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As for Wicked itself, well, I managed not to belt out the lyrics in the middle of the very crowded local theater. Our cineplex has been nearly empty since it reopened after the pandemic lock-down orders were lifted. This was the biggest crowd in a movie I attended since Avengers: Endgame was released five years ago.
I'm not going to give my usual SPOILERS warning since the novel was released 29 years ago and the musical debuted 21 years ago. If you don't know the story by now, well, that's on you.
I don't have one CON for this film. Not one. And my PROS have more to do with individual actors and crew.
1) Jon M. Chu made up for the shitstorm of JEM (2015). (Good Goddess, has it been nine years already?) He and the screenplay writers stuck to the original Broadway book. Trust me, there would have been a riot if they hadn't. Any changes to the original script were to expand on certain scenes or to fill in certain insinuations from the original musical.
2) Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande-Butera. Those two could out-sing angels.
3) Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth's cameos during "One Short Day" are absolutely hysterical as they play singers in a diva feud. Plus, you can tell they were having a blast with their roles!
4) Michelle Yeoh did a perfect job as Mrs. Morrible. That's not to discount Carol Kane's efforts the first time I saw the musical. The difference is Michelle did a much more subtle job, so when the twist comes, the movie audience who hadn't seem the musical were appropriately shocked.
5) Jeff Goldblum has the chops to be totally evil and still sympathetic. He doesn't get enough credit for his singing.
6) The movie ends with the showstopper "Defying Gravity" (my personal favorite), which also concludes the first act of the musical. Wicked 2 will be the second act.
Overall, Wicked Part 1 is the perfect vehicle for the whole family to see over the holidays. Just be prepared for the kids to be singing in the backseat on the way home and demanding the soundtrack for their holiday present.
I give Wicked Part 1 100 out of 10 stars!
This will probably piss off some people expecting new stories NOW.
Honestly, I've been stressing about getting things done, too, which doesn't help my concentration. After a super-busy week and today's events, DH told me to put everything down and took me to see Wicked.
It was awesome! I've read the book twice and seen the musical twice.
And it did relax me. So, I got home with renewed vigor tonight.
I think.
I still pretty tired, so I'll start fresh tomorrow.
So when I refer to SAD, I mean Seasonal Affective Disorder, not the emotion. Though to be honest, SAD can make you sad.
Everyone who deals with SAD can have slightly different symptoms. In my case, a low level depression and fatigue set in around Halloween. It's why I (generally) keep my holiday lights up until Valentine's Day. By then, we're getting more daylight, and my symptoms ease, even though it's usually still pretty damn cold.
And while I've sworn off most sweets, this is the time of year when dark chocolate comes in handy to improve my mood, along with anything with cinnamon, orange, or peppermint flavors. Or even better, mix dark chocolate with the other three flavors.
Just not all at the same time. LOL
The good thing is this is a temporary affliction. My skeleton lights are still up and glowing in my art room. I still have a partial box of dark chocolate truffles from Godiva, a birthday present to myself int anticipation of SAD.
And I still have enjoyable books to read and write.
The pharmacy department didn't have the medication ready because (1) it's super expensive and (2) I pay cash. The techs always freak out about filling it until I come in and confirm that yes, I want the fucking meds!
(Seriously, the Grandpuppy loses all his fur and he develops sores all over his body when he's not taking this drug.)
But this isn't about the drug, the Grandpuppy, or the big box store. I wandered through the aisles to kill time while the pharm techs filled the prescription. Lo and behold, the cheaper versions of the Wicked dolls were in stock.
Now, I'm one of those weird doll collectors. I'll buy the expensive collectible version to display. Then, I buy the cheap version to play with.
Play with you say? Yes. As we've grown older, DH isn't as. . .enthusiastic at being my model for any fight or love-making scenes. So, I use dolls. The Made-To-Move Barbie doll bodies are especially awesome for working out character moves.
Anyway, I bought Elphaba in the full witch ensemble with a broom. She is currently sitting next to me as I write this. But she was in her box on Monday night when DH and I were watching The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, our end-of-the-weekday ritual.
The opening teaser was a story about Mattel accidentally printed the URL for an *ahem* adult website instead of the proper URL for the upcoming movie. Supposedly, Mattel was now recalling all the dolls. WHOOPS!
At the next commercial break, DH gets up and reads the box. Sure enough, the wrong website is printed on my box.
Am I taking my Elphaba back? Oh, hell, no! I think the typo is hilarious. But it goes to show why a good proofreader is necessary in everyone's arsenal, not just writers.
Vella was launched at the end of May, 2021. It was Amazon's attempt to latch onto the serialized fiction made popular by platforms like Radish.
However, a number of things went wrong from the beginning. Amazon never really promoted the service, especially to the Gen Z consumers who love this stuff. They gamified the system where readers had to buy tokens in order to read scenes or chapters. Customers couldn't read the episodes on their Kindle devices or apps for the first two years Vella existed. And to top off the problems, the token system meant the readers were paying more for a story than they were for a 70-100K word novel.
Is Amazon losing touch with the average consumer? In a single word, yes. The average consumer is no longer Amazon's core customer. AWS, Amazon's computing division, makes far more money than the consumer goods division. The only reason the Amazon store still exists is because there's never enough money for rich men. They must have it all.
That same reasoning means the execs no longer have a real plan as far as books go. They're throwing things at the proverbial wall to see what sticks. "Hey, Radish is making money, so we should do this thing we don't understand, too!"
Um, no, that's not a business plan. That's guessing. It's definitely not a strategy.
For those of you who have Vella episodes you haven't read yet or have tokens you haven't spent yet, you've got until February 2025 to spend, download, and or read your purchases. (Amazon has not announced the specific date, so I'd do it before the 1st.)
After that, let's see what Amazon throws at the wall next.
Well, DH had been paid, and I entered all the bills and receipts, both business and personal, and reconciled accounts on Quicken over Thursday and Friday. I closed the Quicken window, realized I'd forgotten a receipt, and reopened the application to enter the info before I started my laptop's backup.
And for some reason, an update decided to re-initialize my data file. And by reinitialize, I mean the update blew away the data file I'd spent two days getting up to date and created a new, and very empty, data file.
ARGH!
Thank goddess for backups! I still had the mid-October backup on a couple of different storage mediums. Then I spent Saturday and Sunday re-entering everything I'd entered on Thursday and Friday.
And of course, NaNoWriMo started on Friday.
So, I'm a week behind on installing the new solid state drive. I also 7K behind on my NaNo project novel and 15K behind on A Cup of Conflict.
The family funeral on Monday, the election on Tuesday, and my annual cancer check-up on Wednesday have not helped my mood whatsoever.
Some stories may come out later that I planned, but dammit, I WILL get them done!
Well, people didn't give much of a shit back when I voted in my first election either. It was the Ohio primaries of 1984 if anyone was wondering. But my parents, grandparents, and the older aunts and uncles truly believed in their civic duty. Especially, the great uncles who fought in World War II.
What has changed over the last forty years is the incredible rage and hatred I see in my fellow citizens. Everyone's worried that someone is taking something away from them, or they don't like sharing the costs of things that affect everyone.
Some of the reviews I've received for my books are eye-opening and cruel. Readers especially hated Aisha and Rey from the 888-555-HERO series for not being white or not being manly enough. Yet, Summer from the Seasons of Magick series has been put on recommendation lists for readers who are into non-white interracial romance lists. Even funnier, I don't think some readers have realized the majority of characters in the Justice series are Native American.
