Monthly Archives: March 2012
Let me preface this by saying that I know that Michael Bay does not care about my personal opinion. I know he isn’t going to read this blog and tweet, “Oh yeah, @theGreat_Puzzle thinks I only know how to ‘splode things, but he only know hows to rant. Rabble, rabble, rabble! Watch this! *Dives into Scrooge McDuck vault of gold coins.” And not just because it’s 42 characters over the 140 maximum, but because it really doesn’t mean a goddamn thing. People are still going to flock to his movies and people are still going to pay the $47.50 to see them in 3D.
Before today I would never say that I hated Michael Bay. Don’t get me wrong, I never liked him. Far from it actually, but I would never associate him with the word hate. Not because it’s too strong of a word, because if you know anything about me, I hate most things. But perhaps I was being easy on him because he brought Megan Fox to the lime light. Actually, that has to be it, because other than that single reason, I can not imagine why I wouldn’t hate him.
I mean, we’re talking about a guy that took a franchise about giant robots that turn into cars, and various other forms of technology and constantly destroy each other into a story about that little kid from Even Stevens. How? How do you do that? I didn’t even know that was possible. And when I say giant robots, it’s not like I mean “Real Steel” robots that are slightly taller than Hugh Jackman, and by destroy each other, I don’t mean they punch each other until one of their heads pops up and you have to push it back down to initiate the next fight. I’m talking about giant robots the size of row homes, some so large that they can crush pyramids, or devour planets. I’m talking about something that Michael Bay should have been good at for once. Something that is ‘splosion centered, because let’s face it, that’s the only word he knows when he walks into the writer’s room.
I feel like when he sits down with his writers, they’re like, “Okay Michael, so we started fleshing out this one scene. We’re thinking that we’re going to have Megan Fox in like nothing, and then she’s going to do this thing where she’s next to a pool wearing even less, but we’re hitting a road block. What do you think we should do with it?” And then he just says, “Well, we could add a building, and then have this really big explosion that takes out the building behind her, and she could fly forward, avoiding it, like she wasn’t that close enough to it to have any long term effects, even though she was, but trust me. She won’t have any hearing problems from a ‘splosion of that magnitude, and her skin won’t be seared off by the heat wave that follows it. I mean, of course we’ll throw a layer of dust on her to make it realistic, but that’s the only damage that she’d sustain, and then after that, another explosion will happen in the background, but the Even Stevens kid will run through it, because he’s a bad ass, and awesome.” And somehow he always adjourns those meetings the same way, “Man I loved that show, Even Stevens. The only thing that would have made it better is if that little kid that loved bacon, loved explosions instead.”
I know what you’re thinking, where is this going? What does his love for ‘splosions have to do with you hating him? And why now? The last Transformers movie came out last year, and it wasn’t that bad, right? So, why has his status changed from a yellow-orange to a crimson on the NHS? (The National Hate Scale)
The answer is simple, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
For dramatic effect, please read this again.
Teenage Alien Ninja Turtles.
I know what you’re thinking, Jason, you must have stuttered or went brain dead in the middle of that last reiteration because what you said is just stupid. They’re not aliens. They were turtles that fell into the sewer and were mutated into crime fighting ninjas only after coming into contact with neon green ooze, and being trained by a Japanese rat that is hell bent on taking out the man who killed his own mentor (in some versions, anyway). So, why would you say aliens? That’s just dumb. That’s what I thought too. I thought I must have made a mistake. It must have been in my subconscious because I was talking about Transformers, or thinking about that awesome ending to that last Indiana Jones movie. My mind must have been elsewhere, because the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are mutants, not aliens, right?
Not anymore.
When talking about the reboot of the Ninja Turtle franchise, here’s what Michael Bay had to say:
“When you see this movie, kids will believe one day that these turtles do exist, when we’re done with this movie. These turtles are from an alien race, and they’re going to be tough, edgy, funny, and completely lovable.” – Michael Bay
… Okay. I don’t even have anything else to say, because I don’t have to. I think that we can all agree, to agree here that the world is ending. That Michael Bay knows something we don’t, like maybe that at the end of the Mayan Calendar that we’re going to be invaded by alien turtles, and this is the way of warning us, but don’t worry, they’re going to be totally tough and edgy and funny and completely lovable.
Kids will adore them.
… well I’m glad you think that Michael. I’m glad you think that. Because I’m done here. I’m going to astronaut school, or winning the lottery, or doing something drastic to escape whatever is left of mankind, because I don’t want to live on this planet anymore. First, Firefly gets canceled by Fox, then the Dragonball movie comes out and they call Piccolo, “Peekolo”, then Lost ends, then Wonka’s Oompa Loompa’s escape and make television history by living in Seaside Heights, then instead of making new movies, or even rebooting old franchises, director’s have somehow managed to get even lazier by re-releasing old films again in 3D without changing anything besides the subtitles, and now this.
It’s just too much.
It’s too much for any single specimen to deal with.
But since me flying away in a lonely little escape pod is far from being even remotely possible, I think that at the very least we should try to reach out to Michael Bay and explain to him that the Ninja Turtles are mutants, not aliens, and that if he manages to mess this up any worse than Stuart Gillard messed up the third film, that he’s going to have hell to pay, or just a lot of investors, because no no one will see it, and it will flop harder than John Carter and the Prince of Persia combined.
So, choose your next move carefully, Mr. Bay.
