Del reviews ‘The Adam Project
Image courtesy of Netflix.
“The Adam Project” Starring Ryan Reynolds, Walker Scobell, Zoe Saldana, Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo. Directed by Shawn Levy. 1 hour, 46 minutes. Rated PG-13. Netflix.
Del’s take
“The Adam Project” is a perfectly calibrated popcorn flick that pushes all the right buttons. It features a precocious young actor who does not fear the camera, a leading man who can laugh at himself, a leading woman who is tough as the proverbial nails, and a villain as despicable as people who vote a straight party ticket.
In fact, the whole contraption is so finely tuned and calculated that I found myself missing the pop and fizz of 45-rpm vinyl, which is to say it’s a little too polished for my tastes. Oh, it’s a terrific movie and you’ll like it a lot. But the next day you’ll struggle to remember much about it except that you probably should have sprung for a Diet Pepsi to wash down the popcorn.
The story is about the titular Adam (Ryan Reynolds), who steals a spacecraft and wormholes into the past to prevent a tragedy. Unfortunately he overshoots his destination and arrives at the location and time of his 12-year-old self (Walker Scobell), whom he enlists in trying to save the future. In the process Adam bucks up his long-suffering mom (Jennifer Garner), revisits his dad (Mark Ruffalo) and reunites with his future wife (Zoe Saldana), all while thwarting the evil machinations of his former boss, Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener).
What follows is a thrill-park ride of battling robots right out of “Lost in Space,” dodging anachronisms and revisiting the good old days, none of it very demanding of deeply embedded cognitive skills. And you know what? That’s OK. Sometimes a movie is meant to do nothing more than entertain and “The Adam Project” does that and does it well, like successfully parallel parking an Edsel.
Reynolds is perfection as the wisecracking, flummoxed-when-he-should-be Adam, but more impressive is young Scobell, who matches Reynolds snark for snark and even looks like Reynolds, maybe if you squint. Garner is effective as the suffering mom, and Ruffalo is pretty funny in his role as the absent father who must re-learn his priorities if young Adam is to avoid the awful fate of growing up to become old Adam. Less effective, I thought, was Saldana as Adam’s future wife, Laura, who seems perpetually pissed-off. I mean, the fate of the world hangs in the balance and everybody’s trading witty remarks except ol’ buzz kill Laura, who just wants to stab things.
As a story “The Adam Project” keeps its focus on the action, not the novelty of time travel. “Peggy Sue Got Married” and “Back to the Future” both staked their claim on nostalgia – cars with tail fins, ’50s music and fond memories of the people who created and financed those movies. But in “Adam” nostalgia remains a sideshow to the primary conflict between Adam and Maya, and Adam’s desire to reconnect with his wife. It’s nice to see Mom and Dad getting along.
Predictably the movie has received high marks from the public. It’s one of those stories that requires nothing more of its audience than an hour and 46 minutes of their time, a big tub of buttered popcorn and maybe a healthy tolerance of the absurd. Nothing wrong with any of those things, except maybe the popcorn. Pop a Zantac and you’ll be fine.
As I watched it, however, I felt like I was taking a ride through a Universal Studios attraction, where every twist, turn and visual is calculated just so by mountains of data, algorithms and public feedback. Can you complain about a movie being too perfect? Maybe I should just shut my mouth.
I’m giving “The Adam Project” a B+. It’s funny, entertaining, and every now and again touches the heart. It’s a Diet Pepsi in lieu of champagne.
But then, who drinks champagne with popcorn?
Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.
Image courtesy of Netflix.
“Don’t Look Up” Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothee Chalamet, Ron Pearlman, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi and others. Directed by Adam McKay. Two hours, 18 minutes. Rated R. Netflix.
Del’s take
An existential threat is hurtling our way and what does the president of the United States want to do?
“Sit tight and assess,” decides President Orlean (Meryl Streep), who fears an approaching apocalypse might cost her party the midterm elections.
That’s the message of “Don’t Look Up,” a hilarious yet stinging denunciation of many things – our leadership’s response to the climate change crisis, the empty-headedness of American culture, the corrosive influence of social media and metrics, and the dehumanizing fist of runaway capitalism. It is the new “Idiocracy” and it arrives just in time to skewer all the people who deserve a sharp stick in the eye.
The story is about a milquetoast, Walter Mitty-style astronomer (Leonardo DiCaprio as Professor Randall Mindy) and his edgy PhD candidate assistant (Jennifer Lawrence as Kate Dibiasky) who discover a planet-killing comet that will smack Earth in six months. They discreetly sound the alarm only to discover the authorities, who don’t understand the science and don’t care, will not respond to the crisis unless it serves their interests. So Mindy and Dibiasky whistleblow the story to the media, where it lands with an apathetic thud. Most people are more invested in the breakup of two popular singers, Riley Bina (Ariana Grande) and DJ Chello (Kid Cudi). As doom becomes an undeniable reality the government staggers into action by entrusting the fate of the planet to a whackjob Elon Musk-style billionaire (Mark Rylance as Peter Isherwell), who wants to break up the comet into smaller pieces and let them collide with the Earth so the fragments can be mined – by his telecommunications company, Bash – for precious metals crucial to the manufacture of smart phones. All that’s left is negotiating with the countries to be annihilated over how much money they want for their dead.
“Don’t Look Up” offers more Oscar-fueled star power than a map of the Milky Way, and many of the performances are better than strong. DiCaprio as hapless Dr. Mindy channels a furious Howard Beale (Peter Finch in “Network”) when he finally revolts against the frustrating ennui of 21st century America, while Jennifer Lawrence effectively portrays the optimism of youth as it dashed against the rocks of the corrupt, self-serving inertia that serves as leadership these days. Meryl Streep evokes a dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks, Donald Trump-style president whose only strong suit is a kind of animal cunning, while Cate Blanchett, as the glib yet shallow peroxide blonde who leads Dr. Mindy astray and then abandons him when he becomes a liability, perfectly portrays the fickleness of American media.
A few other performances worth mentioning: Ariana Grande is a hilarious Riley Bina, as is Mark Rylance as Isherwell, which I suspect is a composite of Musk and Steve Jobs. And Jonah Hill as the juvenile White House chief of staff (and Orlean’s son) makes you want to reach through the screen and slap him. The one performance that left me cold was Timothee Chalamet’s Yule, though at one point he offers a prayer for the ages.
