Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Forget the losers who make fun of you for enjoying Hallmark Christmas movies!


Forgetting to Google myself often enough, I missed this article from October in Cosmopolitan where I was quoted on how people feel pressured to say the actually “hate” certain types of entertainment they usually consume. This pressure has given rise to a sort of oxymoron of a phrase called “hate watching,” or how people who watch a certain show regularly would then turn around and claim to watch just to reinforce their hatred of that show.

 

The term is quite foolish and the article correctly points this out. There is no such thing as “hate watching.” You enjoy watching something but you feel embarrassed to admit it when all your friends make fun of your favorite entertainment.

 

In my quote, I make the point that most often female-centric entertainment gets most of the disrespect and the pressure on their fans to justify themselves. Traditionally, women who enjoyed watching soap operas or reading romance novels got most of the grief. These days relationship-oriented reality shows like The Bachelor and The Bachelorette get piled upon as well.

 

Since we’re in middle of the holiday season as I write this, just between Christmas and New Year’s, it makes me think of all the people who enjoy piling on the Hallmark Channel’s Christmas movies. I wonder how many fans of those movies claim to be merely hate watching in order to “know how bad they really are.” What I would suggest to all those Hallmark Christmas movie fans—while Hallmark Christmas movies are not really my thing, I do enjoy watching Hallmark’s various cozy mystery series—is that they should first give all their critics the middle finger and then ask those very sophisticated and hip friends of theirs if they haven’t yet gotten sick of Batman and Spider-Man reboots. I mean, how many times can you really tell the same old story about how witnessing his parents’ deaths warped Bruce Wayne and created Batman? Or the significance of Uncle Ben’s death to Peter Parker’s psyche.

 

Watch whatever you like and ignore the losers who give you a hard time for it!

Saturday, December 18, 2021

Some guy named Oliver is upset with declassified JFK documents…

Oh, yeah! Oliver Stone! Now I remember. He used to be big in the early 90s. Unfortunately—or, rather, fortunately—he hasn’t been relevant since. Nonetheless, as he was readying the November 22 premiere of his new Showtime documentary, “JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass,” about, you guessed it, explosive new “facts” that prove a vast Deep State conspiracy killed John F. Kennedy, he had been giving various interviews, basically handed the microphone  by the media to revisit conspiracy theories that have been long proven to be a pack of sensationalistic, absurd fabrications. The Hollywood Reporter gave him the opportunity to write this op-ed piece about his dissatisfaction with a newly released batch of recently declassified government documents about Kennedy’s murder. For Stone, not surprisingly, the documents are still incomplete and it still gives him reason to disbelieve the official version of events.

 

In his documentary, Stone now points the finger to Allen Dulles, one of the founders of the CIA, as the chief mastermind behind the assassination. Stone apparently has decided that Lyndon Johnson, his head conspirator in his 1991 film, “JFK,” was not really the grandmaster behind the conspiracy after all. And Stone must have decided that his insanely long list of conspirators, including FBI agents, J. Edgar Hoover, the Dallas police brass, members of every intelligence agency and high-ranking commanders in each of the armed forces, “the homosexual underworld,” New Orleans businessmen, and Texas oil tycoons was not quite long enough.

 

Why Stone is given the platform to make his new documentary now and treated to a great deal of favorable media coverage is puzzling. In the wake of Covid, anti-vaccination movements, and the age of QAnon, the media’s long-running romance with conspiracy theorists has thankfully cooled off. Oliver Stone, however, has turned up again and somehow he’s being given the benefit of the doubt by outlets like the Hollywood Reporter. Maybe they think this favorable treatment is okay since Stone’s films supposedly performed an important function of inspiring much needed skepticism in people when it comes to official government sources and organizations of power and influence.

 

Except Stone’s work has done nothing of the sort. “JFK,” his magnum opus, his impassioned call for truth and justice and taking back democracy from shadowy cabals that subvert the will of the people, is a piece of fraud. The film is a manipulative con job that created enough controversy to garner the film smash-hit box-office numbers at the time of its release and made Stone a lot of money. Luckily, not only have historians dismantled the film at the time of its release, but the in the years since, numerous publishers have bucked the conspiratorial trend and put forth several books challenging the JFK conspiracy mythology. Amidst the multimillion-dollar conspiracy industry the media had created over the decades, feeding the appetites of book readers, TV-viewers, and moviegoers wanting to believe in real life capers and shocking mysteries, more rational minds have prevailed and have thankfully debunked all the conspiratorial foolishness clouding John F. Kennedy’s memory. Among several books and documentaries on the subject, the best one is Vincent Bugliosi’s “Reclaiming History,” not only answering every conspiratorial argument but exposing Stone’s film in a chapter so long and so thorough as to let it stand alone as a book by itself.

 

While the exaggerations and manipulative slight of hand in Stone’s torturously long 3-hour movie can hardly be covered here—again, I highly recommend Bugliosi’s book just for its analysis of the film—I think it’s important to make the point that “JFK” is deliberate deception and not, as film critics and his fans always claimed, simple artistic license in order to create a coherent narrative. “JFK” is a carefully constructed set of distortions and misrepresentation of facts and people. The most egregious of these distortions is the presentation of where people sat in Kennedy’s limousine as it drove through Dealey Plaza. The lynchpin of the entire Kennedy conspiracy is the argument that the bullets that struck Kennedy and Texas governor John Connally could not have come from the direction of the Dallas School Book Depository and been fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. “JFK” attempts to demonstrate this in one of its courtroom scenes where Kevin Costner’s Jim Garrison character displays a drawing of the car, its seats, and the positions of the car’s occupants, proving beyond a doubt that bullets that struck Kennedy and Connally would have had to magically shift in mid air to cause the damage they did. The scene is a dramatization of conspiracy theorists’ “magic bullet argument” that also claims to prove that the wounding and killing shots could not have come from Oswald’s position on the sixth floor of the book depository. The problem of the scene, however, as is the case with the entire conspiracy theory it’s based on, is that the position of the seats and their occupants in the film is not accurate. Stone knowingly changed the position of the limousine’s occupants to make the “magic bullet” arguments of the conspiracy theorists look plausible. This is not creative license for the sake of dramatic impact. It’s a piece of deliberate deception. The entire  movie is flim flam, an elaborate lie intended to deceive people.

