russburlingame

[russburlingame]

My Hottest MCU Take

Here's a rant I just went on, over on my Discord. Feel free to jump in if you want!

My hottest MCU take is that the good ones aren't as good as you remember, and the bad ones aren't as bad as you think. People talk about the MCU as though everything prior to Endgame was a 10/10 movie and everything since has been a 3 or 4.

Most Marvel movies are solid, formulaic, action movies. They have great actors turning in likable performances, they have top-notch visual effects and comforting stories. They aren't Shakespeare, but the floor for quality is pretty high. They're incredibly competent movies that feature popular actors playing beloved characters. On the other hand, they're still a corporate product, and people have to strain pretty hard against the system to make great art.

My opinion is, all those threes and fours are really closer to fives and sixes once you get a little distance and context. And most of those nines and tens are more like sevens and eights. There are periodic exceptions (more commonly with nines than with fours) but I really do think almost every MCU movies reverts to a mean six to twelve months after it's released. Go rewatch Captain Marvel and Age of Ultron, and tell me they aren't of VERY comparable quality.

I also think the reports of the MCU's death are greatly exaggerated -- largely by people who have been cheerleading for it for a long time. I think the last few Marvel movies have kind of proven James Gunn's point that there isn't superhero fatigue in the sense we typically think about it; there is mediocre superhero movie fatigue, and if you make an entertaining, appealing movie, you can overcome it.

Both Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 and Deadpool & Wolverine outpaced not only the prior installments of their own specific franchises and also the movies that immediately preceded them in the MCU. That's both in box office dollars and the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes (critics score, the second installments outpaced the third, but I think that's a whole other conversation, honestly).

[russburlingame]

Review: Booster Gold: The Complete 2007 Series vol. 1

DC has released a new collection of one of my all-time favorite comics: the 2007-2011 Booster Gold vol. 2. It's a pretty cool book that promises something exciting coming next, but it's still a little wonky.

The new book -- you can get it here, and I should get a tiny commission -- collects the first sixteen issues of Booster Gold vol. 2, the bulk of which were written by Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz, with art by Dan Jurgens, Norm Rapmund, and Hi-Fi on colors. One additional story was written by Chuck Dixon with art by Jurgens, Rapmund, and Hi-Fi, and another was written by Rick Remender and featured art by Pat Oliffe, Jerry Ordway, and Hi-Fi.

Most (not all) of these issues had a "commentary track"-style interview that I did with Katz and Jurgens at Comic Related, a now-defunct site where I worked before ComicBook.com. All of those commentaries (plus others) are collected in my book The Gold Exchange, which you can get here.

With Booster Gold: The Complete 2007 Series Book One now in stores, I'm super tempted to make tiny little ebooks or paperbacks (or both) that are JUST supplements to these volumes and break up The Gold Exchange into particular runs of issues.

(That's a little inside baseball and not really pertinent to a "review," but it just felt like something that I could and might do, and so I figured I would mention it. Believe it nor not, since I never crowdfunded it and only sold it once it was completely done, The Gold Exchange is my top seller on Amazon the last time I looked at my books.)

The review part of the review:

Booster Gold: The Complete 2007 Series Book One is a fine addition to your library, particularly if you are precious about your now-out-of-print hardcovers. The interiors are largely similar to the contents of the original printings of Booster Gold 2007, with a notable exception that has both good and bad aspects to it:

In between single issues of the comic, both collected editions would share the cover for the original book. The first two issues had variant covers, and so one side of the page would feature the standard cover, with the variant on the back. On every other issue, where there were no variant covers, the back of the page varied between the first and second collected editions.

In Booster Gold: 52 Pick-Up (the first original collection), dynamic images from within the issue were framed inside playing cards. That works for a number of reasons: Booster's "original sin" was gambling, while the first issue began with him taking down the Royal Flush Gang. Also, Booster Gold #3 (so -- the first issue without a variant cover) features a cover where Booster is in the Old West, playing poker with Jonah Hex.

In Booster Gold: Blue & Gold, the second original collection, they got rid of the "card pages" and instead just used the same image each time: a piece of the cover from Booster Gold #0, framed in a "circuitry" frame that was styled to the cover logo.

In The Complete 2007 Series Book One, this is improved upon: they retain the cards as a framing device, choosing a dynamic image of one of the lead characters to frame in each one. My only quibble is that a number of them are shots that appear fuzzy, small, and in low resolution because, while the pose might be dynamic, it was taken from a small panel on the page and then blown up to suit the card frames.

This seems like sheer laziness on DC's part: surely there are high-resolution digital files somewhere. After all, they have to provide them to Amazon for the books to be available on ComiXology, right?

Looking a second time, they are mostly not as bad as I remembered, but there absolutely are at least a couple that should not have passed quality control, and it's a baffling decision because the choice was made to unify the collection and improve the overall reading experience. With that context, it's even weirder that some of the pages look amateur.

The collection features the cover to Booster Gold #1 as its front cover and the cover to Booster Gold #0 as its back cover. That's playing it pretty safe, since those are two of the most commonly-reused images from the whole run...but while it was used heavily throughout the Blue and Gold collection, the #0 cover did not appear on the back cover of the original collection (or any other that I can recall). This, along with the use of the cards in place of the "circuitry pages," could suggest DC is putting a little more thought into these collections than is immediately evident.

The biggest benefit to having The Complete 2007 Series Book One, though, is the reprints of Booster Gold #13 and 14. Those are the issues by Remender, Oliffe, and Ordway, and unless I'm missing something, this is the first time those have been reprinted at all. My recollection is that Remender had been led to believe he might be taking over the title, so he planted seeds to pay off later. that never happened, because Dan Jurgens was given both the writing and art jobs starting with Booster Gold #15, and so it's likely that they originally felt Remender's issues would have complicated the otherwise-straightforward narrative that they created between the Dixon/Jurgens and Jurgens solo stories. It is, however, nice to have them finally collected.

Those issues alone make it worth buying, especially if you weren't reading the series at the time and have only read (or re-read) it in collections. It isn't the best Booster Gold story ever told, but it's an interesting glimpse into what it was like having a very different voice on the book. One of its hallmarks during most of its run would be its consistency of tone and sense of direction, so any issue that breaks away from that is, if nothing else, a valuable artifact.

It's a little funky that the front cover lacks credit for Dixon, Remender, Oliffe, or Ordway. I suppose at some point you have to make a cutoff, though, and they only worked on a few issues. The back cover does list the primary creatives with "...and many more" attached, though.

The collection itself feels strange. It jumps right into the issues, and feels like it would benefit from an introduction of some kind. That MIGHT be a kind of optical illusion -- the thickness of this much-larger collection makes it feel like it should have some kind of introduction or table of contents or whatever. But even then, DC seemed to intuitively know this in the past. The original trades didn't have a proper foreword either, but they did have a recap page, as well as Booster Gold's origin page from 52, which immediately preceded the volume.

The inclusion of the Remender issues, paired with the apparent desire to keep the page count and cover price down as low as they could, also means that any backmatter originally published in the collections -- which included alternate covers and early sketches of Booster from Jurgens's notebook (remember -- Jurgens created the character!) -- are all but missing here. That's particularly a loss because there were some really cool images in a "rejected cover gallery" at the end of Blue and Gold.

Still, as noted above, I wouldn't go as far as to say it isn't a worthwhile collection. Bringing the Remender story in is good, as is bringing some of these stories back into print for the first time in years. Before the announcement of the upcoming Booster Gold [HBO] Max series, none of the 2007 collections were in print. Even after the announcement, it was just 52 Pick-Up that was rushed back into stores.

