sailed into the air. Like Icarus I had flown too close to the sun and for my hubris was pushed. Mine was a humiliating prat fall, which, to the credit to those around me, was met with concern and not the peels of laughter such as I deserved, but for real. 

Fortunately, the only thing injured was my pride, and possibly my ulna, we're still waiting for the x-ray.* I tell you this not to illicit your sympathy, nor to amuse, but to urge you to heed warnings you read on the floor of bowling alleys. 

How could I possibly known?

*I'm just kid, I kid. This is America, I can't afford an X-ray.

Welcome to Lassie Lunch

I ask you, what even is this? What's what, you might reasonably reply? Why this:

"Wait, what? Is Jesus about to make out with that Scottish woman?"

-everybody

To be clear, Amazon is garbage and 
I used a private window to cover my tracks.

Ok, well obviously it's The Lassie Eunuchi by Laurie Perkins, but more to the point, why is it? And furthermore, is this even real? Because I have my doubts. The subtitle "The Savior's Love Story" sums it up nicely, as this is--and I'm quoting the Amazon description here--"...a uniquely tender love story about a beautiful, yet resilient, woman who marries The Saviour, even [sic] Jesus Christ." Even Jesus Christ? What does that mean? It's...just tip of the iceberg...a weird, possibly fake iceberg. 

Typos are the least weird thing about this, although check this description out from the book's website, exactly as it appears:

You all know the renown hero Jesus, right? 
He's famous for protecting the woman He loves?

"Rightly so, the literary world is inundated with famed story lines disclosing the struggles between the forces of good and evil. In the fictional novel. "The Lassie Eunuch". the antagonist is none other than Lucifer, himself, the Master of Darkness! Lord Jesus is the renown Hero! He must do what He does best. He must protect, restore, redeem the woman He loves."

-actual quote, presumably from someone 

who stared into the abyss too long

Above: some of Jesus's wives.

That's from www.thelassieeunuch.com although the title tag reads "welcome to lassie lunch" which is bananas, but only slightly more bananas than the actual title: The Lassie Eunuch. Speaking of, who's the eunuch in this equation? What is a renown hero? And how does one use a comma anyway? There're no rules, right? You can just throw one anywhere? And I'm no theologian, but isn't Jesus famously single? Except of course when it comes to nuns who are all married to him. Or Him, I guess. Look, like I said, I'm no theologian.

Pictured: Lylyana, a person who exists and
who wrote a review that isn't at all fake.

The whole thing sounds a little, I don't know, blasphemous? Which is weird because author Laurie Perkins describes herself as religious in the "about the author" page of the site. But whatever, let's see what the reviews say, and again, these are taken directly from the website. Specifically from the "Our Satisfied Readers" section. According to Randy, who is definitely real: Lorem Ipsum dolor sit amet..." While Lylyana raves "Ut enim ad minim veniam."  

So between the Lorem Ipsum reviews, the befuddling grammatical errors, and the ludicrous premise of the book, I'm beginning to suspect we've been had. Is the book real? Is Laurie Perkins real? Is this whole thing just AI nonsense? And not even like, good AI. AI that, when assigned the admittedly difficult task of writing copy, took a Burger King ad, replaced "all-beef patty" with "books" and "grilled" with "written" and called it a day. 

Personally, I only read books that have been written to perfection.

Today in staying the course:

Ideally, companies prefer earnings to go up.

(source: business)

You might not know this about me, but I am not a movie executive, nor do I know anything about movie executive-ing...executing? No, that sounds like you murder movies. Whatever the verb is, I don't know thing one, but I did feel somewhat smart today when the news came that Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that going forward the company would limit itself to a maximum of three new Marvel movies and two new Marvel TV shows per year. This comes as their quarterly earnings report showed a decline.

Who are these people and what are they
doing? I have no idea, and I watched
a whole ass movie about them.

Hey, get me. Did it sound like I knew what I was talking about? Largely I didn't, but what I do know is that many of the recent Marvel movies have been pretty forgettable, and this might have something to do with the sheer volume of entires that they've been cranking out. I mean, I thought I was just being sophisticated and snobby when I rolled my eyes at Endgame, yawned my way the third Guardians, and straight-up skipped the last two Ant-Mans. Ants Men? But there are two things I still don't get.

One, they already do three Marvel movies per year. Like, since the first one, Iron Man, there've been about three per year, so in many ways this new plan to stave off the general fatigue audiences feel, sounds a lot like the old plan to put out as much CGI nonsense as possible and hope we just get numb to it. 

Pictured: CGI nonsense. For real, I mean, what's even happening here?

No, we haven't yet. I see some room in the back.