“Don’t Look Up” has gotten mixed reviews. Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com calls it “McKay’s worst film yet” while Charles Bramesco of The Guardian dismisses it as a “disaster.” The New York Times and CNN were more merciful. The complaint centers around the jokes and caricatures, which they say are lowbrow. I would argue that in an age where attention spans near a half-life of a nanosecond, the lack of “razor-sharp wit” is as much commentary as the jokes and characters themselves.
I enjoyed the hell out of “Don’t Look Up” and I thought it communicated exactly what the “Let’s Go Brandon” crowd needs to hear – that they’re a bunch of fucking idiots who are screwing up the country and the planet with their selfish ignorance. The fact that this message was delivered with a hammer, not a scalpel, is a strike in the movie’s favor. Do you seriously think people who believe vaccines are evil and Donald Trump is still the president would notice or respond to “razor sharp wit”? Give me a break.
Isherwell brags that his algorithms are so good they can predict when and how President Orlean will die. She will be eaten by a “bronteroc.”
I won’t tell you what that means. To find out you must watch past the credits. But it’s pretty damned funny.
Meanwhile, check out “Don’t Look Up.” Pay no heed to the critics – it’s funny as hell and I think you’ll enjoy it, unless you’re one of the people being skewered. And who knows? If you have a sense of humor, you too might get a laugh.
I rate it a solid A.
Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.
[ Cover image by Del Stone Jr. ]
In 1993 I decided I needed a dose of furry companionship. I went to the animal shelter and picked out a cat. A black cat. I named him Pavlov. Get it?
Moving on, that first night, when I came home from work, Pavlov came tumbling down the stairs to see who had arrived to entertain him. He had been at the house alone after my friend Lurene dropped him off. She had picked him up from the vet where his, er, equipment had been snipped off.
One thing about Pavlov I noticed immediately – he sure was noisy. I believe cat people use the term “vocal.” I would use the term “pain in the ass,” because after five minutes of meowing I was having serious second thoughts about my new status as cat daddy.
My friends Mike and Gerdy had another idea. “Why not get another kitty to keep him company? Two cats are no more trouble than one.” Knowing what I know now, I’d love to go back in time and argue that point. Two cats are no more trouble than one? Maybe in some parallel universe, but not this one.
But that seemed a logical solution, so a couple of days later I was back at the animal shelter adopting a tail-less tabby kitty I named Magpie, or Maggie for short.
The plan worked. Maggie kept Pavlov company and I regained my wits. While Pavlov veered off into some weird, Lovecraftian territory of evil and revenge – he once crapped on the floor after I yelled at him, and he shredded the shower curtain and destroyed the toilet paper in return for another scolding – Maggie became the love of my life. She was the most innocent kitty to walk the earth, and she loved me. My lap was hers, and she would fight Pavlov for it.
It was Pavlov and Maggie who became the inspiration for the following story, “Aunt Edna’s Cats.”
This piece began its life as a column that ran too long, so I decided to rewrite it into a slightly longer piece and sell it to a magazine for cat aficionados. It was considered by many and one national publication almost bought it, but then bailed at the last moment.
Then when day I spotted a reference to a Barnes & Noble anthology called “Crafty Cat Crimes” edited by Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg and Martin Geenberg. It was a collection of stories about cats and their roles in mysteries.
I loved those Barnes & Noble anthologies, not just because they bought my stories but they paid so reliably and well. The editors were obliging, provided good feedback and conducted themselves professionally. I received royalty payments for those stories for many years.
I modified my column and shipped it off to Stefan, who got back to me with suggestions about how to improve it. I followed his advice, resubmitted it and voila! It was accepted.
I’m glad Pavlov and Maggie were “immortalized” in a short story that saw print. They were good kitties and deserve to be remembered. Maggie crossed the Rainbow Bridge in 2005, and Pavlov in 2009. I’m sure the people who live in the townhouse I rented are still finding kitty toenails and litter in all the corners.
If you have a cat, give it a hug for me. Maybe one day I will again feel the warm presence of a kitty in my lap and hear the sound of a purr monster warming up.
If you’d like to order a copy of “Aunt Edna’s Cats,” follow this link. And remember, you don’t need a Kindle device to read a Kindle book. Simply download the free Kindle app to your phone or table.
(Cover image courtesy of Del Stone Jr.)
From Amazon
Dotty old Aunt Edna has left her kitties with her nephew while she goes off on some damn-fool adventure, like searching for D.B. Cooper’s ill-gotten stash of cash, or tracking down the hidden location of Shangri-la.
She chose her nephew because he’s reliable, a stay-at-home who is averse to anything that might disrupt his carefully choreographed schedule for life.
Cats, by nature, don’t follow any schedule and in no time the nephew’s daily routine has fallen to kitty-shredded bits.
But when they start bringing him certain kinds of gifts, as cats are wont to do, the nephew begins to suspect batty old Aunt Edna had a larger purpose in mind when she asked him to take care of her beloved furbabies. And maybe, just maybe, his life might become a lot more interesting if he just took the hint.
“Aunt Edna’s Cats” is a story that all cat lovers will instantly understand and appreciate, but it’s more than that. If you have ever felt a little too settled in your day-to-day existence, maybe you should consider a visit to the local animal shelter, where a new life awaits, that of a cat mommy or daddy.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, Ello and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
About this book:
“Aunt Edna’s Cats” is a 2,055-word contemporary fantasy short story.
The book’s total length is 4,830 words.
Judi Baller-Fabian poses with members of the Guardia Seville at Retiro Park in Madrid, Spain, in this photo taken during a vacation trip in the late 1970s.Judi Baller-Fabian poses with members of the Guardia Seville at Retiro Park in Madrid, Spain, in this photo taken during a vacation trip in the late 1970s.
Mom’s friend Judi was killed in a hit-and-run the other day, and I didn’t know what to say to Mom, or even if I should say anything at all. I guess I was still in shock myself.
She had known Judi since the early 1960s. Dad, who was active duty Air Force, had just been transferred to Torrejon Air Base outside Madrid. We flew to Spain on an ancient C-124 Globemaster, a four-engined, propeller-driven behemoth with a top speed of 350 mph. Needless to say it took us all day and night, with a refueling stop in the Azores, and half the following day to reach Torrejon.
We settled into our quarters at an American enclave called Royal Oaks and began making friends with some of our neighbors including Judi and her husband, Paul, who lived across the ditch that separated our quad from theirs.