The biggest thing here is that Booster Gold ran for 49 total issues before it was wiped out by the annihilation wave that was The New 52 reboot in 2011. Jurgens wrote, drew, or both most issues of the series -- although the Justice League International writing team of J.M. DeMatteis and Keith Giffen teamed with a number of fan-favorite artists to make about a year's worth of the book while Jurgens was off working on Time Masters: Vanishing Point, a story that tied into the events of The Return of Bruce Wayne and set up Flashpoint.

(Fun fact: That story is also widely credited with being a big influence on the development of DC's Legends of Tomorrow, the TV show covered in my next book!)

Booster Gold: The Complete 2007 Series Book One carries a $29.99 price sticker, which is pretty reasonable considering it weighs in at over 300 pages of comics, some of which are ordinarily pretty difficult to find. The value proposition is definitely there, and given that this is one of DC's most consistently entertaining comics of the last 20 years, it's definitely worth picking up if you have a friend who needs a Booster Gold primer ahead of that casting announcement we've all been waiting for. You can get it at a variety of online retailers, and it's likely in stock at your local Barnes & Noble as long as they have a decent comics section.

[russburlingame]

I have a lot to say about Jeannie Epper. Most of all, I loved her. I always felt that we understood and appreciated one another.

After all, it was the 70s. We were united in the way that women had to be in order to thrive in a man’s world, through mutual respect, intellect and collaboration.

Jeannie was a vanguard who paved the way for all other stuntwomen who came after. Just as Diana was Wonder Woman, Jeannie Epper was also a Wonder Woman.

She is so beautiful to me. Jeannie, I will miss you.

[russburlingame]

Springsteen in Syracuse (for the first time in decades)

I got to see Bruce Springsteen tonight. Well, technically last night, because Bruce is Bruce, so the concert ran for about three hours and ended at almost 11 p.m.

I’m a huge fan of Bruce Springsteen, so my review of the music itself wouldn’t be of much value to most of you. I love his work, and I had a great time at his show. This is — I think? — my sixth Bruce show, which is not much compared to a lot of the hardcore fans who follow him around the world…but for somebody like me, who doesn’t have a ton of disposable income and only gets to see a concert once a year or so, it’s not insignificant.

Tonight’s show was my wife’s first time seeing Bruce, and she seemed to have a great time. I was really glad about that. I liked that she wanted to come with me, but she isn’t as big a fan as me, and so I knew a 3-hour show was a lot.

The show was great. Not just because I’m a Springsteen fan, but because the audience was great, which is something that existed in tandem with high energy from the band. And the setlist was exactly what it should have been — although I’m sure some hardcore fans would disagree.

Tonight’s setlist reminded me a lot of the “Greatest Hits Tour” that Springsteen did around the time Tracks and Bruce Springsteen’s Greatest Hits came out. I was in college back then, and it was a huge deal that he was touring actively with the E Street Band again for the first time since Born in the USA.

I know some of the people who have the means and determination to follow the band around, don’t like hits-heavy setlists, and would prefer to see more oddities and rarities. But since Bruce and the band hadn’t been in Syracuse since the 1980s, I’d argue it’s exactly the right setlist for Syracuse. And, yes, the reactions of the audience bore that out.

I love that I got to see “Thunder Road” and “Growin’ Up,” two big hits I haven’t ever seen live before tonight. And I know a lot of hardcore fans would have been thrilled to see “Detroit Medley,” which isn’t necessarily my favorite and which I saw back in 2003 at Shea Stadium. But by and large, only a very small number of songs they played tonight — “Darlington County,” “Spirit in the Night,” and one or two of the newer songs — weren’t staples of the setlist and staples of the Springsteen catalogue. It was exactly the setlist you want to play for a venue where you haven’t appeared in 40 years.

Anyway. It was a ton of fun. I had fun. My wife had fun. The band was obviously having fun. If you have a chance to see Bruce and E Street live, I recommend it highly.

Here’s the setlist:

Lonesome Day

Night

No Surrender

Two Hearts

Darlington County

Growin' Up

Ghosts

The Promised Land

Spirit in the Night

Hungry Heart

Atlantic City

My City of Ruins

Nightshift

Last Man Standing

Backstreets

Because the Night

She's the One

Wrecking Ball

The Rising

Badlands

Thunder Road

Born to Run

Glory Days

Dancing in the Dark

Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

Twist and Shout

Detroit Medley

I'll See You in My Dreams

[russburlingame]

[russburlingame]

Reblog this picture of me holding a Family Size box of Honey Nut Cheerios? I’d really appreciate it.

[russburlingame]

Meet Your Heroes, Kids.

I have always thought “never meet your heroes” was a terrible piece of advice. In my life and career, I have been lucky enough to meet a number of people whose work I greatly admire. I have only had really bad experiences once or twice, versus dozens of great experiences on the other side (and even a few lifelong friendships). Yesterday, my daughter was lucky enough to have a similar experience.

I had a day off yesterday, so Cali and I decided to surprise Samantha with a day trip to New Jersey to meet StacyPlays, an author and entertainer who Sammy calls her “favorite YouTuber.” Of all the (many) people Sammy follows on YouTube, Stacy has always been one of my favorites, too. She’s smart, creative, and makes art that brings something positive into the world. None of those things are necessarily de rigueur on social platforms.

Stacy has a new book out (I actually talked to her about it for my day job, in an article that should be up tomorrow!), and she’s doing a signing tour. When we saw there was an appearance less than 4 hours from Syracuse, we decided to make it happen for Sammy.

Sammy struggled in the run-up to the trip. She was very excited to meet Stacy, but also very nervous about the prospect of meeting her hero. I shared a story with her about the first time something like that happened to me, and how I was nervous, too. Sammy also gets car sick easily, so she was on edge more or less the entire trip about that.

We left very early, hoping to spend a little time in Paramus, because we didn’t want to be at the end of the line for StacyPlays. That was lucky, because about halfway there, our car died. Totally unexpected, not something we were prepared for, and Sammy was despondent. She was scared, and cold, and convinced that we were going to miss meeting Stacy.

I’ll spare the details – there are many. But the short version is, everything that could go right, did go right. A tow truck literally happened to be driving behind us when we pulled over. We got the last rental car reservation in the county. After about 90 minutes, we were back on the road.

Getting to the point of all this – StacyPlays is an absolute treasure of a human being.

When the signing happened, we were the second people in line (I told you we left early!). Stacy quickly read Sammy’s nervousness, and was working VERY hard to bring Sammy out of her shell. She was kind, attentive, and repeatedly tried to engage Sammy even though Sam was obviously feeling very intimidated.

We took some photos, and the first one is really emblematic of the moment, with Stacy smiling up at Sammy from her seat. I’m not sharing it, because nobody was posed yet, and so it isn’t the most flattering photo of Stacy – but it’s my favorite, because not only is Sammy beaming, but Stacy is radiating the same level of enthusiasm. She looks like she genuinely cares about this kid she just met, and she’s really happy to be taking a photo. It’s an incredibly kind and empathetic moment that I clocked in real time and captured (kind of) on camera.

After feeling nauseous most of the day, and being really stressed and scared when the car died and we were trapped two hours from home, Sammy told me last night that she had a good day, and that she was really glad she got to meet Stacy. Cali and I were struck by how incredibly lucky we got in a number of ways, and how great everyone was. I’m praising Stacy here because she’s a public figure and was incredible, but B&N manager Laura was also a rock star. A very long, very stressful day was made worth it by simple acts of kindness, including by Stacy.

I’ve gone to dozens of comic conventions, signings, and other events like this over the years. Most professionals are friendly and happy to spend a few minutes with you. The people who want to genuinely and empathetically engage are a lot more rare, and I think it’s worth celebrating them – especially when their audience is made up primarily of kids.

So, in short, meet your heroes, kids. And buy Stacy’s book if it sounds like your kind of thing. She deserves the love.