 

Furthermore, what ultimately makes “JFK” inexcusable and the “it’s only a movie” argument unacceptable is the fact that Stone had always staunchly claimed that his film was NOT “only a movie.” Upon its release, Stone claimed in interview after interview that the film is perfectly accurate in every one of its claims and the depiction of the assassination. He had, in fact, urged moviegoers to use his film as a tool for activism and reject the Warren Commission’s conclusions about Oswald acting alone. 

 

One can not ethically use deception as a tool to get people to take action. As I always discuss with my students in the media ethics course I teach, when you lie to someone, you are robbing them of their autonomy. You are no longer free when you make your decisions about how to act based on someone else’s deliberate deception. When someone is lying to you, they are leading you around by a leash. They have turned you into their slave, their puppet.

 

“But even if Oliver Stone distorted the facts in a movie, could there not be a greater good in inspiring people to question the government, be skeptical of the official version of events, and think for themselves?” Stone’s defenders usually ask. 

 

The answer is “no.” The conspiracy mythology propagated by “JFK” has not led to a world of skeptical critical thinkers. It has led to a world of QAnon, Flat Earthers, anti-vaxxers, and belief systems that deny any kind of consensus reality, science and logic. As Tim Weiner writes in his excellent Rolling Stone article about Oliver Stone and his conspiracist derangement: 

 

“I can tell you for a fact that our democracy is suffocating under an avalanche of disinformation. Trump won the 2020 election! Covid vaccines are seeded with microchips! Democrats are blood-sucking pedophile communists! 9/11 was an inside job! Our body politic is being poisoned by lies. They stalk the land like brain-eating zombies. And we can’t seem to kill them.

 

“We have a moral obligation to call bullshit when we see it. Especially when public figures promote lies for profit. Stone’s JFK films are fantasies. Conspiracy theories are not facts. They’re a kind of collective psychosis. And they’re driving our country down the road to hell.”

Saturday, December 4, 2021

How Books Are Made: With Patience...

Here's a story I ran across in the Saint Peter's school newspaper about my book signing event when FATAL POSE came out. It slipped my mind when the story ran and I wanted to share it here for an amusing example of how long certain books can gestate before finally finding publication. 

As I discuss in the article, FATAL POSE had originally started rattling around in my head way back...in college. So, that actually would be in the, well, let's say early 1990s. No, age is not making it slip my mind! But the point is that when you realize that the kernel of a good idea for a story exists, don't worry about needing to work with it, reshaping it, putting aside and coming back to it, or just taking it completely apart and rewriting it from word number one.

As I discuss in the article, I actually do outline all that I write very carefully and always know exactly where a story is supposed to end up. Except when the story is finished, I might realize that something - or a number of things - might still not work. Such was the case with FATAL POSE.

After a lot of life getting in the way, other books getting published, agents and editors coming and going, many of them passing on the book, FATAL POSE finally found life at World Castle Publishing.

So hang in there and keep punching away at that keyboard.


Friday, December 3, 2021

At the Recent Philcon Conference




It was almost remiss of me to not mention my participation in the recent Philcon conference of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society in Cherry Hill, New Jersey (close enough to Philly). After last year’s all-online conference, it was exciting to be able to talk to a full conference hall of people rather than just stare at a computer screen, and it was great walking through the dealers’ room browsing books.
 

 

And, of course, doing readings and book signings or THE CEDAR VALLEY COVENANT and CONFIRMATION: INVESTIGATIONS OF THE UNEXPLAINED was outstanding. The interactions with one’s readers, the fan communities that frequent literary conferences, are an experience all authors should take part in. 

 

Those same fans also let me know they will keep me on my toes if I want to writefiction about conspiracy theories…no theory in any book they have read, they told me, is as demented as the “real” ones so many people swear they believe in these days.

 

Well, it’s a good thing my books critique conspiracy theories!


Friday, November 12, 2021

The Literary Titan Book Award for FATAL POSE


Very glad to have been recently given a Literary Titan Book Award for my bodybuilding murder mystery. With all the work and time that goes into producing a book, it's rewarding to receive an award "bestowed on books that expertly deliver complex characters, intricate worlds, and thought provoking themes."

I hope you check it out! 

Monday, October 25, 2021

FATAL POSE Greets More of the World



And how could I have been remiss to mention a very successful book-signing event recently at Saint Peter's University's O'Toole Library. And yes, I sold all those copies of FATAL POSE, raising money for our chapter of the National Communication Honor Society!

Psychos, True Crime, and "You."



I was recently quoted in this article about the Netflix show "You," revolving around a serial killer. The show is currently enjoying smash-hit success on the streaming service and has become the latest buzzy pop culture phenomenon. 