Very carefully.
So, lately I have been trying this thing called productivity. It’s kind of weird, and isn’t something that I am all that familiar with.
Well, that sounds bad.
Let me clarify.
It’s not that I am not a productive person because I believe that I am, but only when I have an end game, only when I have a goal to accomplish. For a long time, I kind of stopped creating goals for myself because I thought that I was accomplishing things. I thought that by keeping busy with menial tasks that I was doing something, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. I was merely keeping my mind occupied enough to think that I was accomplishing something, and thinking about it, it kind of makes you sick, you know? Like, thinking about it, you’re just biding time, waiting for someone or something to snap you into the next mode of productivity, and that’s not living at all.
You can’t expect anyone to hand you anything, and I think to an extent that I let that happen for a little while. Not that I expected someone to ring the doorbell with an opportunity and wait long enough for me to run downstairs and answer it, but I think that I have kind of waited for opportunity to come to me, and let’s be serious, who has that ever worked for? Okay, Will Smith’s kids don’t count. They were going to be famous no matter what they looked like or what they did, but for us mortals, opportunity doesn’t knock on your door. It’s in a car somewhere, flying down the highway and if you’re lucky, you’ll pull up next to it and get a glimpse of what it has to offer. It won’t ever slow down long enough for you to line up the cars, open your window and dive into the backseat (summer-movie-blockbuster style), but it will let you catch a glimpse of the driver’s GPS, maybe not the final destination, but you’ll see what route he’s taking. It will give you just enough to get somewhere if you want to get there.
And it kind of makes you think, you know? It makes you wonder what opportunities you missed out on, it makes you think where you would be if you stepped outside of the box and onto that metaphorical highway.
I’m not saying that I’ve been sitting in my computer chair for the past ten years, listening for that annoying chime to sound through the house so I can take off running. I mean, I went to college for seven years, I got a pair of Bachelor’s degrees, I worked full time during the winter, and at every event that I could work during the summer. It’s not like I would ever say that I was outright lazy, but I guess you could argue that I should have done more. I should have been more motivated. I should have been more decisive, and I would agree with all of those things.
But at the same time, I like to think that because I didn’t do more, that I wasn’t more motivated and that I wasn’t more decisive that I’ll learn from that, and that’s important too, you know?
So, I’m starting back at the fundamentals of the things that I know, and with each step I will probably need some help.
My first step is to get back on track with writing. By writing, I don’t necessarily mean blogs, but of course I will do that as well. I mostly mean works of fiction. I have had like three or four solid ideas for novels that I just never work on. I have notebooks scattered about my room littered with minute notes, and a hundred one liners that I jot down in my phone every time I think of them, but I never do anything with them. They never evolve past that passing idea, and part of that scares me.
It scares me because sometimes when I look back at the notes, or the one liners they don’t mean anything. I look at them and think, what the hell does that even mean? And that’s kind of sad, I think, because at one point I thought it was a good enough idea to write down. I thought that it was good enough to spark something, but it never does, because I never let it. I never try to let it spark something. So, that’s what I’m doing. That’s where I’m going.
I started working on one pretty large piece of fiction. I don’t know if it will flesh out to be a novel or not, I’d like it to, but I don’t think that’s something that you can force. So, in the mean time, we’ll just say it’s something I am working on.
This is where the help comes in (not without a quick anecdote, of course).
My favorite part about college, about being in the Writing Arts department was getting insight from our workshops on the things that I wrote. It was about getting feedback on the ideas that I had, and listening to what other people had to say. No, it wasn’t because I was narcissistic with a Mothra sized ego. It was because I wanted to know what people thought, and how they thought. It was because at the time that I wrote something, I thought it was good. It doesn’t mean that it was. In fact, most of the time when I reread it, I thought it was pretty terrible, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything either. It’s hard judging your own writing because you kind of get sick of reading it after a while. It kind of gets stale sometimes when you read the same thing over and over again because you already know what it says and you already know how you say it.
The point is, I think that like anything in this world, writing needs a little bit of help to grow, and I think an outside perspective can do provide that assistance. It’s kind of like how they say that talking or singing to a plant helps it grow. Some people used to think that plants grew when you talked to them because the plant absorbed whatever you told it, it kept your secrets, and therefore it got bigger because it kept it all in. This is kind of similar to that. I mean, I don’t want you to tell me your secrets (unless they’re really, really good ones), I kind of just want someone to help my writing grow.
Back to the point.
I kind of want to share what I’m writing with a handful of people, but only if they think that they’ll have time to look it over and give me some feedback. Let me start by saying, I don’t want someone that is going to read it and say, “This part sucks. A lot.” But I also I don’t want someone to read it and say, “Hey, that’s really good. Great job.” Instead, I kind of want someone that will be objective and say things like, “I think that the part where this happens could be a little bit stronger. Like, you could use a little bit more detail to get this point across.” or “I don’t think that point is strong enough. Like, did you mean this? or that?”, or “Where are you going with this? Is this part important enough to stay in? It’s kind of stale or repetitive.” etc.
I want input because as much as I am writing for myself, I am writing because I want to create something that other people will want to read. Not commercially necessarily. Not like Twilight or Vampire Diaries or whatever that junk is, but something fluid. Something that makes sense, and has some sense of meaning, even if it doesn’t mean a whole lot.
So, if you think you might be interested, email me at jah713@gmail.com.
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