Review – Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life

April 28, 2009

There are only a handful of books that I’ve read that really changed my life. One of those books was The Game by Neil Strauss. It’s a book I liked so much I even mentioned it in my book. While those who have not read it may think it’s just a book on how to pick up girls, it’s really a lot more than that. Neil Strauss uses that premise to hang an entertaining and informative narrative, and then goes one step further by not just showing various pick up techniques but showing where the limits are on that sort of thing. After reading The Game, I instantly had more confidence when it came to women and for the first time in my life really felt comfortable in any given social setting. The Game changed things for me.

It’s because of the effect The Game had on me that I picked up Neil’s latest book: Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life. Instead of Pick Up Artists, this time around Neil submerged himself in Survivalists. Like a lot of people, the past eight years has scared the hell out of Neil Strauss, but he’s not the sort to just be scared. Instead, he started looking into ways to assuage his fears. Nowhere else are you going to find a book that talks about everything from living in the forest to cryonics and the benefits of owning goats.
Like The Game, Emergency is told in an entertaining narrative format. At first this didn’t seem like it was going to work as well as it did in The Game. The first hundred pages or so have less to do with survival techniques and more to do with the reasons for his various fears. Luckily, all of that was just laying the groundwork for the rest of the book.

Once the book gets rolling, it’s a lot of fun. The cast of characters may not be as colorful and crazy as his friends in The Game, but they’re a hell of a lot more dangerous. One of the things that makes Neil Strauss’ books so damn readable is that he approaches these ‘experts’ with the same sort of wary eye that most of us would. When he goes to Tom Brown’s infamous boot camp, he thinks most of the people there are crazy. He pitches his tent wrong and it floods. He hates it. And yet, he’s learning. He takes what he can from the camp without drinking the Kool-Aid. That’s what makes Emergency such a good read. Unlike most Survivalists, he’s not trying to brainwash anyone. He’s just talking about what happened to him and what he went through.

About two-thirds into Emergency, Neil Strauss has turned himself into a force to be reckoned with. He can live off the land indefinitely. He’s trained to use various forms of firearms. He can build a shelter out of just about anything. He can track and identify an animal by its prints. He is prepared for the shit to hit the fan. That would be enough there to recommend this book, but then something else happens.

The last third of the book surprised me. He goes from being a survivalist to being something else. Something better. I don’t want to say too much because I think it’s better that you read it for yourself, but yet again, like The Game, he turns out to be a better person than you’d think. Even if he did kill a goat.

Whatever Neil does next, I’m looking forward to it. He’s one of the best Stunt Non-Fiction writers* out there.
-Jack Cameron

* Stunt Non-Fiction: A term I made up to describe non-fiction books where the author essentially takes a subject, throws himself into it, and then writes about it. Other Stunt Non-Fiction writers include AJ Jacobs and me, among others.

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Still Alive

January 31, 2009

Sorry it’s been so long since my previous post. I’m working on the novel and promised myself I’d work on nothing else until it’s done.
-Jack

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Fall Season TV Review

October 20, 2008

I watch entirely too much television. It’s a habit. And like all habits, it’s sometimes a lot of fun and sometimes it’s outright painful. When the Fall Season begins, I tend to go on a TV binge. The downside of this is that I end up having less time to write because I’m watching TV. The upside is that when I have time to write, I can let you all know the shows to avoid and the shows that are actually worth your time.

Big Bang Theory

A couple of nerds have a hot next door neighbor. This is basically the entire premise of this show. Basically each episode is full of geek talk vs. real world talk from the hot girl, punctuated by arguably televisions most annoying current laugh track. BBT is actually a fairly entertaining sitcom, but the laugh track gets to me. I don’t like to be reminded when to laugh. I’ll laugh when it’s funny.

How I Met Your Mother

I ended up watching this show last year because it was on after Big Bang Theory. It quickly became apparent that this was the far superior show. The title of the show comes from the framing device of each episode being one of the characters telling his children how he met their mother back in the early 00’s of the 21st century. While all of the actors on this show are good, Neil Patrick Harris tends to steal every scene he’s in as the womanizing Barney. This show is about twice as funny as Big Bang Theory and is consistently entertaining.