As the article explains, while there are many people who are big fans of the show, there are just as many who are worried about the possible dangerous societal impact of serial killer films, TV shows, and true-crime entertainment. As it also discusses with my quotes, true-crime entertainment and the obsession with the macabre is certainly nothing new. In the 1800s, after all, we already had the forerunner of true-crime entertainment in the form of the National Police Gazette magazine and people would turned out with their entire families to watch the public hangings of wild west desperadoes ranging from murderers to cattle rustlers and horse thieves.

Then, in the twentieth century, the news media would once again satiate a public appetite for knowledge about real criminals like Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floy, Machine Gun Kelly, and underworld kingpins like Al Capone. Among the most popular films at the time were the gangster films that made superstars out of actors like Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson playing underworld thugs and tough guys.  But even before frontier justice or stories of organized crime in the United States were turned into public entertainment, we had millennia of people all over the world turning out to see the brutal public flogging, skinning, burning, disembowelment, decapitation, and dismemberment of people who had defied the law. It is remarkable to behold the incredible level of mathematical and architectural accomplishment of the ancient Romans thousands of years ago, and then to consider the fact that they applied such advanced knowledge to the construction of the Colosseum, an immense amphitheater dedicated to displays of violence and brutality. For the ancient Romans, watching marathon sessions of gladiatorial combat where people from criminals to slaves, prisoners of war in the empire’s foreign campaigns, and all sorts of imprisoned undesirables being forced to fight each other to the death was as entertaining as watching football or baseball is to us. 

 

So, taking in such a history of violence, we have to recognize that the twenty first century’s violent entertainment, like movies or documentaries discussing true crimes, pales in comparison to the blood lust of our ancestors. We merely hear about serial killings or see actors recreating crimes in TV shows or movies. We no longer watch people torn limb from limb in front of us or watch see them get crucified, scourged, or burned at the stake.  

 

The point is that we need to realize that a fascination for all manner of information about or depictions of violence is a part of human nature. There are areas of science that have long sought to understand this. Perhaps there was an evolutionary advantage to constantly thinking about possible threats, possible sources of violence. An imagination of threats kept our ancestors on the lookout for dangerous predators. This fixation on the violent and morbid, in turn, kept them alive long enough to reproduce and pass those traits on to descendants who merely enjoy a TV show like "You" about a murderous stalker. Today’s threats we need to be on the lookout for, the new unseen danger that haunts the imaginations of modern humans, is not a wild animal hiding in the bushes but the serial killer who might be living among us. It is the friendly person who lives down the street or a boyish coworker we talk to every day who might be a twisted, blood-thirsty psychopath. Our fascination with true crime then is merely our evolutionary programming at work. Films, TV shows, and documentaries dramatize this programming. 

 

But, ultimately, is a violent show like “You,” or any number of serial killer films, slasher horror films, or true-crime podcasts dangerous to society? No, it is not. Research has long sought to find a causal connection between watching violence and violent behavior and could not. What we have instead are correlations between the enjoyment of violent entertainment by some people who also happen to have committed crimes. But a correlation is not a causality. Perhaps people with a propensity for violence mere just enjoy watching violence as well. True crime shows or serial killer movies do not make real life killers and criminals.  

Friday, October 15, 2021

Literary Titan Review of FATAL POSE



Seeing a story you had spent years crafting, polishing, rewriting, and just generally fussing over night and day until it's ready for publication connect with readers and critics is always fantastic. Very happy to have gotten this excellent review of FATAL POSE by Literary Titan.

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

Close Encounters of Every Kind



I was recently interviewed about a subject that's quite a favorite of mine because it's so hard to come to conclusions about. It's a topic that requires and open mind, but one that won't be easily filled up with garbage...

UFOs.

This article on the How Stuff Works website (and you can listen to its podcast version as well) details the complex classification system of alleged UFO encounters, everything from strange lights in the sky to encounters with otherworldly beings and all the way to purported human/alien hybrids walking among us. The classification system was originally devised by the legendary astronomer J. Allen Hynek, and it would eventually provide the title for Steven Spielberg's iconic science fiction film, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Hynek's system only had three kinds of close encounters. As the article details, at least seven more have been added, including complex subheadings of encounters.

But Hynek's involvement in UFOs I find very intriguing since the eminent astronomer who had originally worked for the Air Force's research projects into the phenomenon was originally a skeptic. He changed his mind while working on the infamous Project Blue Book.

I'm quite open minded about the topic of UFOs myself, but I guess I would consider myself an open-minded skeptic. The recent Pentagon report on UFOs (or UAVs as they like to call it), I thought, made an intriguing case for the consideration of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. There is something flying around in the skies, physical objects of some kind, aircraft that could not have been built by any known technology on Earth today. So where does that leave us about this issue...?

I don't know.

I kind of like the Sherlock Holmes approach to UFOs: once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, has to be the answer. So far the Pentagon report made a pretty good case for the elimination on Earthly technology behind the phenomenon.

So does that leave aliens?

I don't know. 

So my mind is open about the issue, but just as long as we don't get into the territory of absurdly complicated government conspiracies about back-engineered UFOs, demonic UFOnauts, and U.S. presidents having made deals with aliens in abduction/technology-exchange deals.

5-Star Review for FATAL POSE on Reader's Favorite



It's always great to see your work recognized and I'm very excited to receive this 5-Star review from Reader's Favorite for FATAL POSE. Check it out right here.

In the world of LA's pro bodybuilding scene, health and fitness can be deadly!

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

"FATAL POSE" sample chapter!









With the release of my new novel, FATAL POSE, take a sneak peek at its entire first chapter!

