A VIOLENT (OR APATHETIC) REACTION!

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Last week I was at dinner with a friend and the topic of gun violence in schools came up. During the course of the conversation, my friend casually mentioned, “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it. These things are just going to happen.” I have to admit I became defensive. Perhaps it’s because I teach at a university and there is a slight vulnerability that I feel. I explained to my friend that his attitude reflected part of the problem. As a society, we have accepted that violence is part of life, but many of us don’t see or understand the ways in which we are complicit. Agreeing to the normality of deplorable aggression is at best apathetic and portrays the population at large as powerless.

HOW WE FEEL ABOUT OURSELVES AND BODY IMAGE

We, as a society, have put our stamp of disapproval on profanity, nudity and sexuality. A quick flash of Janet Jackson’s nipple created a firestorm of censorship that eventually forced people like Howard Stern off of terrestrial radio. At the time, Howard was known for pushing the envelope with discussions involving sexuality.

In our culture, we have forbidden our networks from featuring nudity on our broadcasts. I recall the first time I traveled to London, nearly three decades ago, and saw nudity in a TV skincare commercial. I was stunned. Not only did they have nudity on TV, it was in a commercial. At the time, it never occurred to me this could even be done. But Europeans don’t have the sexual hang ups that we see so frequently here in the U.S. In fact, one of my screenwriting students recently wrote a sex scene that read something like this: “It is indicated they have sex.” I immediately understood this was her own form of censorship because she didn’t want to describe the intimate details of her own story.

 WTF STANDS FOR WHAT?!

As a society, we have also outlawed four letter words. I was miffed recently while watching a reality show. Some of the reality stars were cursing and the network had not only bleeped the language, they had also pixelated the mouths of those delivering the salty words. I suppose their philosophy was, we don’t want you to hear it or see it if you read lips. I must admit I was incredulous. In the U.S., we have huge checks and balances in place to make sure no one sees a nipple, or hears words like shit or fuck. But what are our attitudes on violence? How hard do we work to regulate how much of it audiences see on the big and small screen?

A few years back, I turned on my TV around noon and stumbled onto the movie Thirty Days of Night. The film had already started and one of the characters was being decapitated. Very recently, a new series with Kevin Bacon aired on Fox called The Following. As a professor of film and TV screenwriting, I must admit it is well done. But I also question how responsible the writers are. The level of violence in The Following is extremely high. People are sliced and stabbed, beaten, shot, and set on fire and much of that happens in a single episode. While, on one level, the writing is quite good, I don’t know that I can follow the show because, even as a viewer, I felt assaulted by the amount of violent imagery.

This is why I grew defensive when my friend said, “There’s nothing we can do.” As a society, we have ample servings of violence on TV and in movies. Young children who turn on the TV at noon might see people being shot, stabbed or beheaded. These same young minds also switch on their X-boxes and play video games like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto, where the goal is to rape, rob and kill. I don’t play video games, but I’ve seen the commercials promoting them. It seems the majority of them involve the delivery of violence.

How can we feign surprise when fifteen to 20 years later these same kids walk into a school or a movie theatre and begin delivering the same kind of brutality in real life? When we decide, as a culture, that images of violence might be as or perhaps more dangerous than a nipple or the f-word, maybe then we will see its decline. But it’s disingenuous to pretend that we don’t understand how or why these things happen. We are confronted with it almost every time we turn on our TV’s, play a video game or go to a movie.

On a lighter note, I have written a book. THE UNVEILING: 1.0 is a sci-fi/fantasy/adventure that many have compared to The Da Vinci Code (only with psychics and aliens, specifically the Anunnaki of Sumerian Mythology). To check it out, please visit the website: TheUnveilingSeries.com

DID SHE OR DIDN'T SHE? BEYONCE & THE ILLUMINATI

Beyonce has been in the news a lot lately. First, there was her lip-synching debacle during the presidential nomination and then the rumors about whether or not she flashed an Illuminati sign during the Super Bowl’s half time show. So, what’s all the hubbub about Beyonce and the Illuminati anyway?

