Mladen and Del review ‘Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver’
“Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver” Starring Sofia Boutella as flabbergasting Kora; Djimon Hounsou as uninspiring Titus; Bae Doona as almost likeable Nemesis; Michiel Huisman as meek Gunnar; Staz Nair as the soppy prince Tarak, Ed Skrein as the only-good-enough-character-in-the-film Atticus Noble; and others. Directed by Zack Snyder. Two hours, 2 minutes. Rated PG-13. Streaming on Netflix.
Plot summary: More of mediocre and trope-filled “Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire” but 17 minutes longer. Rednecks fight an evil empire that can’t feed the soldiers it sallies to subdue rednecks.
Mladen’s grade: C+
Dels grade: D
Mladen’s take
This is an unauthorized review. That means it wasn’t approved by Del. He wanted me to review (and, someday, I will) a movie titled “This Is Not a Test.” Sheesh, Del, are you still afflicted by your memory of the Cuban Missile Crisis? Is that why I’m supposed the review “This Is Not a Test?” Because it’s a nuclear warhead Armageddon film and you’re worried that the Small Man in Moscow will trigger World War III via Ukraine that plunges all of us into Hobbes’s state of nature.
Anyway, let’s talk “Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver” recently launched on Netflix. Two is no better than One, which is to say all the principal characters, barring one, are bland at best and unlikeable at worst. Don’t care about Kora’s faux internal conflict. Don’t care about Titus’s guilt. Don’t care that Tarak is a nepo baby trying to redeem himself. Just. Don’t. Care. That’s a problem because Rebel Moon offers nothing by way of an original story or grand ideas.
Ready for some alien invasion action? Check out Mladen’s and Del’s review of “The Tomorrow War.”
If there’s nothing pathbreaking in a film, the only factor that can save it is a good script. Neither Rebel Moons have good scripts. Two is packed with the banal such as near-immortality to keep the bad guy going, i.e., resurrecting someone from the half-cell that was saved after they’ve been incinerated, blasted apart, depressurized, I don’t know, take your pick of demises. Other banalities abound, too. Stuff like peasants fighting to keep their simple lives, peasants organizing an effective armed resistance against the system’s behemoth power, Motherworld, with two days of combat training, and peasants harvesting a massive wheat fields in three days using scythes so that they have two days to get military training before the Man arrives with a dreadnought the size of a city and thousands of troops. And, how the hell is the Rebel Moon able to produce an atmosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere that sustains carbon-based life when, on the horizon, is a gas giant that should be either emitting extreme magnetic radiation from its core that sterilizes everything on the moon, or locks the moon tidally so that all you get is extreme heat without darkness on one half and extreme cold without light on the other.
The secret to enjoying Two for what it is, a second-rate “Star Wars” or “Starship Troopers,” is to pay attention to the film’s few merits.
There’s the sublime evilness of Atticus Noble, the soulless admiral in charge of the Motherland force trying to sack Rebel Moon and capture Kora, who has an alias that, when revealed, surprises or shocks no one in the village. Noble is fit. Noble has a good vocabulary. Noble, who is the opposite of the meaning of his surname, keeps his uniform tidy and his composure intact as he whacks peasants and beats the crap out of Kora. Hated to see him die.
Also noteworthy is the film’s score. The music is particularly effective during Two’s last 50 minutes. In fact, just skip to the last 50 minutes of the film to immerse yourself in the spectacular visual effects. The battle scenes are terrific. Watching automatic plasma fire in slow motion fracturing and melting structures again and again never became boring. The sound is top tier, too. Everything from the zip-bang of rifles to the blast of the big gun on the dreadnought enhanced the VFX.
If you watched One, you may as well watch Two. And, yes, prepare yourself to watch Three, which is on the way. Three promises to be the all-or-nothing showdown between the Dark Side of the For … ah, between the Saviors of the Peasants and the top Motherworld Bad Guy, whose name sounds like it was ripped off from the name of a genus of dinosaur.
Del’s take
After watching “Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver,” I’d like to ask, who’s the more scarred – the movie’s viewpoint character or ME, after Mladen dragged my sorry ass back into that steaming pile of wookie poop. I’ll say this about Part Two – it earned an even lower score than Part One’s dreadful Rotten Tomatoes rating of 23, clocking in at a mere 15 percent. That’s almost as shitty as Truth Social’s stock price.
