There is one thing to being tone deaf to your audience, and there is another being just completely stupid. Collider went with the latter on Thursday.

Making a living on the Internet, I read a tremendous amount of blogs in a day. As one would be safe to surmise from my blog, I look at a lot of pop culture blogs along with my work. A frequent stop in my browser is Collider which serves up a lot of movie news each day. When I saw a story about an actor rumored to be cast as Johnny Storm/Human Torch in an upcoming reboot of the Fantastic Four movies, I was of course interested.

The story noted that Michael B. Jordan is said to be up for the role in the film to be directed by Josh Trank. Trank and Jordan worked together previously on the indy super-hero hit, Chronicle, which was a fun, albeit slightly flawed, film. The issue with Jordan taking on the role of Johnny is that he is African American, and both the Storm siblings – Sue Storm/Invisible Woman being his sister – have always been portrayed as Caucasians. In fact, Collider itself had noted on Wednesday that actress Allison Williams from Girls was up for the part of Sue.

Let me show you why this might make them being siblings a tad unbelievable on film.

Now, there are a couple ways this could be explained through adoption or step-siblings, but it’s still a little jarring. Part of the dynamic of the Fantastic Four has always been about family with Johnny and Sue Storm also having a heated sibling relationship. As I said, it could be explained away, but when you’re trying to reboot a franchise, you kind of want to start off on the right foot.

And this is where Collider comes in.

In the article by Michael Goldberg, in his third paragraph, he begins with the following:

Of course, the real noteworthy item here is that Jordan is black and in the comics Johnny Storm is white. This fact will undoubtedly infuriate geeks who are racist and/or horribly OCD.

So, let me see if I have this right. My two options for having issues with this casting rumor are that I am either bigot, or I suffer from a disorder? There’s no third option for I would just like to see the source material honored? One of the two extremes and that’s it? I couldn’t possibly just like to see the family dynamic, a core aspect of the Fantastic Four played out as it should be, either I have a white hood in my closet, or I need to be in therapy.

You know, there isn’t much that I read on the Internet that makes my jaw literally drop, and I do mean that in the sense that my mouth fell open when I read that line, but Collider succeeded.

Was I over reacting? Possibly. So I sent the link to two other writers I know and let them read the article, and both concluded, nope, pretty darn insulting to your audience.

As my day wore on, this still bugged me. How can you work for a site that is all about movies, and even go so far as reporting on casting rumors, and think it’s ok to suggest your audience is either racist or OCD if they get worked up about something like this? I finally decided maybe I should reach out to the editorial staff, but when I went to the masthead I discovered that Goldberg is actually the Managing Editor.  Okay, so perhaps I should go to his Editor-in-Chief, Steve ‘Frosty’ Weintraub. (He lists the ‘Frosty’ on the Contact Us page, blame him, not me) When I checked his Twitter stream, somehow I doubted I was going to get very far:

people who aren’t on board with mixing it up regarding casting…GETOVER IT.

— Steven Weintraub (@colliderfrosty) May 2, 2013

if they’re smart, they’re going to get 4 different people to play the FANTASTIC FOUR. Make them represent the world. Not white America

— Steven Weintraub (@colliderfrosty) May 2, 2013

Well, okay, obviously I am totally wrong, and siblings should be of different races. How could I be so foolish.

Here’s the thing, if the filmmakers wanted to make both of them African American, I would have no problem with this. If they wanted to make Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic African American, I would have no problem with this. Ben Grimm/The Thing, same thing. I don’t care if you change the race of a character because at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter, and in most cases doesn’t form who they are. For instance, Michael Clarke Duncan played Kingpin, a traditionally caucasian character, in the 2003 Daredevil movie. While the movie sucked, he was one of the few shining things in it. No problem with that. BUT SUE AND JOHNNY ARE SIBLINGS! I don’t care if they cast Martians in the two roles so long as they are of the same race as their sibling relationship does indeed form who they are.

The movie is setting itself up from the outset to change the family dynamic of the Fantastic Four if it does end up casting these two. While the series is about super-heroes, it has always had a strong family element to it, and this is basically saying from day 0 of production, “eh, not that important.”

Somehow I am in the wrong for this. Somehow I am either a racist or need to be in therapy because I care.

While Collider could have simple said, “You know what, that comment was uncalled for. We’re sorry,” its EiC instead decided to just keep on the same path.