Heroes

As a life long comic book collector, I was genuinely impressed with the first season of Heroes two years ago. They managed to have fun with the super-hero genre while still being original. They threw a bunch of balls in the air and caught every one of them. Then last year Season Two happened. While a certain amount of blame could be put on the season being cut short by the writer’s strike, the bottom line is that Season Two wandered all over the place and ended up absolutely nowhere. It’s no surprise to me that this season has had a huge ratings drop. However, the creators of Heroes apparently learned from their mistakes last year. The first two episodes of Heroes were more eventful the all of the Second Season combined. Things are happening fast and it is fun. The only problem is that right now it’s more plot than character. It’s almost as if they’re just doing all these big things just to do them. Like the first season, this one has a lot of promise, it’s just a matter of whether or not they can catch every ball they throw.

Fringe

When I was in high school, the Fox Network had a show about weird science and paranormal events that were investigated by the FBI. It was called X-Files. Fifteen years later, Fox has another FBI weird science show. This time it’s Fringe. Like X-Files, Fringe has an overall conspiracy combined with weird event of the week. So far this is working well, just like it did for the first few seasons of X-Files. Here’s hoping that Fringe can sustain the balance of mystery vs. reveals.

Eli Stone

I’m not a big fan of musicals. But my wife is. This is why I ended up watching Eli Stone. Eli is about a lawyer who has an aneurysm that causes psychic and musical hallucinations. Basically each week he has a vision of some sort that he has to unravel in order to save whoever he has to save and invariably it has something to do with his being a lawyer. Last year they ended the season with Eli getting his aneurysm removed right after predicting a huge San Francisco earthquake that destroys among other things, the Golden Gate Bridge. It wasn’t until this last episode that I really started to like the show. It takes guts to seriously mess with the city your characters live in. Unfortunately, this fun lasted all of one episode because in the season opener, the Golden Gate Bridge was back and so was the aneurysm. And to make matters worse, they decided to take the most intriguing part of the show and kill it by revealing that yes, his visions are in fact from the big guy upstairs. I don’t think I’m going to stick around to find out what happens next.

Grey’s Anatomy

Despite being a heterosexual male, I have in face seen every single episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Why? Because I’m obsessive and I tend to either watch every episode of a show or none of them. Unfortunately Grey’s Anatomy is a show that only gets worse and worse. I realize I’m not the demographic they’re looking for, but after four seasons, not one of these characters has become redeemable. In fact, every single one of them is so self-centered and short-sighted that it’s kind of scary that any of them are doctors. For a while there were two or three characters that were worth watching, but they either left the show or became so morally compromised that you couldn’t possibly think of them as good guys without forgetting what a good person is. With any luck at all, I’ll avoid most of this season because at this point I really couldn’t possibly care less who screws who or why or who is mad about it.

The Mentalist

When my son was younger, he’d watch a show called Blue’s Clues. Every episode they’d have some sort of mystery and they’d discover clues and try to make the kids watching the show guess what was going to happen. This is great for a show aimed at kids because it makes them think and builds confidence. Strangely, it seems to also be the premise for The Mentalist. The title character of The Mentalist is supposedly a guy who notices absolutely everything and using these abilities, solves crimes. And as the audience, we see what he sees and then get to feel all smart when we come to the same conclusions. Unfortunately this doesn’t make us think the character is smart. He is, at most, only as smart as we are, and while we tend to think we’re fairly bright, we all know we’re no geniuses and so the premise of the show falls apart.

11th Hour

I’m blaming the success of House on the glut of new shows that revolve around a ‘cranky genius’ character. Of course the success of House isn’t due to Dr. House’s character, it’s due to him and his supporting cast. So the 11th Hour, about a ‘scientific consultant’ for the FBI doesn’t fail because of lead, Rufus Sewell. It fails because there isn’t one other interesting character around him. If that weren’t bad enough, so far every episode, has been a slow plodding thing that lasted an hour but seemed like three. This show can’t be cancelled soon enough. Rufus Sewell is a good actor. He deserves good work.

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The Ruin Your Life Post Game Show Part 1

September 24, 2008

Last year I published my first book. Since I’d never done that before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be taking a look at the making and aftermath of my book, Ruin Your Life.

 

I’m going to start by talking about the response to the book.

 

Part 1 Feedback

 

When I published Ruin Your Life, my main hope wasn’t to make a bunch of money. It was to get a reaction. In that regard, I was very successful.

 

My mom thought it was great and bought copies for all her friends, but she’s my mom. Of course she liked it. My dad read some of it and decided he couldn’t have a book like that in his home. This is just one of the things that happens when you have a born again Christian father and a lesbian mother. Family of course is no test for this sort of thing though. They’re going to behave how they always have.