[russburlingame]

Keith Giffen.

Keith Giffen, one of the most original and influential voices in modern superhero comics, has passed away.

The 70-year-old writer and artist, who co-created characters like Rocket Raccoon and Lobo, is probably best known for two wildly different things: his dire, epic Legion of Super-Heroes story The Great Darkness Saga, and his long-running Justice League stories with co-writer J.M. DeMatteis (and usually artist Kevin Maguire).

In Justice League, Justice League International, and their numerous spinoffs, Giffen and DeMatteis transformed the Justice League into a workplace comedy, blending high stakes with intimate character studies. Giffen may not have been directly involved with the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, but it was Justice League International that established a template for the kind of superhero book that would inspire those films.

Depicting the heroes of the Justice League as deeply flawed and deeply human, Giffen, DeMatteis, and their collaborators took characters with little-to-no established fan bases and transformed them into key parts of DC's universe and lore, complete with personalities so immediately identifiable that they inspired everything from Geoff Johns and Dan Jurgens's Booster Gold revival in the mid-2000s to Tom King's recent Human Target.

Giffen, a proud curmudgeon, seems to have known that his time was limited. In April, he recruited his son-in-law to launch a podcast titled I'm Not Dead Yet!, in which he recalled stories from his decades-long comics career. The announcement of his passing, posted to his personal Facebook page, was also certainly very much in Keith's voice:

I told them I was sick… Anything not to go to New York Comic Con Thanx Keith Giffen 1952-2023 Bwah ha ha ha ha

That "bwa-ha-ha," which became synonymous with Giffen and Dematteis's Justice League, is a heartbreakingly perfect final piece of writing to come from the pen of Keith Giffen, and it seems that he was prepared, and taking things as well as he possibly could. that's certainly some comfort, but since most fans and comics professionals had no idea he was close to the end, a lot of people -- myself included -- are in a little bit of shock tonight.

Sending love to all of Keith's friends, family, and collaborators. He couldn't pick me out of a lineup to save his life, but the handful of times we interacted I always enjoyed it. His work has enriched my life and made me love comics far more than I would have without it, and his loss will be felt, by a lot of people, for a long time.

I can't think of anything good to say. But I needed to say something. I imagine Keith would hate this, and say so.

Goodnight.

[russburlingame]

Peanut

Hawkman: Someone threw a peanut at me. Someone threw a seed that has a shell and grows under the ground. Whoever is throwing peanuts had better watch out!

[russburlingame]

C is for Comics and D is for Dinosaur!

Back again, back again.

Okay, so let me tell you a story about comic books.

No, this isn't another quasi-autobiographical rant, like I had about video stores (although I could do that, too!). This is a mini-rant about how the C week of the Alphabet Superset...well...got away from me.

Kind of.

A while back, while I was mowing the lawn, I had a story come to me fairly fully-formed. That's...amazing...for me. I haven't written fiction in many years, as I noted in the A is for Accident post.

Okay, so...comics. Why is C for comics? And why haven't I shown you any comics yet?

When that story came to me while I was mowing, I didn't seriously think I would do anything with it -- it's based on characters I don't own, and I'm certainly not planning on pitching it to the owners.

Still, I jotted most of the key points down. Far be it from me to completely dismiss an idea, even one that wasn't practical to consider.

In the months since then, new ideas have kept popping into my head with regard to the fiction story, and I quickly realized that it had to be a graphic novel. I have an artist in mind, who agreed to do it for a very modest fee, and while I haven't paid him or talked about the book to my bosses at Paramount yet, I'm not sharing any of my character sketches and wacky comic ideas here because...well...I feel like I'm going to make the comic.

Not with the corporate-owned characters, no. Rather, I'm thinking of using a blend of original characters and public domain superheroes from the Golden Age (since it's THAT kind of story anyway, honestly). Camp, comedy, heroics, heart...that's what I'm going to go for. I can't even kind of start writing it anytime soon, but I'll give you the very bare-bones concept here:

A group of time-travelers find themselves imprisoned. The charges? They've broken time, and nobody is quite sure how, or how to fix it. Before too long, it becomes clear that they have been set up: the head of the organization that's holding them, has a decades-long grudge against an old ally of the team. They have to get a message to that ally in order to get sprung from jail and...hilarity ensues.

They're stuck looking for a historical figure who was kidnapped and disappeared by his own government. with their ability to time-travel significantly limited, if they can't find this mystery man, they may be doomed!

Okay, and now for D is for Dinosaur.

I've put these two things together because neither one is really a stand-alone piece of creative work, but more an icon representing creative work that I've been doing behind the scenes. Also, so that I can share them more easily to the Alphabet Superset Discord server.

So that guy up there is Boone. You may recognize him from The VelociPastor, a 2019 micro-budget movie that became an instant cult classic. Back in September, I visited the set of VelociPastor II, did hours of interviews, and got lots of photo and video with my buddy Zach. And while I'll save the details for when there's an official official announcement, the thing I'm here to share is that I'm writing an official companion book for VelociPastor II. Called The VelociGospel, the book will be an oral history of VP and a companion to VP2, speaking with as many cast and crew as possible. The plan is to release it on the same day VelociPastor II comes out on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital.

More on this soon, but I just really, really want to let people know it's a thing that's happening so that I can mention it on Bluesky and not immediately feel like I have to chase my own tail or delete the post.

Yes! There's going to be a VelociPastor book! And I already have about 30 pages written!

So...yeah. These are project that I have been working on quietly in the last few weeks. But I can't share stuff just yet. Soon, I promise!

[russburlingame]

No, Sir Galahad is not in the Bible, and I never said he was.

OK, so in my series of posts and lectures about my work on Neil Gaiman's Chivalry, I pointed out that Sir Galahad's first appearance in Arthurian fiction was in the Vulgate, and that his name was originally spelled Galaad. Therefore the spelling in Neil Gaiman's Chivalry is correct, and Galahad is a later variant spelling.

Someone recently took me to task for saying this meant that I claimed Sir Galahad was in the Bible, and yet Sir Galahad appears nowhere in the Bible.

I never said Sir Galahad was in the Bible.

I said he was in the Vulgate.

Vulgate means "common version" in Latin.

The confusion here stems from the word "vulgate" which often refers to the 4th century Latin translation of the Bible commonly known as the Vulgate Bible.

But "vulgate" is also a term used to refer to The Lancelot-Grail Cycle, a 13th century French Arthurian cycle which is also known as the Vulgate or Vulgate Cycle -i.e. common version. Later translations of this work are known as Post-Vulgate.

Specifically, Galahad or Galaad appears in the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal.

Happy to help.

Chivalry is available wherever fine books are sold, and you can come see me at the San Diego Comic Con Museum on October 4 where I will be signing and lecturing and showing art. Thanks.

[russburlingame]

This is Russ, working at Emerald City Video (Store 2) in 2005. Photo by CS Muncy.

[russburlingame]

B is for Blockbuster

Okay, so this story isn’t about Blockbuster, but it’s about video stores. And for a generation of people – my generation – video stores and Blockbuster Video are inextricably bound together.

This is a fictionalized account -- or at least, the bit about my relationship with "Erin" (not her real name) is. What’s true, what’s not? Doesn’t really matter. The stuff that matters is true, and you get to decide what about this story matters.

I was 21 years old when my heart was broken for the first time.

I had been dating Erin – a friend from high school who turned into more – for a little over a year, and I was sure – absolutely sure – that I was going to marry her. When she got accepted to the University of New Hampshire – a several-hour-drive away – I bought my first car (hers) just so I could go see her on the weekends.

