On The Comeback

Posted on October 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

Gillette Fusion Razor“They ain’t curing AIDS. Shit, they ain’t
never curing AIDS. Don’t even think about
that shit. They ain’t curing it, ’cause
there ain’t no money in the cure. The money’s
in the medicine. That’s how you get paid, on
the comeback. That’s how a drug dealer makes
his money, on the comeback.”
– Chris Rock, Bigger & Blacker

One of the things I want to point out in this series of articles is how companies manage to give you less for more. The funny part about this is that they will usually do this in the name of advancement or convenience. And sometimes this is true. However, most of the time, it’s an excuse to make you buy something more expensive that is less permanent. Making money ‘on the come back’ isn’t just a game the pharmaceutical companies play, it’s played everywhere.

Razors are a perfect example of this. My grandfather and yours too probably shaved with a shaving kit. It consisted of shaving cream, a small bowl with which to mix the cream, a  brush with which to exfoliate the skin and apply the cream and a safety razor with refillable blades that only cost pennies.

Now you’re expected to buy something like the Gillette Fusion Proglide. You can buy this for eight bucks, which doesn’t seem too bad. But then you have to buy the refillable cartridges. Over at Amazon you can buy an 8-pack for just under thirty bucks, which works out to about $3.75 a razor. So let’s say you shave every three days and that each razor can be used three times. So that works out to $3.75 every nine days. That’s about 40 razors or $150 a year. And that’s not including shaving cream.

So what’s the alternative? Over at ClassicShaving.com you can purchase the Complete Celtic Shaving Kit for $99.99. It includes a stylish shaving mug, a high quality badger brush, a double edged, closed comb safety razor and ten blades. And you can buy thirty more for $18. (Three packs of six.)  Even with purchasing new equipment, you’re still over thirty bucks ahead. Safety razors last for years. So in year two, Gillette guy is still spending $150 a year. Whereas the Classic Shaving guy is spending $24 a year or $6 per ten-pack. The bottom line is, even in today’s world, your grandfather had the right idea.

This is just one example of how companies have encouraged our disposable society. Other examples are things like mops. It used to be that you owned a mop. You had a bucket. You put soapy water in the bucket, you soaked the mop and you mopped your floor. All you had to buy was soap. Mops lasted for years. You can buy a good mop over at Amazon for twelve bucks. Now, they want you to buy a Swiffer WetJet for twenty bucks and refills for six bucks per twelve-pack.

This reverting back to the old way of doing things isn’t always best. You won’t see me telling you to turn in your iPod for a record player. However, the idea that you need to shave in five minutes with four blades or that your floor has to be clean to CDC standards is absurd. For starters, shaving can actually be enjoyable if you don’t rush it and take your time. And exposure to a reasonable amount of germs is what keeps your immune system working. A freshly mopped floor never killed anyone..unless they slipped on it.

My point is that there are hundreds of examples like this. The thing to remember is that unless your money is disposable, you shouldn’t be buying disposable items. There are often cost effective alternatives that last longer and are of better quality.

I’m not interested in showing you how to live like you’re poor. That’s not what this is about. It’s about living well with what you have, even if you don’t have much. This is important because the big companies are actually more afraid than you are. They’ve kicked their profit lusting into high gear and they don’t care who they hurt along the way. Netflix just lost 800,000 customers, but it doesn’t matter to them because they also just increased their profits 65%.  McDonald’s just announced they’re increasing their prices. Of course they made sure that announcement was drowned out by the return of the McRib.

If we’re going to get through this without falling into poverty, we’re going to need to help each other. The one thing we can still share is information. That’s what this is about. That’s why I’m putting this online and not in a book. My hope is that these posts will become a conversation. Share it with your friends. Comment below if you’ve got other ideas that relate to this.

Thanks for reading.

-Jack Cameron

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Posted in Corporate Greed, Ruin Your Lifestyle

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There Is No Conspiracy

Posted on October 24, 2011 | 1 Comment

In Las Vegas they thought that maybe having drunk people near naked women was a bad idea. So they made a law that strip clubs could not serve alcohol if the strippers were going to get totally naked. Then someone pointed out that it wasn’t right that women under the age of 21, who could not legally drink, should work in strip clubs where alcohol is served. The result is that if you’re in a strip club in Vegas and the girl gets totally naked, odds are she’s under 21.

A conspiracy nut might say that this was some lawmaker’s elaborate way to get 18 year olds to take it all off, rather than working in a topless club. Of course this isn’t true. This is just a combination of events resulting in a certain consequence. Before I go too far into what I see happening with this country or the world, I want to be clear that as much as I love conspiracies, I don’t believe in a gigantic conspiracy to destroy the Middle Class. I believe there are groups and individuals who see profit in activities that may result in the Middle Class having difficulty maintaining their lifestyle.

