Raw Process: Feywild

Got a new desk, and what did I find as I re-organized but the original, puke-map of my work on Manual of the Planes. That's pure unedited brainstorming right there, for what it's worth. Posted for novelty's sake. (click for the big version)

Torchwood: Children of Earth

That's got a bit of a Global Frequency vibe, right there ... and hey, BBC America just showed up on my bloody XBox 360.

(h/t Mad Pulp Bastard)

4GM: Consoles, consoles, consoles & Netflix

A little scattered as I'm, you know, running a goddam television show. But the major points are in here for you to criticize and argue over:

British satellite TV network BSkyB is cutting a deal with Microsoft to have their content available on the XBox 360:

Rapid TV News understands that the long-awaited link up between BSkyB and Microsoft’s X-Box is at last going to happen. Full details will be announced tomorrow (Friday, May 29). The unveiling "Experience the Vision' press event will explain more..

... However, providing some sort of BSkyB functionality for Microsoft X-Box/360 users could potentially deliver millions more users in the UK and Ireland to BSkyB.

Do I get a Nikki Finke "Toldja" here? Four years ago I started discussing the idea that American's have an "entertainment space." For too many Americans, the computer is a box in that room over there, and the TV is where I play my games and watch my shows -- and the console got into that "entertainment space" first. Apple had an early lead with its iTunes/studio integration, but bobbled it badly by selling a crippled box. Turns out that while we require our music players to do very little but play music, we demand our video box do a bunch o'stuff. Like play games. And any format of entertainment we might care to toss at it. And bring us shiny new free shows that are, in fact, legally free, on another data stream.

Recent surveys -- whee, actual data -- seem to support the idea that "viewing" habits as we understand them are not evolving radically:

In a nationwide survey of 1,250 broadband households and separate sample group of 250 teens aged 12 to 17, Leichtman found that only 8% of respondents watch repurposed TV shows online, compared with 24% who watch news clips, 20% who view user-generated clips on YouTube and 15% who watch sports news or highlights.

"While online video usage is growing, it is shortsighted to think of this primarily as an alternative venue for watching TV shows," Leichtman said in research notes. "In fact, consumer use of video online remains much more about short-form video."

This in no way contradicts my previous argument about broadcasters creating artificial monopolies by switching 100% to Hulu. The numbers you're seeing here are the results of the failure to embrace that decision. The number cited above is a little useless actually -- a better thing to know is what percentage of teens who watch TV shows watch repurposed TV on computers. But that would emean somebody actually savvy about the emerging business model would have do this research.

There is a parallel in the States to the above BSKyB development -- customer surveys and rumors indicating that Netflix may begin streaming HBO and other quality cable content for an additional monthly fee. This is a bastardized version of cable a la carte ...

... and one of the reasons that I stated, in my last post on the matter, that Netflix will wind up the winner of the future content wars. Netflix has cunningly positioned itself as a pure content company. It will deliver content on a dedicated player, on your XBox, on your Tivo, through the goddam 3000 year old delivery medium of snail mail.

Netflix will give you a movie, or TV show, whatever's available on DVD and now streaming. It does not care, its jobs do not depend on dominating any marketplaces or shares. It's job is to Get You Stuff from People Who Make Stuff. It is catering to strong brands. Better or worse, if I pay for HBO, I know what I'm paying for. I pay for Showtime, I know what I'm paying for. I pay for NBC ... what am I paying for? Kings or My Name is Earl? Dateline or 30 Rock? I like Southland, why am I paying for Last Call with Carson Daly?


If you don't have a brand, get out of the business. Netflix is going to be doing your job better than you in five years.

Netflix is in the prison yard, strolling up to the Mainstream Networks with a sharpened toothbrush clenched in one whitened fist while the Mainstream Networks chat dreamily about how they're gonna go straight and get good jobs when they Get Out. Ain't gonna happen.

Certainly, right now, Netflix is dependent on material produced on other monetized media for it's content. Some people state this fact as a criticism. These people are chimps. That's not a problem. That's smart. In capitalism, letting some other dude pay the bills is a smart play. That border is going to blur as more and more private money moves into production. I would remind you -- Leverage has no major studio. It is coming back for a second season on TNT, a legitimate, well-thought of network. I don't think we're quite at plausible premise yet, but we're getting there.