What I remember of Judi is that she had a quick wit, was always cracking off-color jokes, and owned a Skye Terrier named Marky. Years later, when we got our own first dog, an English Springer Spaniel, we named her Marky in honor of Judi’s pup.
She and Mom became fast friends and spent much time together. They had a similar sense of humor. One of their shared jokes was the “blinking red eye of Royal Oaks,” a flashing red light on a nearby radio tower. To their imaginative eyes – perhaps with the help of a few Aguilas, the local beer – that light became the blinking eye of a tall creature that only came out at night.
We left Spain in 1963 and from what Judi told us later, it was a sad day for her. She felt all alone in a foreign country that did not particularly like Americans.
They kept in touch over the years, and even started a new tradition: Every Halloween they would exchange cards and joke about the blinking red eye of Royal Oaks.
Judi later became an author. “The Officer’s House” is the story of two women who fall in love with the same man. She paid Mom the ultimate compliment by creating a character based on her for the book. Mom still has her copy and I think that’s pretty cool. How many people can say they were the inspiration for a book character?
The news that Judi had been killed arrived via Facebook. She and I had been friends there, and she had befriended one of my Facebook friends. It was she who had tried to contact Judi and had not gotten a response. After a couple of days she began searching and found news articles about Judi’s death – apparently she had been trying to cross a busy street and was struck by a car. The driver fled but was later apprehended. He has yet to stand trial, but no punishment will ever make up for the fact that Judi is dead.
I didn’t want to tell Mom because the news of Judi’s death would bring another blow in a constant stream of blows. Her parents were gone, most of her siblings were gone and many of her nieces and nephews had died. Her friends had dwindled to a cherished few. It seemed the longer she lived, the longer death’s shadow reached over her. And now, with Judi’s violent end, it had edged a bit closer.
I considered that old aphorism, the one about sleeping dogs and how they should not be disturbed if you don’t have to disturb them. Next Halloween I could buy a card, put Judi’s name on it and mail it to Mom. With luck she wouldn’t notice the Pensacola postmark.
But the more I thought about it, the more I came to believe that despite the pain, Mom would want to know. Old friends are not like old soldiers; they don’t just fade away. Eventually Mom would wonder, and find answers to her questions, and somehow know I had kept the news from her. Moms figure out those things.
So on a chilly, rainy morning about three days after Judi’s death, I told her.
She seemed to take the news as well as could be expected. She was sad, of course, but when you live to be Mom’s age, sadness is part and parcel to the experience. She noted that Judi’s death placed her in the company of all of Mom’s other friends, who had also passed away.
While we all wish for a long and healthy life, it places us in the unenviable position of seeing the world from a decades-long perspective and noticing that everyone we have known and everything we thought was important has departed from this world, and with each day we become a little more alone. The opportunities to make new friends, find new love and enjoy new experiences become fewer and fewer, until a kind of entropy sets in and we become nothing but nostalgic for the good old days, when we could walk and talk and laugh.
I try to get Mom out of the house every day, and I try to get her to try new things. Sometimes I succeed but the weight of the decades is awfully heavy and most of the time Mom is content to coast along on the inertia life has given her.
She will remember Judi as her crazy Jewish friend from Torrejon who wrote novels and sent her Halloween cards each year. And that little bit of the world will one day pass.
But not unnoticed. Not if you have read this to the end.
—
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, Ello and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Michael Foran of Flickr via Creative Commons license. https://www.flickr.com/photos/pixorama/
This is what I remember of that awful September 11 morning in 2001.
The air was cool, crisp and clear, which was unusual for a September morning in the Florida Panhandle.
The newsroom was empty except for Ralph Routon and Brenda Shoffner, who were staring at a wall-mounted TV in the corner.
I didn’t believe Ralph when he told me a commercial airliner had crashed into the World Trade Center. I didn’t believe him when he said it was intentional. No American pilot would do such a thing, I said.
I didn’t know the first plane had hit. I didn’t know the second plane had hit until I saw it on the little TV sitting on the file cabinet in the Art Department. Then, I knew we were under attack.
I remember bulletin after bulletin coming over the Advisory wire from The Associated Press. One I remember distinctly – it said the sound of explosions and gunfire were reported from the Capitol building.
I began making a list of stories we would need to do. It was not my place but I did it anyway because I thought it needed to be done. An hour later I threw it out. Things were changing that fast.
The phone was ringing off the hook. People were calling in a state of panic.
Almost instantly, American flags appeared everywhere. Ribbons on car antennas. Lapel pins. Buttons.
I called Mom. My nephew Michael was visiting her. I said something like, “Did you see what those bastards did?” Yes, she had seen the news. Like me, she couldn’t believe it.
People teared up as fighter jets roared overhead.
The newsroom was busier than I had ever seen it. So many people, so much noise. Lots of yelling. Telephones ringing. TVs blaring.
The decision was made to lead the front page with a photo of New Yorkers running from the dust cloud of the collapsing World Trade Center. I remember strongly disagreeing with that choice. I thought it should have been one of the buildings exploding, but at that time I was editing the features sections and did not have a say.
I went home and watched it on TV. I remember becoming sick to my stomach. I called my friend Debbie Lord and we talked about it. I just needed to hear a voice.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I turned the channel to HGTV and watched something about remodeling a house. Years later I would do the same when Hurricane Ivan was threatening.
In the days that followed, more shocks would be forced upon us – anthrax in the mail, a plane out of New York City going down. It all seemed unreal and it was too much to digest – the worry, the fear.
But there was some good that emerged from the tragedy. Americans united as I had never seen in all my life.
One of the men who tried to storm the cockpit of United Flight 93 was the son-in-law of a writer I knew. Another was gay, but that wasn’t something a lot of people wanted to hear about.
The newspaper used an entire page to print an American flag. I saw those newsprint flags hanging in windows all over town for months after the attack.
And in the years that followed, a war, an economic meltdown, a warming climate, a pandemic and a violent schism in our culture.
Americans are more divided than I have ever seen in all my life. They fight – physically fight – against wearing a facemask so that they don’t spread a deadly virus, or receiving a vaccine that could end a deadly pandemic. They buy guns and brag about overthrowing the government and promise to kill the loyal opposition. They vote for mentally ill people who lie to their faces and laugh at them behind their backs.
I wonder what the people of Sept. 11, 2001 would have thought about the world of today?