I didn’t bother contacting the editorial team at Collider because from the EiC’s tweets, it’s pretty obvious he wasn’t going to be receptive to anything I had to say, so why waste my time? I’ll do the next best thing and vote with my virtual wallet. Collider, like pretty much every other site on the Internet, is supported by ads. If I don’t visit the site, and I don’t see their ads, they make less money, so that is exactly what I shall do, and I shall stop visiting their site. There are plenty of movie news sites on the Web, and somehow I doubt many others will decide it’s a wonderful idea to insult their audience in the way they chose to.

And I lied… I would care if Sue and Johnny were played be Martians. I am completely racist against Martians.

Welcome to the seventh annual posting of this entry!  Long time readers can skip it, but as I keep adding more readers, it’ll keep getting posted!

Ah, Columbus Day, the day we set aside each year to celebrate a lie. It always warms my heart.

People tend to forget that Christopher Columbus wasn’t looking for North America when he landed here, he was looking for the West Indies. Quite the navigator there. He also believed, until his death, that the entire time he was in this area that he was exploring the Eastern coast of Asia.

Never mind the fact that he also took the indigenous people as slaves and shipped them back to Spain, against the Crown’s wishes. Never mind that colonists he brought over here rebelled against him when the New World didn’t come close to what he described. No, no, all those things are just a-ok for a man we should honor with a governmental and banking holiday.

The biggest offense to me is that he was far from the first person to “discover” the Americas. (how does one “discover” a place that is already inhabited?) The Siberians crossed the land bridge with Alaska as early as 70,000 BC, and it was those crossings that gave us the Native Americans. There were numerous other occurrences of people coming to the Americas, but one of the most well documented was Leifur Eircksson in 1005 when he sailed from Iceland to North America and traveled down the coast. Gee, does that come before 1492?

Yet, history textbooks still hail him as the man who “discovered” America. Why is beyond me, but a friend pointed me to a wonderful book called Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
(Barnes & Noble link) that spends an entire chapter delving into this very matter. Fascinating stuff.

If you want to credit Columbus with something, just say that he brought the America’s to the attention of Europe, but leave it at that.

I have been a long time fan of PayPal – the online payment service owned by eBay – but all of that came to a screeching halt today.

Curious as to what my current balance was in PayPal, I logged into the site to see if all my bills for the month had been paid.  Due to the type of account I have, I also have a debit card with them that I love using as I receive a 1.5% cashback bonus.  My balance was healthy, but as I glanced through my transactions there was one that leaped out at me.  Somehow it claimed I had charged $88.29 to a Domino’s Pizza in Flushing, NY.  There are two immediate issues with this: I have never been to Flushing, NY and I never, ever eat Domino’s.

I called up PayPal immediately and was connected to an operator.  I told her the situation and she transferred me to the right department.  I went through the situation again and I will say they were very quick to assist with me putting the charge into contention.  As I feared they wanted me to cancel my card so they could issue me a new one, and while not thrilling, it was totally understandable.

And here is where we hit the snag: I was informed that it would take two to four weeks to issue me a replacement debit card.

Now, I don’t know about you, but in general I expect to get a new card in this type of situation in no more than 48 hours.  I told the gentleman assisting me that the length of time was unacceptable, but he assured me it is usually closer to the two week estimate.  I told him, again, that it was unacceptable in this day and age and that most card companies can get a replacement to you in no more than 48 hours.  He said there was nothing he could do to speed up the process.  I went ahead and canceled my card so that a new one could be issued, but that was when I decided I couldn’t just let this pass by.

If you think about it, I would need to contact everyone I pay with that card and tell them to use a different form of payment for the next month, and then I’d have to go through that all over again when the new PayPal card arrived.  This is far from an optimal solution as I’m sure anyone can see.

With this in mind I decided to turn to Twitter, my favorite mode of communication in situations like this.  After a particularly frustrating situation with FedEx, I used Twitter to finally get some results, so there was no reason to think that I wouldn’t get similar results this time.  I sent my first tweet around 1 PM CST and here I am several hours later without a peep out of them.  Some of my 3,000+ followers joined in as well by re-tweeting me and adding their own comments, and that didn’t seem to motivate them either.

At 2:32 PM CST I informed them via Twitter that I was pulling all of the money out of my account.

I have long loved PayPal, and though there have been many stories of issues with the firm, I have always stood by them as I had never encountered any problems.  While this is the company policy as opposed to a problem, in 2012, taking two to four weeks to issue me a card that gives me immediate access to my money is inexcusable.  Yes, you can pay online without the card, but that doesn’t work quite as well when you’re at the gas pump.  It doesn’t work so well when you use the card to pay for the very server this site is on, or the Interner subscription I access my blog with.  I need a card to pay for things with that money and informing me that it could take up to a month to get me a new card?  No thank you.

