Let me illustrate. About 18 months ago, Amazon did a Kindle promotion for Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I don’t normally buy bestsellers, but I figured… what the heck, for this one. It was $5, I think. So I got it. Months later, I had some long flights to and from France and the airline I took didn’t have onboard movies, so I wanted something gripping and popcorny to read, so I opened it up. I finished it on the flight back. It’s a total trip.

A little while after that, I told my buddy I was travelling with that I had read it, and he said something that really illustrates the point I am making here. He said, “I haven’t read those books yet but I probably will because I feel like they are a part of the fabric of the culture now.”

See that? Certain books are so widely read that you want to read them so you can have that in common with the other folks that read them. The Harry Potter books, the Hunger Games, the Twilight Books… they are all high quality, but I’m not sure the quality quite reflects how effing huge they all are. I’m not saying they are low quality. I am just saying that there are probably some books just as good that didn’t blow up like that. I think certain books just kind of win the culture lottery and their success becomes self-perpetuating.

Let’s not get in a big fight over that, though. The real point is, even for less well-known books, there is some cachet in reading something that you know other people have read. We can agree on that, right? If you spend the 10 hours it takes to read a book and you don’t have anyone in the world you feel more connected to after doing so, you got less value out of that book than if you read something you know other people have read.

See what I’m saying?

Another way: If there are two equally appealing books in front of you, and you know four people have read one and no one has read the other, you are going to read the one that you know four people have read. Because you can not only enjoy reading it, you can enjoy bonding over it.

My book, Dream Her Back, I think, is a totally fun book. Right now, I know, for sure, that my mom, my girlfriend and my high school english teacher have read it. Those are three great ladies, but none of them are in the target audience for the book, at all. It’s for smart geeks who like sci-fi that’s more about relationships than world-saving. That’s who my book is for. They aren’t in it, and I’m not sure that anyone who is in it has read it or even has a copy. I know a lot of my friends have copies, and that’s really nice, but what if some people who are inclined toward those sorts of stories actually saw it? What then?

OK, so, to my idea for the secret writer cabal. What if a group of writers came together and just committed to reading each other’s books. Say you got 50 writers with 50 books and they all read each other’s books and they all left reviews of them on Amazon and they all tweeted about them and wrote about them on their blogs. What if they all lived in the same city or at least fairly nearby? They would probably all be pretty well connected, well liked people. Writers tend to have their own little networks. 50 reviews on Amazon would get you some attention. 50 smart people in one city who could talk intelligently about your book might have an echo effect?

It’s not unprecedented. 13P is a theater company founded by 13 playwrights who committed to work together until each and every one of them had written, directed and staged one play. 13 playwrights. 13 plays. And it’s working.

Or maybe it’s a drop in the proverbial pop culture bucket. I don’t know. But I might like to try it. Anyone want to try it? I’ll read your silly e-novel if you’ll find 49 other enovelists who will read my silly e-novel?

#SOAPBOX#

I promise this is the last time that I am going to go off about this topic at least until I forget that I promised I wouldn’t go off about it anymore.

I don’t know why it matters so much to me. The fight is already won. E-publishing is the future and I really do think it’s better – on balance. There are things that are worse. You can’t flip through an e-book like you can a paper book. On the other hand, the text of a paper book isn’t searchable, either. You can’t lend e-books as easily or buy them used. That kind of stinks. On the other hand (while it hasn’t happened yet) I do think e-publishing is going to bring down the price of books.

That’s good. Did you know that Barnes and Noble and Borders drove up the price of books? It’s true. The price of all their great sales was that they drove up the cover price of books.

But I digress.

I got agitated about this again when I read this piece by some undergrad on The Missouri Review‘s blog. You’d think that wannabe writers would have a little more sensitivity to the fact that they are blogging against electronic publishing.

What bugs me about this myopia has two levels.

1) It bugs me when anyone scoffs at a new technology these days. I can understand being skeptical about change in the 1950s, when new technologies were coming along,  but not nearly so fast and furiously. If you were born before 1990, though, you have at had at least some consciousness of the rise of cell phones, The Internet, Blogging, Email, ipods, mp3s and smart phones. It has been an amazing time. How can you have lived through any of this without realizing that change is the new now? The sooner you embrace it the sooner you will enjoy it.

2) It especially bugs me, though, when artists and creative people are small-minded and unimaginative. Really? Your whole aspiration is around seeing the world differently? You can’t step outside your comfort zone and accept that this little medium you have come to enjoy might actually be changing for the better? I’m sorry you might never see your name emblazoned on the spine on someone’s bookshelf. Bummer. But the vastly lower marginal cost of e-publishing may also make it possible for you to find many more readers than you ever would have.