I bet they wouldn’t believe it.
I bet they’d be ashamed.
—
Photo courtesy of Michael Foran of Flickr via Creative Commons license.
Author’s note: Contact me at [email protected]. To read more of my opinion and humor pieces, visit delstonejr.com . I also write fiction – horror, science fiction and contemporary fantasy. If you’re a fan of such genres please check out my Amazon author’s page. Print and e-books are both available, and remember: You don’t need a Kindle device to read a Kindle e-book. Simply download the free Kindle app for your smart phone or tablet.
Image courtesy of Netflix.
“Kate” Starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Miku Patricia Martineau, Jun Kunimura, Woody Harrelson, Tadanobu Asano. Directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
106 minutes. Rated R. Netflix.
Mladen’s take
My deep love for Mary Elizabeth Winstead remains unabated. She’s terrific in “Kate,” the new brawler film on Netflix. She’s been terrific for years. McClane’s daughter in “Live Free or Die Hard.” Terrific as a different Kate in “The Thing” prequel. Beyond superb in “10 Cloverfield Lane.” Should have been nominated for a Best Actress Oscar but the Academy dislikes sci-fi and horror. Assholes. Winstead was the only reason “Gemini Man” was tolerable. I bet she’s terrific in “Birds of Prey” as The Huntress.
Other critics have somewhat panned “Kate.” I attribute that to silly expectations. Should anyone believe a movie about an assassin will offer us anything fundamentally original or mind boggling? No. Hell, even the John Wick trilogy gets weaker as it progresses.
Let’s take this A- movie for what it is. Winstead showing us that Theron (“The Old Guard’) and Chastain (“Ava”) are OK as killers. Garner in “Peppermint” gives Winstead a better run for her money. Blunt in “The Edge of Tomorrow” better still.
But.
Winstead is plausible physically as a trigger puller and martial arts master. Her action scenes in “Kate” are executed adroitly and confidently, lacking what I call “girl lag.” You know, that slight femininity that makes it look like a punch is thrown with hesitation or accompanied by circumspection. There also might be a pinch of awkwardness. It’s like the difference between a guy’s handwriting – generally angular, sloppy, careless, unreadable – and a gal’s – generally flowing, clean, loopy, soft.
By now, Del is, like, where the fuck is the summary, Mladen?
Here’s the summary. Kate is an orphan befriended and trained by Varrick (Woody Harrelson) to kill people. Bad people, which, of course, makes Kate a White Hat assassin. Now an adult with a string of wins, Kate is tasked with a hit. The target is the second-in-command of a powerful Yakuza clan. The top lieutenant is also the brother of clan boss Kijima (played by Jun Kunimura, who I also adore because he’s in a goodly number of Godzilla films, including “Shin Godzilla”).
The hit is a success, sort of. Kate is ordered to take out Sato (Koji Nishiyama), though he’s with his young daughter. Ani (portrayed by Miku Patricia Martineau) takes her father’s blood spray in the face as the first bullet nudges aside neck and the second perforates both temples. Some months later, Kate is slipped Polonium 204. It’s a revenge killing ordered by who? No, not Putin. As her body deteriorates – there’s no antidote for acute radiation poisoning – Kate regains her humanity while first exploiting and then protecting a precocious Ani as she hunts for her killer. Don’t listen to Del when he tells you that Martineau steals the show. Watch Winstead in the public toilet of some Tokyo back alley act human, though her skin is bruising, has sores, and hemorrhages. In fact, always pay attention to Winstead’s face. It expresses as much as the words she speaks. Love it to no end.
The car chase in the film is hokey but the rest of the action blisters. Knife fights. Gun fights. Pure hand-to-hand. Lots of blood. Lot of cussing. Everything I want in an action thriller that has no purpose other than to entertain and make you say every now and then, “No way” or “Damn, girl” while cringing with delight from the protruding blade pushed through a nasal septum.
The “Kate” score fits with the bright lights of a big Japanese city. The soundtrack is a bunch of wonderful Japanese technopopelectronicapunk.
Well done, Mary Elizabeth, if I may call you by your first name. Just make sure you don’t end up pigeon-holed as an action star. Your acting chops are Amy Adams-like. Do drama. Do cerebral sci-fi. Go experimental. It’s only a matter of time before the gold statuette is in your hands.
Del’s take
Easy there, Tiger. You keep swingin’ that libido like a baseball bat and you’re gonna put somebody’s eye out.
Mladen is talking about two separate issues – “Kate,” the movie, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, the actor. OK, let’s do that.
Up first: Winstead.
I’ve seen several of her movies but her role in “Kate” is the first to leave an impression. I wonder why? I’ve decided it’s because she’s superb as an assassin. She has a watchability I can’t wrap my head around. I mean, she’s undeniably beautiful, with a uniquely expressive face. But there’s more to it than mere beauty. She brings a swagger to the role that other actors – Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Garner, for instance – fail to muster. She’s a much better Ripley than Katherine Waterston and that’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it? Ellen Ripley. “Aliens.” The “Get away from her you bitch!” role that set the bar for badassery among lady action figures. When the tank tops come out and the hair comes off, you know the shell casings are about to fly.
Winstead approaches her character with an understated and off-kilter confidence that was hobbled by a lame script, which always seemed to veer into the predictable just when you thought the movie was about to show you something new. That’s a shame because I think with better material Winstead could have gone toe to toe with Sigourney Weaver. Instead, we are given only moments of brilliance.
Another fine performance is delivered by – yes, Mladen – Miku Patricia Martineau, who excels as snotty Ani, a girl for whom life is nothing more than a sad simulation of her online reality, given meaning only through selfies, drama and Kate’s Terminator-like determination to complete her mission of vengeance. Ani is only a small planet orbiting Kate’s star but she revels in the baking heat when Kate goes nova.
One more comment about the acting and I’ll move along. Woody Harrelson plays Kate’s mentor and overseer, a kind of Charlie to her Angel, and I can’t decide if I hated him or the role. Harrelson played it with a loopy fatigue you see from Bruce Willis these days, but the role itself seemed poorly defined and a little too muted for its eventual octane rating.
That can be our segue into Mladen’s other second issue – the movie itself.
Is it entertaining? Absolutely. Is it original. Absolutely not. In fact, it seemed Frankensteined from just about every other recent action movie. What you get is a gumbo of clichés and soupy dialogue.