On her birthday, I was waiting for Erin to get back from dinner and call me, to let me know she had gotten home okay. She was on a trip with her sailing club – yeah, apparently that’s a thing at some colleges – and I just wanted to touch base before going to sleep. No, this isn’t a tragic story of somebody lost at sea. She just got drunk and made out with somebody.

Either way, she didn’t call me that night, or until well into the next day. This was 2001, and it wasn’t especially common for people to be in constant contact via text, so sometimes, you just…didn’t know what was up with people you loved. Crazy, I know.

Erin finally called me, tearfully confessed, and I forgave her. I was scared for her safety and glad to find out that she was fine.

We talked for hours that day, but a week later, she called again: she didn’t think she could keep up the distance thing. She needed more than a weekend boyfriend.

I was crushed, and I begged her to hold off on making a decision until we had seen each other again. The summer was coming up, and we were both really excited about seeing Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, so I figured it was worth having one last day out, and a long talk face to face.

It didn’t really work out that way. She agreed to the idea, but didn’t call me again for the rest of the semester, and it was pretty obvious things were doomed. When she got home from school, she asked if I wanted to come over for an afternoon, and I did – although this was about a month and change early for Kevin Smith.

We hung out, played Scrabble, fooled around, and got into a playful wrestling match. She managed to pin me to the ground, and instead of taking advantage of my helplessness, she kissed me on the cheek and got back up.

Oof.

With a few hours left before her parents came home, we decided on watching a movie.

What movie?

No ideas came. Erin suggested a trip to the video store.

Now, you young’uns don’t understand that the video store was a great place to hang out in the days before the modern internet. I could kill hours there. So, hell yeah, let’s go to the video store. Erin drove, and we headed east out onto the big boulevard where all the stores are. To my surprise, we passed right by Blockbuster. Where were we going?

The local Blockbuster, which was about a half-mile from Erin’s house, was the only video store I knew of on this side of town. To go anywhere else I knew about, it was at least an extra ten to fifteen minutes of driving. Chimney’s, the great video store that had been another mile or so down the road, had recently folded, much to everyone’s collective chagrin.

Erin turned toward Chimney’s, and I figured maybe she was just confused.

“Chimney’s is closed,” I said, bemused.

“Yeah, I know. I’m going to a place my dad likes,” she answered. Another mile, a turn, and…well, damn. There’s another video store.

Emerald City Video was a store with a narrow storefront, but inside, it was cavernous. The store was probably 20 feet wide by 60 feet deep, with a great selection and an adult room hidden in the back corner. Movie props hung from some of the walls – high enough up that you couldn’t take them down and mess with them – including a shield from Spartacus, a costume used in Killer Klowns From Outer Space, and high-end replicas of props from The Mummy and the James Bond franchise.

This. Was. Heaven.

I was so immediately taken with the place, that I barely noticed when the guy behind the register greeted us. I wandered to the “special interest” section – where they had cult classics, documentaries, and anything LGBT-themed – and looked it up and down. A middle-aged woman with short hair and glasses saw me staring, and asked if I needed help.

“Oh – no, I was just checking things out. I’ve never been here,” I admitted. “This is a great store.”

Erin had gone to a more mainstream section of the store to find a movie we could watch while cuddling. It would be the last time, and by this point both of us knew it, so she looked for something sweet and timeless and sentimental. She really went all in on giving this relationship a proper sendoff.

Me? I was sitting in the Special Interest section, talking with…umm…

“I’m Russ,” I said, offering my hand. The woman took it.

“I’m Rita,” she said. “I’m one of the owners.”

I don’t remember what movie Erin and I watched. I don’t remember what Rita and I talked about. What I do remember, is that by the end of the conversation, Rita suggested I should apply for a job at the store.

I had just, days before, started a job at Barnes & Noble. Like basically everyone else, I applied to be a bookseller, and got immediately hired to sling coffees for B&N/Starbucks. I take black coffee, and am very – very – bad at making sweet, frothy coffee drinks. I knew my days were numbered. I took the application. It’s been more than 20 years since I walked into that store for the first time, and as far as I know, there are no extant photos of “Store 1” – the location where I first encountered Emerald City Video. But I can still see it when I close my eyes. It was – ironic, given its name – a magical place.

I would work at Emerald City Video – mostly at Store 2 – on and off for the next 7 years, before moving to New York City to chase down my dreams of being an entertainment writer.

Where was Store 2? Well, we manage to get hold of the store formerly known as Chimney’s. For years, it had been our town’s home entertainment Mecca, and now, ECV was going to restore it to its former glory.

Of course, now it’s split up between a cardio kickboxing place and a laser hair removal center. But still.

I still love Erin. Dating her was good for my personal development, good for my soul. She’s a good person, and the once-in-a-blue-moon when we get to chat, I always enjoy it. And on top of everything else, Erin gets to claim credit for introducing to the place that would change my life.

When I was 24, I first met my (now) wife Cali…at Emerald City Video.

Cali was a customer, and she had a crush on me. I was in another relationship, and entirely oblivious to her interest. My obliviousness was taken as disinterest, and nothing happened for a handful of years, before we finally bumped into each other while single. But it’s funny to think about how the first girl to really, truly break my heart, was the one who brought me to Emerald City Video. She put me in the right place, at the right time, to meet the person who still makes that heart swell every day.

In 2021, I fulfilled a life-long dream and published my first book. For a variety of reasons, I went the self-publishing route. The name of my publisher? ECV Analog. The logo: a modified version of the old Emerald City Video logo. Rita and her husband Jim, the owners of Emerald City, joined me at a movie theater nearby to celebrate the book launch.

[russburlingame]

A is for Accident

So, here goes.

A few weeks back, I was supposed to have started work on the Alphabet Superset, a project from Struthless that's aimed at helping motivate artists who are a little...stuck.

I am, strictly speaking, not stuck. I actually have more on my plate than I can handle most of the time. Still, it seemed like a cool project, and something that could help me hone some writing muscles that I don't use very often. I have a fiction project that has been percolating in the back of my mind, but it has been literally years since I wrote more than a few pages of fiction. And longer than that since I showed it to anyone.

So. The Alphabet Superset. It's a weekly challenge format, where you have a consistent theme and approach to the art, and each week you come up with a piece of work representative of that week's letter of the alphabet. I SHOULD have just started with D -- especially since I know what D is, and it's exciting! -- but I also know myself well enough to know that if I bail on A through C, I'll probably do basically none of the letters down the line.

Recently, I have been going through a bunch of my old archives to see whether there are any diamonds in the rough. So my "style" is going to be creative writing -- fiction and creative nonfiction, mostly not journalism, which is what I do the rest of my life. And the theme I'm choosing is autobiography. That doesn't mean you're going to get a lot of stuff that's super revealing about me -- although there will be some of that. It means each project will speak to a theme, an idea, or sometimes an archival project that was significant to a part of my life.

For the first installment, I'm going with "A is for Accident." The accident in question? A first-time hitman kills the wrong guy.

Oops.

This is a reworking of the first bit of 'I Got Him,' a novel I wrote once...but didn't back up before my computer was stolen. Back in the 2000s, not everything was always being loaded to the cloud. That was a rough lesson to learn, kids!

The only part of 'I Got Him' that survived was the first 40 or so pages. And I have always fantasized about bringing it back to life. This is not entirely new content, but a piece of the original version, lightly edited. I may tweak and hone a little more during a future week, but the hope here is to get myself back on track for the Alphabet.

So...here we go.

Oh, and this story takes place around 2003.

CHAPTER ONE: Somebody Got Murdered

  “I got him,” Martin said into the phone. “Just like you wanted, I got him!”

  “You didn’t,” Alderman said coolly, the background buzz of a crappy payphone not enough to mask his irritation.