The purpose of these posts is to point out things I believe are part of the problem. These are both overt and coincidental things that cause people to spend more money for less. I’m also going to try to provide alternatives and solutions to these things. Unlike a lot of my projects, I haven’t planned this one out, so I can’t tell you what’s all going to show up here or where we’re going from here.

I am currently making more money than I’ve ever made before and yet I’m still struggling to make my bills every month. I don’t think I’m alone in this. And I don’t think I’m alone in thinking this isn’t how it should be. I only have so much control over how much money I make, but I have complete control on how to make my life and standard of living better than it is.  And while I’m doing it, I think it makes sense to show you as well. Because I’ll tell you the first way that a country without the Middle Class works: we share. We stop worrying about if I believe in the same political party or same God as you. Instead, let’s recognize that odds are, regardless of who you are or what life you’ve made for yourself, you’d like to know how to survive with less. Just in case.

The truth is that they are not out to get us. There is no big conspiracy. The Powers That Be do not care about you. Ask the people of New Orleans about Katrina if you don’t believe that to be true. Hopefully we’ll both learn a thing or two. And hopefully, we’ll have fun while we’re doing it.

I’m always interested in your input. Comment below or write me at jackcameronis@gmail.com

One last thing, if you like what you read here, please share it. I’m not spending any time marketing this site. So people who find it are likely friends or friends of friends.

-          Jack Cameron

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Posted in Ruin Your Lifestyle

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Middle Class Warfare or Ruin Your Lifestyle

Posted on October 21, 2011 | 1 Comment

I’m always running scenarios in my head. I’ll take the information I have and try to figure out where it’s going or at least of where it could go. It’s how I write fiction. I just take one or two blocks of information and then figure out what the most interesting third block might be. What if? I’m always looking at Step 3.
 
So I’ve been gathering various pieces of information and I’m beginning to build a picture of a possible future. I’m not the first to do this and I’m not sure that anything I’m saying is going to be all the revealing. But I do find it interesting.
 
Let’s put together information and see where it leads us.
- Post 9/11 paranoia has resulted in invasive and previously illegal   intrusions into our lives.
- Social networking has essentially made everyone online into their own personal brand.

- Between GPS enabled smart phones, RFID tagged passports and driver’s licenses, ‘Hot Lane’  passes and other devices, finding individual people and their current location has become easier than ever before.

- Unmanned weaponized aircraft (UAVs) have become both inexpensive and easy to use and have been used recent weeks to kill alleged terrorists who also happened to be American citizens.

- Facial recognition software literally getting better every day.

- CCS International, a security company, estimated that the average person in Manhattan was photographed 73 to 75 times a day and that number is going up.

-  Cash is quickly becoming the least used form of currency. Debit and Credit cards are becoming more and more popular and are instantaneously tracked online.

- Media outlets are doing less true investigative journalism than ever before.

- The authorities are regularly arresting people for ‘terror plots’ that had little to no chance of ever actually getting off the ground except that undercover agents provided the means in order to arrest them.

-  The national and global economy is quickly becoming the Rich and the Poor. The Middle Class American is disappearing and it’s happening fast.

- Healthcare in America is getting more and more expensive. At a recent Republican debate when it was suggested an uninsured person be left to die, the crowd CHEERED.

-  Laws are being passed to make DNA sampling part of being arrested.
- People at protests are being arrested, often on no real charges.

- There is a push to make voting paperless, making fraud easier than ever.
 
Okay, I think that’s enough stuff to work with for now. And I think it paints a fairly clear picture. What it says to me is a handful of things.
1.       If the Powers That Be really wanted to, they could probably find you and kill you fairly easily and chalk it up to a victory for the War On Terror. Or at the very least, they can throw you in prison and once you’re part of that system, any ex-con will tell you it’s difficult to get out. On top of that, no one outside of your social circle would know or care.

2.       If you are the sort who wants to fight against the system, the first things you’re going to want to do is get rid of your cell phone, your credit cards, your bank accounts, your social networking profiles, your email accounts and anything else that can be used to identify and track you because, well, see point number one.

3.       If you don’t have at least a few hundred thousand dollars a year coming in, then you shouldn’t expect your life to be very comfortable for the foreseeable future unless you get very creative.

4.       The time to fight what’s happening is at least 10 years ago. Probably 20 or 30. Fighting the power at this time is potentially dangerous and you’re going to want more than a slogan and a sign to do so.

5.        As things get worse, people will get more and more desperate. This applies both to the rich and the poor. Prices for common items will continue to rise, making the middle class standard of living less and less, but not really causing any problems for the rich as the increased prices give them more money in the end.

6.       It would be easier to become one of the rich than it would be to actually change things because the money involved and the resources that money provides makes thwarting any attempt to change things comparatively easy.

7.       If you don’t have a legitimate job with a company, you’re likely to go to prison for whatever you’re doing which will make companies that own the prisons more money. One way or another you’re going to feed the corporate machine.