Not only that but all the characters in this rogues gallery are unlikeable, including Kate herself, the loveable assassin with a conscience. It was like watching high-decibel anti-vaxxers die of COVID-19. There’s a karmic justice at work here, yes, but the human being in you cringes as you see that metaphysical balancing go about its ugly business.
And the movie is a non-stop bloodbath. Between Kate’s wrecking ball tour of Tokyo’s Yakuza underworld to the toll on her body taken by the polonium 204, you will either avert your eyes or stop the movie and excuse yourself to the restroom.
If you’re a fan of action movies and especially those that feature a female protagonist, you’ll love “Kate.” It’s a brawl all right, with lots of firepower, graphic violence and gore. Beware of the treadworn plot and thin broth of dialogue.
I grade it a low B.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Amazon Studios.
“The Tomorrow War” Starring Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski, Sam Richardson, Keith Powers, Betty Gilpin, J.K. Simmons and others. Directed by Chris McKay. Too long (2 hours, 20 minutes). Rated PG-13. Amazon Prime.
Mladen’s take
“The Tomorrow War” would be an A if I could look past its derivative plot, two smulchy scenes (one on a beach and the other amid a ferocious battle with an alien matriarch), it’s PG-13 rating and that it’s a product of juggernaut Amazon, which is more of a threat to Earth than the beasts portrayed in the movie would be.
But, I can’t, so this film gets a B-, though the acting is good and the movie’s pacing decent despite its 3,000-hour run time.
Here’s the plot summary, which Del will correct: An intergalactic pet transporter carrying really mean quadrupeds that remind me of the creature in “Cloverfield” crashes in the past on our planet near the North Pole. Global warming thaws the tentacled critters, which also remind me of the mimics in “The Edge of Tomorrow,” aboard the spacecraft in the future. They proceed to nearly take over the planet after eating all its meaty life, including people. Flash to the present and the future, “Tenet”-like, comes to us via a time travel device because Future Humanity needs Current Humanity to help our species survive. How? By Current Humanity conscripting its people as soldiers to fight with Future Humanity against the carnivorous alien invaders. The now‑soldiers are transported in waves to fight in the Tomorrow War by the time travel machine.
The good thing about “The Tomorrow War” is that the time travel paradoxes created in the film are comprehensible.
The bad thing is that the director uses the time travel to insert a who-cares subplot about our protagonist, Dan Forester played by Chris Pratt, and his family. What’s hard about making a sci-fi action yarn without encumbering it with people relationships? I didn’t like Forester any better because he was frustrated with his life as I am with mine. I didn’t like him any better because he was a father as am I. Just give me a story that focuses on what would come naturally to most of us if animals tried to eat our children (and us). We’d fight until one or the other side wins.
If you like the other movies I mention above and masterpieces such as “Alien,” “Aliens,” and “The Thing,” you’ll enjoy “The Tomorrow War.” But, for a sci-fi guy like me, this movie is just one of many stopgap measures between the good stuff.
I also can’t shake the feeling that “The Tomorrow War” was put together somewhat hastily to make Bezos even more money. I don’t know, maybe he underestimated the cost of flying to the edge of space in his personal rocket and “The Tomorrow War” will help him pay the unexpected bills.
Del’s take
Mladen goes on about how he doesn’t care about people, but he really does. Beneath that so-called shriveled turnip of a heart lies the soul of a man who is not ashamed to messy-sob after hearing Netflix changed the ending of “The Notebook.” So I don’t take anything he says very seriously, especially when he fusses about relationships sullying “The Tomorrow War.”
If you removed the relationships from “The Tomorrow War” you’d be left with something like a documentary about ants in the Amazon. Not much fun there. I’d rather be blowing up spaceships and squabbling with my dad about shaving off that Unabomber beard.
“The Tomorrow War” is a perfectly adequate summer escapist movie, in the spirit of “Independence Day,” “Edge of Tomorrow” (a vastly underrated film) and “Battle: Los Angeles.” It is long on action, short on logic, and more entertaining than its length might suggest. In fact, I was shocked to learn it was 2 hours and 20 minutes. It didn’t feel like a two-hour movie.
Mladen summed the plot and you’ve likely seen much of the movie already through the ads. My advice is to turn off your brain and enjoy the cool special effects. The story offers nothing new, but then the drive-thru at McDonalds is always around the block so “new” is not high on the list of America’s entertainment palate. And Chris Pratt is, in my opinion, a huge miscast … but hey, there’s always another “Guardian of the Galaxy” or “Jurassic Park” to fall back on.
My gripe with Pratt is that he does not, in this time or any other, evoke the brawn and swagger of an action hero. He’s more teddy bear than Terminator, a plump Pillsbury Doughboy with a machine gun.
I’m a fan of J.K. Simmons but his role as Pratt’s father is reduced to an algorithmic cipher, just another piece in the blockbuster puzzle that appears to work but doesn’t. Simmons plays the role with a strange lack of emotion that made me wonder if he too wasn’t giggling about the absurdity of it all.
As the movie explodes and gore-sprays to its predictable conclusion you’re left wondering how much money this thing will put in Jeff Bezos’ pocket. From what I hear it was originally earmarked for theatrical release by Paramount until Uncle Covid and the Pandemics arrived in town, and somehow fell into Amazon’s pocket. At least they didn’t charge extra for Prime clients.
Hey look, the movie’s fine for what it is – two hours of mayhem and a chance for mankind to vent his violence on something other than the environment or himself. Don’t expect anything new or different; it’s as predictable as that glowing menu at the Mickey D’s drive-thru.
I agree with Mladen; the movie is a B-.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Del Stone Jr.
I was privileged to have grown up on the Miracle Strip.
To my loss – and everyone else’s loss – the Miracle Strip is now a thing of the past.
It has been replaced by an asphalt and concrete monument to greed.
This is what I want to tell you.
—
The Miracle Strip as it once existed, the Miracle Strip of the 1950s, ’60s and even the ’70s, possessed a unique charm, a kind of innocent simplicity dipped in yellow cornmeal and buttermilk, then deep-fat fried and served with melting butter. That recipe for charm still exists in places with names like Sopchoppy and Wewahitchka, but it has long since vanished from the Greater Destin-Fort Walton Beach Hellplex.