                              CHAPTER 1

With a face like a homecoming queen, she had a body that must have been some one hundred and seventy pounds of lean muscle. At about five feet and six inches tall, her physique was flawlessly proportioned. She had a disarming smile, wore her hair in a well-styled pageboy, and sported a low-cut flowery summer dress. The wide neckline of her dress was snug atop the dense pectorals and reaching toward a pair of wide, hulking deltoids. The tight fit at the top, though, allowed for the dress to slacken at the waistline. There, her torso tapered from her hard-pumped lat muscles, creating the precision V look of her upper body . 

“Perfect,” Laura Preston whispered as the flash bulbs strobed around their model. 

They were snapping the final pictures for Muscle Quest magazine’s “Bodybuilding R&R” segment for next month’s issue. Laura was about to worry the shoot would run too late again. She had made a point of staying all the way until the end, but now she absolutely had to get going. Her mind was on the drive up to Big Bear Lake more than anything else. Well, the drive, the Smith and Wesson automatic handgun in her desk upstairs, and the meeting with Brad Holt. 

“All right, and that’s a wrap,” Dave Sachs, the photographer, called and glanced at Laura. 

She nodded her approval. 

“We’ll have the proofs for you by tomorrow,” Dave told Laura. “My word on that.” 

“I know,” Laura said.
“I’m sorry we had to reshoot.”
“At least we’ll make the deadline. That’s what matters.”
“Hey, Laura,” called Christy Gilmore, the model with the spectacular 
physique. “think it’s a good thing we had to do a second shoot, you know.” “How’s that?” Laura asked.

“I got a full circuit in since last time. Chest, legs, back, everything. This morning it was biceps and triceps.”

She quickly raised her right arm and contracted her bicep. The fresh pump in the gym had the athlete’s muscles gorged with blood, looking as if the hypertrophied hunks of muscle were straining to explode right through her skin. 

Back when she used to compete, Laura was merely a shadow of the enormous musculature on Christy Gilmore. 

Christy flashed one of the winning smiles that helped propel her to victory three times in a row over the past year and a half. Winning the Ms. California Invitational, the National Physique Association’s All-National pro-qualifiers and the Muscle Extravaganza women’s championship had earned her the photo spread in the next issue of Muscle Quest. 

The “Bodybuilding R&R” column was the human-interest section of each issue. It profiled what normal lives the physique competitors really lived outside the gym. Fighting the ongoing battle to mainstream the sport, Laura had conceived of the column three years ago. The R&R feature alternated between male and female athletes from month to month, and Laura knew most of the attention had to go into the women’s version. In the twenty-first century, she still had to fight wars to get the female athletes the respect they deserved. Someone like Christy Gilmore making it to the pro ranks was a godsend, Laura realized. Not only did Christy have an otherworldly physique, but her dimpled, girl-next- door smile might just generate a renewed interest in the floundering women’s division of the World Body Building Federation. Or maybe one day, Christy could start making movies and get herself elected governor of California. 

That’s when Laura felt something like a spear of pure, solid ice ramming into the middle of her chest again. The blast of adrenaline flooding her body felt as if someone was deliberately tearing into her soul. 

Because they were, Laura knew and fought to keep a convincing smile on her face as she said goodbye to Christy. Laura knew how precisely, how deliberately, her life and her career were targeted for complete destruction. 

Brad Holt. 

No, it was more than her career, Laura knew. Brad Holt would not be satisfied with that. He wanted to step on, to defile everything she believed in, everything she stood for in the WBBF organization, everything she wanted this sport to represent. 

Except she would not give him that chance. 

Thursday, September 2, 2021

The Spike Lee controversy and the end of the conspiracy theorist hero



I was recently interviewed for this article for the French film-magazine, Telerama, about Spike Lee’s new documentary miniseries about New York and the strange, needless controversy surrounding it. As the article details, Lee appears to be a conspiracist who inserted a 30-minute-long segment about the claims of the so-called 9/11 “truth movement” into the final episode of his upcoming HBO documentary, “NYC Epicenters 9/11-2021 ½.” 

Lee’s film focuses on New York City and how it has fared over the last two decades, from the 9/11 attacks until the impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, since the miniseries foregrounds New York culture over that twenty-year period rather than dealing specifically with 9/11, the insertion of what critics have called a virtual endorsement of one of the most repellent 9/11 conspiracy theorists seems peculiar.

 

The segment which Lee has since removed, reportedly leaving the final installment of the documentary series only 90-minutes-long whereas the other episodes each clock in at two hours, essentially gives the microphone to Richard Gage, the founder of “Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.” Among 9/11 conspiracy theorists, Gage’s claims about the attack are particularly offensive and deranged. Aside from the standard, debunked canards of the 9/11 conspiracy mythology – that jet fuel couldn’t have melted steel, that the collapse of the towers was a controlled demolition, and that the collapse of Tower 7 is some kind of a “smoking gun” proving a conspiracy – Gage has argued that the towers were actually hit by drones camouflaged by holograms. He has repeatedly endorsed the claims that the Israeli government was behind the attacks, appearing on numerous podcasts and conspiracy-friendly outlets that also believe the Holocaust was a hoax and that all the world’s miseries are caused by all-powerful, all-controlling Jewish cabals. Recently Gage has also jumped on the COVID-conspiracy bandwagon, arguing that the pandemic was a government-engineered false flag operation, that vaccines will kill people, and it is all but a part of a grand New World Order plan to exterminate large swaths of the human population. Then, for good measure, Gage has also blamed Bill Gates for this massive conspiracy.