  “Best part?” Martin continued, undeterred. “I knew the bastard! Fucking comes into McVeigh’s all the time and gives me shit because his burger has mayonnaise. Like I can help it that nobody reads the ‘special order’ line.”

  Alderman sighed. “What are you talking about?”

  “What, I gotta say it?”

  “That’s what I’m asking for.”

  “How do I know the phone’s not bugged?” Martin asked, and instinctively looked around as he said it.

  “Why on earth would it be?”

  “Alright, fine….I killed the Zlomek guy for you.”

  “Somehow I’m guessing that one of us has got something very confused here,” Alderman said, sarcasm starting to creep in around the edges of his frustration.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I’m very busy right now, actually. Can I call you back?”

  “Oh, right, right. Fine. But we’re solid here, right? You’re going to make sure I don’t get blamed for this?”

  “I really do have to go. I have a friend from work here right now,” Alderman said.

  “Oh,” Martin said. “Didn’t realize. Sorry!” And then, after a pause, “We’re not on speakerphone or anything, right?”

  “No, no. Eugene Zlomek is here, is all, and he’s telling me about his plans for the weekend. I think I’ve mentioned him before, right? A business acquaintance from the City.”

  Martin felt his stomach fall into his testicles. “Fuck,” he said.

  “That’s right.” The happiness in Alderman’s voice was the kind you only heard when businessmen were placating a customer, or an employee. Professional Happiness.

  “How about I’ll call you tonight, okay? Have a drink and unwind while you wait, alright?”

  Franklin Alderman didn’t wait for Martin to respond before hanging up. Martin had said, “Ri—” before realizing that nobody was on the other end, and then hung up with a petulance rarely seen in a grown man. He tapped the end of his rifle impatiently against the side of the phone booth for a minute, but his mind was moving too fast to remain focused on that, and he inadvertently put the barrel through the thin plastic panel.

  The Verizon logo on the outside of the phone broke outward and away from the booth and bits of plastic rained on Martin’s hair. The reason it had rained on his hair, rather than on his shoes, is that when he heard the sound of the plastic popping and breaking away, he hit the ground in terror, dropping the gun. He was convinced that, somehow, it had gone off in the booth. Having no bullets in the chamber, though, the gun of course hadn’t go off, and continued not to do so when dropped. Suddenly he wondered what the hell he had been doing carrying the murder weapon around with him in the open to begin with.

  Martin picked it up and forced it into his long, over-packed gym bag. It was nylon-and-mesh, and intended for use by baseball players (hence the length to accommodate a gun). It was loaded up with shorts and towels, on the off chance that anyone should want to take a look through it and Martin couldn’t dissuade them. The bag had a Champion logo on the top of it, which Martin couldn’t help but feel was a little ironic riding next to his face at the moment, while he tried to figure out how he botched his job so badly and who, exactly, he had killed.

  He jogged to his car—a red, 1991 Ford Mustang LX waiting at the curb about fifteen feet from the payphone—and jumped in. He tossed the Champion bag in the back and shifted gears all at the same time, in one motion as though the release of the bag by his left arm had caused the right one to pull the lever between his front seats. The car failed to roar to life, but gurgled a bit, and rolled down the street in the way that 1991 Mustangs are wont to do.

  The street was well-lit for the night drive home, and Martin was thinking of his terrible mistake, wondering what would happen next, when he saw the lights of a police car in his rearview mirror. He looked at the digital clock he had fastened to the dash when all of the vehicle’s interior lighting had failed months before. It read 1:39, which meant it had been a little more than forty-five minutes since Martin had killed someone who was not Eugene Zlomek.

  He grabbed the pack of cigarettes from his dashboard and took one out. He lit it with a Zippo from his jacket pocket because the cigarette lighter in the Mustang had been removed by the previous owner, who thought he had been improving the transmission at the time. He rolled down the passenger side window and blew the smoke from his cigarette in that direction. He leaned onto the passenger seat and opened the glove box.

The police officer, carrying a flashlight that was completely unnecessary given the intensity of the spotlight he had pointed at Martin’s rearview mirror, used it to tap on the driver’s side window. Martin opened the driver’s door a crack and half-shouted out it.

  “The window doesn’t open, Officer,” Martin apologized. “Wiring’s all screwed.”

  “Can I see your license, registration and insurance card, please?” The policeman asked, with no clear indication that he understood or cared what Martin had said about the state of the Mustang.

  “Absolutely. Hold on a minute.” Martin felt a cold sweat coming on as he rifled through the open glove box. He coughed a little on the cigarette, as he didn’t smoke. Instead, he had lit up to mask the odor of smoke in the car.

  Having worn gloves for the killing, Martin thought that maybe they would have gunpowder residue on them, and started the light them on fire in the bushes outside the

Zlomek house. But when people inside realized that someone—not, apparently, Eugene

Zlomek—had been killed, they started to mill around by the window and Martin had felt

obliged to get out of there, carrying—in his dazed panic and hurry—his flaming gloves

with him. The smell of smoke was very strong in the car, and he had made use of some

very old, very cheap cigarettes a friend had left in the car months ago. He sat upright in

the driver’s seat, passing his license and insurance card to the patrolman outside.

  “I can’t find the registration,” Martin said. “Can you take it off the windshield?”

  The patrolman shone his unnecessary flashlight at the windshield to confirm that

there was, in fact, a registration on the car. “I’ll get it from the plates,” he said, and

walked to the front of the car, shining the flashlight some more.

  The officer walked back to the open door. “Where is your front license plate?”

He asked.

  “Vanished a few weeks ago; haven’t had time to report it,” Martin said honestly.

  “You’d better.”

  “I will.”

  “Next time,” the cop warned, “you’ll get a ticket.”

  “Is that why you pulled me over, Officer?”

  “I’ll tell you when I get back.”

  “I wasn’t speeding, was I?”

  “I’ll talk to you when I get back,” the officer said, increasingly frustrated.

  The patrolman walked back to his car, clicking the flashlight on and off, and then

sat in the driver’s seat for what seemed to Martin to be a very long time. Finally he got

out of the car, still hefting his flashlight.

  “What’s that smell?” Asked the police officer when Martin reopened the door for

him.

  “Smell?”

  “Smoke. Do you have an exhaust problem, too?”

  “Not that I know of. Maybe my cigarette?”

  “Is it cloves or something?” The cop asked.

  “No, just very cheap.”

  “Hm. Maybe.” He straightened up. “Mr. Bidwell, do you know why I pulled

you over?”

  “Because I have no front license plate?” Martin ventured.

  “No.”

  “Oh. In that case, I’m not really sure.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “No. Absolutely not. I’ve never had a drink in my life.”

  “That sounds very defensive,” said the police officer, shining his flashlight around

inside the car.

  “No, Officer. Just definitive.”

  “Do your headlights work?”

  Martin looked at the switch on his dashboard which controlled the headlights. It

was in the “Off” position.

  “Shit,” Martin said.

  “That’s what I thought when I saw you barreling down the road like that,” said the

patrolman.

  “I just pulled away from the gas station about two miles back. This is a very well-

lit road…!”

  “I understand. Are you related to Jonathan Bidwell?”

  “My second-cousin.”

  “His father was on my softball team last year.”

  “Mike’s a great guy.”

  “Yeah….I’m not going to ticket you tonight. Just be a little more with-it, okay?”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem. And get your exhaust checked. I don’t think that’s tobacco.”

  “Thanks.”

  The patrolman walked back to his car and sat in it while Martin pulled back into traffic, turning on his headlights and blinker. In the back seat, the odor of the burning evidence still lingered. He left the passenger window down to get rid of it.

-----

  “…But it’s trash, Doug!” Irwin shouted.