Network humans vary in quality (we have some very fine ones at TNT) but end of day they are devices through which one transforms monetized eyeballs into financing for content, making their living off the skim. These first attempts at alternate monetization will more often than not fail, but the experiments are getting closer and closer to viability. That need for an intermediary will falter, and that skim will become smaller and smaller. It will never be zero; but it will drop to the point that is the bare minimum to do their job, rather than "subsidizing-giant-useless-buildings-in-the-Valley" levels.

EDIT 5/29/09: And rumors heat up that the XBox/Hulu connection is finally happening. Let me be perfectly clear here -- I've been a longtime optimist on the speed of the transition to digital content delivery, and even I am stunned at how fast things are changing and going to change.

When I say "Netflix" is going to win, I mean (whatever Netflix becomes) or (whoever finally buys/co-opts Netflix).

Why, Hijinks DO Ensue!

Terminator or Dollhouse? Nicely done, Joel. The most accurate portrayal of the modern television industry in webcomics.

Too bad Terminator couldn't be picked up on SyyyyFyyyieeeyyyghd.

WRITING: The Sequence Shuffle

First off, a quick reminder: the only eternal storytelling hard-and-fast truth is that there are three questions every story must answer.

1.) Who wants what?
2.) Why can't they have it?
3.) Why do I give a shit?

All other bits of writing technique are nothing more than hard-won advice, and YMMV.

I have to admit, John Truby's The Anatomy of Story utterly defeated me. I found a lot of useful tools in there, but at the same time nothing I didn't find in Elizabeth George's excellent book on general writing, Write Away. To boot, George has a nimble, engaging authorial voice while reading Anatomy is like having someone bang your temple with a ballpeen hammer all the while humming the opening four bars -- and just the opening four bars -- of "Holly Jolly Christmas" over and over again. Forever. I understand Truby's a hell of a lecturer, but damn this thing's a hard slog.

Truby rejects the current ubiquitous sequence approach to screenwriting. I think there's an excellent argument to be made on over-reliance on these structures; each screenplay is like a snowflake: unique and ultimately destined for a slush pile. However, being able to see the broad moves within your work, using these structures as a handle on the sheer bear of bringing a film over the finish line ... not a bad thing. At the very least they allow you to localize discussion when wrangling notes with executives. The fact that I began what passes for my writing career in television probably colors my opinions on the matter. I like a good act break, a little shove into the next section of the story.

Recently, I banged out a second draft beat sheet for a movie I'm working on, trying to isolate what worked in the puke draft and what might shift if I made some changes. I printed each sequence of roughly 4 or 5 story beats on a separate page, and laid them out on the table. My movies tend to then roughly lay out to 8 or so sequences, each with their own sub-goals and tones.

I realized, as I looked the pages over, that I'd reversed the third and fourth sequences (or the first two quarters of the Second Act). Then I stared at it for a moment. This was right.

I originally had the characters making a logical decision based on what was happening, make a run for some resources, and then head on off to the larger goal, enjoying misadventures along the way before being grievously interrupted at the midpoint.

What the accidentally shuffled, isolated sequences showed me was that if I allowed the larger goal to drive them, and then had them discover they needed the mini-goal along the way, this gave us a twist and a new bit of suspense. The larger goal created context rather than just being an endpoint. I could also see that if such a shuffle could occur without grievously changing my villain's plans, then my villain's plans were too vague.

Also exposed: the entire conflict of one sequence relied on it occuring after the other. I was, in fact, cruising on momentum there. (hey, I said it was the puke draft) Its internal structure was ill-defined. We've discussed books treating screenlays as essentially fractal before, and this shuffle reminded me of that idea and prompted me to break out some different tools.

All this to say -- try it. Grab your sequences or acts. Bang them out on separate pieces of paper. Line them up, face down. Shuffle them. Then flip them, and ask yourself: is this mini-story something worth watching on its own? Are its conflicts clear, its visuals unique? Who wants what, why can't they have it, and would I in theory give a shit for the next 12-15 minutes?

It's a nice way to get some altitude on the script, particularly when you've been knee-deep in the trenches for a few weeks.

(I also like to pick a representative color for each sequence, but that's my artsy bullshit kicking in)

I've Loved You So Long & Film Recommends

French, and very lovely. I'd say Netflix it up, but don't read a goddam thing online. Don't even read the summary on the side of the Netflix envelop.

Your foreign film rental suggestions in Comments, please...

Draper article on Rumsfeld

And this is by a Bush supporter, who wrote an authorized profile of the President. Former SecDef Rumsfeld does not come across ... well. But I don't think it's quite the scathing indictment other people are treating it as, either.

In fact, he comes across as a human being dealing with enormous power and responsibility within a complex system and letting his flaws consume him. Which was always what amused me during the whole "These people know what they're doing" days -- the entire country's based around the idea that you don't trust the bastards in charge. Ever. Even when we're wrong, the onus is on them to prove they're right.

Why? Because they have the power to break the world.

End of day, the one you have to admire is Jessica Lynch. One one hand, she debunked the myth of her own heroism. On the other, she took the $1,00,000 check for the book. I kind of like that level of spunky pragmatism.

On the other other hand, where the fuck is Lori Piestewa's statue?

I Am Not an Expert

The section from Gladwell's Outliers -- positing that one requires 10,000 hours of practice before one can be considered an "expert" -- came up in the writers' room recently. Almost habitually, I did the Fermi Problem in my head as I was leaving the parking lot Friday.

On a good day, I get a solid four hours of productive screenwriting done. That's actual head-down typing, new words produced, problems solved with pens and flowcharts on card-stock. For every weekend I've plowed straight through I've utterly goofed off, so lets say 5 days therefore 20 hours a week, so 5 weeks gives me 100 hours let's multiply by 10 to get 50 weeks a year (vacation for 2 weeks) producing 1000 hours per year ... wrote my spec feature in '99 -- I'll just cross the threshold this year. For television writing you could argue 12 years (12,000 hours) but I had a whackload of years off in the middle there where I just wrote pilots and never staffed. You could argue I've got no more than half that time elbow-deep in the bloody guts of broadcast television writing and producing.

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure what that means, other than a.) put your head down and take every job you can, and assume b.) you'll suck for quite a bit of it and c.) ultimately it won't matter as long as you do a.) and build your toolbox.

One might also assume that my actual expertise -- gleaned from doing stand-up since I was 22 -- is in convincing strangers that I am amusing and competent, and assume that expertise over-rode my lack of competency in sheer craft.

Regardless, this only supports the idea that any advice I offer about writing on this site should be taken with a rather large grain of salt.

Submissions, please, for your Odd Area of Expertise, in the Comments.

(Oh, and the first person with any variant of "well, considering the quality of your work I'm not surprised" Comment will be banned simply for screaming unoriginality. I mean, really. Stretch a little.)

Fantasy Casting: Next Gen

John: Hey, Chris, I was just asking Frakes what he thought of Trek.

Frakes: I loved it.  Had a great time.

Chris:  Of course, all you have to worry about now is Zach Efron playing you in the Next Generation prequel.

John: ...

Chris: Go ahead.  Blog it.

I'm rewriting all morning.  Fantasy-cast away in the comments, with DS9 also allowed.

Process Part 1

by M A N

Some of the best writing advice I've ever received came from Mark Waid: "Embrace your process." Basically, find the way that you get work done, no matter how counter intuitive that process may seem, and accept it. The crux here, however, is that you have to take the time to figure out what that process is.

A couple weeks ago I was having a conversation with a fellow writer while we were waiting to take the stage at the LA Festival of Books. Our conversation meandered through a variety of writing-related subjects, eventually landing on process. To that point, it was something that I had never put too much thought into and, to be honest, wasn't sure I even HAD a process. But as I started to talk about it, the more Mark's advice echoed in my brain and it solidified in my mind. Finally, I was able to recognize what my process is. This may all sound painfully prosaic, but it's something I feel most aspiring writers never think about but something that they all should.

Now, everyone's process is going to be different. What works for me most likely won't work for you. But that's the point. It's all about finding what DOES work for you and then exploiting that process to get. Shit. Done.

I'm at my most productive in the mornings. My brain is on, I'm focused, and I'm motivated from the time I crawl out of bed to lunch time. But at about 12:30, 1:00, I become a useless husk. I am completely unable to form coherent thoughts, let alone dredge up the mental acuity needed to tell a story. So I've learned to get my work done early. Occasionally, the work I do in the morning will carry me into the afternoon. On those days, I hunker down and write as much as I can, forgoing food or bathroom breaks until my body absolutely needs to be dragged away from the keyboard because I know that the second I step away from my computer, I'm done. Those days don't come around very often, but when they do, I try to take advantage of them.

