LEVERAGE Season 1 Recap

courtesy TNT promo humans:

Farrah Fawcett

You know, props -- having a mainstream TV star make The Burning Bed advanced the discussion of domestic violence in America considerably.

That week was a fast, shitty triple.

Threat Level: Infinite Orange

Idle thought, since I flew today -- has the airline Threat Level ever NOT been orange since the inception of the color terror alert scale? Just wondering.

The Closer

I'm catching up on Tivo now that I'm back from Portland. You know, I give our fellow TNT network brethren at The Closer some friendly teasing about the glories of writing a show shot on one set, but Jesus Murphy the episode "Red Tape" is one of the most engaging pieces of detective television I've seen in a really, really long time. I mean, damn. Damn.

I Have an Odd Job on an Odd Show

That was the star of the last shot at 5am on Saturday morning. Tore the throat of an extra, but hey, that's what insurance is for.

LEVERAGE set photos

The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny (Wheaton vs. Kane!):



Looking a little Anime there, kids:



You know what they should be starring in? The live action version of:



You know, to tell the truth, they're kind of already starring in it ...

Tank Man vs. Tank Commander

Well, that's a hell of a piece of writing.

The thing is, Tank Commander is far more dangerous than Tank Man. Tank Man can simply be shot; most seem to believe that Tank Man was later executed, far out of sight of the international media. The regime survives if Tank Man dies, even if the death of Tank Man isn't the optimal outcome. The regime dies, however, if Tank Commander refuses to run over Tank Man. Eisenstein used the Odessa Steps to demonstrate the corruption of the Czarist regime, but the regime didn't die until the soldiers refused to shoot the demonstrators. The successor regime didn't die until Boris Yeltsin climbed on a tank in August 1991. While there's some mystery as to the fate of Tank Man, I don't doubt that the CCP found Tank Commander and put a bullet in the back of his head at the first opportunity.

From the always excellent Lawyers, Guns and Money

Why is Chris Wearing a Hat in #207

Because somebody who insists on doing his own goddam stunts cut his forehead to the goddam BONE in a fight scene, to the tune of a severed muscle, bone bruise and 17 stitches. Back at work the next day, but damn, we've got to start putting padding around the set.

To be honest, it doesn't look all that bad. Because, of course, he decided to take the damn stitches out early. Himself.

Fucking Oklahoma.

Zeh nech-shav

In Portland for Ep #207. Rolled out of bed at 5:30 am, in at 7, redirected a few small notes to Berg while I try to cook up some arc-related elements for 209 and on. Like last year, Chris and I will be writing the season finale, and I'd like it to feel like we got there on purpose. Mostly.

Boylan's on prep for #208, 029 & 210 are both being torn up in the writers' room, director Marc Roskin's looking at his cut for #205 in the trailer ... its like a real damn TV show.

I'll try to post some pictures up later, but in the meantime, let's see how long it takes you to figure out that title. Who says it and in what context -- we'll leave blank for now. Also, check the twitter feed @jonrog1 for updates and pics.

This Will Haunt Me Forever

What parts? WHAT PARTS?!

Wow, LOOKOUTS ...

... arrives, and instantly a franchise is born. I'm seriously crazy about this Penny Arcade one-shot.

"Hold! For these are baby writers who did not heed their showrunner!"

Emissaries of the Dead

Just finished both Adam Troy-Castro's Andrea Cort novels. Classic detective procedurals in a far flung future. Pervasive AI's, cranky aliens, wetware psychics and whodunnits. A bit Asimovian, to tell you the truth. Highly recommended.

Suuuure, It's Just An Umbrella ...

I have decided my hiatus project will be to learn Bartitsu, the stick-fighting style mastered by Sherlock Holmes. I shall not be dissuaded. I just have to find an instructor in L.A.

Sunday chat, in the Comments: You have a year, unlimited funds, and the choice of one skill to learn in that time. What is it?

Ephemera 2009 (9) - Artistic Process

-- Cully Hamner, the artist who created the new Blue Beetle look (hey, those Brave and the Bold checks coming in, Cully? Yeah, me neither) is now blogging. Go look!

-- Bill Cunningham, who's been relentlessly preaching "Get of your ass and make your own media", just issued the first chapter of his old school radio play, "The Murder Legion Strikes at Midnight" online. Lots of stuff at his site, including articles about --

-- John August's adventures in self-publishing his short story, "The Variant." John's being ridiculously thorough -- track back through his blog to see he's pared sales, comparison of payout to the published short-story market, discusses the Kindle/Amazon house percentage, and what it all means. (The Kindle rake is shameful, by the way, but not unexpected. Within spitting distance of the iTunes rake) His blog in general is one of my favorite screenwriter's blogs. Ahhh, feature writing. I remember when I had that kind of spare time ...

-- On Twitter, @cwgabriel (Penny Arcade) and @pvponline (PvP) often do live, streaming shows of them drawing their webcomics. Follow, watch for the alerts, and jump in.

-- Mark Waid is off doing conventions, which is why he's been absent here, but a reminder that he's now got his own blog-space at Boom!, not just writing about writing but doing interveiws. (They should put a front page link up, it's a little tricky to find).

-- Tobias Buckell had his readers design his business cards. Hmm, I have a few things arund here that need sprucing up ...