  Irwin Shaw was sitting on a rolling chair in an office of white-painted concrete,

shouting emphatically at a stooped, wrinkled man whose white, bushy hair and lively eyes left even his best friends wondering how old he actually was. The man, his editor, walked away toward his own office and Irwin stood to follow him.

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s trash, Shaw,” Doug told him. “What you did was unwarranted.”

  “Completely unwarranted,” Irwin agreed, in a way that expressed a total lack of enthusiasm for, or interest in, Doug’s assessment.

  “You wrote—let’s see…” Doug rustled papers around on his desk theatrically until he found one that he wanted. He squinted at it, opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again.

Then he threw that paper at the ground, and picked up another one instead. He looked pleased with this new acquisition.

“You wrote, ‘…where the only thing greasier than the fish fry and warm beer is the middle-aged barmaid who flirts with everyone under eighty.’”

“It’s true. The facts all check; I have quotes from seven regular customers.”

“I don’t care about your ridiculous quotes. You know you can’t say that shit.”

“Why not?”

“You know damned well why not,” Doug growled, withdrawing a pair of reading glasses from his paper-covered desk and putting them on top of his head as if he may wear them eventually, but not right now.

“I can’t tell the truth about the places I’m supposed to ‘review’ because they’re our advertisers and they might get mad if someone points out how shitty their bars really are.”

Irwin had used air quotes to emphasize his point when he said the word “review.”

“Not bars, Irwin. Clubs.”

“Three quarters of what you send me to cover for the ‘Local Clubs’ column are just crappy bars that have local cover bands playing on systems too loud for the rooms they’re in.”

“Tanner’s called. They won’t advertise with us anymore.”

“That’s not such a bad thing,” Irwin said. “I don’t think I would want our paper associated with that dive anyway.”

“No, no, no. That’s a very bad thing. Where do you think your salary comes from?”

“Salary?! You’re crazy. I get twenty bucks a story. That’s not a salary, that’s money for gas and food to get to, and then do, the story. And the food’s hardly ever any good. But I’m not complaining about the money, trust me. Play money for play journalism. It all makes sense.”

“I told you when you took over this column that the food is free at the clubs you’re writing up,” Doug sighed, putting his head in his hands and knocking the reading glasses askew, then taking them off and putting them back on the desk.

“I’m glad you think that; the bar owners don’t seem to have been told.”

There was a knock on the door, and a young, husky man with very black hair came in wearing a t-shirt that said, “Dammit—I Did Not Have Sexual Relations With That Woman Either.”

The young man said, “Mister Hooper? We really need you out here. It’s almost two,” and left in such a hurry, it was obvious that he was either very busy, or hoping to dodge Doug’s reply.

“Okay, Irwin. You’re off this column.”

“Doesn’t that have to wait until the real editors get here in the morning?” Irwin asked with a smirk.

“No. You run in my edition. And I already talked to Brad.”

“So, I’m fired?”

“No, you still have your other column.”

“Gee, thanks. You know, that one was also a lot more interesting before you guys started to get…”

Doug cut him off. “…And for the next few weeks, until we figure out what else you’re good for, I want you on newsdesk during this shift.”

“What?”

“General assignment.”

“I’m—what? Demoted? How does that even work, when you pay by the story?”

“Not demoted. The new Local Club writer came out of that slot. I just need you there until we fill it.”

“Roger is taking over the Club column?” Irwin choked on the statement, and caught his body trying to laugh without permission.

“Yes. Is there a problem with Roger, too?”

“Not at all, Doug. It suits him.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Doug asked, a vein in his head starting to throb.

“Your nephew’s not really a reporter, he’s just the nephew of an editor.”

Doug's face started to turn red, and he rose in from his seat, but Irwin continued. “That column isn’t really reporting, as I said, just kind of masturbation of our sponsors…”

The young man came back to the doorway, still looking harried. “Mister Hooper? It’s almost two.”

“Still?” Doug shouted.

The young man missed the sarcasm, and paused for a second before darting away to process it, as though the question might be a trick.

“…Yes?” He responded hesitantly.

“I’m coming,” Doug said to the young man, and then to Irwin he said, “Get out of my office. I just got like nine e-mails in two minutes, so something must be happening. Go check the places you go check.”

“Will do, Skipper. By the way, nice office you have here.”

“Yeah, Doug said, ushering everyone out the door. “It used to be a bathroom, but the Department of Health said it was too small for that. Now get out of it.”

“I see,” Irwin said, “You’ve gotta take a leak.”

Doug slammed the door.

Irwin walked around the corner behind him and was standing next to the computers that were set to receive e-mails from wire services, freelance writers and letters to the editor. Two of them were idling, waiting for a password to unlock them so that they may crash freely. On a third, there was an e-mail program open. This, Irwin knew, was the computer that John Ramsay, the editor in charge of the Op-Ed section, used to receive all of his e-mail. Irwin sat in front of the computer and looked up the e-mail preferences.

Ramsay had set the computer, apparently, to filter out pornography, letters from a recently-fired Sentinel employee and anything with a subject heading containing nasty language. Irwin knew that there had been some very, very unpleasant language used in a some recent letters to the editor, mostly directed at Ramsay’s mother after a story he’d written on why it was necessary to enforce dog-leash laws that were already on the city’s books. Irwin changed the settings so that anything containing any one of several nasty words would be forwarded to Ramsay’s home e-mail account and marked with a little red flag that said “Urgent!” if you held the mouse over it for a second.

He also turned on an auto-reply feature that would tell anyone e-mailing letters to the editor that The Editor had been “…eaten by a rampaging groundhog, and that future e-mails should be directed to:” and then Ramsay’s personal e-mail address again.

He skated sideways on the rolling chair, then, and punched his own password into another computer to see what had been coming in while he was in Doug’s office.

A few headlines popped onscreen: “Fire at Soup Company Kills 11.” “Classical Pianist Arthur Dent Dies at Age 67.” “French Language More Prevalent In Michigan, Study Shows.”

He printed off each of these and left them sitting on a desk for the news desk reporter to find in the morning, then he walked toward the door.

“Where are you going, Shaw?” Shouted Doug Hooper from a light table where he was looking at the next edition of the Sentinel.

“My People of Interest column,” Irwin said.

“I’ve already got it!”

“The next one.”

“What was on the wires?”

“Gerard Depardieu in Detroit.”

“Just go home, Shaw,” Doug said, waving at him irritably, looking down at the table, then feeling on the top of his head for the reading glasses that were no longer there.

It was 1:40 in the morning when Irwin Shaw left the offices of The Sentinel.

It was 6:51 the next morning when he finally arrived at home. At 1:46, as he was turning into his driveway, Irwin had heard on the police scanner in his car that a man had been found dead about four miles from where Irwin lived.

He arrived at the address of the death five minutes ahead of The Sentinel’s police reporter, Jim Smith. Jim was a tall, jolly guy whose writing was as bland as his name and who didn’t really care if other reporters hijacked his stories. He’d just been working the same beat for so long, it was like getting paid to hang out with his friends in blue.

The house was enormous, but other than that pretty unremarkable. It was white with black shutters, squarish, and had what appeared to be about one window for every room in its three sprawling stories. All of the windows were the same; there was no picture window visible on any of the three sides of the house that Irwin could see either from the road or from his current position in the driveway.

Irwin, flashing his press badge to no one in particular, stepped up near the front door of the house where the police and the press had already set up shop. There was a police line, and just outside of it a handful of uniformed police officers were talking in subdued tones to a young man and woman in their early- or mid-twenties. The young man looked vaguely familiar, but it was the kind of familiarity that easily could have come from living so near to one another and shopping in the same places. Irwin couldn't place him.