I think it is already true for some writers (and certainly some comic artists) that they have found a large following in today’s world even though they never would have gotten past the gatekeepers in an earlier era.

Can’t folks see how great this is?

Change is here to stay and change is really pretty awesome. Get with change, creatives, before change gets over on you.

OK, this is the last time I’m going to fight this fight. The next time I see a blog post about how Kindles are making readers stupid I am not going to click, I’ll just laugh to myself and go home to read on my Kindle. Which I love. Thank you very much.

First, everything in the following is giant spoilers from the movie, The Avengers. So, if you hate spoilers, don’t read it. Fair warning!

Second, I just want to be clear: I loved this movie. It was so, so good. Joss Whedon really did right by a group of heroes I love and superheroism in general.

All that said, the movie has got a lot of plot holes. In fact, as I walked out of my second viewing of the movie with my girlfriend (who doesn’t like comics but did dig the movie), and we were both talking about parts of the movie that didn’t make sense. It’s so weird, I thought: Joss is such a smart, careful filmmaker. How could he make so many little mistakes? It defied understanding.

Then I sorted it out. Joss is brilliant, but so is Edgar Wright, the eventual director of the movie adaptation of Ant-Man. Here’s what I think happened: these two super smart writer-directors worked out the most brilliant superhero cameo in the history of comic book movies. In fact, all the plot holes in The Avengers can be explained by a too-small-to-be-seen-on-screen Ant-Man.

The Black Widow’s hair-only rear headbutt.

The first time you see ScarJo in the flick, she’s tied up by some Russian mobsters. When she decides she needs to get free, she starts kicking their butts even tho she is all tied up. Makes plenty of sense, but there’s one moment where she takes out a mobster with a back-of-the-head headbutt. Okay, now, first of all… that would give anyone a concussion. No martial artist would ever try it. But second, her head never even gets close to the guy. Only her hair touches him, but he still goes flying!

Explanation: Ant-Man jumped off her shoulder and knocked the guy cold when he saw him coming at Romanov from behind. Obviously, SHIELD would want to send in back-up with a star agent, and they sent Ant-Man!

How Captain America muscles open a SHIELD safe.

So midway through the movie, the heroes begin to suspect that Nick Fury isn’t telling them everything. Tony Stark looks for answers his way, with hacking, but Steve Rogers decides to do it the old fashioned way, by nosing about. He finds a locked cell and once he gets in he finds old Hydra weapons that use the same power source Loki stole from SHIELD at the start of the movie. But how did he get in there? Now, the movies definitely portray Captain America as somewhat super strong, but I don’t believe they mean for him to be so strong he can tear steal, but somehow, when he finds a locked door in the SHIELD helicarrier that he needs to  get to the other side of, he can just muscle it open. What?

Explanation: Ant-Man shrunk himself down inside the locks and cut the bolts holding the doors shut. Cap still had to use his strength because without the proper security code they didn’t get an electronic assist. So Cap had to use his super strength to overcome the heavy friction, but not as much super strength as you might think, because the lock itself had been taken care of by Ant-Man.

Loki’s agents failing to pick off Cap while he’s hanging helplessly from a metal cable at the bottom of the helicarrier.

So Cap goes with Iron Man to help him fix a busted engine on the helicarrier, but just as they do so, Loki’s agents attack and they manage to knock Cap off the platform. He only saves himself by catching a stray cable that’s hanging from the broken engine room. A minute or so passes while Cap hangs there and Tony is restarting the engine. Loki’s agents have automatic weapons and yet somehow they don’t shoot him while he’s hanging helplessly beneath them.

Explanation: Someone must have kept them busy until Iron Man got back out of the engine and managed to repulsor beam the bad guys out of the picture. Who could have stayed out of sight but agitated Loki’s boys so much they couldn’t shoot straight? The one and only Ant-Man.

Romanov has fallen and she can’t get up!

There’s a big explosion in the Gamma lab and it knocks Black Widow and Bruce Banner down into some kind of machine area. A bunch of heavy stuff falls onto Black Widow’s legs and she’s not strong enough to get out from under it. Meanwhile, Banner has been rattled enough to turn into The Hulk. Then, all the sudden, Romanov is able to move a bunch of metal she couldn’t budget before.

Explanation: Ant-Man scrambled down there and helped her lift. Sure, he stayed tiny and just gave her that tiny bit of extra help she needed to get out. Can you blame him for staying tiny? The Jade Giant was about to rage out, and he’s much too much for a full-sized Ant-Man.

The Hulk finds Loki in Stark Tower.

In one of the greatest scenes in the whole movie, Loki escapes from the heroes and returns to Stark tower where he’s rigged up his portal maker. Inexplicably, the Hulk, who’s been down on the lower levels smashing Thanos’s invading hordes, appears out of nowhere and gives Loki a beating that makes Ragnarok itself look like a cakewalk. How the heck did he know that Loki had gone up there, though? He didn’t have any kind of POV to see it.