8.       Unless you’re one of the rich, you’re going to want to figure out what you can live with and what you can’t and minimize your spending as much as you possibly can because it’s only going to get tougher until the Middle Class no longer exists.
 
 
So there are a few of the thoughts I have on what’s going on in our world today. There are more pieces of relevant information and more possibilities with that information. I’d love to start talking about a solution, but I’m still working on that part. I’m still thinking.
 
What now? There are those like the Occupy Wall Street people who have quite literally taken to the streets. This is understandable. But I don’t know that it’s going to help. I’m not sure there’s help to be had.
 
I’m not saying we should give up on changing things. America has a long history of fighting the odds and making good things happen. And maybe the Occupy Wall Street protestors will be the beginning of a revolution, but even in a best case scenario, that’s going to take many years.
 
There are plenty of sites on how best to mount your protest or any other sort of activism you might want to do or be into. But if you’re going to be one of the people who creates true change, you’re going to have to make it your full time life and most of us have jobs and lives. So instead, I think I’d like to write about how to live in America if you don’t have a million dollars and you find yourself with less and less every year.
 
I’ll be posting more about this later. (Along with other unrelated stuff because we still have to keep this site a little fun.)  I’m interested in your thoughts on all of this. Feel free to comment below or email me at jackcameronis@gmail.com

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It Might Not Get Better….But Don’t Leave Just Yet

Posted on September 28, 2011 | Leave a comment

When I worked for the police department in police records, I was shocked by many things, but nothing shocked me more than the amount of suicide reports I encountered. There was one about every other day and I was one of six people processing the reports. And this was just for Tacoma, Lakewood and Pierce County.

Many of the reports contained notes written by the person who committed or attempted to commit suicide. The first one I encountered was written by a 13-year-old boy. He lived in unincorporated Pierce County. He rode his bike up a trail in the woods, wrote a note and shot himself with his dad’s pistol. The note said how he’d never be cool enough or smart enough and he’d never be anything he or anyone else wanted him to be and that he just couldn’t live not fulfilling these ideas of what he felt he was supposed to be.

I cried a lot that day. I thought how if only I could have talked to that kid. Maybe I could have said something. Of course that’s probably naïve or arrogant of me. Whatever the case, over the two years that I worked there, I got used to the suicides. I learned that the longer the note, the more likely the suicide attempt would fail. I learned that some suicides weren’t just people giving up, but people deliberately trying to hurt people by their passing. I learned that it almost never works out the way they expect it to.

Lately there’s been a lot of talk about cyber-bullying. There’s the ‘It Gets Better’ campaign, mostly targeted towards gay and lesbian teens. I like the idea of it for the most part, though few of us are going to end up being rich and famous regardless of how long we live. For most of the people in those campaigns, it didn’t get better. It got fucking amazing. But it’s made me think what I’ve thought about since the day I read that 13-year-old’s suicide note. What would I say to someone who was thinking of kill themselves?

So here it is:

I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t know what you’re going through. And I don’t know that it will get better. Things might even get worse. That may not be the best thing to hear right now, but it’s true. When life sucks, it tends to suck a lot. So let’s get that out there right now.

The other thing I’m going to say that a lot of people wouldn’t say is that you have absolutely every right to kill yourself if you really want to. We don’t get to choose how we come into this world. I think it’s fair to let us choose how to go out. However, just because you have the right, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

I’ve known people who’ve killed themselves and people who’ve tried to kill themselves. And every single one of them was someone unlike anyone else I’ve ever met. I don’t think that’s coincidence. I think that the freaks, the geeks and the nerds are far more likely to consider suicide because they are far more likely to consider anything. You are the people who come up with the ideas no one else can think of. You’re a valuable piece of the world. And while it might not seem like it right now, we need you.

More importantly, we need you here because there are a lot of people and I mean a LOT who aren’t like you. They don’t think much. They don’t really do anything different than anyone else. And if you’ve ever felt like fighting for anything in your life, then you know that you simply cannot let these people win. And they can’t possibly win while you’re alive.

There are things in this world that you haven’t done yet. And I’m not talking about a bucket list. I’m talking about life experiences you can’t plan and never expect. I’m talking about your entire world changing in the space of a few hours.

I’m 36 years old as I write this. I’ve been married twice. I’m a father. I’m a published author. I’ve been to the other side of the planet. I’ve done things I thought only happened in movies. But long before all of these things happened, I sat in my parent’s living room with a gun in my mouth. I may not know what you’re going through, but I understand the urge to end things.

You are not a burden. You are a person. You are not doing anyone a favor by checking out. It might not seem like it right now, but this isn’t the end. It’s the beginning.

You don’t know what’s coming for you. It may get better. It may get worse. But I promise you, it won’t be all bad. And some of it is going to be more amazing than you can possibly imagine right now. You aren’t normal and that’s a really good thing. Stay weird. Stick around. It’s the one thing you can do that will drive all the right people nuts.