 

To be sure, the examination of the cultural impact of these tragedies on New York City is an excellent idea for a documentary. Why Lee would choose to mar that work by giving the floor to an opportunistic charlatan like Gage is somewhat odd. And I say “somewhat” odd because Lee had often made comments to the effect that he, too, believes in the main tenets of 9/11 conspiracism. He had recited those now debunked theories about jet fuel and steel and controlled demolitions. At one point, sounding spectacularly ignorant, Lee had also said that he hoped there would be a full-scale Congressional investigation into the causes of the collapse of the World Trade towers on 9/11.  Except there has been such an investigation. In fact, it had been carried out between 2002 and 204 by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, commonly referred to as the 9/11 Commission. So since Lee appears to be a full-fledged fellow traveler of the Richard Gage and Alex Jones conspiracy crowd, it makes sense that he would want to propagate their theories in his documentary. Now my impression of Spike Lee, from what I have read about him in the entertainment news media, is that he is not a stupid man (an assessment I am reconsidering now in light of this controversy) I am stunned that it wouldn’t occur to him how offensive the majority of Americans find Gage and his ilk. There is a reason none of Lee's colleagues in Hollywood have given 9/11 the Oliver Stone “JFK” treatment; because they understand how the 9/11 truthers are a bunch of bottom-feeding ghouls, a collection of grave-robbers attempting to capitalize on the deaths of thousands of Americans. Giving Richard Gage a platform in a documentary like this is akin to someone making a documentary about the Moon landing and giving the flat Earth theorists and the moon-landing-hoax crowd equal time to argue their beliefs. The fact that Lee does not realize this is stunning.

 

But what happens now that Lee had wised up and removed Gage’s segment? Because Lee was foolish enough to put Gage in the documentary to begin with, he has merely been made a martyr for the conspiracy cause. Richard Gage is a now an idealistic “truth seeker” who is being silenced by The Man for getting too close to the dangerous truth. Just like Alex Jones, Gage might be able to appeal to an even bigger legion of those who are delusional and pathologically alienated from the real world. Gage’s acolytes are those who can’t live in the real world and would rather make up their fantasy version of it, a version in which they are smarter, more astute, more vigilant to the hidden truth than all the “sheeple” around them. 

 

The unpleasant irony in this is that the bookend of Lee’s documentary about New York is the COVID pandemic, a plague that has killed so many more people than it should have and a plague that appears to be intensifying once more because of the madness of conspiratorial thinking. The COVID deniers, the anti-vaxxers, the conspiracy theorists ranting about Bill Gates depopulating the world and putting microchips into vaccines and altering the human DNA are driven by the same fantasies fueling the 9/11 derangement. And, yes, I do loath to call the 9/11 conspiracy theorists “truthers.” They are lying parasites who feed off the blood of three thousand and some innocent Americans. The COVID vaccine conspiracy theorists, in turn, are the kinds of people we had seen stand trial for encouraging the mentally unstable to commit suicide.

 

Although, as the article concludes and as I have been writing for years, this entire Spike Lee controversy appears to be bringing a change to the entertainment industry. The conspiracy theorist hero might soon disappear from popular culture. Films, TV shows, and books – just as I had done in my books like CONFIRMATION: INVESTIGATIONS OF THE UNEXPLAINED, and THE CEDAR VALLEY COVENANT – might soon show them to be the villains they really are.

Sunday, August 22, 2021

Win another FREE book!


 

Like I had written a couple of posts before, I'm running two book giveaways on Goodreads as a lead-up to the release of my new novel, FATAL POSE, coming out on September 14.

Only until August 31, you can win a copy of THE CEDAR VALLEY COVENANT, a science fiction thriller that ask how the best and the brightest in the quiet small town of Cedar Valley, Illinois, could collude to hide evidence of a world-threatening evil. 

So go to Goodreads.com and check out this story of people would rather see their world burn than try and work with those they disagree with.

Thursday, August 19, 2021

Talking about "The Last Picture Show" on the Cineversary Podcast



One of the best films of the early 1970s, in my opinion, is Peter Bogdanovich’s “The Last Picture Show.” So check out my recent guest appearance on Erik J. Martin’s Cineversary Podcast where we dissect the “New Hollywood” auteur’s film about coming of age in a crumbling, fading Texas town in the early 50s. With the film holding a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, there is, indeed, a great deal to examine about this complex, nuanced, often blunt, and controversial (for its time) film. 

 

So listen to the podcast – and do scroll through Erik’s list of episodes for other excellent episodes about films that have stood the test of times and still remain relevant – for all things “The Last Picture Show.”

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Talking about the art of science fiction




I was recently included in this article where I got to join four other science fiction writers and discuss the art and relevance of the genre. We talk about what got us interested in science fiction, the kinds of sci fi we like to watch and read, and why this genre is more relevant now than ever. 

As I discuss, we love sci fi and the genre is sure to keep growing in popularity in books, movies, and TV, because we seem to be living in a world that resembles a science fiction story more and more each day. The government’s UFO revelations, anyone? 

Saturday, July 10, 2021

Win a FREE book this July!



Do you want a FREE book? The one that predicted last year's metal monolith mystery? The book Kirkus Reviews calls "A captivating examination of humanity's fear of the unknown, with hints of sci fi and fantasy"? The one that convinced conspiracy theorists that I’m a real-life James Bond villain plotting to brainwash the world on behalf on the New World Order? With the release of my new novel, FATAL POSE, just a little over two months away, this July and August you can win a signed edition of my first two novels! Until July 31, you can get a copy of "Confirmation: Investigations of the Unexplained," the book that rubbed so many conspiracy theorists the wrong way. Get it for free only on Goodreads.com. As Paul Levinson, author of “The Plot to Save Socrates” wrote, this book is “a media-savvy, X-Files-like, fast paced story that’s just dying to be made into a Netflix or Amazon series.”