Explanation: Ant-Man told him. Seeing the battle turning their way, Pym knew it was time to wreck the morale of the invaders’ leader, so he whispered in the Hulk’s ear and the Green Goliath bee-lined topside. Because everyone listens to the Ant-Man.

Why Loki wanted the heroes to capture him and take him on board the helicarrier in the first place?

Yeah, no. No one can explain that one. Not even the genius of Hank Pym, also known as Ant-Man.

The Mayor of Philadelphia has a real way of rubbing people the wrong way with his tone. One of the most tin-eared moments of his administration was when he got involved in the second SEPTA strike I have lived through here in Philadelphia and really, really screwed up by telling reporters that there wouldn’t be a strike, which basically forced the Union to strike. Nice one.

SEPTA Union Head Calls Out Nutter: MyFoxPHILLY.com

A lot of times, it seems like nothing is more important to this Mayor than how competent he appears. It was weird that he was even involved in the strike, because the City really has next to no power over its transit system. So why was he there?

I hate it when SEPTA strikes. Not because I’m against the workers, but because it makes me feel so bad about this City. Everyone turns on the workers when they strike, because it is one of those industries that everyone really feels if it shuts down. Even if you aren’t a mass transit rider, you know it when it’s shut down, and that’s a pain.

But… I mean, workers have a right to strike. If they think they are being screwed, they have the right to do it. Just because you had to get up earlier doesn’t make them greedy.

I just don’t have much faith that people are able to accept some social cost if it means other people gain a lot of gain. Even if it’s temporary.

I have never liked sports, but I remember how angry people were when the Baseball players cancelled a season over pay when I was in high school in the early 90s. I didn’t care one way or another, but I remember a lot of my fellow high school students who really missed watching baseball calling the players greedy. I was like: you’d rather all that money went to the owners? The real answer: they didn’t care. They just wanted to watch baseball.

See what I mean?

The Alpha Girls is a feature length movie project by some young comic book guys in South Philadelphia who go by the name of South Fellini. Taking a page from the Joss Whedon playbook, they emphasize action stories with a lady lead. So for their first feature they go almost 100% lady with a horror movie set in a sorority. A sorority that’s also a cult. Not exactly unfamiliar ground, but hat tip to some really young guys who are just effing doing it. We should all be so bold.

I’m looking forward to seeing how all their blood splatters turn out. They just released this trailer, above. Stay tuned!

I realized that I have been getting so into Marc Maron in the last year that I am nearly to the point where he’s as much my guru as John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats. Could it be that I’m changing gurus? I don’t know. I feel like it’s happened before. Robert Heinlein used to be my guru but now I am kind of embarrassed at the thought of the dirty-old-man-ness of his later books (the Door into Summer, though – I will never be embarrassed about loving that).

But then I thought about it some more and I realized that The Mountain Goats and Marc Maron together would make for an unforgettable show that would leave you crying but also laughing but mostly crying – in a great way. Has a musician and a comedian ever gone on tour together where they didn’t just have two separate acts on the same stage but actually performed at the same time, taking turns but not really ever leaving the stage? John Darnielle and Marc Maron complement each other maybe too well. Maron could focus on all his really emotional comedy and Darnielle or his band could play some music in the background while he riffs, then every ten or fifteen minutes Darnielle could take over with one of his really emotional songs, like “No Children” or “Cubs in Five.” It would leave you even more elated and ragged than either of them can (and do) do alone.

So, Maron, Darnielle, if this reaches you two somehow – please connect. The two of you could do an amazing tour together. You both appeal to really smart, really literate people. You both have total NPR audiences that would love to see you two experiment on a collaboration. I am sure touring with each other would inspire you both to come up with all new bits/songs and you’d probably end up writing a book together.

Because that’s how the two of you are.

And you were meant to be together.

So make it happen.

Anyway, off to see Maron tonight. It will be my first time seeing him live. I hope to meet him after and maybe get him to sign something. That would be good. I think the guy I am going with kind of knows him but I’m not 100% clear on that.

All that said: I haven’t posted a link to another webcomic on here for a while, so here’s a really cool one that isn’t super famous yet. Poorly Drawn Dinosaurs is drawn very pleasingly and I really liked this contribution from the site.

Dream Her Back is a set of two break up stories so intense that the person on the losing end physically transforms. Pretty intense, right? And it’s free till Tuesday.

Remember, if you don’t have an ereader, you can still read it on your computer. Or, just get it, and let it wait for you in Amazon’s cloud until you do get one. Get it! And let the world know what you think of it!