The police didn't seem to be talking to the young man and the young woman as much as talking to the young woman and tolerating the young man being there, his hands on the girl's shoulders obviously being integral to keeping her from falling apart. The young man looked around him, and his eyes were red. He glanced through the crowd, fixed on Irwin for a second, and then looked away. There didn’t seem to have been any indication of recognition from the young man in the second they'd made eye contact.

The officer who had been talking to the young couple turned his back and headed indoors, and the couple sat on the bottom step of the house's big, all-wooden porch.

Irwin hung his head, took a reporter's notebook out of the pocket of his gray trench coat and approached them slowly. He spoke, first, to the girl, who had obviously been crying. Her eyes were red and puffy, her hair mussed. There was blood on her shirt, which had been partially covered by the brown corduroy jacket slung over her body. The young man next to her didn't look much better.

"I'm sorry," Irwin started. "I know this is a terrible time, but can I ask you a few things?"

"Who are you?" The girl choked out.

"Irwin Shaw, with The Sentinel."

"Oh. Press."

"Yeah. We always know just where we're needed the least, and that's more or less where we're paid to be. I live right down the way, so my editor figured I might know you guys,. Your brother looks a little familiar."

The young man didn't move, didn't respond. He didn't seem to be acknowledging Irwin at all.

"He's not my brother," the girl corrected. "My fiancé. This is James. His father is...was...he's the son."

"Of the one who passed?"

"Right."

Irwin looked at the young man, whose dark hair was longish and unkempt and who appeared to have been rousted from his sleep to come to the crime scene; he was wearing sweat pants, a mesh shirt and slippers. His eyes were also red with exhaustion and tears.

"I'm sorry for your loss, James," Irwin said, but the young man didn't respond.

The girl chimed in quietly: “What do you need, Mister…hmm…I’m sorry, forgot already…?”

“That’s okay. It happens. Irwin Shaw, Sentinel. You’ve had a long night.”

“So do you know what’s happened?” She asked him.

“I heard on the police scanner that someone was found dead here.”

“Yes, James’ father.”

“You said,” Irwin led her on. “What happened?”

“He was murdered. Shot.”

“Was anyone else in the house at the time?”

“He was shot through the window.”

“Are they absolutely sure about that?”

“I don’t know if they are, but I am. I was in the next room.”

Where was James here? In bed?”

“Yeah, in bed…at home…” the girl seemed flustered. “…At his house. Sorry. I don’t usually talk to the press.”

“You’re fine,” Irwin reassured her, “You’re doing fine. What’s your name, though?” He was scratching out the first notes in his pad.

“My name? It’s Michelle Zlomek. This is my house.”

“You live here alone?”

“No. It’s my dad’s house. I live here. I’m not out of college yet.”

“Where do you go?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Okay…”

“Don’t you want to know about who was killed?”

“I was coming around to that.”

“His name was Lowe. Edward Lowe.”

“Name sounds familiar.”

“He was the CEO of Keystone Security,” James said. His voice was so hoarse and quiet that it took Irwin a second to realize that he was being addressed.

“We did a feature on them not long ago,” Irwin said, turning to James and trying to keep from seeming put off. “They’re local.”

“Yeah,” James said.

“Was there any reason why anyone would be wanting to kill your father, James?”

“Plenty.”

“Want to tell me some of them?”

“Not really.”

“Want to tell me who? I might be able to bring them to justice….”

“I thought that was the police.”

“Them, too,” Irwin quipped, trying his hardest not to sound overly glib and failing.

“I think I’ll stick with them. They’re kind of officially doing it.”

“They’re just part of the Executive Branch. The press is the Fourth Estate.”

“I am greatly disturbed by the death of my father, which comes as a shock to our family,” James said. It sounded as though he were reading from a script. “I look forward to seeing his killer brought to justice and will support the law enforcement community in any way I can during the investigation.”

“Wow,” Irwin said.

“Is that what you needed?” James asked, ice in his tone. “A comment?”

“Did you kill your father, James?”

“Fuck off.”

“I’ll fuck off in just a minute. Just wanted you to know—if you give a press conference and make a remark that shallow, in that tone of voice, anyone who sees you on TV will think that you killed Edward Lowe.”

“Off the record?”

“That all depends.”

“I already know who killed him. I also know they’ll never be held accountable. I just don’t know what I’m going to do about it yet.”

“Tell me what you think. Maybe I can get some evidence to supply to the police.”

“Why can’t I just tell it to the police?”

“Or that.”

“You’ve got my statement, Mr. Shaw. Please just go away now.”

“Miss? I forget your name.” He looked down at his scrawled notes. “Michelle!”

“What?” She sighed.

“Why was Mr. Lowe at your house so late?”

“My father works with Ed at Keystone.”

“What’s your father’s name?”

“Zlomek.”

“His first name?”

“Just go read some press releases or something,” James hissed. “I’m sure you can put it all together.”

“Thanks for the help,” Irwin said.

He stood, much to the chagrin of his knees and ankles, and turned around. He almost walked into a uniformed police officer who was making a beeline for something important.

“Whoa! Sorry,” Irwin said. “Irwin Shaw. Sentinel. Got a minute?”

“No,” the cop said, and tried to sidestep Irwin, who followed his movement.

“How about half of one?”

The cop’s jaw tensed for a second and then relaxed. “What do you want?”

“Whose house is this?”

“No comment.”

“What relation is he to the deceased?”

“No comment.”

“I hear he worked with the victim. What’s the homeowner do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you know that Lowe was the CEO?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t know what Zlomek was? Is.”

“No.”

“You guys got on this pretty quick. I don’t live far.”

“I was in the area.”

“Doing what?” Irwin wondered if there was evidence to be had, which a slow patrolman might not put together and might, therefore, accidentally expose to the press.

“Someone busted in the side of a phone booth.”

“Sounds thrilling,” Irwin said, “What’s your name?”

“Shane Norton.”

“Thanks.”

Irwin put his pad and pen back in the pocket of his coat without having written anything about a vandalized payphone.

---

Martin’s phone was ringing.

He had been sitting up in bed for over three hours, waiting for the call, but he was slow to answer. On the small coffee table in front of his television was the morning’s paper. On the front page, with a tabloid-sized headline, was a story about a CEO of a locally-owned, New York-based company having been shot to death at his partner’s house the night before.

“Edward Lowe, 53, of Brick was killed last night in Red Bank….Lowe, the CEO of Keystone Security, was shot through the window of 212 Marsh Drive….The building belongs to Eugene Zlomek, Lowe’s business partner and the CFO of Keystone.”

Martin had killed Edward Lowe. Edward Lowe, the annoying bastard who always came into work and bitched about his cheeseburger. For a moment, Martin was struck by the pettiness of a millionaire—someone who obviously could have gone to a better establishment after one or two disappointments and left Martin the hell alone—coming every single day and bitching about mayonnaise. The thought, though, was hard-pressed to remain long in Martin’s mind, given the thoughts it was fighting for attention and the ringing of the phone that Martin knew could not possibly be good news.

“Yes?” He answered, tired and anxious and not at all happy to be alive.

“Martin, how are you?” Came Alderman’s voice from the other end of the phone; his good cheer was infinitely more frightening than if he had just called and started shouting.

I’m so sorry I fucked up, Mr. Alderman,” Martin said into the phone, so fast he could hardly be understood. “Please give me another shot—chance. I’ll fix things.”

“There’s nothing to fix. I’ve got things under control on my end, I think. You’re not going to be paid for this travesty, certainly. You did, after all, screw up the job rather severely…but you had the right idea and you got away without implicating any of us.”

“Thank you, Sir. Do do I…?”