 

Friends aren’t much better in that regard. Most friends told me they loved it, even if some of them probably didn’t read it. All friends told me they’d buy a copy and those who haven’t to this day will still say they’re going to buy a copy. But really, these are friends. If they buy a copy of my book or not, they’re still friends. And I know they’re not going to tell me my book sucks.

 

And then the president of the company I work for decided to buy a copy of the book for every employee there. This was fantastic, except that now everyone I worked with would be reading my thoughts about getting drunk, doing drugs, and fucking the wrong women. This isn’t exactly information you usually want your supervisors to have. At the same time though, this was good in that it put the book in the hands of people who know me but might not like me. In other words, people who would tell me the truth.

 

The feedback I received was interesting. For one, I’ve apparently written a book that people like to pick up and read random chapters of. One coworker read it to her boyfriend while they were on a road trip. For another, people seemed to really enjoy reading the book. One of my wife’s coworkers sent it to her brother in prison. She told me he said, “I now know where I went wrong.”

 

The thing that surprised me the most was the amount of people who responded to my book by telling me how much they enjoyed it and that they had never finished a book before. I heard this from no less than five people. It seems I’ve written a book for people who don’t like books. It’s at this point that I’m glad I wasn’t banking my retirement on this book because from a marketing standpoint, I’m not sure how to sell that one. I mean it’s hard for bookstores to sell to people who don’t go to bookstores.

 

I was approached by a production company to turn Ruin Your Life into a movie, but I just didn’t see it as a movie and the production company seemed a little shady. They wanted a piece of the book profits and since they had nothing to do with making the book, I couldn’t imagine why I would do that.

 

While I’m satisfied with how Ruin Your Life turned out, I’m still convinced that the book has more legs than it has shown so far. That’s one of the reasons I’m lowering the cover price and planning a few other things.

 

I’m all out of the signed and numbered editions, but I’m still selling copies of the book. If you’re interested in buying a copy, click the Ruin Your Life tab above.

 

And if you’ve already read Ruin Your Life and want to let me know what you think, don’t hesitate to write me at jack@jackcameron.com.

 

Thanks for reading.

-Jack

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Felon (Movie Review)

September 21, 2008

In the 80’s there were a lot of made-for-TV movies that had a plot that basically consisted of taking an everyman and putting him in whatever bad situation was the hot topic; a father whose daughter gets raped, a factory worker whose plant shuts down, a guy whose neighbor is a drug dealer. Felon follows this basic plot idea and has a guy who kills a burglar in his home and goes to prison for it.

Felon stars Stephen Dorff as the everyman. He has a cute wife and a young kid and he’s doing his best to make a life for his family. Then some guy breaks into his house and he chases him down, hits him with a bat and kills him. (I’m not really giving anything away here. This all happens in the first ten minutes or so.)

 

So then our hero is put into prison where bad guys do bad things to him and the guards are only slightly less corrupt than the prisoners. It reminded me of Oz without the depth or Shawshank Redemption without a point. It’s not so much that the movie is bad. It’s actually fairly well done. It’s just that it’s not the first prison movie and it does almost nothing different in it.

 

Val Kilmer shows up as a mass murdering lifer who tries to help our hero out. Regardless of the part or how good or bad the movie is, Val Kilmer tends to be fun to watch and this movie is no except to that. The problem is, he’s much more interesting than our everyman. I cared more about him in the handful of scenes he’s in than I did for Dorff’s character who is in almost every scene.

 

No review of Felon would be complete without a mention of Harold Perrineau. After spending five seasons playing a wheelchair bound prisoner in Oz, I can only assume he took the role of head prison guard just to play the other side for once. Like Val Kilmer, he’s an excellent actor. He isn’t given much to play with here though and I doubt I’d be mentioning his character at all if it were played by a lesser actor.

 

Like I said, Felon isn’t bad. It’s a solidly average movie, but given that there are plenty of great movies to watch out there, I doubt I’ll be watching it again.

-Jack

 

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The Other Victims

September 12, 2008

The following is a short fiction piece I wrote a few years ago. It’s pretty much the only thing I’ve written about 9/11.

The Other Victims

By Jack Cameron

copyright 2005

 

My name is Paul Newman Jr. My father is not famous. He named himself after his favorite actor when he came to the United States. He said that he wanted to fit in and that every American he’d ever met could never pronounce his name. And so four years later when I was born, he gave me this name as well. I’m not entirely sure why I’m writing this or why it has taken three years for me to do so. They say there is a time for everything and I think the time for this is now. My father died in New York on September 11, 2001. He was forty-seven.