But secondarily, how come it took them this long to catch on? Of course three movies in the same series is too--huh? Yes, I said series. I don't read Variety, and normal people don't say use words like franchise, or content, or IP's in normal conversation. Wait, where was I? Oh, right, over saturation. It's a thing. See? I do know business words. There have been thirty-three movies in the series since 2008. That's bonkers. We could fill the oceans with the Blu-rays of these movies. It's just too much, and without getting too critical, the quality kind of suffers, you know?

Also, how come it took them this
long to X-men? I mean, seriously. 

And look, I don't want to back in my day this, but back in my day you had to wait for things. There were fully three years between Batman and Batman Returns (the best Batman--fight me). Fourteen between The Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace. It was interminable, sure, but it made a new installment in a series feel, you know, special? There's just something disposable about these movies. Don't get me wrong, they've got my twelve dollars for Deadpool & Wolverine, I am a huge hypocrite. 

But are we saying that it took Disney this long to figure out that it was time to slow down with these things? And that they need to pay Bob Iger thirty-one million dollars a year to come up with a plan to scale back his studio's output? And also that that plan is to keep making three movies per year, which was kind of the problem in the first place?

I know literally every nerdy, cis white dude thinks he knows better
than the people who actually run movie studios, but I mean...do I?

It's not small, it's just far away.

I mean, this is why we can't have nice things, right? Huh? What is? And what things? Right, the Mona Lisa and the plan to move it to an underground bunker.

What? The bullet proof glass, cameras, and
phalanx of security guards aren't enough? 

Both because he's dead and because the
concept would be brain-meltingly alien to him.

According to this article on NPR, the famous painting is getting bad reviews on the internet which, I mean, I don't know why this surprises me, but it does. Not that it's getting bad reviews, which I'll get to in a minute, but that it is getting reviews on the internet. It shouldn't surprise me, like, the internet's combination of broad accessibility and functionally infinite room means every weird passing thought everyone has is given a platform. And that's great, I just never thought of reviewing a five hundred year old painting, nor do I think the artist would care what yelp thinks.

But what do people on the internet think of the Mona Lisa? Well, I'm glad I pretended you asked. The article cites complaints like long lines and getting only a brief chance to see the painting, but I did some independent research--meaning I googled it--and evidently some are disappointed by the painting's size. 

I mean, they don't let people get very close...is it possible 
they don't understand that far away objects appear smaller?

For Rome it was the Goths, for the Aztecs,
Conquistadors. For us? Portion sizes.

Obviously I was reading reviews in English, so that probably skews the results a little, but why do I suspect that the paintings size is mainly a complaint levied by American tourists? It's ok, I can say that, as much as I make a big deal about my Canadian grandmother, I am mostly American. Besides, it just seems like the kind of thinking that could only come from the country that invented Supersizing and Big Gulps, you know? Oh, I guess we also came up with the internet, and probably the concept of yelp reviewing renaissance art. 

Pictured: Des Cars, seen here
caving to whiney tourists.

Anyway, the museum president Laurence Des Cars plans to bow to internet pressure. Like a quitter.

"Nous réfléchissions à une amélioration des conditions de présentation de la Jaconde, qui me parait nécessaire aujourd'hui."

-museum President Laurences Des--wow, 

French people have to type all those accents? 

Like all the time? It's like three extra keystrokes

Above: Europe Fun Bucks.

Thanks to my high school French and some internet translation, I've learned that she's saying that the museum is planning some improvements. And by improvements she means--yeah, Jaconde. Everywhere else in the world the painting is called la Jaconde or whatever version of that sounds good in their language. I guess we're the only weirdos that call it the Mona Lisa. Anyway the plan is to spend something like half a billion euros to move it into its own underground exhibition area which I mean, yikes.

That's a lot, even more when converted into real money, but I guess it makes sense. It's not just the bad reviews. Remember a couple of years ago when climate activists were throwing soup at paintings? Well they did, and the Mona Lisa got souped as well so it might be a security issue as well. Although, if it were me, I'd save a few hundred million euros and just ask the guards to be on the look out for anyone carrying soup in the Louvre.

Don't worry, it turns out that bullet proof glass is soup proof as well.
The planet's still on fire though, so jokes on them, right? Wait...oh...

Conspiracies in the time of neck ruffs:

Just in time for his 459th birthday, new research suggests that people were doubting whether or not William Shakespeare actually wrote, you know, Shakespeare. 

Above: the grave in the Church of the Holy Trinity in which
Shakespeare's headless corpse rotates every time someone publishes
a new paper about how Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare.

The Internet: giving everyone a platform,
no matter how ill-informed, since 1983!

So just to be upfront, I am not an expert and only have a few lazy internet searches and a handful of books on the subject aimed at equally lazy laymen such as myself to go on, but I mean, seriously? This again? The paper, which was published but is evidently not yet available online--which is fine, because I'm pretty sure I won't be able to follow it--was written by Roger Strittmatter from Coppin State University in Maryland, and in it he uses a book by a contemporary of Shakespeare who thought that the Earl of Oxford was the actual playwright. 