Most striking were the beaches – radiant and opalescent, their snow-white sands and turquoise waters exceeding the color-saturated promises of every postcard ever printed. They were everywhere, wherever you wanted them to be, mile after mile of trackless miracle. You parked your car along a berm of crushed oyster shells, threaded your way through sandspurs and sea oats, and set up shop on an infinite expanse of sand so white it threw sunshine into the sky, a halo of silvery, divine light. The water was the color of bluish-green you dreamed beaches in heaven looked like, and it was warm and calm.
It was all so restorative … to lie in the sand, sit at the water’s edge, listen to the gentle sussing of wind and waves, and swim out to the sandbar. The natural quiet opened places inside you had forgotten existed. You could think. And yes, you could dream.
If you lingered at the beach until your skin burned you were in trouble. You needed to swath yourself in vinegar water to ease the pain. You went around smelling like a salad and three days later you were molting like one of those green lizards that lived below your front porch light, but at least you didn’t scream when somebody slapped you on the back. Or maybe you did.
On the way home you might pull off at one of the roadside shanties for shrimp or boiled peanuts. There were restaurants that fried the pompano living near that sandbar swam to, and even a few fast-food joints where you could get a milkshake for a quarter and fries for 15 cents. You sat in the parking lot, on the hood of your car, and wondered where Bob had gotten the money for that ’57 Chevy, and you knew Mark had rolled his bangs on a pencil to get that flip when a dab of Brylcreem would have done just as well. Stupid boys.
The boat ramps were uncluttered and the fish so thick you could track down schools of feeding blues in Choctawhatchee Bay just by looking for the froth. In those days the bay was big enough for Sunfish sailboats and Glastron ski barges, and the water was so clear you could see starfish on the bottom, or seahorses clinging to the marsh grass by the Yacht Club.
The only traffic to speak of is when they held the Billy Bowlegs Ski Show on this side of the Cinco Bayou Bridge. Rugged-looking guys wearing boxy swimming trunks would ski off ramps and sail through the air. Pretty girls in clingy one-piece bathing suits would glide past the crowd, waving their flags. It was all so daring.
After the show, a couple of drunks would putter out into the middle of the bayou and light off a batch of sky rockets they had bought from a roadside stand just north of the Florida border. Then everybody would climb into their cars and go home, except the folks stopping at the Grants or the Delchamps just around the corner. There was also a Piggly Wiggly at the corner of Hollywood and Eglin and by God it had those fancy automatic doors, the kind that opened without you having to do a thing.
It was a wonderful place to grow up because although there was nothing to do, there was everything to do, from hanging out with the teenagers at Tower Beach to bird hunting at First American Farms in Freeport or tonging for oysters on the Choctawhatchee River delta. Your fun wasn’t made for you. You invented your own, and even that was fun.
But now?
Compared to then, now is just … ugly.
—
These days, summers on the Miracle Strip are challenging, not just for locals but tourists, too.
That’s because everybody’s trying to make a buck.
From hotels, resorts and condos to restaurants, T-shirt shops and attractions, everybody’s trying to make a buck.
And that has made the Miracle Strip ugly.
For locals and tourists who aren’t staying at a beachside hotel or condo, or a nearby facility with guaranteed access, getting to the beach is … challenging.
That’s because decades ago the local leadership did not recognize the beach belongs to everybody, not just the monied haves. In other parts of Florida the beaches are available to all, but in the Greater Destin-Fort Walton Beach Hellplex they were put up for sale. The haves slithered in and snapped them up, like gators scratching and hissing over a chicken carcass at one of those South Florida reptile attractions.
And then the haves put up their “no trespassing” signs and fences, and called law enforcement when they saw people “trespassing” on “their beach.”
These days, folks who don’t own Gulf-front property are restricted to a few public beach accesses which are hopelessly overcrowded. That is no exaggeration. They are hopelessly overcrowded.
But why bother?
The beach-going experience has been made ugly by money, from aggressive beach chair and umbrella vendors to advertising boats and banner-towing aircraft hawking restaurants and bars. Parasails, sightseeing helicopters, dolphin cruises, personal watercraft rentals – all of it has reduced the beach vacation to a vulgar sales pitch designed to separate people from their money.
Away from the water it’s not much better. Hotel rooms go for $600 a night and higher. Meals at a sit-down restaurant will set you back $50-plus per person. Gas along the coast and the interstate exits costs a lot more than everywhere else. In some places you have to pay for parking.
That’s the new ad slogan for the Miracle Strip – pay, pay, pay – all for the dubious pleasure of being stuck in never-ending gridlock, standing in long lines, and peeling bills out of your wallet.
—
There were those who warned against uncontrolled growth, but they were demonized as NIMBYs, opponents of progress, or Negative Nellies.
Turns out, Nelly was right. In fact, Nelly was an optimist.
The haves moved in and made their fortunes and created jobs – some good jobs but mostly low-paying jobs that provide no benefits. The haves made their millions and are enjoying the benefits of “progress.”
But for the rest of us “progress” has brought misery – a paralyzed infrastructure, exorbitant cost of living, rents so astronomical that fewer and fewer of us can afford to live here, and endless, ceaseless, hopeless crowds, noise and traffic.
This isn’t “progress” for us.
This is the sad destruction of what was once a paradise.
—
In the future, the haves will live and play on the Miracle Strip. The have-nots will be trucked in to reroof the houses, water the gardens, wash the cars and raise the kids. Fort Walton Beach, with its ample supply of storage units, gas stations, car washes and convenience stores, will become a service hub for points east.
Isn’t that the way it always goes? Money wins because everybody wants it.
But in the scrabble for a buck, an ugliness emerges that cheapens life itself. It is the ugliness of concrete monads standing like tombstones on what was once an opalescent beach. Of endless car windshields baking in the sun as traffic oozes from one quick-buck “attraction” to the next. Of credit cards being accepted and somebody, somewhere, growing fatter and richer while everybody else suffers just a little bit more.
And those lost afternoons of kneeling at the surf line, immersing yourself in the gentle ministration of wind and waves?
Gone.
The peace, serenity, and sense of place – no, make that sense of home. …
All gone.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.
—
“The Last Journey of Paul W.R.” Starring Hugo Becker, Lya Oussadit-Lessert, Paul Hamy and Jean Reno. Directed by Romain Quirot. 1 hour, 27 minutes. Unrated. Hulu.
Del’s take
“The Last Journey of Paul W.R.” is a visually arresting but spiritually obtuse commentary about many subjects, some personal, some cultural, some even scientific. But the viewer will decide if any of these arguments have merit and if the movie is as steeped in layers as it would have you believe.