 

They say that no one will ever forget September 11th and the media seem to want to make sure of that with news specials, retrospectives, online timelines, commemorative magazine issues, and things like that. I’m not sure we really need it. I know I don’t. Honestly, it’s a day I want to forget.

 

I remember how they read off the names at Ground Zero. I remember how my father’s name was not on there. They talked of financial ‘compensation’ for the families of those who had been killed, as if money could compensate for a life. It didn’t matter though. They never contacted me. And I knew why.

 

September 11, 2001 was a day like any other. When my dad got into his cab, I’m sure he didn’t expect that he wouldn’t be home that evening. He didn’t know that halfway through his second fare in the morning, he’d be dead. Neither did I.

 

At the moment of my father’s death, I was in Oregon at Reed College probably smoking a morning bowl of pot, wondering if I was actually going to go to my Greek class. I remember turning on the television and finding every channel exactly the same: The absurd images of planes crashing into buildings. I think even without the pot, it would have taken a little while for it to register the magnitude of the whole thing.  I didn’t go to my Greek class.

 

It wasn’t until evening that I got the call. At first there was just crying and I thought it might be Mindy, my drama queen of an ex-girlfriend.

 

“Junior.” The voice croaked out through sobs.

“Mom. Mom what is it?” My mother was the other woman in my life prone to hysterics.

“It’s-It’s your father. He’s dead.” Great. This whole thing must have unhinged her more than usual. They moved upstate years ago.

“Mom, dad’s not in the city. He’s drives upstate. Remember?”

 

It was then that she told me what happened. He’d been shot in the back of the head and robbed. While the whole world watched the towers fall, petty thieves and murderers were still plying their trade.

 

It was two days until my father’s death reached the papers. Even though they lived upstate, he had made arrangements years ago for our family to be buried in New York. Even so, the circumstances made it difficult. The New York funeral home business was having their busiest week in history and prepaid or not, logistics were still an issue. The home finally agreed to have the service but the only time available was the morning of September 13th. The police said they wouldn’t be done with my father’s body in time. So the funeral would have to happen with the burial later. 

 

I emailed my professors and let them know I needed to go back for my father’s funeral. I packed a couple bags. Smoked another bowl to settle my nerves and called to make plans for my flight.

 

It wasn’t until that moment that I realized no planes were flying. And they weren’t sure when they would be and when they were, there’d be days’ worth of people who needed to get to New York and everywhere else. I couldn’t drive across the country in a day and a half and they couldn’t reschedule the funeral. I wasn’t going to be at my father’s funeral.

 

It took me two weeks to get out to see dad’s grave. By then he was in the ground and the police had already caught the guy who did it. Seems the camera in the car got a good look at him. It didn’t matter. Just like those who lost people in the towers weren’t comforted by the fact that the hijackers who did it were dead. It doesn’t change the fact that I’d never see my father laugh again.

 

They say that there were almost 3,000 people killed on September 11, 2001, but they’re wrong. The truth is there were hundreds more killed across the country, around the world, and in upstate New York. And it continues to happen every day, but it doesn’t have the impact that 9/11 had on everyone because it’s just not as fantastic. They were right that September 11th was a day just like any other. I just wish it hadn’t been.

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Jumper Movie Review

August 18, 2008

I’m a big fan of director Doug Liman. Swingers and Go are both all sorts of fun. His first big budget move, The Bourne Identity redefined action movies in a big way. The commentary on the original release of that DVD is one of the best commentaries I’ve ever heard. His cut of Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a good bit of fun too. So when I saw he directed the movie Jumper, I thought this might not be some crappy phoned in action movie.

I was wrong. Jumper is so bad I’m surprised Doug Liman’s name is even on it. The idea of the movie is that this kid played by Hayden Christianson is part of a group of people who have the power to teleport anywhere in the world. There’s a mysterious government group trying to stop them. I’d like to say that once you watch the movie there’s more to it than that, but there really isn’t. Hayden’s character seems to be entirely selfish, with no conscience whatsoever. Sure, he doesn’t want to kill people, but he also doesn’t really seem to care to much what happens to other people. All he wants is to be able to do whatever he wants and live happily ever after with his girl.

I realize that his character is a teenager and that such immature motivations are fairly typical, but the whole idea of storytelling is for the character to have some sort of journey. In Jumper, despite the fact that they jump all over the planet, the characters don’t really go anywhere. Every character in the movie hasn’t really changed by the end of the movie.