So, after years of using my card for more transactions than I care to think about, my PayPal debit card and I are going to have to part ways.  From the sloth like speed with which new cards are issued to the complete non-acknowledgement of a customer complaining loudly, it’s time for us to break up.

And by the way, it is most definitely you and not me that caused the problems.

(screenshot of the offending transaction after the break)

Continue Reading ->

Maybe I’m just getting old and cranky, but can someone explain to me how this April Fools joke from WestJet is funny?

I’ve seen a lot of April Fools jokes today, some of them a bit more successful than others, but the one WestJet – a Canadian airline – came up with just struck me as being in poor taste. KargoKids is supposed to be a new way to transport children on flights by putting them in the cargo hold of the plane, making for a child-free cabin.

I’m sure we’ve all had that feeling of dread when we see a family boarding a plane with a baby, but seriously? The idea, even in jest, of putting children in cargo like they are a burden on everyone, including the parents? I’m all for a good joke, but this one just struck me as callous and in extremely poor taste.  Maybe I’m all just a bit too literal at times because all I was thinking was, “You know, the cargo hold gets extremely cold.”

Sorry, WestJet, while you tied this into a discount coupon code for travel, I’m just not finding myself laughing.

In a day and age where the tenth anniversary of 9/11 just passed, one has to wonder how anyone could be oblivious to their surroundings in an airport.

While walking through the Dallas airport this morning to catch my connection, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a policeman standing with his arms crossed in an aggressive pose. This would get my attention at any time, but being in an airport just heightened that. As I came closer, I could see there were two more policemen with him and a man in a suit all surrounding what appeared to be a college-aged caucasian male with a largish black & white dog. The male in question seemed perplexed by whatever his situation was (after observing for a bit I finally pieced together it had something to do with getting the dog on the plane), and the police had him surrounded.

Being a curious sort, I found a chair a fair distance away and observed the situation, but what drew my attention quickly more than the actual occurrence was that I seemed to be the only one paying any attention. I sat there for a good 10 minutes watching the scene, and I spent the vast majority of that watching person after person walking by and not even noticing this was going on. Even people who came over to the area where this was happening would swerve to miss one of the policemen as they walked because they were paying no attention.

Something my family always raised me to do was to be aware of my surroundings; I am always very aware of where exits are in buildings, how many people are around me and so on.  Ive even been known to catch a shoplifter or two when I’m just out shopping.  The idea that people could walk through an airport, a known terrorist target, and not pay attention to something of this nature just astounds me.  What if he had been dangerous and stood up and grabbed one of the cops guns?  What if he had somehow smuggled a weapon through security?  There could have been an endless list of dangerous scenarios, and yet no one paid it a bit of attention.  (For the record, I chose a seat that was a good distance away and partially concealed by a pillar, I chose that postion based on ability to get away and shielding)

It is easier than ever to get distracted in this world these days thanks to all of the gadgets we carry, but aren’t there some things we should just be at least a slightly bit aware of?

Welcome to the sixth annual posting of this entry!  Long time readers can skip it, but as I keep adding more readers, it’ll keep getting posted!

Ah, Columbus Day, the day we set aside each year to celebrate a lie. It always warms my heart.

People tend to forget that Christopher Columbus wasn’t looking for North America when he landed here, he was looking for the West Indies. Quite the navigator there. He also believed, until his death, that the entire time he was in this area that he was exploring the Eastern coast of Asia.

Never mind the fact that he also took the indigenous people as slaves and shipped them back to Spain, against the Crown’s wishes. Never mind that colonists he brought over here rebelled against him when the New World didn’t come close to what he described. No, no, all those things are just a-ok for a man we should honor with a governmental and banking holiday.

The biggest offense to me is that he was far from the first person to “discover” the Americas. (how does one “discover” a place that is already inhabited?) The Siberians crossed the land bridge with Alaska as early as 70,000 BC, and it was those crossings that gave us the Native Americans. There were numerous other occurrences of people coming to the Americas, but one of the most well documented was Leifur Eircksson in 1005 when he sailed from Iceland to North America and traveled down the coast. Gee, does that come before 1492?

Yet, history textbooks still hail him as the man who “discovered” America. Why is beyond me, but a friend pointed me to a wonderful book called Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
(Barnes & Noble link) that spends an entire chapter delving into this very matter. Fascinating stuff.

If you want to credit Columbus with something, just say that he brought the America’s to the attention of Europe, but leave it at that.

The American Family Association (AFA) has decided that the time has come for them to take their fight for decency into the grocery aisles.  Their target?  Schweddy Balls.