Check out Del’s review of “Avatar: The Way of the Water.”
Mladen and I reviewed Part One last December and what can I say? Part Two is just as awful. OK, let me back up. It’s maybe a smidge less awful because the audience isn’t forced to suffer through the painful backstory infodump that took place in Part One. See? There is a God.
Here’s what I wrote in my review of Part One. These observations remain painfully true of Part Two:
“Rebel Moon” is Star Wars Lite, if such a thing is possible. When I saw director Snyder’s remake of “Dawn of the Dead” I told myself, “Now here’s a guy who knows how to make a movie.” Unfortunately, Snyder is a guy who knows how to make one movie. “Rebel Moon” looks just like “Sucker Punch,” “300” and “Watchmen,” and despite the lofty ambitions, it’s surprisingly bereft of depth.
Let’s not even talk about things like tropes or archetypes – “Rebel Moon” is a bad copy of a bad copy, like that photocopy of the mysterious night shift worker’s ass that turned up on the Xerox machine one morning and now everybody’s passing it around the office.
Dialogue is, well, corny. And not just corny corny, but fanboy at the science fiction convention Dungeons & Dragons icebreaker corny. Characterization is practically non-existent – you’ve seen these people in dozens of movies over the years, starting with Akira Kurosawa’s “The Seven Samurai,” the same place Snyder got the plot. It would have been hilarious if he’d ripped off J.J. Abrams. Alas, the universe doesn’t have that ironic a sense of humor. FX are not great, either. I should think $166 million would buy you a more realistic-looking spaceship or future city.
It’s all a gussied-up, overhyped pile of same-old, same-old, and I’ll be honest – it actually offends me. The science fiction genre – at least the printed-on-paper part of the genre – has thousands of really terrific stories waiting to be told. Why waste $166 million on this retread?
Are you getting the idea I really hated this movie?
I did embrace one aspect of the Rebel Moon universe – I bought two bags of Rebel Moon popcorn, but only because Walmart had them marked down to $2 apiece. And let me say, even the popcorn was crappy – chewy and stale, with lots of tooth-breaking unpopped kernels. If you want a really good bag of movie-style popcorn I recommend the AMC brand. It’s awesome. Just be sure to heat it up in the microwave for 30 seconds.
As Mladen, in a rare moment of cognitive awareness, pointed out, there actually may be a Rebel Moon Part 3. I’m telling you right now if he tries to make me watch that crap I’ll retaliate with lots of gay romance movies and a doc about the continuing evolution of the band Duran Duran. By the way, did you know they got that name from an old Jane Fonda movie, “Barbarella”? Yeah. I saw “Barbarella” at a drive-in in the early ’70s. Drunk, of course, because that’s the only way you can sit through a showing of “Barbarella.”
I give Part Two a D. It’s a goulash of clichés and horrible dialogue, and I’m angry Hollywood thinks I’m stupid enough to want that.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.
Image courtesy of Raw Pixel by way of a Creative Commons license.
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 .
The author at the '94 San Diego Comicon. Image courtesy of Lurene Haines
In the summer of 1994 I participated in the San Diego Comicon as a guest. It was to be my first and last visit.
My credentials hardly qualified me as a “guest.” I went there largely on the coattails of cover artist Dave Dorman and his then-wife, Lurene Haines. I’d known Dave and Lurene since the early ‘90s; Lurene joined our science fiction-horror writers group, which at the time consisted of me, my friend Ray Aldridge, Ed Sears and his daughter Vicki, and Richard Bamberg. We usually met at a local saloon named Chan’s, which sat on the limb of a tranquil bayou. Our meetings were anything but tranquil. Fueled by too much beer, we raucously critiqued each other’s work, and usually extended the meeting to a nearby poolhall, Starcade. Sometimes Dave would join us. That’s how we met.
Lurene was constantly encouraging us to try our hands at scripting comic books. As a kid I’d read comics – in Spain, where there was no TV and precious little radio. We had no other option … well, I suppose I could’ve read a book, but c’mon! I was 6 years old. But as I grew older and passed through my TV-watching stage, I turned to books, and as I began writing my own stories it was in the narrative style of novels and short stories, not the scripted style of comics.