-          Jack Cameron

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My thoughts on the whole Netflix/Qwikster thing

Posted on September 19, 2011 | Leave a comment

I went to Safeway the other day and was shocked by a new business that had opened up next door. It was a video store. With the exception of Red Box or the DVD section in the local grocery store, video stores are practically extinct. This is due in large part to the prevalence of Netflix. Netflix has changed the way we watch movies. And they are about to do it again.

Recently Netflix announced that they were going to effectively split the company in two. Their DVD by mail service that was the nail in the coffin to your local Blockbuster is now going to be called Qwikster. Meanwhile, their streaming service which you can use on most gaming consoles and Blu Ray players, will continue to expand under the Netflix banner.

Qwikster will continue to have the wide variety of movies and TV shows you’ve come to expect from Netflix. In addition to that they’re adding a video games section for an additional charge, much like they do with Blu Ray DVDs now. That’s the good news. There’s more than a little bad news. The most noticeable change is that the two sites are not going to have any interactivity. So the movie in your DVD queue and your streaming queue will no longer be able to interact with each other like they do now.

There are many who see this move as stupid. It’s hard not to see how this makes getting DVDs by mail a bit more of a pain. In this age where everything is connected, Netflix is separating things. Netflix has become the preferred way of watching movies by being ahead of the curve at every step. So why would they make a mistake now?

It’s simple really. One of the reasons Amazon.com has successfully killed many brick and mortar book stores is that Internet technology only gets cheaper and real estate only gets more expensive. When it comes to cost, technology beats traditional every time. The bottom line is not only is streaming movies less expensive, it’s getting cheaper all the time. Whereas the Unites States Postal Service has threatened to shut down entirely if they can’t increase revenues. For Netflix, a perfect world would be one where they don’t have to mail their customers anything at all.

So what’s the solution? If they simply got rid of their DVD by mail service, we would all simply go to Blockbuster or Red Box for our DVD needs. You can’t just cut people off. They’ll find another outlet. What you do instead is slowly introduce the concept of streaming. Make it available using a computer. Then make it available for people with X-Box 360, then PlayStation 3, then Wii, finally make it available on Blu Ray players. And make it part of the DVD by mail service. Eventually, even the people who don’t usually use streaming will try it out.  They’ll watch a TV show on their computer at work during lunch or something.

Once you’ve got a good audience through a slow ramp up, you can start charging for the streaming and the DVD by mail separately. The result will be the some people will choose the streaming and some will choose the DVD by mail. And some will actually pay more for the same service you were providing. Now that you’ve established your audiences, you can further separate them by making them into two separate entities. This will make even more people choose between one or the other. Since it’s more cost effective to stream movies, keep the Netflix brand and name connected to the streaming service. Give the other company a name that sounds like other failed Internet companies like Friendster and Napster. Call it Qwikster.

Now you’ve got two separate companies with two separate destinies. The Netflix streaming service continues to increase its library. Qwikster will eventually raise their prices due to the cost of postage or whatever other excuse they can come up with. And more people will leave Qwikster. Maybe they’ll have new releases only available on Netflix. Eventually, Qwikster will die. And when it does, Netflix will still be going strong with their streaming service. They’ll have cut their costs, increased their profit and retained the majority of their subscribers. It’s actually a very good marketing strategy.

While I’m sure that Netflix’s streaming service will increase (assuming the studios let them),  they won’t include all of titles that are currently available on DVD. Unfortunately, this means that soon there will be thousands of titles that aren’t available unless you want to buy them. It means hundreds of thousands of hours of television and movies that new generations will never see. As a guy who likes old movies, I think this sucks. Worse, I’m not sure that there is any way around it.

I don’t like this latest move by Netflix, but it isn’t stupid. What bugs me is that I’ll still be a Qwikster subscriber until its last day because it’s still the best game in town.

- Jack Cameron

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Posted in Movies, Random Thought, TV

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The Other Victims

Posted on September 10, 2011 | 1 Comment

Following is a piece of fiction I wrote a while back about 9/11. It’s pretty much the only thing I’ve written about 9/11. I’m of the opinion that we cannot fully understand what happened to those who lost people on that day. I think the rest of us can have sympathy but we can’t ever really know. The one thing we can relate to is loss. We’ve all lost someone at some point. This is about that.

The Other Victims

by Jack Cameron

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 ten years 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 just before eight 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 and in the Pentagon 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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Fall TV Preview 2011 – Part 2

Posted on September 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

Person of Interest Looks Like Fun

Okay, here’s part 2 of my Fall TV preview. I’ve listed all of the shows premiering between Sept. 18 and Sept 24. and what I think of them. There’s a lot of good shows  coming up. There are also shows that should have been cancelled years ago.

Feel free to post your own thoughts in the comments.

Sept. 19

Dancing With The Stars (ABC):  So the big controversy is apparently that Chaz Bono is on it. Apparently there are ultra-conservatives who think having a transgender person on a reality show is bad or something. I think a much bigger controversy should be why there are so many dancing shows.