So finding the best time of day to write is a critical step to understanding your process. For me, I now know that if I'm not writing by 11:00, chances are I won't get anything done that day. And fruitless days are the death knell of a freelancer.

STAR TREK and Breaking the Rules - SPOILERS

Loved it. Almost every choice was the best possible choice except the odd waterslide incident. And now, below a very large SPOILER GAP, a discussion of how what will be the most successful movie of the summer kicks conventional screenwriting "rules" in the junk.

SPOILERS.





NOT KIDDING.







BUGGER OFF.







FINE THEN.





SPOILERS.





Captain James T. Kirk, the protagonist of the movie, does not have the development executive's beloved "character arc." He has no arc at all.

He starts as an arrogant sonovabitch, and becomes a slightly more motivated arrogant sonovabitch. He does not learn to sacrifice, he does not learn to work well with others -- he takes over the goddam ship. He's right all the time, he never doubts he's right, and the only obstacle he occasionally faces is when other people aren't sharp enough to see how frikkin' awesome -- and right -- he is as quickly as they should.

He never has an end-of-Act-Two "low point." Being stranded on the ice planet? Please. He spends those few minutes dictating a memo about bringing Spock up on charges when -- not if, when -- he rejoins the fleet. Oh yes, and then not one but two deus ex machina's get him back to the ship in time.

Does he learn Spock's precious lesson about fear? No. Does he learn what it was like for his father to willingly stare death in the face and sacrifice himself? FUCK no, that's Spock in the starship in the end, making the kamikaze run.

These are not flaws, by the way. These are the moves of a supremely confident director/storyteller. And it adds weight to an argument I've been making for some time: heroic franchise characters often have revelatory arcs rather thn transformative arcs.

A transformative arc is the classic feel good "a bad person becomes a good person." This is the Disney arc, the classic arc, although frankly many people confuse a character's circumstances changing with a transformative arc. Star Wars is the perfect example. "Luke Skywalker is a farm boy who becomes a hero." Well, sure. But he wasn't a cowardly farm boy. He wasn't an insecure farm boy. As soon as holo-Lea shows up, he is on-mission. He didn't leave his loving family behind, he was burnt out of his shitty hut he hated anyway.

He wasn't a farm boy who never believed in the Force, once he's introduced to the idea. Hell, turning off his targetting computer during the trench run is the least surprising thing he could do. Now if HAN SOLO suddenly showed up believing in the Force, well, that's a change. As a matter of fact, Han's the one with the transformative arc in the movie... Just like Spock's the one with the character story (kinda) in Trek.

A revelatory arc # is one in which the story of the movie is revealing how the hero (and the virtues he represents, which you the writer wish to highlight) is exactly the right person to solve the movie's problem. It's more an echo of the old school morality play. "Behold how misfortune comes unto the world. Now see what kind of man may set it right!" The protagonist of this sort of movie triumphs by holding on to whatever virtues he has, and often by becoming even more confident in them.

Indiana Jones has no transformative arc (and yes, Don, I know what you say, and I call shenanigans). Batman has no arc (Ollie Queen does). Superman is arc-less. WALL-E has no arc. James Bond has that fake "no, I really love her this time" arc in some of the movies, but c'mon. None of the characters in Pirates of the Caribbean have arcs. They become something else, but rarely choose to become something else in direct opposition of their previous character.*

Oh, and Star Trek kicks "Why Now?" in the crotch also. I swear, if I never hear "Why now?" again in a meeting, I'll be the happiest man alive. Why does the story start now? Because that's when the story needs to start in order to tell the best possible version.

Discuss my hack-dom, supporting and opposing examples in the Comments.










# (TM JOHN ROGERS YOU MUST ATTRIBUTE IN YOUR SUPER-FANCY SCREENWRITING SEMINAR AND SEND ME SOME OF THE MONIES YOU ARE TAKING FROM GULLIBLE WAITERS etc.)

* I had the odd experience of seeing Pirates 2 & 3 in near empty theaters back to back, and I'll argue that if you strip away what you expected those movies to be, the entire trilogy works as a pretty spiffy magical fantasy novel.

LEVERAGE 2: 5 Stages of Grief of a TV Guest Star

Yay, finally a video where someone comes across as creepier than I do!



For what it's worth, Ryan and Rachel are now my favorite "characters" in my workplace. How meta is that?

C'mon California!

This is just embarrassing.

Governor Signs LD 1020, An Act to End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom

May 6, 2009

AUGUSTA – Governor John E. Baldacci today signed into law LD 1020, An Act to End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom.

“I have followed closely the debate on this issue. I have listened to both sides, as they have presented their arguments during the public hearing and on the floor of the Maine Senate and the House of Representatives. I have read many of the notes and letters sent to my office, and I have weighed my decision carefully,” Governor Baldacci said. “I did not come to this decision lightly or in haste.”

“I appreciate the tone brought to this debate by both sides of the issue,” Governor Baldacci said. “This is an emotional issue that touches deeply many of our most important ideals and traditions. There are good, earnest and honest people on both sides of the question.”

“In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions,” Governor Baldacci said. “I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage.”

I mean, Iowa was one thing. But Maine? We're California people. We're Hollyweird, Soddom and frikkin Gomorrah San Francisco boogeymen. And we can't even do this?

Let's face it, Cali. Time to turn in the indie cred, release the greatest hits album and move the main show to a stage in Branson.

4GM: The Plausible Premise and the iTunes Monopoly

A while ago Dean sent me this Variety article. The upshot -- the networks are moving to video, but the ad revenues aren't there. Here, for me, are the nut graphs:

So why are the networks investing in sites like Hulu and allowing widespread online distribution of their costly exclusive programs? Because they saw what happened to record labels, which avoided the Internet for years when they couldn't figure out how to protect their old business model. In the process, they lost millions of consumers to piracy and other digital-friendly alternatives. Thanks to faster connection speeds and cheaper storage, accessing video is about as easy now as music was a nearly decade ago when Napster began making headlines.

(SNIP)

Which leaves Hollywood in a Catch-22: If it doesn't follow increasingly wired consumers online, it could lose future generations to piracy, amateur YouTube clips and videogames. But if too many people switch to services like Hulu too fast, the business model of television could collapse.

First off, the phrase "piracy, amateur YouTube clips and videogames" is in the wrong order. Videogames come first in that list of threats.

Where was I -- oh, well, yes. The business model of television will collapse. I'm not bloody HAPPY about it. The business model of television pays me quite nicely, thank you very much. However ...

... right, detour, stay with me. Our favorite new-warfare guy Jon Robb writes about the "plausible premise" in new open-source insurgencies. I'm not going to get into his new warfare theory, but basically what you really need is a plausible premise. i.e. "You can kill US soldiers with IEDs." and then the new Interconnected Marketplace Of Shitty Evil Ideas will solve the problem for anyone looking to kill US soldiers with IEDs.

Or, more succinctly, in order to get the marketplace off its ass to solve the impossible, you have to just pull off the highly improbable and make sure everybody knows about it. Show it can be done, show how you did it, and watch the "marketplace" attack because you've made the "premise" "plausible".

Now what's kind of interesting here is that everybody in TV looks at the music industry collapse as the Bad Story and iTunes as the plausible premise for digital entertainment distribution. iTunes makes money. QED, there is money to be made in digital distribution.

But drawing this conclusion ignores one of the fundamental facts about iTunes -- it is a de facto monopoly. As Clay Shirky writes quite shinily here, a series of lawsuits and circumstances cut off pretty much all other music distribution channels online. Tying the system in to great hardware was the clincher, of course, accelerating the process. But end of day, if you're buying a song quickly, easily and legally in the US, you're buying it from iTunes.

The TV humans are missing the point of this plausible premise -- you can make money off digital distribution as long as you have a monopoly. It's a little shocking that they're missing this, as the massive financial success of the entire television industry up until recently was based on them having a monopoly. A taxpayer-funded monopoly, no less.

Now, let's see how many ways I can watch HEROES right now, off the top of my head:

1.) On NBC when broadcast - ad supported

2.) On NBC.com - ad supported

3.) On HULU - ad supported.

4.) XBOX LIVE - direct purchase

5.) iTunes - direct purchase

6.) Amazon Video on Demand - direct purchase

7.) Netflix - streaming, subscription ... hell, I have no idea what this revenue model is. Oh, and that Netflix is now available on cable boxes and game consoles.