Based on a short film by French director Romain Quirot, “The Last Journey of the Enigmatic Paul W.R.,” which premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, “Journey” tells the story of Paul W.R. (Hugo Becker), who is the only man who can save the world.
In the near future, man’s meddling with climate and his despoiling of the environment have led to catastrophe. Rising temperatures caused by fossil fuels have transformed the earth into a desert hellscape. France now resembles Morocco, where “Journey” was actually filmed.
Salvation arrives in the guise of a planetoid called “the red moon,” which contains a mysterious substance, Lumina, a highly energetic mineral that promises to solve mankind’s energy crisis. Unfortunately, the mining of Lumina has provoked a hostile response, a powerful electromagnetic barrier that surrounds the red moon and sends it on a collision course with the Earth.
Only one man, Paul W.R., for reasons unspecified, can penetrate the electromagnetic barrier and destroy the red moon. But hours before he is due to begin his mission, Paul W.R. flees, hiding among the thousands of climate refugees that populate desert France. He connects with a disaffected teenage girl, Elma (Lya Oussadit-Lessert), and together they embark on a quest to find a forest Paul remembers from his childhood, one that may hold personal salvation.
Bound up in this hegira is Paul’s father, Henri W.R. (Jean Reno), who in the American style neglected his sons and his dying wife to ensure mankind’s access to Lumina, and Paul’s brother, Elliott W.R. (Paul Hamy), who attempted to pierce the red moon’s veil and failed, coming away from that near catastrophe with a psychic ability to compel suicides. Elliott is pursuing Paul, ostensibly to bring him back for his flight to the red moon. But it is obvious a degree of sibling rivalry may result in a different outcome.
The movie is visually beautiful. Quirot composes scenes the way a poet might arrange quatrains. But lost in the images of desert and firestorms is a sense of purpose as Quirot struggles to decide which imperative will drive his movie – the larger issue of mankind’s demise or the dysfunctional dynamics of Paul W.R.’s family. Add to this muddle the presence of Elma, clearly a symbol for innocence, and the red moon itself, which may be a metaphor for Paul W.R.’s late mother, and the result is a film going in several different directions, none of them working with the other.
“Journey” is a European movie – a French movie – though at times it does lean toward the American sensibility for gunplay and fistfights. In the end it becomes a commentary about the power of the individual, and how one must remain true to his or herself. Or perhaps not.
I give this movie a grade of C+. It has lofty ambitions and beautiful scenery, but its lack of focus means few will appreciate whatever it was Quirot tried to say.
Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Paul Sableman by way of a Creative Commons license. https://www.flickr.com/photos/pasa/31911920834
Another mass shooting.
Ten people dead this time in what has become a depressing affront to human decency.
We will react the way we always react – with declarations of “thoughts and prayers,” angry remonstrations over gun control or mental health funding, vows to vote out the politicians who don’t act on behalf of our beliefs … and do nothing.
And you know what? Nothing will change. It will happen again. We will react the same way, and again, nothing will change.
Change involves risk. As a culture, we’ve become risk-averse in everything from fighting wars to having dinner at a locally owned restaurant. We don’t like risk because it’s … risky.
Meanwhile, some of us will become a little more afraid. When we go out in public we’ll look for places to take cover. We’ll make sure we know where the exits are.
Some of us will become more cynical. We’ll throw up our hands in defeat, ask a rhetorical question about the fundamental nature of society, then move along.
Many of us – far, far too many of us – will become more hardened and extreme in our political beliefs until any kind of action, for better or worse, becomes impossible.
All of us will be asking: Why?
What compels a young man – and many of these mass shooters are young men – to pick up a gun, go to a public place and open fire on innocent people?
It’s trite and dismissive to brand them as “mentally ill” and let it go at that, as if no further explanation is necessary. Of course they’re mentally ill. It could be argued that anybody who commits premeditated murder is mentally ill, and these horrible acts are premeditated. They are not impulse killings or spree killings. They are planned and prepared for, a process that occurs only when a person’s grasp of reality has been seized by infection and rots and dies.
But what caused them to become mentally ill?
Some might say their home environment. Others blame video games and violent movies, while others say we have too many guns floating around out there.
I’ve been thinking about this question for a long time.
I’m afraid I don’t have an answer.
But I do have suspicions.
When I was a kid, most households consisted of two parents. Typically it was the mother who kept the family running and the father who went off to earn a paycheck. These days, far too many households consist of only a single parent, somebody who must work to support the family and is therefore absent a good deal of the time. Many children are raising themselves or worse, they are being raised by television and the internet. While I have known single parents who did a good job bringing up their kids, I suspect having one parent at home results in a more stable family environment. It allows children time to be children, not miniature adults with adult responsibilities. Childhood is an essential ingredient of a well balanced individual, I would say. I make no judgments about the gender, race, politics or religious persuasions of the parents. And I acknowledge that even in two-parent households, the cost of living often requires both parents to work outside the house.
Marriage, it seems, is treated as a disposable commodity. I suspect that’s a symptom of our overall attitude toward the concept of disposability. Whether you agree or not, here in the United States we live in a throw-away world. We throw away everything – small appliances, food packaging, furniture, and yes, even people. We perceive something that’s broken as replaceable, and we throw it away, because it’s cheaper than trying to fix the original.
That was not the case when I was a kid. We fixed things. If the electric can-opener broke we took it to a repairman. If a clock broke we took it to a clock shop. Soft drink bottles carried deposits, and with a bicycle basket full of Coke, Pepsi and RC Cola bottles you could earn enough money to buy a box of frozen shrimp to use as fish bait. Fixing things took time and cost money, yes. But often, the thing that was fixed was better than the original. And guess what? All those clock fixers and can opener surgeons had jobs.
Back then, couples who were having problems with their relationships tended to stay together and attempt to fix them. They didn’t always succeed but they seemed more inclined to try. Your mother was right – marriage is hard work. Not all times are good times. But in today’s throw-away culture we treat marriage and relationships as disposable, just like that clock you bought at Big Lots that stopped working three days after you hung it on the living room wall. We place less value on marriage and relationships because we know if they are not instantly gratifying, we can simply throw them away and find another one.