How I Met Your Mother (CBS):  Consistently the funniest show on any of the big three networks. Neil Patrick Harris just kills it on this show and the writers are some of the smartest, wittiest writers on television. 

The Sing Off (NBC): Sixteen a cappella groups compete against each other. I like a cappella from time to time, but definitely not every week.

Two And A Half Men (CBS): Ashton Kutcher is not Charlie Sheen. Charlie Sheen is funnier and I didn’t watch the show when Charlie was on it.

2 Broke Girls (CBS): Sarcastic Brooklyn waitress meets uptight socialite who suddenly has no money. You’ve seen this show a hundred times and so have I. I’m betting this show won’t be around by Christmas.

Castle (ABC): I’m a huge fan of Nathan Fillion. I even watched the six episodes of Drive a few years ago. I honestly didn’t like the premise of Castle and thought it wouldn’t last. It has and the few episodes I watched were actually good. I’ll be watching this regularly this year.

Hawaii Five-O (CBS):  Flashy cop show that has nothing original going on.  I watched a few episodes last year, but it’s just not my thing.

The Playboy Club (ABC): First off, having a show called The Playboy Club and not having it on HBO or Showtime is just a little bit silly. Secondly, you’re not going to capture that Mad Men audience by making shows that take place in the mid-60s. You’ll get them by having fantastically well written and well acted shows. Whether this is one of them remains to be seen. Personally I doubt it.

Sept. 20

Glee (Fox): I’ve watched a few episodes. I’ve never been one for musicals (with the obvious exception of Dr. Horrible and the like)

NCIS (CBS): My biggest problem with this show is that Mark Harmon will ALWAYS be Mr. Shoop from Summer School. I simply cannot see him as anything else no matter how much of a hard ass he tries to be, but my mother-in-law loves this show so I’m glad it’s back.

The Biggest Loser (NBC): Watching fat people try to lose weight isn’t my idea of entertainment. It just isn’t.

NCIS: Los Angeles (CBS): I watched the first few episodes of this show and somehow they’ve all merged into one episode. I think because to me they all seemed the same thus I stopped watching.

New Girl (Fox): Zoey Deschanel stars as a recently dumped girl named Jess who moves in with three guys and starts singing. Despite my dislike for musicals, I may watch this simply because Zoey Deschanel is endlessly watchable.

Raising Hope (Fox): I’ve never seen an episode and I’m genuinely surprised it’s back this year.

Body of Proof (ABC): A neurosurgeon gets in a car accident and is unable to operate, she then becomes a medical examiner. I’ve never been a fan of M.E. shows. And really, it seems to me if you want a show on ABC, make it a medical show and you’re in.

Unforgettable (CBS): A woman who remembers every moment solves crimes. I wouldn’t be interested but one of the creators is John Bellucci who was the voice of Derek Wildstar on Star Blazers back in the day. No, this is no guarantee he can write a show, but I’m willing to give it an episode or two.

Sept. 21

The Middle (ABC): Described as a ‘slapstick sitcom’ about a wacky family and how they get along, I’m willing to say that five years from now, not even the people who created this show will remember it.

The X-Factor (Fox): Simon Cowell’s latest talent show. I’ve never watched a full episode of American Idol. I intend to continue this tradition of not watching Simon Cowell’s shows. Sadly, everyone else in America will watch because….well I have no idea why.

Modern Family (ABC): If I were to watch a ‘slapstick sitcome’ about a wacky family and how they get along, this is the one I’d watch. But I’m probably not going to. I like Ed O’Neil a lot, but I like him in his dramatic roles more than his comedic ones.

Criminal Minds (CBS): I’ve talked about this show before. I used to be a big fan but it’s become a weekly event of ‘What horrible thing can we do to how many beautiful women this week?’ (As a side note the CBS show Unforgettable claims only six people in the country have eidetic memories. Since one character on Criminal Minds also has a eidetic memory, that means a third of these people have TV shows.)

Harry’s Law (NBC): David E. Kelley’s latest law show is like all of his other shows. It’s quirky and topical and occasionally funny, but it’s nothing challenging or more than expected. Still, it’s better than most shows out there. I’ll likely be watching this at least in the beginning.

Revenge (ABC): A woman enters a community for the explicit purpose of exacting revenge. It could be fun and at least one episode is directed by the awesome Philip Noyce. I’ll try it out, but with a plot like this, the show needs a specific end point otherwise it’ll start treading water.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS): Sometimes you want to die where everybody knows your name. Okay, that was my way of welcoming Ted Dansen to the cast of CSI. This show should have been cancelled years ago. I still hold out the hope that the final episode will reveal that the mob pays for all of the incredibly expensive forensic equipment they use in exchange for the Las Vegas police looking the other way.

Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit: Wow. I thought this show got cancelled. I’m glad it’s not. Not because I’m watching it, but because that means Richard Belzer can keep playing Det. John Munch, a character he’s been playing since 1993 when he was on Homicide: Life on the Street.

Sept. 22

Charlie’s Angels (ABC): Look, I know for a fact that there are talented, creative writers out there who have original ideas. Can we please stop trying to recreate old shows from the 60s and 70s? Thanks to DVD if we want to watch those old shows, we can.

The Big Bang Theory (CBS):  A stupid show about smart people. And yet, it’s still funny. It could be better if it assumed a certain intelligence in the audience and didn’t have a laugh track that a monkey could follow along to. I’ll be watching because the actors are actually good at turning okay material into genuinely funny stuff.

Community (NBC): Another show I should watch that I don’t. Probably because I’m watching Big Bang Theory. Maybe I’ll try this out this year.

Parks & Recreation (NBC): I’ve heard absolutely nothing about this show and I’ve never watched it. Is it any good?

Grey’s Anatomy (ABC): I must confess I’ve seen every episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Since its second season, this show has had a slow decline in quality punctuated by occasionally really well done episodes. I still contend that every single character on the show is a selfish punk who deserves every bad thing that happens to them.

Person of Interest (CBS): A weird show from the guy who gave you Lost and the guy who gave you Inception. Really, do you need any more than that? Okay, the star of the show is that creepy guy from Lost? Not enough? Fine. The other star is JESUS CHRIST. Oh wait, I mean James Caveizel. Sorry for the confusion. Seriously, this show had better kick my ass. I’m really looking forward to it.

The Office (NBC): Loved the British version of the show and just couldn’t get into the American version. I know he’s no longer on it, but I think I might be the only person in America who doesn’t think Steve Carrell is funny.

Whitney (NBC): A show starring Whitney Cummings who I’ve never heard of and am not interested in.

The Mentalist (CBS): For a show called The Mentalist, this show should be a hell of a lot more clever than it is. Instead it’s House meets Criminal Minds. Yawn.

Prime Suspect (NBC): Somehow there is not already a show called Prime Suspect. This is a cop show starring Maria Bello. This means I’m watching it. She’s a good actress and she’s nice to look at. I still have little hope of the show being good, but I’ll try it out.

Sept. 23

A Gifted Man (CBS): A doctor starts seeing his dead wife. With Medium and Ghost Whisperer gone, I suppose CBS needed a new supernatural show. The only thing this show has going for it is the first episode is directed by Jonathan Demme. I may watch just for that.

Nikita (CW): Apparently this is the second season of this show I’ve never heard of. It’s apparently based on La Femme Nikita. This show will likely continue to fly below my radar.

Kitchen Nightmares (Fox): Chef Gordon Ramsey has become more famous than yelling than he is for cooking. If a British guy yelling at morons at restaurants that are barely getting by in a struggling economy throughout the country sounds like fun to you, you and I probably have very little in common.

CSI: NY (CBS): Still waiting for Gary Senise to show that he’s really a traitor like he is in almost everything he’s ever been in.

Supernatural (CW): Isn’t this like the third last season of this show? Seriously, I swear I read that this show ended three or four years ago.

Fringe (Fox): A smart show with good special effects, good acting, and fantastic writing? With the exception of Person of Interest, this is the show I’m most looking forward to this Fall.

Blue Bloods (CBS): I started watching this show when it premiered last year, but I just couldn’t get into it. This is almost entirely the fault of The Wire. Thanks to The Wire I have absurdly high standards when it comes to a good police drama.

Sept. 24

Rules of Engagement (CBS):   And I thought Friday night was the death slot. Does anyone watch TV on Saturday nights? Why not just cancel the show?

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Fall TV Preview 2011 Part 1

Posted on September 6, 2011 | 1 Comment

Parenthood Premieres September 15th

I tend to watch a lot of television. And even the shows I don’t watch, I tend to be at least aware of. I’ve been told I know more about the TV and movie industry than anyone should who isn’t in the TV and movie industry. I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not.

So here are the shows premiering this week and next week and what I think of them.

Sept. 6

The Rachel Zoe Project (Bravo):  I’m not entirely sure I would know this show from any of the other big-ego-no-talent-hey-look-at-me-and-how-I-spend-my-time/money reality shows on Bravo. Needless to say, I won’t be watching.

Sons of Anarchy (FX): Strangely, I have never seen an episode of this show. Bikers never interested me, but I’ve heard good things and will likely check it out on DVD sometime. As such I won’t be watching it this Fall. I’m too much of a completionist to start in the middle.

Sept. 13

90210 (CW): I didn’t watch the original. I won’t be watching this one. ‘Nuff said.

Ringer (CW): It’s Sarah Michelle Gellar playing a dark and damaged girl pretending to be her twin sister. Written by one of the writers of Supernatural. This will likely be very average. So I’ll probably watch something else.