Announced a mere two weeks ago, the Saturday Night Live inspired ice cream has already hit store shelves (I’ve tried it, I liked it.)  One Million Moms, a sub-division of the AFA, has issued a statement against the new flavor and its “vulgar” nature.

In the past, Ben & Jerry’s has released controversial ice creams, like a special edition of Chubby Hubby called Hubby Hubby last year which celebrated gay marriage. It seems that offending customers has become an annual tradition for Ben & Jerry’s.

The ice cream is being released in a limited batch, which means it will be distributed nationwide but only for three or four months. If it proves popular, another batch might be forthcoming, but we hope not.

Ben & Jerry’s spokesman Sean Greenwood replied to the call for the protest:

The name is irreverent, but we’ve always been about having some irreverence and having some fun … We’re not trying to offend people. Our fans get the humor.

As per their usual modus operandi, the AFA is making a call for action that you should protest against Ben & Jerry’s, and as with just about everything this group does, I just have to shake my head.

This group takes offense at just just about everything under the sun, and as per usual there is next to nothing to get worked up over.  They get offended by “Schweddy Balls” as they don’t want kids asking for it.  What makes them think kids will know what the heck it means?  How about if they ask questions you just say it’s named that because there are balls of sweets in it.  If you don’t make a big deal out of it, they won’t even think twice about it.  However, this group is positive that the smallest thing will cause children to turn into perverted savages.

You know what?  It’s an ice cream.  Get over it.  How about you get worked up over something serious in this world that presents a real danger to children such as the lack of exercise, falling grades and in general how to get by in this world.  But no, by all means, ignore actually spending time with your children and instead spend your time writing useless letters over the name of an ice cream.  That is the perfect use of your time.

One man is shot and killed by the police; a man suspected of drug and gang crimes, and with evidence pointing to him having fired at the police. While outrage is fine, and speaking out against it is more than acceptable.  Four days of rioting?  Now you’re just spitting on the man’s grave.

Before I go much further, let me say that I am speaking solely to the rioters.  I have had many friends from England over he years, and I know that I am not speaking to 99.99% of the population of the country.  I am speaking directly to the cretins that have seen fit to take the death of Mark Duggan and turn it into an excuse for looting, destroying and acting generally as asses.

You are a proud nation, a nation that was a glowing example of strength and will in the face of a great enemy as Germany pounded you nightly during the Blitz.  You are a nation that has once been able to say that the sun never set on your empire … and now you are burning down a Sony warehouse after you’ve ransacked it for some electronics?  Well done.  Makes total sense that you should loot businesses of people completely unrelated to what happened to Duggan.

What about the 150-year-old family business you destroyed?  Did they shoot Duggan?  No, they didn’t.

With every moment of footage and report I read, I feel a gut wrenching sadness for England, it’s proud history and the innocent people caught up in this that have never done anything to harm anyone.  Those of you participating in the riots, you are nothing but hooligans, thugs and scum.  You want to know what’s wrong with your life?  Look in a mirror and leave those around you alone as they have done nothing to you, and all you are doing in the end is hurting yourself.  You are hurting friends, family, loved ones and taking jobs away from your area by destroying businesses.

Are you proud of yourselves?  No, you aren’t.  And as more and more of you upload pictures and video to social networks, and you slip up showing your faces here and there, we’ll see how proud you are as you get hauled off to prison.

To those of you who have stood strong, keep calm and carry on.

It would seem that being a woman beater is not harming Chris Browns career in any way, shape or form. Must be nice.

Following an appearance last week on Good Morning America where he was so enraged by an interview that he broke a window, Chris Brown was back on ABC tonight to appear on Dancing With the Stars.  Despite the fact that host Tom Bergeron and professional dancer Cheryl Burke both voiced opposition to his coming on the show, come on he did.

In case you’ve forgotten why this matters, while Brown has had some success as a singer, he became most well-known for beating his now ex-girlfriend Rihanna back in early 2009.  He got noticed again when American Idol singer Adam Lambert got pulled from some TV bookings due to kissing another man on sage at the American Music Awards.  Brown took over Lambert’s bookings, sending a signal that beating women was still better than being gay.  Good to know.

So, here we are with Brown still acting up, existing show personalities expressing their dismay at his coming on the program, and ABC just ignores it all.  Does he have incriminating photos on someone high up at the network?  Somehow he keeps getting on this channel even after he has thrown a hissy fit on another of their shows.  Does this make sense to anyone?  Was a guy who is simply out promoting a new really that necessary to appear on your show at the risk of alienating viewers and cast members?