For years, there have been rumors about the music industry and the occult. Some believe that most (if not all) successful musical artists have literally had to sell their souls in exchange for fame and fortune. Could there be any truth to such outrageous allegations? I suppose the first question we have to ask ourselves is whether or not we even believe in such a thing as the Illuminati. Do secret societies really exist with the ability to manipulate or control commerce and the media?

To hear Bob Dylan’s cryptic interview where he implies he’s sold his soul, click here.

One thing I can vouch for is humanity’s cliquish nature. Mankind has an innate desire to belong to something exclusive. We see this play out daily on grade school playgrounds as well as in the sororities and fraternities of university campuses. Many of these archetypes were well represented in the movie, “Mean Girls:”

1. The plastics
2. The jocks
3. The band geeks
4. The art freaks
5. The Goths.
6. The punk rockers

This list could go on. All of us who have survived high school, and those who are braving it now, know these affiliations well. Which groups did we interact with and what are the groups that we secretly hoped to participate in? I am unsure why we have this desire to belong to something larger than ourselves, but as we age, the exclusivity of our cliquishness becomes more and more sophisticated. These aspects are easily displayed in the hazing of fraternities and the secrecy of the Freemasons (which Dan Brown reveals in his last novel, “The Lost Symbol.”)

THE BILDERBERG GROUP, THE COMMITTEE OF 300 & THE ILLUMINATI...
So, do wealthy and influential people band together to brainstorm on ways to stay wealthy and influential? If we chose to, couldn’t we just call this by one of its names: corporate strategy, where CEO’s and high paid executives sit in boardrooms trying to determine the best way to stay on top? Not only is this a common practice, corporations contractually bind their employees to maintain secrecy about what goes on in the boardrooms. But is this where it stops? Is there another level of exclusivity beyond the corporate boardroom? We know the Freemasons exist. We know the Bilderberg Group exists. Are the Illuminati and the Committee of 300 that farfetched?

What I find interesting are the media’s attempts to rebuff that Beyonce flashed the Illuminati's not-so-secret symbol during the Super Bowl. The argument was that she would never display a secret sign in a public venue, that the gesture she made was simply one of Jay Z’s antics for his record company, Roc-A-Fella Records. I find this is flawed logic, especially since there has been talk of Jay Z’s affiliation with the Illuminati even before he married Beyonce.

As rumor would have it, Jay Z is the one who brought Beyonce into the fold. As rumor would also have it, the Rockefeller name has for years been associated with the Illuminati. Is it simply coincidence or brazen behavior that Jay Z chose to name his company Roc-A-fella and that he often uses the Illuminati symbol as part of his shtick?

Here is the Illuminati symbol, which you can find on the back of every dollar bill. It is a simple triangle with the all-seeing eye in the center of it.

If Beyonce did choose to flash this symbol during the Super Bowl half-time show, could there be a more efficient way to do it than the way she gestures above? I’ll let you do the math.

I’m not here to prove anything to you, but I do hope you open your eyes to see the world, not as we’d like it to be, but rather to see it as clearly as it is.

I WROTE A BOOK!
TO LEARN MORE OR TO READ AN EXCERPT
of my sci-fi/fantasy/adventure, “The Unveiling: 1.0,” please visit TheUnveilingSeries.com.

Commercially Yours

In light of the Super Bowl and its legendary commercials, I figured today’s topic was timely. Now that I have Netflix, I have grown accustomed to commercial free viewing when I watch series television. While I don’t have a DVR, I still find myself trying to pause live TV, a habit I developed from watching Netflix and DVD’s.