Gratification. That’s another ingredient in this toxic stew of cultural rot. Our technology has given us the ability to be instantly gratified in just about everything we do. Want something right now? Buy it online and have it delivered. Don’t have the money to pay for it? Put it on credit. Want attention right now? Find it online. Want to be distracted or entertained right now? Lose yourself in a mobile phone screen.
Once, anything worth having was worth working and sacrificing for. A person did without, delayed gratification and scrimped on time or money to eventually acquire that magical thing. Once they had it, they worked like hell to keep it in great shape, which is why Dad spent Saturday morning washing and waxing the car, and Mom spent so much time cleaning the house and yelling at kids who didn’t wipe their feet before they came inside. A certain pride of ownership came with every new and great thing, and that was partly because it represented, to borrow a cliché, all the blood, sweat and yes, even a few tears, to get it in the first place.
The work it took to get those things – not just material possessions but marriages, relationships and children – was instructional in and of itself. It taught us the value of hard work, gave us patience, and made us appreciative for what we had.
I guess what I’m talking about are old-fashioned values.
Life was more difficult. Everything from washing clothes to fixing the car, cooking dinner and making sure the kids toed the line, took more effort. People didn’t have time to feel sorry for themselves, spread poison on the internet or immerse themselves in screed and demented jingoism. They were too busy trying to get by.
People tended to communicate by actually talking to other people. That was partly due to necessity – there were few alternatives – and partly because it was pleasurable. People invented reasons to socialize with other people, from parties to bridge club meetings, social work, scouting or just hanging out at local restaurants. When you speak to somebody in the flesh, a magical thing happens. You engage in not only verbal communication but interpersonal communication. You see the arch of their eyebrows; you hear the tone of their voice. You know instantly when they are joking, being sarcastic, or feeling grief.
You develop empathy.
That’s a quality sadly lacking in today’s environment of text messages, email, online comments and social media posts. We communicate, yes. More than at any previous time in human history. But the quality of our communication is lacking. It is disposable, just like everything else in our culture. We treat others online in ways we would never do in person – as a person who grew up before the arrival of the internet, I would say we rarely treated people as savagely as we do now in comments and social media posts. The lack of immediate physical presence has exerted a profound influence on not only what we say to others but how we say it. The dearth of empathy has turned many of us into sociopaths.
The internet has been a boon to mankind. Commerce, communication, the availability of knowledge – all of these activities have been revolutionized by the invention of the world wide web. Just today, for instance, I went online to search for a way to replace the batteries in an LED lantern. When I found the instructions in a PDF, I had to search for a way to mirror an image in Photoshop because the text was backwards. It would have taken me weeks to get those answers 50 years ago, and the Photoshop question would have been moot, because it didn’t exist 50 years ago.
I spend a great deal of my time online, from posting my ramblings on social media to checking weather models for hurricane development, watching movies, and offering my fiction for sale to readers directly.
But the digital world is a double-edged sword. I have an advantage over younger people in that I grew up with and learned a tradition of study and contemplation. I read quite a few books per year – some by excellent writers, others throw-away trash designed to entertain, not inform (I do not throw them away! I donate them to the SOCKS thrift shop to support their mission of saving and finding homes for abandoned cats and kittens in the Fort Walton Beach area.)
But for every online opportunity to learn, share information or spread kindness, there are a thousand ways to waste time, indulge in trash or even poison, and be cruel to other people. Pornography is rampant, for instance. While I personally don’t have a problem with porn, its easy availability means children are seeing it, and it is shaping their views about sex, romance, and relationships. Jingoism, political dogma and the echo chambers of extremism are also only a few clicks away. Nazis, racists, left- and right-wing extremists and others who never, ever would have received much of an audience in the past now make their voices as loud or louder than the mainstream.
The result is a skewed perception of reality. Marshall McLuhan told us that the medium is the message. If that’s the case, the message is that the United States is awash in rage, from angry comments to political extremism and violence. A kind of cultural lawlessness is at work in the absence of everything that leavened our behavior – hard work, struggle, delay of gratification, studiousness, and the consideration of others. These days it seems even acts of kindness we hear about are freighted with an expectation of reward other than the mere satisfaction of having done something nice.
It must sound as if I’m demonizing the present and deifying the past. I suppose I am, to an extent. I acknowledge life today, in many ways, is vastly superior to what it was 50 years ago. I can communicate instantly with people halfway around the world; in the past that would have required a costly telephone call. I take a pill that keeps my blood pressure down; in the past I would probably be dead of a stroke already. I underwent a laser iridotomy to treat my acute-angle glaucoma. It was an office procedure and I drove myself home. In the past it would have required major surgery. And it’s not just things – attitudes have changed. Although we are still struggling, we are making progress in eliminating racial discrimination. It is no longer an automatic death sentence for a man to admit he loves another man. We care about the environment (except for President Imbecile). We can build a device and send it out of the solar system to capture fantastic photos of objects we will not, in our lifetime, see for ourselves.
Life is so much better in so many ways.
But in other ways it is worse.
Families are fractured and kids are left to fend for themselves. People communicate vicariously, and much is lost in translation. Technology is a dehumanizing wall that is transforming us into misanthropes and sociopaths. Our obsession with disposability has extended to our relationships and how we treat others. Our technology has created a vast laziness that affects not only what we think but how we think it, corrupting both the medium and the message.
The medium and the message.
I would say many of these mass shootings represent a reservoir of anger generated by the way we live, coupled with a cry for attention from a generation of kids who desperately need some stability and love in their lives.
In the balance of things, our efforts to make life easier have not done us many favors.
Calls for additional gun controls, or more guns carried by more people, or more mental health funding, or any of the knee-jerk solutions offered by angry and frightened people in the wake of a mass shooting, are probably not going to work. Simple solutions to complex problems never do. The problem is a hydra, with many, many faces. One answer does not fit all.
So how do we fix this? I have some ideas, but because my analysis of the problem is made up of suspicions, so is my answer. Bear that in mind as you read this, if you are still with me.
I think the only answer is to re-establish certain values. People need to put down their phones and spend time with their kids. They need to get involved in their communities on a face-to-face basis and meet their neighbors. They need to make time for the important things in life – family and community – and stop throwing it away on self-indulgence and comfort. They need to make time for contemplation, thoughtfulness, and at least a small measure of scholarship. Sacrifice. Work hard. Delay gratification. Be nice.
And again, for God’s sake, spend time with your kids.
Those things won’t happen, but if they did, mass shootings might become a thing of the past.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, Ello and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .