Shoot Promos on Race, Class, Gender, Etc

"You've always been what you are. That's not new. What you'll get used to is knowing it." - Cassandra Clare One of my favorite movies as a child was Rocky IV , the epitome of 1980's excess, cliches, and cheesiness. It certainly isn't the best Rocky but it's in my estimation the most entertaining Rocky film. Written and Directed by Sylvester Stallone himself, during the height of his star power and influence, when he could get any project green lit. Never to be confused by the sharp, witty dialogue of Aaron Sorkin or a Martin Scorsese level auteur, though you can argue that Sly certainly had a specific vision for this sequel. Nearly a third of the movie is composed of montages, including a montage in the middle of the film set to "No Easy Way Out" by Robert Tepper, which recapped the previous 3 Rocky films in a tidy 4:25. Would I have preferred a scene where Stallone performed a dramatic monologue to serve as the film's exposition? I don...

"Resilience is all about being able to overcome the unexpected. The goal of resilience isn't to just survive but thrive." - Jamais Cascio Oh, you thought this Hero's Journey was over? Of course the hero's journey was going to be a trilogy. If it's good enough for The Godfather , Star Wars , and Captain America , then it's good enough for me. The journey for Michael Corleone didn't end with his ascendance to power, nor did it end when Cap found out his best friend Bucky was alive, nor did it end after Luke found out who his father was. I just hope this 3rd installment will be slightly better than The Godfather 3 , which I contend is still quite good.  In pro-wrestling vernacular this is the "false finish", when a wrestler absorbs another finishing move [signature attack] and then manages to escape the pin after the move. My hero's journey didn't conclude nice and neatly after I battled depression and suicide for the third time. I survi...

"I am a series of small victories and large defeats and I am as amazed as any other that I have gotten from there to here." - Charles Bukowski The early 1990's was an interesting time to be introduced to comic books and superhero stories. In the context of the post-Reaganism, glorification of "yuppie" values (an obsessive devotion to career and materialistic lifestyle; think Gordon Gekko in  Wall Street  "greed is good" speech), and the AIDS and crack epidemics of the 1980's (thanks a f*cking lot Reagan, depending on how much you believe they were government conspiracies to specifically target Black, Brown, and LGBTQ communities), the early 1990's can be characterized by "grunge" and the popularization of gangsta rap, music genres and cultural subcultures characterized by a darker, edgier expression riddled with angst. The comics of that era with characters reflecting these darker themes of the supernatural and paranormal like The San...

"I guess that's the thing about a hero's journey. You might not start out a hero, and you might not even come back that way. But you change, which is the same as everything changing. The journey changes you, whether or not you know it, and whether or not you want it to." - Kami Garcia Growing up as an only child in the late 80's/early 90's, the highlight of my week was Saturday morning when I would have my bowl of sugary cereal, plop myself in front of the TV, and watch Saturday morning cartoons. Before my parents could afford cable TV, there were 3 channels (CBS, NBC, and ABC) and from an early age I would curate my cartoon consumption switching back and forth between channels based on when certain shows were on (which may explain why I continue to obsessively curate playlists with Spotify and watch lists with Netflix, Disney Plus, and HBO Max). Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry were on ABC, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Garfield were on CBS, and live action si...

"Because I always wonder what would have happened if things had played out differently. But to name my past decisions 'mistakes' or 'regrets' is foolish. If I chose something, it was the right choice at the time. We never purposefully make mistakes, we only call them that in hindsight" - Amanda Torroni If you've ever played Conversation Question Card Games at social gatherings, you may have encountered some version of the question "if you could go back in time and change [or relive, redo, etc] something, what would it be?". Based on how you define the question, there are so many ways you can go with this. Do you take the prompt on a macro level, like change the outcome of the 2016 Election? That way we would not be stuck with 3 Supreme Court justices who all lied under oath and have effectively turned America into The Handmaid's Tale (I actually haven't seen the show yet; too triggering). As a nation we would have had a more pro-science...