I must admit I was a little perplexed when I stumbled across Alexandra Wentworth’s comedy series “Head Case.” The first episode I watched was 11 minutes long. The length perplexed me since TV shows are formatted to be a half hour, an hour, or a movie length of 2 hours. When you watch an hour-long drama without commercials, they tend to be between 40 and 42 minutes long. This means an hour-long TV show will have anywhere from 18 to 20 minutes of commercials. This is one-third of the viewing time spent watching commercials. If this formula were used for a half-hour show, you would expect there to be roughly 10 minutes of commercial viewing and 20 minutes of the actual show. Once again, the 11-minute length of Head Case confused me. If this was a true time frame, it meant two-thirds of the viewing time was dedicated to commercials while only a third of the time slot was dedicated to the actual show. Huh?

As it turns out, “Head Case” was developed for the Starz cable network. From what I can gather, Starz doesn’t have commercials, which explains the 11-minute format. With that said, I still wonder how the show will be syndicated. Perhaps, they will double up on episodes, although some of the later episodes actually did approach roughly 20-minutes. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how that plays out.

Noticing these discrepancies brought a larger question to mind. Is it the intention of the television networks that we watch their shows or the commercials that are interspersed between them? Back when my mom was alive and we were both in California, I would visit each Saturday. I still remember her muting the television during commercial breaks because in her words, “The commercials drive me crazy”.

In the past year, I confess I have begun to do the same thing, muting the television each time commercials appear. I am often fascinated by the synchronicity of the networks. More often than not, if you change the channel during a commercial, you land on another commercial. How do they manage to do this so consistently? Truthfully, I know the answer to this question. For the most part, TV shows are similarly structured into six acts. As such, the commercials will tend to occur simultaneously across all of the networks.

Most of us find this aspect of television annoying, which is why the DVR’s arrival has been a particular challenge to advertisers and networks. When we record our shows, we can easily zip through commercial breaks. Advertisers deplore this idea. In the old days, we would run to the bathroom or get snacks during commercials. This is the reason the volume blares much higher at these times. You can still hear the name of the product or catchy lyrics that you will hopefully remember while you are in the grocery store or shopping for some other product.

I still recall how absurd I thought “The Running Man” was with Arnold Schwarzenegger. While it was released in the late 80’s, it was a portrait of a futuristic world overrun by edgy, life threatening game shows and corporate advertisers. At the time, I thought it a far-fetched concept but in many ways it has come to fruition. Shows like Fear Factor, The Amazing Race and Survivor flood the airwaves with a slue of commercials and infomercials, brainwashing us to consume. Today, I write only to reflect. Is it the commercials or the shows being sold to us? Do we go out and consume what we want, what we need, or the things advertisers tell us we need? Hm.... Happy Super Bowl everybody!

I HAVE WRITTEN A BOOK! TO LEARN MORE OR TO READ AN EXCERPT
of my sci-fi/fantasy/adventure novel, “The Unveiling: 1.0,” please visit TheUnveilingSeries.com.

Don't Get It Twisted

Months ago, I decided to stop following news on health care reform. It just seemed too much of a circus. Each week, if not each day, the media flip-flopped, portraying different angles on the story. It’s going to pass. It's not going to pass. It’s going to pass. At the end of the day it was dizzying and left me with that childhood feeling of “eeny meeny miny moe.” If reform of any kind were going to occur, it seemed it would only be on the luck of a draw.

The whole debacle left me questioning our politics and more importantly our value system. How did the things we care about become so unforgivably skewed? I remember when Janet Jackson performed at the 2004 Super Bowl and exposed her breast. It turned the media on its head forcing networks everywhere to be super diligent about language and nudity.

I find it peculiar that the human form and unsavory language are such magnets for outrage, but violence is seen as completely acceptable. Just last week, I turned on the TV while eating lunch and stumbled onto the movie “30 Days of Night.” The film was nearly over, but I’d flipped to it just in time to see someone being decapitated. By American standards, images of murder and dismemberment on the airwaves [at noon] are not seen as problematic, but the sight of a nipple or the utterance of a curse word cannot be tolerated. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this seems a little backwards if not ludicrous.