 

Sign up for a chance to win right here:

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/327328-confirmation-investigations-of-the-unexplained?fbclid=IwAR0NYtwKiZxiKTj0LusC3LThX6dgKUyYHtaBvVaTKLMCqQZxFYalRqImr-o


Sunday, June 27, 2021

My Guest Spot on the Common Cents Finance Podcast



I was recently interviewed by a couple of excellent Saint Peter's University business students for their Common Cents Finance podcast and we discussed an eclectic mix of topics that included branding, public relations, crisis communication, publicity and brand management, not to mention our discussion of conspiracy theories. And we even lay the smackdown on John Cena for embarrassing himself with that groveling apology to China.

Check out the episode right here.

And do make sure and listen to all of their other episodes as well because the show's knowledgeable discussion of business issues can give a lot of big-name, professional business-broadcasters a run for their money.

Especially in our discussion of off the wall conspiracists like Alex Jones, State of the Nation, and the rest of their ilk, we discuss why the people behind these odious websites and social media need to argue that EVERY SINGLE major world event is really a part of a conspiracy. While these people might be unscrupulous and obviously lacking any sort of a moral compass, they are shrewd practitioners of personal-branding strategies and tactics. If your brand is that of the biggest conspiracy theorists in the world, you have no choice but spin alternate narratives to the consensus reality and information from mainstream sources to keep your fans happy. Why just imagine if State of the Nation did NOT blame some major news story on the Deep State, the Illuminati, or the New World Order! What would their fans do? Most likely star migrating to other purveyors of nonsensical fabrications and fake news.


Saturday, June 5, 2021

A Nice Little Gem of a Movie In Light of Recent Events


While you wait for more information on the Defense Department’s report of its UFO studies to be released in full to Congress by the end of June and peruse the news for analysis of the parts of the study that have already been leaked, I would like to recommend a nicely original little film about alien encounters. 

I ran across “UFO” (2018) while randomly looking through Amazon.com’s recommendations of science fiction films. I was in a sci fi mood and desperately hoping to find something more interesting than superhero films or Star Wars. The user comments for this film were very positive, making the story sound blessedly original. I was definitely not disappointed after adding the DVD to my collection.

 

The film is based on a 2006 sighting of a disc-shaped object over Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, an event quite familiar to UFO enthusiasts. You can check out the overview of the O’Hare incident right here. The plot involves a mathematics graduate student who is able to figure out that the FAA’s explanations for strange aerial phenomenon over an airport (moved to Cincinnati from Chicago) don’t make sense. After convincing his friends and one of his professors (Agent Scully herself, Gillian Anderson, in a nice bit of casting) that there is something unusual going on and government investigators’ prosaic explanations don’t make sense, our headstrong hero finds himself under surveillance by a shadowy group of investigators who want to know how he figured out what he did.

 

That synopsis might sound like something that could have been recycled from a million UFO-conspiracy films, but the film is much more than that. It uses the archetypes of the genre to examine the psychology of what it’s like to crave answers, the obsessive need to know in the face of an unsolvable mystery. I don’t want to go into more details about plot points because I don’t want to spoil anything, but do check out the film to see how effectively one can tell a story about the true nature of the unknown.

 

It might make you look at the latest UFO discussion and speculations playing out in the news every day in a whole different light. Just what if there really is something extraordinary flying around in the skies out there, but we may never know what it is? What if there is nothing more in the hidden government files than the admission of total ignorance?

Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Fascinating!



UFO’s are all over the media lately, and not just on the History Channel and the Travel Channel. 60 Minutes recently did an extensive story on the government’s admission that it had started investigating the phenomenon again in 2007. The 60 Minutes segment can be seen on YouTube here, and several extensive stories about the new UFO revelations can be read here and here. 

And this month, the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Defense are required to share their findings with Congress.

 

The US Air Force had conducted several research efforts into UFOs in the past, starting with Project Sign in 1948, then Project Grudge in 1949, and finally the famous Project Blue Book that ran from 1952 until 1969. Once Blue Book was shut down, the government said that it would no longer spend resources trying to figure out what was behind the phenomenon. The study’s official conclusion was that the vast majority of sightings were misidentifications of everything from temperature inversions, unusual cloud formations, meteorites, swamp gas, and stars, to birds, weather balloons, and conventional aircraft. Since UFOs appeared to pose no threat to national security, there was no reason for the government to be in the business of studying them.

 

That changed, apparently, in 2007 when Nevada Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader at the time, had been given information about Navy and Air Force personnel—including fighter pilots and radar operators—routinely seeing unidentified flying objects. These UFOs (or UAPs, “unidentified aerial phenomenon,” as the term UFO had been rebranded) would routinely exhibit flight capabilities beyond those of any existing aircraft in the world. Just as decades’ worth of UFO sightings claimed, the unidentified objects would be capable of speeds exceeding those of any known Earthly aircraft and would perform maneuvers, again, beyond the capabilities of aircraft manufactured by anyone in this world. The UAPs reported by the military personnel must have been powered by technology we can’t even theoretically conceive of. Aside from their abilities to accelerate or decelerate at rates that would most likely compromise the structural integrity of any aircraft—and kill any living being inside it—several of these mystery craft had been seen plunging into the ocean or emerging from it to fly away into the sky. 