-- "Losing your show is more like a surprise divorce where you get served papers in the morning and your (ex)wife is fucking Human Target by three in the afternoon using the same time slot your child was conceived in and also where she did that one thing that one time on your birthday." Hey, guess, what -- Josh Friedman's blogging again.

-- Holy crap, The entire run of Jackie Chan Adventures is available on Amazon's "video on demand"! But still no DVD boxed set? Weird. Super weird.

Hail MightyGodKing

And sometimes, insider comedy about comic books is just really, really funny.

Una Serie De Catastroficas Desdichas

I've stayed out of the Sotomayor thing because, well, I'm a television writer. But this latest bullshit from Pat Buchanan annoys the hell out of me (courtesy Washington Monthly):

The New York Times had a report over the weekend on Sonia Sotomayor's background, which noted that the judge, as a young woman at Princeton, "spent summers reading children's classics she had missed in a Spanish-speaking home and 're-teaching' herself to write 'proper English' by reading elementary grammar books."

Pat Buchanan, at his most Pat Buchanan-esque, is not only using this anecdote to mock the judge, but he continues to push a baseless, insulting far-right line about Sotomayor's intelligence.

"Well, I, again in that Saturday piece, she went to Princeton. She graduated first in her class it said. But she herself said she read, basically classic children's books to read and learn the language and she read basic English grammars and she got help from tutors. I think that, I mean if you're, frankly, if you're in college and you're working on Pinocchio or on the troll under the bridge, I don't think that's college work."

For what it's worth, my piss-poor Spanish improved immensely once I started reading children's books in that language. The technique was suggested to me by a web acquaintance who used to be an actual spy. So, you know, good enough for people who have to learn how to speak a language well enough not to get caught and tortured, not good enough for Nixon's speechwriter.

Also note the insulting use of "...she went to Princeton. She graduated first in her class it said."(emphasis mine) This is not he said/ she said. She graduate summa cum laude from fucking Princeton. They write this shit down. They keep records. This is, as we used to say in the science business, an objective goddam truth. And Ivy League schools don't give out affirmative-action summa cum laude's. It is worth noting that they did, for decades, hand out out gentleman's C's.

When simply Googling "Sotomayor/first in her class", you get an awful lot of right wing websites, and the comments in there are revealing. They remind me of when I wrote about Imus insulting the Rutgers women's basketball team with the phrase "nappy-headed hos." Not the article, but about a particularly informative and sincere exchange that started in the comments and then, if memory serves, ended with a perfectly polite set of e-mails.

One reader didn't agree with my characterization of the basketball scholarship players as in a "power negative" position. As he put it "They're going to to a top-level university I'd never get a chance to go to."

And what I didn't want to say at the time was: well, yeah, but it's not like they took your spot. These young women got scholarships based on sporting ability -- offered to thousands of students every year based on skill, thousands of hours of practice and hard work, and sheer luck -- and then had to maintain their grades once they were at that school. If you think that any coach of the women's basketball team at any major university has the clout to grade pad, you're adorable.

This is the same sort of madness that makes the reader of one right-wing blog contribute:

Derb — I’ve been hoping that someone might be bold enough to rain on the Sotomayor “compelling life story” parade.

The woman grew up in the capital of the world, went to two Ivy League schools, and was blessed by Providence with the precisely correct right race-gender two-fer for the moment.

This is a story of privilege, dammit, not adversity.

I'm sure when Sonia Sotomayor was six years old, being raised by a single Puerto Rican mother in the Bronx in the 70's, she knew she could kick back and riiiiiide it out, because she was on fucking Easy Street, baby. As we all remember so well, the Bronx in the 70's was a peaceful racial utopia.

People this stupid should have their license to chew gum revoked.

It's no great insight to say the default setting of American culture has become a lurking fear that "somebody else got something you wanted" mixed with boiling resentment at the mere suggestion that anyone at any time may have it harder than you do, but it's worth stating, plainly:

If you didn't get into Harvard, and all the black and Hispanic Americans suddenly disappeared, odds are you would still not be getting into Harvard.

(If you do get into Harvard, however, feel free to apply for one of many quirky scholarships, including one just for people named Downer. Huh.)

Not to belabor the point (too late), but two things in this world are generally, 99.9999% true:

1.) If you are unhappy with your life, it's not because a brown person made it that way.

2.) If you end any argument or statement with " ... is that racist of me to say?" -- the answer is always "yes."

Glad to help.

(EDIT: Hey, what about when a black person commits a crime against a white person? Sure, you go rock that argument out. I'll wait.)

TONIGHT! GUILLERMO DEL TORO AT MELTDOWN

Where are all the cool kids going tonight? On a Monday night? Well, ridiculously talented director/creator/"guy you wish you were" Guillermo del Toro is stepping off an international flight, straight into a town car of dubious legality and being shuttled directly to Meltdown Comics for a MIDNIGHT SIGNING of his new novel The Strain.

That's June 1, 11:59, at Meltdown on Sunset. Get your copy of the first in a trilogy of classic horror, updated for the 21st Century. It's like Pan's Labrinth, but bloodier and longer, and if you take it to bed your spouse won't stare at you.

Purchase it here if you must. But far cooler to grab it at midnight and pepper the creator with drunken questions!