Parenthood (NBC): There are a dozen reasons why this show should suck, but it doesn’t. It’s actually fun to watch and I like the cast of characters they’ve put together. Granted, I’ve been watching anything with Peter Krause since Sports Night, but really, this is a well acted and well written show that doesn’t assume a certain stupidity on the viewers part. I’ve seen every episode and I’m looking forward to this season.

Sept. 14

H8R (CW): A show with text-speak for a title with a first episode that has Snooki on it. The fact that this was even given a green light is more proof that the CW really isn’t a very good network.

Survivor: South Pacific (CBS): If this show is going to continue being interesting, they need to do a ‘from the ground up’ rebuild of it. Since they’re not going to do that, I’m not going to watch, but here’s my suggestion. Have three tribes. Two do what they’ve always done and vote one at a time off. The third tribe is a group of 3-5 ‘pirates’ who try to make the other tribes so miserable that they quit by taking their supplies and wrecking their shelters and whatnot. If the third tribe can get all of the others to join them or quit, then the pirates share in the million dollar prize.

America’s Next Top Model (CW): This show seems to have so many seasons that apparently being ‘top model’ is something that lasts about four months. Like most reality shows, I won’t be watching this one either.

Up All Night (NBC):  A sitcom with Christina Applegate and Will Arnett about the ‘joys’ of being new parents. I’ve got news for you. Assuming new parents have been able to get the kid to sleep, the last thing they want to do is watch a show about trying to get the kid to sleep. Don’t expect a season two.

 Free Agents (NBC): With the massive success of adapting The Office from British television, I suppose it’s to be expected that they’d continue to try to adapt more shows. This one is an office comedy with Hank Azaria in it. I love Hank Azaria. So I might watch an episode or two.

Sept. 15

The Vampire Diaries (CW):  I could be wrong, but I think the vampire thing is over. I mean except for True Blood, I don’t know anyone fanatical about vampires anymore.

The Secret Circle (CW): I was just thinking how the CW doesn’t have enough supernatural teen angst shows….luckily this showed up. I’m clearly not their demographic and that’s fine. I’m sure there’s someone who might want to watch cheap cgi mixed with melodrama.

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (FX): This is one of those shows I should watch but I don’t. It’s my kind of humor. It’s got a good cast. And I just never get around to watching it. Maybe I can fix that.

Archer (FX): Again, my fault. This is something I might like, but I’m simply not a fan of animation in general these days.

- Jack Cameron

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Go

Posted on August 31, 2011 | Leave a comment

I’d like to talk about something that I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’ve found that modern society has made it fairly easy to coast through life. With really, a bare minimum of effort you can get through school, find a job, find someone to spend your time with, get a house, bills and responsibilities. You can simply become one of the masses. Each of these things does have its individual hurdles and heartaches. There are difficulties alone the way, but it’s not really difficult. Most of you are likely on some part of this path right now and let’s face it; it wasn’t non-stop effort to get here.

I recently read a book called The Information. I got it from the library and it took me $5.00 in late fees to finish reading it. One of the big revelations in that book for me was the fact that regardless of the possibility of life on other planets, the vast majority of the universe is dead. Most of it was never alive. If you were to average it out, life would be the anomaly. Life is the part that doesn’t quite fit. If the universe were a perfect machine, life simply wouldn’t exist.

Life is the part of the universe that doesn’t play by the rules. It is the chaos. And the last thing it does is what’s expected of it.

Now I’m rereading a book by Timothy Ferriss called The 4-Hour Workweek. Like The Information, there are things in there that I haven’t quite wrapped my head around. However, one of the main themes of all of Ferriss’ work is that you don’t have to do things the way everyone else does. More to the point, if you want a different experience out of life than what most people get, the best way to do that is not to act like most people.

Now when I put all of this together, a few things become clear to me. One is that our individual thoughts and desires are among the rarest commodities in the known universe. The fact that I’m writing this and you’re reading it is more amazing than anything we’ll find among the stars. It is clichéd to say that life is precious. It’s said so often that it lacks meaning. But how often does someone tell you specifically that your life is precious? How often do you realize as you go about your day that every breath in your body is in defiance to the rest of the universe? We are incredible and rare. This I think gives us a certain responsibility. Our hopes and dreams are not just fanciful ideas with no meaning. They are what we are here for. We are alive to live out those hopes and dreams. If you are not actively going after what you want in your life, you are giving in to the rest of the universe. You need to live while you’re alive. It’s not what the rest of the universe is expecting you to do and that’s why you should do it.

These things are true regardless of your personal belief system. Whether we exist by God’s grace or we exist because of a spanner in the works of the universe,  it doesn’t really matter for the purposes of what I’m saying right now. You can ignore what I’m saying and keep doing everything the way that everyone else does. Or you can start taking steps in the direction that you want if you haven’t already. Remember, no one on Earth can do what you do because there isn’t anyone else who has your mind. Let’s show the universe what we can do.