 

Harry Reid’s reaction to this information was the request that $22 million be allocated to the Pentagon’s black budget to study these UAPs. As the Senate Majority Leader, he got what he asked for.

 

As the links to the stories attest, the result was the establishment of a study group called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), run by the Defense Intelligence Agency and tasked with cataloging the UFO/UAP sightings. AATIP was funded until 2012 and the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force was a follow-up program.

 

We now know all this because a former AATIP director, Luis Elizondo, leaked the information to the media after resigning, allegedly frustrated by the Pentagon brass’ lack of interest in trying to determine what the UAP’s are. In 2017, the New York Times broke his story in this article.

 

So, any day now, we could get the Defense Department's report on all this and, at the very least, it’s expected that the report will acknowledge that the military is aware that some sort of hyper-advanced aircraft are able to enter U.S. airspace at will and evade our most sophisticated defenses. What these aircraft are, the report will no doubt say, nobody knows.

 

If, in fact, the government is “keeping something hidden,” as so many UFO-conspiracy films, TV shows, and books have claimed, that hidden information, I always suspected, is this sort of ignorance. There is something in the skies and we don’t know what it is.

 

Such information would be quite sobering, if not disturbing. It’s actually much more disturbing than all the rococo conspiracy theories about retrieved alien flying saucers and back-engineered UFOs in Area 51. The unknown is the most frightening thing in the world. 

 

It should inspire what past governmental studies of UFOs could not: a broader investigation of the phenomenon by the scientific community. Hopefully scientists might step up and do what Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Project Blue Book’s skeptic/debunker-turned-believer called for when he said the subject needed “agnostic” investigators. It needed people who neither blindly wanted to believe, nor their mirror-image opposite, the zealous debunkers who had made up their minds that UFOs could not possibly exist before examining the facts.

 

What might eventually derail any such open-minded investigative efforts would be the hard-core conspiracy theorists once more. The conspiracy culture in the UFO community had already driven scientists away once before. As French information scientist and UFOlogists Jacques Vallee wrote in his 1991 book, “Revelations,” by the 1980s scholars like himself had walked away from UFO investigations because the field had been taken over by the saucer-crash proponents and the uncritical believers of ever increasingly outlandish theories about aliens in underground bases experimenting on human abductees, extraterrestrials living among us and walking next to us on the street, or ETs clandestinely running the countries of the world. The sober, cautious, and conservative investigations of lights in the sky and distant sightings, Vallee writes, was just not as sexy as the lurid tales of alien abductions and clandestine military/alien partnerships. But the “sexiness” of the conspiratorial claims had also killed the chance of mainstream science taking the UFO phenomenon seriously.

 

Hopefully that won’t happen again.

Saturday, May 8, 2021

MUSCLES! MAYHEM! MURDER! And the FATAL POSE plot reveal!

 


September 14 is the date! My new novel, the murder mystery FATAL POSE is dropping from World Castle Publishing and Gunnar Marino and Erika Lindstad are investigating the deadly side of professional bodybuilding! And check out this sneak peek at the plot...


Venice, California: Where you’ll find the hottest beaches, hottest gyms, and hottest bodies. This is where ex-bodybuilder turned private investigator, Gunnar Marino, runs his business.

The World BodyBuilding Federation: The most successful health and fitness empire in the world. But WBBF President of Operations, Laura Preston, suddenly finds herself in the middle of a blackmail scheme, with bodybuilder Brad Holt threatening to expose a shattering secret from her past.

Where two adversaries meet: After Holt dies at a contest from what appears to be a dangerously unhealthy dieting regimen, Marino is hired to look into whether or not his demise might have been the perfect act of murder. But the deeper Marino digs into the case—pressed by a personal obligation to Holt's sister—the more unsettled he is by Holt’s background, questioning the morality of seeking justice for a corrupt murder victim and pursuing a prime suspect who might have been a victim herself.

A showdown no one might walk away from:  Finding himself in an escalating battle of wills and wits with Laura Preston, Marino is aided by a group of athletes he employs as an investigative staff, and Dr. Erika Lindstad, his former lover and ex-bodybuilder in her own right. But the more troubled Marino gets by the case, he realizes that he has no choice but to see the investigation to its conclusion...because suddenly he and everyone he cares for are targeted for death.

Sunday, May 2, 2021

You don't become a successful conspiracy theorist like this...

So, my "anti-fan," Hank Wolfe, on the Before It's News conspiracy site is again claiming that I am up to more dastardly deeds and wickedness. So far he had accused me of being a part of a plot to brainwash my students using 5G technology during my online classes and to replace students who are critical of conspiracy theories with computer-generated "deep fake" doubles. He seems to imply that I either had advanced knowledge of the COVID-19 outbreak or I'm just taking advantage of a COVID hoax - his postings are not quite clear if COVID-19 was manufactured or it's a hoax and no virus actually exists - in order to enslave my students. Since he doesn't seem to be accusing me of being one of the creators of the pandemic (or hoax), I am actually a bit disappointed. I really would have liked to have been accused of something as grand as causing the entire outbreak, or maybe just sitting on the all-powerful Committee of Doom that had manufactured the pandemic.

Now in a post from December 23, which I just noticed on Hank's Before It's News page, he does accuse me of being the mastermind behind the 2020 metal monolith mystery. My novel, CONFIRMATION, Hank argues, is but a bit of "predictive programming," or a part of some greater global plot. I need to reread his post since I can't quite recall his muddled line of "reasoning." Or you can check his posts about me and monoliths here and in right here.