That doesn't stop these flash mobs from going after other creators. Ubisoft's head of the Assassins Creed franchise has lost patience with the racist outrage of the latest version of of the game. Color me baffled by this "woke" bullshit being spouted. The Assassins Creed team has used historical figures in the past in its game. Yasuke has hit a nerve with the Neo-Nazi movement in the U.S. though because he was a real person, a former slave who became a samurai in the 16th century.
Japanese culture has celebrated him for years. I backed a Kickstarter for a book and comic to bring his story to life. There's an animated series about him on Netflix. Yasuke is not completely unknown.
So what do the complaints about Assassins Creed come down to? Racism, pure and simple. Black and brown stories are being told, and the Neo-nazis just don't like it.
As the Ubisoft executive said, open cultures are the ones that survive. If we closed the U.S. borders over the years, there's so many awesome things we wouldn't be able to experience. Mainly food. I can't imagine my birthdays without lasagna.
But to the assholes, all I say is "Tough noogies, people." The world is changing, whether the bigots want it or not, And like the original Nazis, the racists will become a footnote in history.
Oh, and if you didn't vote yesterday, I don't want to hear you bitching!
However, I started back into practicing cover design. I also downloaded a cheap copy of Corel Drawing for this purpose. Plus, I do keep my music on my work laptop because I use it for white noise or creating a mood while drafting.
The next thing I knew, I ran out of space. Literally. I rolled backup folders and files to portable drives. I rolled off used editorial art and photos. I double-checked that I hadn't copied a handful of movies from my old laptop to the new one. So as of right now, I've got 13.9G.
I can already tell you it's not enough to last through the rest of the year.
With DH's guidance, I open up my laptop to check if I had room for a second solid state drive. No extra slot.
*sigh*
So, I broke down and ordered a 2T SSD. Now, I need to do some surgery on my baby this weekend and move everything from the old drive to the new drive. It'll be just like last year when I shifted everything from my old laptop to the current one.
If everything goes right, I'll post on Wednesday. If it doesn't...
Well, I'll still post. I've already updated the battery and bought a mouse for the old laptop. The touchpad no longer works and needs to be replaced. However, it was cheaper to purchase the new mouse. But the point is that I've got a functional backup if anything goes wrong.
If I'm successful with this project, Baby Blue is next on the list for a harddrive upgrade!
Wish me luck!
A former writer friend, who has since passed away, introduced me to National Novel Writing Month nearly twenty years ago. Initially, the program helped steer writers in WRITING A COMPLETE WORK in 30 days. The work is not expected to be perfect, but the writer was expected to do their best. The idea was helping writers to get past their biggest hurdle, which was simply finishing a story.
Over the years, things were changed, like introducing alternate goals such as completing an ongoing wip. Programs for teachers to use for their creative writing students were added. Camp NaNo's were introduced in July and then April. Originally, there were useful prizes, like discounts to print books through Ingram Spark.
Now...
The so-called rules were were adjusted to the point as to become meaningless. Some accused NaNo of marginalizing people by having rules. However, rules are often needed to develop discipline. And that need for discipline was booted to the moon.
Encouraging kids to write was an awesome development. Until pedos used the program to target and groom the underage writers. And when the kids tried to report their experiences, they were blown off by their municipal liaison.
Like many other social sites, the online discourse has turn mean and in some cases, violent. This is not a political space. You're problems with real life shouldn't impinge on a people attempting to learn art techniques. Art itself is open to interpretation, but techniques are not. A writer needs to learn the rules in order to effectively break them.
Don't get me started on the NaNo board's stand and the subsequent backlash concerning artificial intelligence.
And the co-called prizes are now discounts for software that doesn't actually help new writers write the freakin' book from companies that are looking to use a new writer's dreams and desperation to rip them off.
So, what do I do this November?
Well, I've started the first draft of a new book. I'll use NaNo to keep track and hopefully hit the requisite 50K goal. But I won't promote it, like I have in previous years.
And next year...
I will wait a see if NaNo's parent organization improves. If not, then this will be my last encounter on NaNo.
Amazon, all countries