According to The Guardian, the book--written by a guy called Frances Meres doesn't come out and say Shakespeare was secretly Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. Instead, Strittmatter thinks Meres left an elaborate "logic puzzle" for scholars to untangle and discover that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford was writing under the name "Shakespeare."

If that sounds like some convoluted da Vinci Code nonsense,
that's the just because it's some convoluted da Vinci Code nonsense.

Pictured: the requisite amount of salt.

Which I mean, look, the internet is full of people chiming in on things they're not actually experts in, and I am 100% that guy right now. Yesterday, I was weighing in on Ninja Turtles. Take my opinion with the requisite amount of salt. Also, I have no personal stake in this whatsoever. Like, if someone digs up a confession in Shakespeare's own hand proving that he was actually the Earl, or Queen Elizabeth, or a couple kids stacked up in a coat, I will move on with my day. It doesn't change the plays or the influence Shakespeare has had in the world.

Pictured: the classic scene where the
cartoon lion cries out for vengeance.

But I feel like it's usually best to err on the side of the simplest solution. In this case that the person that's been credited for four hundred years as the writer of The Lion King, West Side Story, and Ten Things I Hate About You (what? It's Shrew. I don't make the rules) is indeed probably Shakespeare. Computer analysis has shown that he collaborated with other writers, and he may have even straight up stolen from some, but the simplest, least batty solution is that Shakespeare existed Roger Strittmatter is overthinking Frances Meres book a little.

But what do I know? It's not impossible, and I don't think people should stop asking the question of who wrote Shakespeare. I just think maybe people shouldn't get their hopes, thinking there's some elaborate, centuries-old puzzle just waiting for the right college professor to unravel the code.

But who knows? Maybe the entire Elizabethan Theatrical community
got together and cooked up a vast conspiracy designed to fool everybody
about the authorship for hundreds of years. For some reason.

I have a Vanilla Ice-based problem with this.

Far be it from me to yuck anyone's yum but--huh? I do it all the time? Wait--do I? Well, fine, but understand that before I yuck this particular yum, I'm just blogging here. I'm not like kept up at night by the thought of a dark and gritty take on the Ninja Turtles, but seriously, what is up with dark and gritty takes on Ninja Turtles? Were fans asking for that?

Gritty? Remember when they used to fly around on a blimp?

Above: Leonardo, seen here killing some dude.

I know that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles started as a violent, bloody parody of comics full of stabbing and well, mainly stabbing. I mean, they are ninjas. And that's fine, but for nerds of a certain age, like myself, it was a cartoon that aired in the late 80's and early 90's. And a toy line. And bedsheets, lunchboxes, bubble bath, video games, a couple of Jim Henson movies, and absurdly, a live rock tour. Comic book artists Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird one day made the call that their creation would make way more money being kid-friendly and that was that.

So it's weird to me that the next TMNT movie is going to be a live-action R-rated revenge fantasy in which the last surviving turtle--that is, the other three are dead--fights fascism in a dystopian New York. 

Pictured: the Turtles, seen here enjoying some pizza, blissfully
unaware of the bleak future and violent deaths that await them.

Above: Michelangelo (you know, the party
dude?) being spurred on by the spirits of his
dead brothers in his suicidal journey of revenge. 

Um, yikes, right? It's based on a more recent revival of the stabbier take on the series called The Last Ronin, and I'm sure it's great if you're into that sort of thing. Like, movie studios do the math before they spend dime one and if there wasn't an audience for it, it wouldn't happen. And look, to be clear I'm not arguing that this shouldn't exist or anything, I'm just saying that I find the more adult version of TMNT both unsettling and puzzling. I mean, at some point fairly early on, the preponderance of Ninja Turtle...stuff, shifted from grimdark to Saturday morning and to my mind, there's no going back.

I realize they killed his dog, but there
is such a thing as a proportional response.

And was it even grimdark to begin with? My understanding is that it was a sendup of the self serious comics of the early 80's that then evolved into cartoony nonsense for kids. Some interpretations have veered a little more mature, like the early 2000's Fox Kids version, but mature here is thirteen year olds as opposed to ten year olds. So like, noticeably light on the John Wick-style tortured hero leaving a trail of dead in their wake. I guess I just have a hard time with the tonal shift or understanding why anyone wants to take this that seriously.

Is it weird that I, a gross ass adult, has a strong feelings about cartoon characters created for children? Yes. Do I have them anyway? Also yes, but I don't think I'm wrong.

What I'm saying is that once Vanilla Ice sings Ninja Rap in your movie,
there will be limits as to how seriously an audience can take your series.