-Jack Cameron

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How To Save Comic Books

Posted on August 24, 2011 | 2 Comments

Atomic Comics in Arizona closed its doors this week. Atomic Comics was arguably the most famous comic book shop in the world. It was featured in the movie Kick Ass. They had four stores in Arizona. They are now bankrupt and the owner is losing his house. Over the last few months my local comic shop, Comic Book Ink, had a big push to solve a $30,000 debt. They just barely made it. Movies based on comic books have never been more popular. And yet, comic books seem to be dying.

I’ve been collecting comic books since I was twelve years old. I started collecting in 1989 and never really stopped. I was there for the beginning of the 1990s boom where a single issue could easily sell over a million copies in a given month. Now there are months when the most popular book in the industry sells less than 100,000 copies. And there are signs that things are getting worse.

I am someone who enjoys reading and rereading comics. I don’t collect them as an investment. I collect them as an archive. I enjoy the stories. My 13-year-old son is currently reading my Marvel comics. He just finished reading the Onslaught crossover.  He absolutely loves these stories every bit as much as I do. (Yes, Onslaught wasn’t the best crossover.) My son and I talk about the high and low points. We talk about what’s gone on before and what’s going on now. And I can’t help but wonder if he will catch up with the current comics before they stop publishing.

What is killing comics? There are no easy answers. Some say video games. Some say the Internet. Some say it’s just technology in general.

The one thing almost everyone agrees on is that it isn’t a lack of quality. The comic books being published now are some of the best comics that have ever been published. Part of this is due to the phenomenal talent of the creators. Part of this is strangely enough the fact that comics are less popular than they’ve ever been. With less titles being put out every month, there are less creators working on comics and generally speaking the quality creators are the ones who’ve been able to survive the cuts.

A lot of people point to digital comics as the bullet that’s killing print comics. These days you can bit torrent comic books the day they come out for free. So why spend the $2.99-$3.99 for the issue at your local comic shop when you can download it without spending a dime or leaving your chair? For me, the answer is that I want comic books to continue. For example, I know that Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ Criminal is some of the best crime fiction currently being produced in any medium. It’s so good that I want to give these people money so they’ll keep making more. So when I go to my local shop and buy an issue of Criminal, yes, I know that some of that money is going to Marvel, which is owned by Disney, and it’s not as if Disney needs any more money. But I also know that some of that money goes to the creators and some of it goes to my local comic shop so that next month there will be another issue and there will still be a place to buy that issue.

I realize that not everyone thinks like this. Some people just download and share whatever comics they want and don’t spend any money at all on comics. I would argue that these people wouldn’t buy a lot of comics even if digital comics weren’t available. I know it’s all the rage to blame digital pirates for lack of sales of everything from music to movies, but I just don’t think that’s true.

So if it’s not quality and it’s not technology, what is it? Personally I think it’s the death of the newsstand. It’s that you can’t buy comics at 7-11 anymore. My first comic wasn’t bought in a comic book shop. It was bought in a convenience store. So was my second one. It wasn’t until later that I finally ended up going to a comic shop. As a kid, I’m more likely to go to the corner store than I am to go the comic shop. Why did I first go to my local comic shop? Because I missed an issue. And then, because the guy behind the counter was smart, he mentioned that if I just wrote down a list of the titles I wanted, they would hold them for me.

I know a bit about the comic book industry, but I’m not sure why convenience stores stopped carrying comics. It might be that during the boom time of the 90s there were a dozen comics shops in any given big city. Now you can count them on one hand. (Often on one finger.) You need to get comics in the hands of kids again and kids don’t just walk into comic book shops.

With the success of so many comic book movies, one solution is giving away comics at the movie. This is rarely done and when it is, it’s done with a comic book that you can read, but it will likely never be reread. Why? Because the comic in question is essentially filler. It’s rarely written or drawn by any of the big names of comics and it is a story that takes place outside of continuity and doesn’t ‘matter’.

I think it was Steven Grant who came up with the proper way to give away comics at movies. You give away the first issue. End it with a good cliffhanger. Then you say that the second issue is available at your local comic book shop. That issue you ALSO GIVE AWAY. By making the second issue free, you get more people walking into the shop. And once a kid walks into a good comic book shop, I’m betting he’ll show up for issue three next month.

While I’m a 36-year-old guy who collects comic books, they need to be aiming for kids my son’s age. And they need to be looking at how to get comic books into their hands. Whether it’s making them available at convenience stores or in movie giveaways, the key thing here is get the kid to read a few comics. If we can’t get comics in the hands of kids, I don’t see much future for the industry.

I’m not the first one to think of these ideas and I’m far from the most knowledgeable when it comes to the comic book industry, but I do love comics. It’s a medium that tells stories that can’t be told anywhere else. Comic books have been on the verge of extinction before. But that’s one of the great things about comics. Just when you think a favorite character is dead and gone, they come back. Here’s hoping comic books can make a similar resurrection.

-Jack Cameron

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