(You'll note that these revenue streams all pay different factions in different percentages.)

This, my friends, is not a monopoly. If you want to continue to do an ad-supported model ("the business model of television"), then every streaming version -- and broadcast is theoretically a really dumb streaming version that's riding on the remnants of the old monopoly -- takes viewers away from every other streaming version. In an extra special bit of stupid, NBC Universal is actually competing with itself by putting streaming episodes on both NBC.com and Hulu. Now I'm sure there are cross-platform advertising bundles in play, but it's still a dilution of the brand.

Ironically, CBS's utter refusal to stream their shows, generally seen in the industry as a failing, is the smart play. You want a CBS show, you either watch/tivo it -- where the ad pricing from the old monopoly still creates at least a framework for monetization -- or you buy it once the advertising bloom is off the rose, and the money filters back into the Viacomm coffers. Or you pirate it. And we have yet to see a single reliable statistic on revenue loss due to piracy.

So what's going to happen?

No idea*. But in the short run the smartest thing for all the studios who already have programming on Hulu is to shut down all video streaming on their network home pages. Hulu got there first and fastest. If you're not on Hulu, get on it, or shut down streaming on your own site to take advantage of what's left of the old model. If you must have broadcast and streaming exist simultaneously, then force the streaming monopoly.

Apple's advantage in iTunes was that they weren't a music company. They could fuck another industry with a clear conscience in order to establish their monopoly. (This, btw, is why Apple TV sucks. They tried to play too nice with the studios) What's tricky is that there's going to be a lot of factional infighting in these companies as we move to the new model, because:

Hulu is owned by the studios who own the networks that Hulu is going to kill.

Ironically, whoever comes up with the Magic Box that moves streaming internet to the TV in a grandma-friendly way will win. This means that if the studios were smart, they'd be hammering at that tech, pouring money into it like mad so they own it, rather than fighting it. Of course, they're content companies, not tech companies, so that's probably not a priority.

And in the end, Netflix will win. But that's another post.

* Well, actually, I think download's going to die or be subsumed into the equivalent of a cable premium fee for "access" to the material. But that's more a gut instinct than an arguable position.

Guitar Friday: The Fender Blues Jr.

by M A N


Hands down, this is my favorite amp. Which, of course, begs the question: why is a guy like me who cut his teeth with 80s shred in love with a little 15 watt peanut butter sandwich of an amp? Because. It. Sounds. Amazing.

The Blues Jr. has a single 12" speaker, 3 12AX7 tubes in the pre-amp, 2 EL84 tubes in the output section and is rated at 15 watts. 15 watts? That's it? Yep. Don't let the little size fool you. Those 15 watts pack a punch. I've annoyed more than a few neighbors when I used to have one. Naturally, this isn't going to be the amp you'd use on a large stage without any PA system, but it's perfect for studios and smaller stages.

As for the tone, you won't find anything that sounds better in its price range. It has that rich, warm tube sound that most players crave. It's great for getting SRV's tone without dropping 3 grand on a vintage Bassman amp or a tweaked out Twin. And this is where the 15 watts comes in handy. Unlike 100 watt Marshalls or Mesa Boogies , you can push the tubes into their "sweet spot" without having to turn it up so loud that it disrupts the migratory patterns of the local bird population. The Blues Jr. has a both a Volume and a Master control. The Volume controls the pre-amp and the saturation of the 3 12AX& tubes, allowing you to dial in everything from a smooth, crisp, clean sound to a fat and dirty cruch. The Master controls the overall volume of the amp, letting you crank the saturation while still keeping the neighbors happy.

Another great thing about this amp is that it is easily modified. There are several enclaves of people devoted to the tweaking and modding of these little titans, from switching out the speaker for a 12" Celestian Greenback to tweaking the bias and hotrodding the pre-amp section, turning the amp into a full-on Boogie clone.

Although the amp is versatile, it's more geared toward blues, classic rock, and country players. You can throw a Metal Zone in front of it and get all the thrash goodness you want, but the amp really shines when it's left to its own devices (though I like to throw a dyncomp and a blues driver in front). As for price, they're more expensive now than they were ten years ago, but still worth every penny. If you're looking for a stage amp that doubles as a monitor, you'll want something bigger. But if you're looking for an amp that just drips buttery tone, the Blues Jr. is for you.