Now that the health care bill has passed outraged opponents have attempted chaos with random acts of vandalism and incivility. There was even talk of death threats against democrats who had voted for the bill. Are these the actions and values of a supposed civilized world?

Before the bill’s passage, political respect, courtesy and diplomacy seemed to have flown out of the window. Consider Congressman Randy Neugebauer’s uncontrolled outburst when he yelled out “Baby Killer!” during a fellow congressman’s speech. Or even more egregious when the president was interrupted by Congressman Joe Wilson yelling out “You lie!” How do we, as a society, foster respect for one another when our political “leaders” lack it toward each other? It’s disturbing to live in a population where so many people are supportive or apathetic toward something like war, but when it comes to universal health care they become proactive and put their foot down to say no.

Not too long ago, I was engaged in a conversation about relationships and the idea was thrown out, “Is it better to be right or to be happy?” I didn’t immediately grasp the concept of this idea, but I understand it today. We sometimes become so focused on being right that we end up compromising not only the integrity of the relationship, but also of the issue at hand. No one is happy (including us) but then we grasp at straws trying to take solace in the fact that we at least proved ourselves right.

Backwards? Ludicrous maybe?

When What You See Isn't What You Get

Last night I stopped at Starbuck’s to do a little writing. A few minutes after my arrival, two women entered and sat at a table beside me. To my dismay, one of them was loud, animated and distracting. She immediately began talking about something she had seen on television the night before. Apparently, some Victoria Secret model did an interview and talked about being deeply spiritual. This woman was openly outraged by the idea of a spiritual lingerie model. At one point, she described a split screen segment where the model was discussing spirituality on one side of the screen, and on the other there was footage of her scantily clad on the catwalk. The loud talking woman continued to explain that she didn’t believe you could truly be spiritual when you chose to parade around in front of people in various states of undress. She was so put off, in fact, that she was making it known to everyone around her. I quietly frowned, partly because I didn’t agree with her assessment, but also because I would have preferred she lower her voice so as not to make a spectacle of herself.

At that point, the story got even more interesting. A few minutes after they finished judging the Victoria Secret model, the same woman began discussing her own relationship and how she was trying to work through the fact that her significant other had a sex addiction problem. I have no idea which model she was speaking of, but the first thought that entered my mind was this: here this woman has judged and practically damned this model to hell, but when she moved to discuss her own life, it already seemed seedier than walking down the runway in a camisole. And although I like to think of myself as more open and accepting than this woman seemed to be, I know, like many, I am guilty of judging people I know very little about.

FINDING YOUR CENTER

Earlier this year, I attended a silent meditation retreat, where for nine days I ate, slept and meditated beside people I had never met. Nevertheless, I began to form opinions on them. There was a gentleman whose meditation mat was directly in front of mine in the meditation hall. For the most part, he was average in almost every way, but there was something about him that just screamed “family man.” I was certain he was married with a couple of kids, and that he was probably a good husband and father. And then seated behind me, there was a younger guy who seemed more like a film star. He was extremely handsome and athletic looking and there was an arrogance about him. I saw him more as the macho jock, and keep in mind, this was a silent retreat. I made all of these determinations without having spoken a word to either of these people.

On day four of the retreat, we were asked for the first time to assume our meditation posture and to hold it for an hour without moving or opening our eyes. Needless to say, this is very difficult. To hold the same posture for an hour is at best uncomfortable, and at worst very painful. The first time we did this, I could hear the movie star meditator squirming behind me. He was experiencing discomfort and in the last ten minutes of that hour, he actually began to sob. I remember thinking what kind of jock is this? But the truth was I had judged him with no true foundation to do so.

On the retreat’s final day, the silence was lifted and we were allowed to speak. This was a fascinating day to behold. Everyone raced around introducing themselves and comparing experiences about what had been a truly challenging endeavor. It was also a wonderful social experiment. Finally, I could get a glimpse of whether or not I had had accurate impressions of people. The family man, as it turned out, was gay, which I didn’t see coming at all. And the macho jock was in fact a circus performer with none of the bravado that you might expect from a jock.