It's true that I joked around about the monolith connection to CONFIRMATION on this blog, but it was, you know...A JOKE!!!

Now it's easy - and oh, so enjoyable - to make fun of a second-rate fantasist like Hank Wolfe. He makes broad declarations of grand conspiracy theories without offering a shred of proof for any of them. In fact, he does not even try his hand at the sort of conspiracist illusion of proof where he provides links to other conspiracy sites making their own unsubstantiated claims. 

That sort of citation, for example, is the stock in trade of State of the Nation, where each of their unhinged claims of COVID hoaxes, alien space weapons, and false flag operations reference a large number of other sources. Those sources, of course, are conspiracy theorists or just previous State of the Nation articles. This sort of circular method of self-referentiality is so amusing that I think I might use it as a teaching tool in my research methods class this fall. Study State of the Nation very carefully, I will explain, to learn how not to present research.

But Hank Wolfe does not bother to try and reference his shocking claims with even the sort of inept approximation of the scholarly citation system. Hank, actually, appears to be somewhat of a lazy conspiracy theorist, posting claims of far-reaching evil plots sometimes weeks, or even months apart.

What Hank does do on occasion is offer links to some news stories he attempts to use as proof that some immense conspiracy can no longer be kept secret. For example, check out this post where his headline screams that the January 6 Capitol riot was so obviously a false flag attack that even The New York Times says as much. Except the Times does no such thing.

And then we have Hank's latest postings about several stories in the Saint Peter's student newspaper, The Tribune. He argues that these two stories - check them out here and here - just about admit that my grand scheme of controlling students' minds are in full swing. The first story, about marijuana legalization in New Jersey is really an admission of an MKULTRA-style mind-control experiment, or so says Hank. The the story about students and faculty starting their COVID vaccinations, Hank writes, is a glimpse into the university's forced vaccination policy. If anyone reads these stories, they will immediately see that Hank is either spectacularly delusional, can't read, or that he thinks his fans are as lazy as he is and would never check his sources.

Hank Wolfe really could benefit from taking my class on conspiracy theories. The Do It Yourself Conspiracy exercise could help him come up with a much more convincing fake conspiracy theory than the kind of lame material he posts on his Before It's News page.

But I guess we can thank Hank for his ineptitude. In a way he helps shine a light on this bizarre cultural phenomenon that has gone so far off the deep end that at its core is but a collection of fabricated stories by sad, desperate losers and opportunists dreaming of becoming next Alex Jones. Hank's nonsense about 5G mind control technology and online learning come through in much fewer articles that say the constant deluge of rancid sewer sludge on the Sate of the Nation or Millennium Report sites. Although Hank sometimes proclaims in very matter of fact tones that the COVID pandemic is a hoax, his focus still seems to be on the more exotic realms of MKULTRA-like brainwashing conspiracies. His work is both scattered and inept. It is not in the league of the shear, cold-blooded, opportunistic evil of a conspiracy site like State of the Nation that repeatedly implores its readers not to get vaccinated, not to wear masks if one is not vaccinated and in the company of strangers, and to avoid all safety precautions that might stop the spread of COVID-19. Hank Wolfe is but a sad, inept clown, a wannabe in a crowded field of aspiring conspiracy influencers. His competition, like State of the Nation, on the other hand, spreads information that's as close as one could get to attempted murder.

Thursday, April 22, 2021

A piece of advice from a manipulative Svengali...



...please read beyond just the first paragraph or two of an article you are commenting on. That is a problem I recently noticed on the oddball "Before it's News" site of a certain Hank Wolfe who occasionally accuses me of using online education and secret 5G technology for mind control. Or something to that effect. Apparently he is attempting to blow the lid off of the sinister "Donovangate" plot I am masterminding to take over all of education or replace students in online classes with computer generated artificial intelligence avatars.

So looking at a recent post from Hank, I saw that he is still obsessed with Donovangate and mind control, looking for signs of it in my school newspaper's articles. In this piece, he comments on the length of an article I had posted about before. The Saint Peter's Pauw Wow - now renamed the Saint Peter's Tribune - had interviewed me about the QAnon phenomenon and Hank Wolfe, connecting those dots as he usually does, uncovered more clues to my occultic plot to bring on the new terrifying age of the New World Order.

And then Hank gives a warning about an SPU Tribune piece about marijuana legalization in New Jersey. Of Hank's work, this is actually one my favorites, as he calls me a "Svengali" who has complete control over the heart's and minds of all of Saint Peter's University. The SPU Tribune article, Hank warns portentously, is an endorsement of campus drug use. This drug use, he declares, is but a new attempt at enslaving the minds of students in the same vein as the Cold War-era MKULTRA drug experiments did.

Now, of course, Hank offers no concrete evidence of legalized pot in New Jersey somehow being a part of any mind control project, and also mischaracterizes the very point of the Tribune article. The article merely acknowledges the legal status of marijuana in New Jersey and reiterates that the smoke-free Saint Peter's campus does not allow pot smoking anywhere. But as any good conspiracy theorist, Hank quickly adds two and two to get five. Except when the true thesis of the Tribune article is so easy to check, I wonder why Hank would even bother to try and distort it as he does. It might be a better idea for Hank to move out of that basement at last, get a job somewhere, and put his efforts toward becoming a more productive member of society than a teller of weird, unprovable tall tales about Donovangate, 5G brainwashing, and Satanic plots.

So the lesson to take away from all this is to spend a mere two to three minutes double checking the sources of any nutter conspiracy sites like Before It's News and you'll wind up laughing at the crudest, clumsiest attempts at deception. Two or three minutes, that's it!