Still, when Lurene told us about the money to be made, I was tempted – especially when she floated a possible project with Marvel Comics. Seems their Epic imprint was looking for scripts for Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser” series. I’d read Barker’s “Books of Blood” and “The Hellbound Heart” upon which “Hellraiser” was based, and I knew the basic premise – successfully manipulate the Lament Configuration (and you could do so only if you were deservingly evil) and a lifetime of torment followed.
I sat down and wrote my first script, modeled on the style of a script Dave and Lurene loaned me. When I was done I gave it to Lurene, who submitted it with a script she had written for “Hellraiser” editor Dan Chichester. A few weeks later, voila! Both were accepted and suddenly I was a comic book writer. About the same time I sold my first short story to a professional publisher, Bantam-Spectra’s “Full Spectrum” anthology series. Now I as a dual-track writer – comics and prose.
A year or so later I was commiserating with Dave and Lurene about my future as a writer, and how I’d like to do the job full-time. They’d been encouraging me to take on more work in comics, and they wanted me to start going with them to conventions. I knew from experience that if you wanted writing jobs you had to attend conventions – that’s where you meet editors, make impressions, and get future jobs. It’s also where you learn about future projects that aren’t advertised to the public body of writers. That was one of my greatest frustrations as a beginning writer – it seemed a vast body of markets existed just beyond my reach, simply because I didn’t know about them, or hadn’t been invited to submit. And that was because none of these editors knew I existed. I didn’t attend conventions.
So I sat down with Dave and Lurene one afternoon and basically said “Yes, I’ll go to conventions with you. I want to get into comics.” Hence, my departure for San Diego one summer morning in 1994.
I really didn’t know how lucky I was – to have an entre to the professional world of comic book publishing at the hands of Dave Dorman, one of the greatest cover artists of our time … he opened far more doors for me than I deserved. I’ve never had a good opinion of myself as a writer. Bottom line? I’m not really very smart. Most writers I know are smart people who can not only come up with a story idea but conceive it both artistically and mechanically, something that was impossible for me to do. My approach was to jump in, see what worked, and rewrite – not the most efficient process. And if you asked what I was attempting to “say” with a particular work I likely couldn’t tell you. I just didn’t know. I didn’t know because I wasn’t very smart.
But I did know comic book artists were perhaps not the best storytellers – visually, yes. But plot-wise? Maybe not. Some were. But based on what I was seeing in contemporary comics, the stories to a large extent seemed thin, the artwork overpowering. So maybe there was a place in comics for a prose writer, even a lame, half-assed prose writer like myself.
You may remember in the late ’80s through the mid-’90s comics enjoyed a renaissance thanks to the collectibles market. We were part of that boom. There was good money to be made – excellent money – if you could get the work. And Dave was getting the work, so much he couldn’t keep up with it all. This was prior to the wave of comics-to-movies but you could see that coming down the road as science fiction, fantasy and horror inserted themselves into the popular entertainment medium. It really did look like the sky was the limit.
In 1994 Comicon was not the gigantic multi-media con it is today. Mostly it concentrated on comics and graphic novels. You did see the occasional celebrity but nothing like the extravaganza that just played out in San Diego.
Here are my impressions:
The flight to San Diego: I could never become a habitue of the convention circuit because I hate flying, and most of the big cons are located across country. Comicon is in San Diego. Chicago hosts another big comic convention. The World Fantasy, World Horror and World Science Fiction conventions travel around the country.
I remember the flight from Pensacola to San Diego as an endurance test of counting the minutes. In fact, it inspired me to write a short story, “The Fear of Fear Itself,” which was published in the Pocket Books anthology “More Phobias.”
As we were on final approach to San Diego International Airport, Lurene said, “Hey Del, look out the window.” I did, and all I could see were buildings – we were flying between skyscrapers! The airport sits in the middle of town, right on the water, and sometimes the approach takes you through buildings on the hills around the harbor. It was very scary for somebody who doesn’t like to fly.
The airport: I was astonished at how small the airport was. Space is at a premium in San Diego, and the tiny airport is a product of that confined area. Our plane didn’t even park next to a skyramp – we climbed down stairs and walked across the tarmac to the terminal, which was very dark and somewhat run-down. As I looked back to the airplane I saw a fluid dripping from one of the engines. Thank God I hadn’t seen that before we took off.