For a long time, I have been pretty into this philosophy of mine. It’s not deep philosophy, like you study in Western Civ. It’s simply the Philosophy of being human (which, in a lot of ways, most philosophy is). Here’s my big idea: we hobble ourselves by looking for consistency in our thoughts.

I’ll go a step further and say that the whole idea of “hypocrisy” is misleading. We love to point out the moral inconsistencies in people we disagree with. One that I ran across on the same day that I wrote this: the inconsistency of Republicans railing against Big Government yet wanting to pass laws saying that same sex marriage isn’t marriage. That’s pretty Big Government, right?

I don’t agree with them on either point, but I don’t care that it’s inconsistent. We are all inconsistent. Inside of us, there are many conflicting values. In some areas of our lives, we may have very clear liberal values (always voting for the most left leaning political candidate, for example), but in other areas of our lives our values might lead us in a pretty different direction (such as investing for retirement in mutual funds and willfully ignoring the fact that those funds probably use your money to support some terrible, terrible companies that don’t share your values).

I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to aim for moral consistency, but I do think we confuse ourselves seeking a perfect moral clarity. The best we can do is look internally and try to find clarity among our values. In Sex, for example, don’t kid yourself: don’t tell yourself that all you care about is someone you can have deep conversation with when, in reality, you’re also as guilty of objectifying your paramour as everyone else is of theirs. Seek clarity, understand and set your course with intention but not a false certainty.

The Twitter version of my big idea: embrace ambivalence. Not a shoulder shrugging ambivalence but the deep ambivalence of being both attracted and repelled by the same decision (Man, I want to go on an adventure thru Europe and do it all but Dear God that would be so much money gone forever).

Embrace ambivalence.

That’s my big idea.

I may say more about what I’ve been doing to rub this idea up against other philosophers in future blog posts, but, as you might imagine, one of those philosophers that I have been dipping my toes into is Nietzsche (as the comic above indicates). I have, after all, always loved this little vignette of his, about the abyss.

More babble (and more comics) still to come.

So if he doesn’t think comics are stupid and other people do, how can he be so sure that other folks aren’t really confident that the weird art they do isn’t important even though he can’t see what’s important about it?

OK, then, today, Newsworks posted this story about a Philadelphia woman collecting defenses of artwork. Yesterday, when I read the first piece above, I thought about blogging about it and decided not to. Then I read the Newsworks story and wrote a comment on it that was basically a reaction both to the woman’s book and the Vice Magazine piece I read yesterday.

So here’s a slightly revised version of what I wrote over at the WHYY site in support of defending the art world:

God bless Amy Scheidegger. Defending art is such a noble fight. The other day an artist I am friends with on Facebook posted an essay about how stupid the contemporary art scene is, and it really bummed me out. Like those kids Scheidegger heard on the subway dismissing art majors, I know this guy likes all kinds of artists. And I know he likes lots and lots of artists (he’s into comics) that other people think are totally stupid. Those kids Scheidegger heard on the subway, you can bet that at the very least they like movies. And you can bet they had some disagreements with friends over some movies.

So why does anyone get to say where the line is between acceptable art that lots of people like and meaningless crap is? You don’t. And who’s to say that even if it is meaningless crap, it isn’t helping to inspire another artist to do something that will stand up over time?

When people are really hating on art, they often point to Modernism, where people would just paing – like – whole blue canvasses. That’s so stupid, they will say. Anyone could paint that.

That’s not the point of those paintings. The point of those paintings (whether the artists intended or not) is that a painting can be ANYTHING. All the old guidelines got torn down and anything is possible now. So a plain blue canvass in a museum? Yeah, it’s important. It was important then. In that moment. When people had certain assumptions about what painting “should be” and those assumptions were powerful in the art world. The plain blue canvasses were a key step. Sorry, lumpen, if you don’t get it, but artists are doing something important whether you can see it or not. It’s a process. It’s growing. Until everyone agrees and digs exactly the same stuff, no one gets to draw the line between good and bad.

Actually, that’s not true. The people willing to put in the effort to help get things seen get to decide what to show. If you’ll put in the elbow grease to create a venue, then you get to curate it.

Then those folks can decide what to show.

And you can decide what to look at.

And if you don’t like it, then go curate something better.

Otherwise, just don’t go see it if you hate it so much or just shut up.

He was one of those History teachers who didn’t get creative with his classroom. He simply talked every day, but he was good at it and we enjoyed his class pretty well. He wasn’t the young cute History teacher I had the semester before, but I think I got as much out of my time in his class as I did in hers.

And yeah, that April Fool’s joke: works great in a traditional classroom. Maybe I’ll try to pull it off in a meeting this year?

So, real point: to day is May Day. Just for today, all good kids try Communism. Don’t clean up your room unless you have discussed it in your soviet.