“I want him dead by Friday, and I don’t want it in the papers. I don’t want my people to hear about it until it’s too late to be helped. This is kind of against the rules.” His sinister, faux-European voice paused to assume a more professional air. “Zlomek will be named CEO on Friday if he’s still alive when the Board meets in emergency session to discuss the passing of Mr. Lowe. At that point, he’ll become very useful to us. I’d rather he didn’t; he’s a prick and I don’t want to work with him for the rest of my days.”

“And you’re sure there’s nobody listening on the other end of the phone, right? I mean, I’ll get away with this, right?”

“The only thing that could get you in trouble now, Martin—is if you keep asking that. It’s really very unprofessional. It’ll give people the wrong idea.”

“Sorry.”

“Quite alright,” Alderman said. “I’ll call you when I hear that Zlomek is dead. In the meantime, you just sit tight.”

Before Martin could say goodbye, Alderman hung up the phone. Martin sat for a second, scowling at this indignity, and then hung up the phone and silently threw himself at, more than into, his huge blue easy chair. He picked up the remote control from the seat, flicked on the television and caught the news:

“Edward Lowe, President and CEO of Keystone Security, was killed late last night at the home of the company’s CFO Eugene Zlomek. This could spell more trouble for Keystone, whose bid to take over CopCo fell through very publicly last month and whose stock has been steadily declining since rumors surfaced that the company could face charges relating to union-busting. Lowe’s family says they intend to release a statement this afternoon. Keystone, meanwhile…” and Martin switched the channel. On HBO, they were playing a documentary about Lenny Bruce, and Martin left it there while he closed his eyes and tried to decide whether to cry or just take a nap until the phone started ringing again.

---

Irwin's phone was ringing.

After having filed the late-night story on the murder of Edward Lowe, Irwin had returned home and slept. His sheets were tossed everywhere, and there was a pretty clear trail of disorder from where Irwin had entered the dark room the night before, to where he'd hopped onto bed. In that trail were all of the pieces of junk that he had stepped on before falling asleep at five in the morning. He could see it all now, with his clear eyes and the light flooding the cheap lace curtains of the bedroom.

Monumentally disoriented, Irwin faced the wall and reached out. His hand struck the wall and he turned back around and reached out again, this time grabbing at his alarm clock.

"Yallo?" he muttered into the phone when, after its fifth ring, he finally had it in his hand.

"Shaw, what the hell were you thinking?" Hooper demanded.

"Say again?"

"I said, 'What the hell were you thinking?' Last night."

"Last night, I was thinking, 'I should hand in this story to Doug, so that he'll stop bitching.' Shows you Daffy Duck was right when he said it doesn't pay to think."

"Smartass. Stop screwing around. You were hounding someone else's story."

"Oh, come off it. You know he doesn't care."

"We have to have some semblance of order here, Shaw."

"It didn't seem to bother you last night; they said they were planning on running it on the front page."

"They did."

"Great. So what are you complaining about?"

And Irwin hung up.

Of course, I didn't know any of this yet. I figured it all out later.

"Blah-blah-blah!" The TV told me. I had been, for the previous hour, watching an HBO special on Lenny Bruce. Sunk low in a star-spangled camping chair in the living room of my small apartment, I stared vacantly at the television, too exhausted to either change the channel or take in the information in any meaningful way. My phone rang, and I ignored it. Finally, the answering machine kicked in.

"I don't know how you got this number," my voice came from the machine, "but there must be a good reason for it if you did. So state that reason and maybe I'll get back to you." There was then a series of beeps long enough to irritate all but the most persistent caller.

"Mr. Abernathy, we need to talk," a voice said. I cocked my head a little bit and hit the mute key on the remote control. Lenny Bruce was silent, but the TV continued to buzz with electrical life. The caller pressed on. "I believe that someone has tried to kill me. I was fortunate in that they failed, but I'm worried they may try again. I also have...fears...about the legal ramifications for me of their failed attempt. Please return my call at 200-8870. I will pay handsomely."

I clicked the sound on the television back on and mulled over what he had said. I already knew who he was, of course--it had been all over the papers about Ed Lowe at Keystone. There are only so many people who can afford my services, so there isn't a lot of room for coincidences in these matters.

There were only four or five people who could be calling me, asking for my help in this particular circumstance: Board members fo Keystone. I knew off the bat that I could count Mrs. O'Keefe out, clearly, and probably Bill Munger, too. He was too good a guy to be in a compromising position and too hapless to realize it even if he was. Also unlikely was Vittorio Graves, who was too old to be a suspect without a really solid motive--which nobody yet knew he had. That left the CFO, Eugene Zlomek. He made sense as a suspect; unfriendly, corrupt, young and strong...and the murder had happened at his house. So of course he hadn't done it, but the police would be positive he had.

Shit. I had to do this, didn't I?

I tuned off the television and sunk lower in my chair, closed my eyes and bowed my head. Might as well get some sleep.

[russburlingame]

Forty - When no one was looking, Lex Luthor took forty cakes. he took 40 cakes. That's as many as four tens. And that's terrible.

[russburlingame]

The Strikes, and How the Studios Created This Mess On Purpose

A rant I made on Bluesky the other day:

Here's the thing about Hollywood's payment system: it was working for everybody, and executives saw streaming as a way to fuck everyone else over and make it work exclusively for them. Because that's what executives do. And they convinced everyone to take a bad deal to "test out" the new system.

Then, they threw everything into streaming and, in doing so, eviscerated traditional revenue streams like reruns and home video, both of which had better deals for talent. And they were hoodwinked by tech bros who convinced them the path to profitability was MUCH shorter than it is.

Now those execs, who went all in on streaming SPECIFICALLY as a predatory scheme to take more money, are crying poverty because they say it's a losing proposition. And they want people to take a bad deal to underwrite their recovery from self-inflicted wounds.

But at this point, the talent have been living with the previous bad deal for so long a lot of people are being starved out of the industry. So they strike for a fair deal, and what do execs say? "We're going to starve them for this!" You complete fucking CHUDs, what did you think you did before?

Okay, sorry. Got a little off-track there.

Yeah, numbers for streaming are ROUGH. Just like basically every tech startup in the last 15 years, most streamers are nowhere near profitable and living on the largesse of VC money with the promise that if they decimate the market enough that they're the only option, they'll start to make money...but that's really hard for your employees to believe or sympathize with, when they have seen you dump hundreds of millions of dollars into it for a decade. Executives insist they're the smart ones. Why would they throw good money after bad for YEARS?

Meanwhile, stockholders and VC douchebros have been rewarding the gamble for years, living on promises of "we'll be profitable soon" and approving massive CEO pay packages to reward them for finding a way to pay the talent less.

This is all exacerbated by the long history of "Hollywood accounting." Long before the strikes were happening, Ed Solomon was tweeting about the HIGH-larious joke Sony has been playing on talent for years that insists they somehow lost money on 'Men in Black' and so don't owe any residuals.

So when you see companies pouring tons of money into a system, and executives being handsomely rewarded for that system, but you aren't getting paid? Well, it's hard to believe it isn't profitable. After all, these same companies have said for years theaters aren't profitable. VHS isn't. DVD isn't.

This history of obscuring the numbers so that those at the top can sneak away with an ever-growing slice of the pie is epitomized by streamers that refuse to give anyone ANY kind of clarity when it comes to their numbers. There's only one reason to hide that kind of data, and people know it.

I think this is the end of my rant for now. I just feel like one of the things reporters have not done well is communicating clearly what's going on, and why they should care about white collar workers striking. The answer for me is, they're striking against employers who are stealing them blind.

[russburlingame]

How to publicize online:

•Tell them what it is; don't assume they already know.

•Tell them when it is, where it is, who is it for.

•Put the info in searchable text, not in an image.

•Provide a live, direct link to more info.

•Repeat, because not everyone saw it the 1st time

(Reposted from twitter, where I’d wanted to see if I could get all the basics into a single tweet.)