San Diego itself: Because of its small area for such a large city, San Diego is very tightly and efficiently laid out. It’s got lots of restaurants, hotels and shopping areas, including a very neat vertical shopping center, Horton Plaza, that lay within walking distance of the Westin San Diego, where we were staying.
Jogging with a DC editor: Every morning Lurene and I arose before sunup and went jogging with an editor from DC. I believe it was John Nee though I may be mistaken. He set a “brisk pace,” which is to say I was nearly exhausted by the time we finished. I remember talking with him in the hotel lobby one morning. I turned the subject to comic books and he very quickly said, “That’s work. Let’s not talk about work.” I learned at that moment many editors attend conventions to socialize, not network per se, and that knowledge served me well over the coming years.
The Convention Center: The San Diego Convention Center epitomizes what convention centers should be about. It’s a large, modern structure, right on the water, and becomes the focal point of the hotel, restaurant and shopping district. I also remember it being very hot inside – you cram 10,000 fanboys-girls into a confined space with multi-media platforms running at virtually every booth and you get some serious heat. I remember sweating the entire time I was there. I remember when I was there peeking behind a curtain at a Ford display of the new model Mustang. Interesting!
The fans: Even in 1994 the convention was packed! You could barely navigate the walkways and it was difficult to approach a booth. Many fans were dressed in costumes, which is not unusual. I’d attended enough conventions to become inured to that reality. Many of the costumes I couldn’t identify – I simply wasn’t that familiar with comics.
Kij Johnson: I met one other prose writer there, Kij Johnson. We were so relieved to run into one another. We chatted for a few minutes then went our separate ways, but it was nice to encounter a kindred soul of prose.
The celebrities: I encountered only two celebrities while I was there, Clive Barker and John Ritter. Barker was making his way through a crowd and I didn’t get to speak to him. You’ll laugh when I saw this, but I thought he’d be taller. Ritter was standing in the Westin parking garage with a passel of kids, waiting for his car to be brought to him by the valet. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him either.
The convention: I say this for the sake of honesty: I felt like a fish out of water. I was unfamiliar with the comic book monde and I knew none of these people. Lurene was pressuring me to “do business” and I’m sure any “business” I did was counterproductive as there was no way to disguise my ignorance. The extent of my comic book work consisted of one “Hellraiser” story and a novella titled “Roadkill,” published by Caliber. Consequently, nobody knew who I was either and they were not willing to waste time on an unknown quantity like yours truly. So I spent the first two days wandering the convention hall, picking up as many business cards as I could and talking to whomever would listen to me. It didn’t seem my time there was very productive yet I was spending a small fortune on plane fare, the hotel, and eating at pricey restaurants. So finally on Day 3 I said to hell with it and spent the day at Horton Plaza, shopping. I was exhausted and more than a little depressed. It seemed I had no place there and wouldn’t have until I’d educated myself about the world of comics, and published a few more projects. I spent one more day at the convention, basically accomplishing nothing, and thankfully we left the next day.
The ride back: The flight out of San Diego was turbulent. By this time Lurene had assumed the role of official Calmer of Del on the Plane Flight and spent the first 30 minutes assuring me these bumps and bounces were perfectly normal. My God, I couldn’t think of anything more awful than being trapped in a metal tube five miles above the ground with nowhere to go and nothing to do if anything went wrong. When we arrived in Pensacola that night I dropped to my knees in the parking lot and kissed the ground. It was the end of our convention travels for the year. I think they got a picture of that.
Shortly thereafter I suffered a kind of existential overload and temporarily called an end to my convention travels. Work was overwhelming, I was experiencing a great deal of turmoil in my personal life, and I was not happy with my writing life. Dave was getting me tons of work, but over time I began to realize that while my ego and my bank account liked comics, my heart belonged to prose. But all was not well in the prose world either. I was receiving invitations to themed anthologies, but found myself balking at the write-a-story-to-fit-the-premise requirement. Worse, I had just gotten access to the Internet and found myself wondering if the web would allow time in anyone’s day to read a book, and if reading itself would fall out of fashion. The prospects for a barely competent writer like myself making a living of novels seemed daunting at best.