Now I realize that Hollywood likes nothing more than a franchise, and I’m okay with that, but you do actually have to have an ending for each movie. Even if it’s a cliffhanger. Instead Jumper simply ends. You’d think that Liman would have learned from his previous success of The Bourne Identity that the right way to begin a franchise is to make a compelling first movie that has an ending that makes you want more, but still wraps up the major plot threads.

Word is that Jumper 2 is in the works. Honestly, I hope Doug Liman moves on to something better.

-Jack

 

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Coldplay

August 13, 2008

Understand This: I hate Coldplay. I hate them a lot….and I like their new song.

That is all.

Jack

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The Kingdom (Movie Review)

August 4, 2008

When I was growing up in the 80’s almost every action movie either took place in Viet Nam or had characters who were Viet Nam Vets. Much in the same way that movies in the 50’s and 60’s were full of World War II stories and veterans. So in 1999 when the movie Three Kings came out, I thought how this was the first of many movies that will have to do with Iraq and America’s involvement in the Persian Gulf area. Personally I don’t think any of this is bad. Art imitates life. And it should. Sometimes, through fiction, the truth can be talked about more easily. For parts of The Kingdom, that seems to be exactly what it’s trying to do.

 

The Kingdom is about Saudi Arabia and America and what they have to do with each other. The movie begins with a very quick history lesson. It disturbed me a bit that I learned more about Saudi Arabia in the first five minutes of The Kingdom than I have in the last fifteen years of watching the nightly news. Next is a bombing in Saudi Arabia with American victims. This leads to the FBI getting involved and that’s about as much of the plot as I should really talk about.

 

For two thirds of it, The Kingdom operates very much like the best episode you’ve ever seen of CSI: Saudi Arabia. It takes you through the politics of the cultural differences between East and West and how ordinary people with important jobs manage to get through some horrible things. Through this we get to know the characters and the cast is as good as you’d expect when you have people as talented as Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper in the cast.

 

Then the movie takes a severe turn. The final third of the movie is an all out firefight. It’s the action movie that the trailers made it seem like it was. The action is well directed and just works. Director Peter Berg was definitely taking notes when he had a small part in the movie Collateral a few years ago (also starring Jamie Foxx). The balance of character and action, the camera work, and the slow burn pacing are all reminiscent of Collateral.

 

The Kingdom is a well put together action thriller that I think will stand the test of time. Check it out if you have the chance.

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Flip Flopping Isn’t A Bad Thing

June 24, 2008

I tend to follow politics like some people follow football. It’s a good spectator sport. But no matter how much fun it is watching it, I know I would never really want to play in the big leagues. Still, I find myself doing a bit of arm-chair quarterbacking. I see things and think, ‘Well why didn’t he just…” More often than not, I’m sure there’s some sort of reasonable explanation. However, there are some things that come up again and again and they seem to continue to be problems when there are obvious solutions.

One such thing is the concept of ‘flip flopping’. In 2004, you could hardly read an article about John Kerry without hearing how he was a flip flopper. He would say one thing then say something else. He once thought this and now he thinks that. And now with the 2008 Presidential race heating up, it’s coming up again and I don’t get it. Flip flopping isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength and I can’t figure out why no one in politics will say it.

If I were in any political race and someone called me a flip flopper, I’d have to say, “Yes, I said one thing and now I’m saying another. This is because I learned more information or the circumstances changed. And when that happened, I changed my mind. If I had not changed my mind, if I had stuck to a path simply because it was the first path I was on, then I would be repeating the same exact mistakes that led to our current situation in Iraq. I would be making mistakes simply to avoid being called a flip flopper. Personally, I’m not afraid of names and name calling. I’m afraid of people who refuse to look at new information or circumstances. I’m afraid of people who will stick to the wrong course simply because it is the course they are on. Yes, you can call me a flip flopper. I’ll wear that title proudly. But I also want to know, if those who call me a flip flopper have anything more than names to call me. Do they have anything of substance to contribute? Or is it just schoolyard name-calling? Because if that’s the best you can do to tear me down, I have no doubt that the voters will see it for the strength that it is. Thank You.”

Why doesn’t anyone in politics say this? Almost every negative thing thrown at any given candidate is based on a truth. And that truth is likely something that the candidate believes in and can defend. Why not take that negative comment and turn it into something positive? Why not turn it on it’s head? It’s not really all that difficult as long as you’re aware of what you believe in and why you believe it.

-Jack

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