AND THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS...
Needless to say, it became very clear why it isn’t a good idea to judge people. Outside appearances often have nothing to do with what people are feeling inside. Someone who is an avid churchgoer can easily have selfishness and deceit in their heart. And lingerie models are capable of respect and spirituality toward others. The irony of my day at Starbuck’s was not lost on me. That woman had judged the Victoria Secret model and I had judged her. I had to check myself because regardless of how that woman appeared, I had no way of truly knowing the reality of her spirit. At the end of the day, all of us are writers. We look at something and even though we don’t see the whole picture, we begin creating stories to fill in the blanks. Oftentimes, this is fun to do, but we should always keep in mind the differences between fact and fiction.

I HAVE WRITTEN A BOOK! TO LEARN MORE OR TO READ AN EXCERPT
of my sci-fi/fantasy/adventure novel, “The Unveiling: 1.0,” please visit TheUnveilingSeries.com.

Extroverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving…

Last week I attended a career exploration seminar. The workshop required us all to take a test, which asked a series of preference questions. Things like “When you attend a party, do you prefer to mingle around the room or to stay in a small group of close friends?”

The test is devised to profile your personality preferences. Those preferences are then used to predict what kinds of jobs you are best suited for. For example, if you are an extremely extroverted person, it is assumed you will prefer jobs around people vs. sitting at a computer alone. Some of the categories described in the profiles are as follows:

1 Extroverted (E) or Introverted (I)
2 Sensing (S) or Intuitive (N)
3 Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)
4 Judging (J) or Perceiving (P)

To clarify some of the above categories, “sensing” people see the world through their senses and can describe things in particular detail exactly as they observed them. “Intuitive” people see the world in the bigger picture describing things as they related to them emotionally. For example, a sensing person would describe a mugger in detail while an intuitive person might describe them as “scary.”

Judging people are regimented and structured while perceiving people are spontaneous and carefree.

The course leader asked us to guess the results of our assessment. I found that easy and assumed my results would be introverted, intuitive, thinking and judging or INTJ. To my shock, my results came back as ENFP!!! The results are also given in degrees. Mine said I was clearly an extrovert. What?! I was somewhat floored as I sat contemplating these results. Could I possibly be an extrovert? Yes, it’s true, I enjoy the company of friends and family, but alone time doesn’t bother me in the least. In fact, I need alone time in order to remain centered. After I left this class, I ran my results by a few people who know me. Each of them said I seem very comfortable in social situations and meeting new people. Does that make me an extrovert? Perhaps it does, but I’m still working it out.

While I find the premise of the preference test fascinating, I have to admit it is not as fine-tuned as it could be. The questions were all multiple choice and several of them didn’t provide answers that accurately described me. I was left to pick an answer that best approximated my feelings even if it wasn’t an accurate reflection of my actual preferences.

The most interesting result of the assessment was that it got us to consider the truth about ourselves. If I am truly an extrovert, getting comfortable in this role will be important for my growth as a person. One of the other participants tested as a “feeling” person whereas he thought he would fall into the “thinking” category. As it turned out, he associated “feeling” with wimpiness. Without knowing him well, and from what I observed, I would definitely categorize him as feeling. And this isn’t to say I thought he was wimpy, but the feeling role may be one he needs to get comfortable with. Reality is always a much better understanding of the world than delusion. In a peculiar way, the seminar was like a mini therapy session for everyone who didn’t test the way they had anticipated. And any time we can walk away from an experience knowing ourselves a little better than we did before… well, then that’s a good day!

I HAVE WRITTEN A BOOK! TO LEARN MORE OR TO READ AN EXCERPT
of my sci-fi/fantasy/adventure novel, “The Unveiling: 1.0,” please visit TheUnveilingSeries.com.