Toward the end of the ’90s and into the 2000s, I found myself writing less. I was constantly distracted by online stuff, and the idea of sitting behind the computer for hours on end, doing something that was similar to what I did at work all day, struck me as unfathomable. I did manage to finish a novella which became a finalist for the British Fantasy Award, and I took a great deal of pride in that (although it was savaged by British critics). I managed to publish a short story here and there. But it seemed the momentum was lost. Today, I wouldn’t even know how to go about submitting a written work to a publication, and I know nothing about the self-publishing industry. Seeing as how that’s where books like “Twilight” and “Fifty Shades of Gray” came from, perhaps I should.
I always be indebted to Dave and Lurene for trying to help me.
But I don’t think I’ll be attending any more Comicons.
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 .
The view from my upstairs patio overlooking the pool and courtyard of Bienville Square on Hughes Street in Fort Walton Beach. Image courtesy of Del Stone Jr.
This morning I slept in until the late hour of 7:25 a.m. And I didn’t make the bed immediately. My God, what’s happening to me?
This is the day I usually become panic-stricken. It’s the first real day of vacation and I begin to sense the time slipping away. Saturday and Sunday are always the free bonus days where I get to do anything I want, though Friday night is the best. I have a full week of no stress, no obligations and lots of free time ahead. I can finally, completely relax, knowing that if the phone rings it won’t be a calamity that I am responsible for fixing.
I vow each vacation to not waste my time off sitting behind the computer. I promise to GET STUFF DONE, life-changing “stuff,” even if it’s finally ironing all the clothes in the ironing closet. I pursue this with great enthusiasm on Saturday, let up a little on Sunday, then awaken Monday to realize time is slipping away and I’d better get busy. That’s what I did today.
The house reeked of jambalaya. The fridge was packed to the point of nearly exploding with leftovers from yesterday’s Super Bowl extravaganza. But at least the kitchen was clean. In fact, the entire house looked neat and orderly. I was pleased.
So. I got my stuff together for my taxes. I take them to a CPA. In the past my taxes were so complicated I decided it was worth the money to hire somebody to do them. I’d been doing them and getting back $300 or so – the first year I took them to a CPA I got back well over $1,000. It’s been that way ever since, except one year when I made so much money writing I actually had to send the IRS a check. Unfortunately that has never happened again.
My first stop was the tax collector’s office. I had to apply for a rebate on the Pathfinder’s tag. The tax collector’s office is now conveniently hidden in the very back of the new Uptown Station expansion. You enter a foyer; on the left is an office that has not yet been finished. The guts of the thing are hanging out. On the right is the tax collector’s office. You walk into a spacious room and are immediately confronted by an electronic device that wants to know about your “transaction.” You push a button and it spits out a piece of paper with a number on it. Then, you wait until a very pleasant female voice calls out over a P.A. system what you hope will be your number. It reminded me of that Ridley Scott commercial for Apple back in the 1980s. The lady who helped me was pleasant but not overly friendly, which I guess is not a complaint per se. It’s just that every other time I’ve been there the staff was very chatty and personal, which I like. This person had that professional distance I’m not accustomed to encountering at the tax collector’s office. She did, however, get me the form and tell me where to mail it so my mission was a success.
I then dropped off bags of beer bottles, tin cans, plastic bottles, and aluminum at the recycling van. Wasn’t I just there Saturday? Why yes, I was. But over the course of Saturday and Sunday I filled two more bags! So there. And the drunken wasps were nowhere to be found.
As it was just around the corner, I dropped by the used book store to leave a couple of paperbacks and see if they had two books I’m looking for, The Bourne Supremacy and Ben Bova’s Mars Lives. They were closed! Seems like every time I go by there the place is closed. They keep irregular hours and who knows, maybe they close on Mondays. Or maybe the hired help was sick. Don’t know.
So I set out in search of a day-old bakery. There’s one on Green Acres Road but I thought there was one over by Santa Rosa Mall, so I headed off that way. No such luck. One thing I noticed, however, was the emptiness of the mall. At first I thought it was closed. A sad cluster of cars was parked outside the entrance to JC Penney, and another in front of the main entrance. That was it. My God, at that rate the mall won’t be able to stay open. I haven’t been there in years and probably should drop by just to see if they have some interesting new stores.