Apparently so.  Apparently woman beating is perfectly acceptable in the eyes of the Disney-owned network.  Getting destructive after another interview on the same network?  Perfectly ok.

So glad to see ABC has a sense of moral direction

Have you ever walked into your kitchen and thought, “I wish I had a way to quickly tell my friends and family that I’m not totally right in the head … oh, I know, I’ll buy a 5′, 9″ refrigerator with a gigantic picture of the latest royal couple on it!”

If you’re super excited about the impending wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, you can now mark the occasion by buying a refrigerator with one of the royal couple’s official engagement photos emblazoned across the dual doors.  Apparently this design was the winner of a poll conducted by GE on its Facebook page for its UK branch.  The appliance maker is launching a line of customizable appliances, and they asked fans to vote on a design they would love to see, and somehow this is what won.

David Garden, Commercial Director for GE at Glen Dimplex Home Appliances told Get Connected, “As expected, the Royal Wedding has really captured the UK’s imagination and it was no surprise that a William and Kate commemorative fridge was a popular choice.”  He went on to add, “It certainly wipes the floor with your usual commemorative tea towels and mugs and is most definitely one of the most novel Royal Wedding products we have seen. Who knows, it may appeal to die-hard fans or maybe even Prince Charles and Camilla will order one as a wedding gift for the couple.”

What it really is is a way to advertise a new refrigerator that can be customized for color and other specs using panels you can change on the front of it.  All it does for me is make me want to check anyone who orders this version into a mental hospital.  Do you really need to acknowledge the marriage of two people you don’t even know by having them stare at you every time you go to get cream for your coffee?  No, I don’t think you do.

As someone who has taken a lot of ribbing over the years for his love of Star Wars and comic books, even I have to say there is a line I would never cross in my fandoms.  Pasting an image on my refrigerator would be a good guess as one of those lines.

BBC America, once a bastion of British programming, seems to have completely lost track of its original intended purpose.

Last year I complained when it was announced that BBC America was going to start showing Star Trek: The Next Generation.  While I could somewhat grasp the concept as Patrick Stewart is a well respected British actor, but could someone explain to me why they are now also showing The X-Files in the afternoons?  Is there some British connection there that I’m unaware of?  (answer: “No.”)

Then lets take a look at some of the movies they’ve been airing as of late.  Apparently so long as a movie has a British (or Scottish) actor in it, it qualifies for airing on the channel.  The Untouchables?  The story of Elliot Ness that just happens to have Sean Connery in it?  The Hunt for Red October?  Same connection.  It’s getting a bit silly at this point when you consider how many British productions exist that they’ve never aired and yet we’re saddled with American productions you can see just about anywhere on a channel they aren’t made for.

This has become a problem not just limited to BBC America, however.  Could someone explain to me why the SyFy Channel now has a cooking show, Marcel’s Quantum Kitchen?  Don’t forget they also have WWE Smackdown on Friday nights.

I understand that channels may find their original formulas don’t work quite as well as they first thought they might, and then they need to retool, but to go this far afield of their intended purposes just seems wrong.  SyFy is a bit more forgivable than BBC America’s programming choices, but neither of them make a whole lot of sense to me.

And in case you are curious, yes, I have actually e-mailed BBC America to voice my displeasure instead of just venting here.  This used to be my favorite cable channel, but now I find myself turning to it  a lot less as I have no burning desire to watch American shows on a channel dedicated to British television.

In the modern age of streaming video, can we now please get rid of trailers on DVDs before the film so I don’t completely ditch the format?

While siting down to watch a DVD last night, I was rather annoyed by the concept of having to skip through some trailers.  While not anywhere close to being as annoying as the days of VHS, it’s still just a nuisance.

Studios are concerned about declining home video sales, but yet they continue to make watching discs an inconvenience.  When I pop in a disc, I’m forced to go through the trailers.  Not a horrible thing to once, but lets say you go back to watch the same disc a year or two down the road, are you going to care about seeing the same trailers again, or especially what amounts to advertisements for movies from a few years ago?  Short answer, no.

With the rise of digital downloads and streaming video, things that start instantly, why should I be force to even think about trailers any more?  Yes, I know it’s a minor thing, but considering I watch almost everything  via download or streaming now, so when I popped in that disc last night, the first in quite some time, I was just immediately struck by how antiquated this was.  If you insist on putting them on the disc, put them in the extra features or something, but when I start up a Blu-ray or DVD, I should be immediately launched into the menu and not have to fight my way to get there.

With that being said, I’ll go back to watching Netflix now, thanks.  If you want to dump the trailers, let me know.