One other thing I noticed while I was over there is that Mary Esther has a nature trail! I guess it’s been there awhile but I’d never seen it. The place was unusually busy for a workday. I’ll have to drop by with my camera and do a photo gallery.
I visited the Salvation Army’s new digs at Mary Esther Plaza and bought a couple of books, The Flight of the Intruder and another war-themed novel. I’ve been reading lots of those lately and I enjoy them. Paperbacks at S.A. are only 50 cents. The selection is pretty bad but I saw a few goodies on the shelves.
Then it was off to the bakery, where I found a package of hoagie rolls for $1.75 and a loaf of whole-wheat bread for the same price. Why would you buy bread from the supermarket ever again?
I decided to make one more attempt at the used bookstore. Still closed. Arghhh! So I came home, changed clothes and went to Mom’s to work in her yard. I got a swath of leaves raked up and hauled out, and yet again mourned the forlorn “garden” I’ve tried to establish in that weird little space between her carport and house. I’ve tried everything in that spot and NOTHING will grow there, not even cactus. The only thing that ever did well was monkey grass, which I hate. My new attempt includes green and variegated spider plants, which you can literally throw on the ground and they’ll grow. If that fails I might just stick a bunch of artificial plants in that spot and be done with it.
Afterwards I returned home, got cleaned up and sat down to work on my zombie story. Gosh, I hope Steve isn’t reading this because he might be irked to hear I am just now starting the story. Truth is I’ve agonized over this thing. When I first heard of the anthology an idea immediately sprang to mind, but then I began searching for an alternative. Now I’m back to the original idea. I hope it’s trendy enough. I ran into that problem with a story I wrote for Live Without a Net. Turns out all the stories in that book were super-trendy; mine was a dowdy conventional story. I felt like I’d worn blue jeans to the prom. I didn’t want to repeat that mistake but the truth is, I can’t pretend to be something I’m not, in life or writing. So I’ll just do the best story I’m capable of writing and hope it’s good enough to make the cut. I created a Word file and started putting words on “paper” so to speak. The story began to unfold and better, because this is something I struggle with, the tone began to emerge. I like what I’ve done so far and that’s a good sign. It’s interesting – to me, anyway.
Then I settled down to eat dinner and watch that Steven Seagal movie I rented Sunday. Dinner was the vegetable tray we didn’t touch during the Super Bowl. I cooked the broccoli and carrots, and ate the rest of the veggies raw. The movie was predictable. Steven Seagal is a former member of the Russian mafia who now writes novels. His ex-wife and daughter are killed and he must find out who did it. Seagal is barely comprehensible when he speaks English. With an affected Russian accent – and his mumbling – you can’t keep track of anything he’s saying! At one point I fell asleep during the movie and will have to rewatch it.
I went to bed at the insanely early hour of 9:30. Isn’t that crazy? I was tired and immediately crashed asleep. With luck I’ll make good progress on my story Tuesday … and maybe get that ironing done. Won’t THAT be fun!
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 .
This photo has been largely agreed upon as having been taken at the Palm Theater in Fort Walton Beach, although some doubt remains. I was unable to find the name of the photographer. If anybody knows the identity of the photographer, please let me know. I'll be happy to include a credit or remove the photo, if the photographer would prefer. I found it under a Creative Commons license and it appears to be available for use.
First they closed the Stardust. Now, the old Palm Theater has burned to the ground.
Ashes to dust.
For me, the Palm, called The Picture Show these past few years, had assumed a warm and comfortable place in memory, like a favorite song, that first love or one of life’s essential awakenings.
The Palm was the venue for my first “date.” I was 12 and she was 11. My mother dropped us off; her mother picked us up. The feature was Disney’s “Snow White.” I accidentally kicked over the bottle of Coke I’d smuggled into the theater. It clanked loudly all the way to the front of the auditorium.
And – ahem – there was no kissing (Yuck).
That first date notwithstanding, the Palm is where I traveled from childhood to adolescence. The occasion was “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” a James Bond movie, which for years my parents had forbidden me to see, the reason being sex, not violence. I knew that when James Bond became OK, something important about me had changed. I was growing up.
It is also where a friend and I sat through all five “Planet of the Apes” movies. We began this marathon by crouching on the floor in front of the screen, as every mother in town had spotted this rare opportunity to get rid of the kids for a day and the theater was overrun with fidgety 8-year-olds. Luckily, we found an empty seat next to a boy who was willing to let his little brother sit in his lap, so we moved back a few rows, preventing permanent damage to our necks, eyes and spines.
The Palm had a balcony – prime real estate for vandalous little boys with half foot-long gherkins ripe with bright green juice to be squirted onto an unsuspecting audience.
And the staff did not roust you from the theater after each movie showing. You could stay as long as you wanted. I watched “You Only Live Twice” three times in a row.
The Palm had terrific air-conditioning, and on a hot summer afternoon a bratty little kid could lie about his age, get in for 50 cents, and spend two wonderful hours ensconced within the balm of dry, cool, delicious darkness, mesmerized by what have become genre classics: “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “The Other” and “Omega Man.”
Alas, the Palm fell victim to the multiplexes – a shame because moviegoers today are deprived of a unique experience: sitting in a spacious theater, where curtains roll back to reveal a screen as wide as a prairie, and where the synergy of picture and audience reaches a critical mass that cannot be duplicated in the sticky little boxes that pass for theaters these days.
I miss the Palm. It didn’t have fancy sound systems or cup holders in the seats, but it did have grandeur and a sense of excitement that made going to the movies a big deal in a little kid’s life.
Maybe one day theaters will go back to what the Palm was. I think we could all use that small touch of class.
This column was published in the October 1998 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.
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 .
Image courtesy of Flickr user Lance H. Bates under the auspices of a Creative Commons license. https://www.flickr.com/photos/7977365@N08/5709021472/
A number of people called, e-mailed, faxed, or contacted me via the Intergalactic Council to let me know what a rube I am for suggesting flying saucers are a figment of the collective unconscious.
One person even admonished me to put away my Bible (I nearly choked with laughter over that!) and asserted people like me actually hinder the exploration of space by dissing poor little E.T.
I’m not sure what to think about all this. It’s a comfort knowing that skepticism lives in this day of McDonaldized Mass Mind thinking. But at the same time, how spooky to see that this skepticism is fueled by utter nonsense.
Tell you what: I’ll eat my words if somebody can produce a real, live flying saucer, demonstrably from outer space. Until then, you guys keep shaking your hoodoo sticks and baying at the moon.
I’ll wait for the real scientists to give us our answers.
Look for their names on the silver screen! It was bad enough that I nearly sprained my back and gave myself leg cramps trying to help Harrison Ford crawl back into the airplane in “Air Force One.” But then I had to wait in agony until the end of the credits to see the acknowledgments for Eglin and Hurlburt.
But it was time well spent for about 20 of us who remained in the theater as the movie ended Sunday afternoon. When the names of our local bases rolled across the screen, everybody clapped and cheered.
“Air Force One” is one darned exciting movie – probably the best of the action-movie crop this summer. Check it out – and watch those credits roll.
Let it rain: Saturday’s deluge prompted a very strange reaction among some of us around town.
It was such a thunderous downpour – typical for Florida – that people I talked to didn’t even try to go out and about. They stayed at home and watched NASCAR, the Brickyard 400.
I’m not a big NASCAR fan, but like those other people, I was glued to the TV, rooting for all the old-timers, drivers like Bill Elliot (who is the husband of former Daily News photographer Cindy Poole) and casting hexes on young showoffs like Jeff Gordon.
Next thing you know we’ll be packing up the Winnebago and caravanning to Talladega.
Who won the race?
Somebody named Tide.
This week’s wire weirdness: DAKAR, Senegal (AP) – Vigilante mobs convinced that foreign sorcerers can shrink a man’s genitals with a mere handshake have killed eight people in Senegal in the past week.
Attackers killed five people at Ziguinghor in southern Senegal after a man accused one of them of making his penis shrink, newspapers reported Friday. At least three other people were killed in the West African nation’s capital, Dakar.
Headlines that didn’t work: Miners Refuse to Work after Death.
Strange but true: A man in Johannesburg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other’s heads.
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 .