Binge This, Sucka!

Okay, fine. time to put away from aversion to binge watching TV series since most of the frickin' world is sequestered indoors like the OJ jury while the pandemic continues. I used to say there wasn't enough time in the day to catch on everything that's being offered. Now there's all the time n the world, isn't there? That is, of course, as long there is still a world after all this...

Sorry. getting bleak again. Promised myself that I'd only make some suggestions for y'all to watch, some obvious, others I hope you'll take a gander at because they are certifiably Cherney Approved.

Netflix has a bunch of new shows I consider worth your while, particularly a couple in the reality category.

TIGER KING is a true crime limited series that is absolutely bat-shit crazy, revolving around private zoo owners who are breeding lions and tigers and bears in captivity for fun and profit with murder, polygamy, big kitties and totally gonzo whackjobs. This show was so nuts, with more layers than a Blooming Onion of lunacy, it was a welcome diversion from the real-time craziness we're dealing with right now. Two big furry thumbs up.

UGLY DELICIOUS, now in its second, but way too short season, is chef David Chang's non-fiction series is part travelogue, part history lesson and part social commentary revolving around food around the world. This is the best show of its kind since Anthony Bourdain passed into the Great Beyond.

Speaking of Bourdain, one of his producers is working on another travel show, AMC's RIDE WITH NORMAN REEDUS festiring the star of THE WALKING DEAD as he travels the length and breadth of the planet on a motorcycle, occasionally accompanied by a celeb biker. Norman has a goofy, near adolescent sense of wonder that is totally infectious.

HBO has had a few Winners lately, most notably THE OUTSIDER, not only the best TV adaptation of a Stephen King book, but one of the best in any medium. It plays like TWIN PEAKS by way of THE WIRE. A brilliant cast, most notably with Ben Mendelsohn and the brilliant Cynthia Erivo, anchor this show with a gravitas most shows only wish they had.

USA has a new season THE SINNER, which is quite good in a sometimes awkward way, but I prefer BRIARPATCH, a crime meller that makes no sense but is so much fun, you won't even care. Starring Rosario Dawson (finally!), this cray-cray tale of corruption in a Texan town based on the Ross Thomas novel has more twists and turns than a Rube Goldberg contraption.

Give them a look. You don't like an episode, move on to the next show. Obviously, there's more out there: THE CROWN, BETTER CALL SAUL has a new season, DISPATCHES FROM ELSEWHERE, another weird and wonderful AMC show if you find yourself missing the late, lamented LODGE 49, BABYLON BERLIN, the great German show I dearly is back on Netflix and Pamela Adlon's sensational BETTER THINGS on FX. Oh, God! There's so much! What a cornucopia!

Or, if you're ODing on screen time, consider the words of Roald Dahl's Oompa Loompas:

Happy Quarantine!

Holy Crap, Batman!

My goodness gracious. Aren't we in a collectively pissy mood lately? It seems we're absolutely outraged over just about everything these days, whether they're world events or the slightest trivial infraction exploding into a controversy of catastrophic proportions. It's not like we don't enough to complain about-Syria, another in series of impending government shutdown, mass shootings, the weather, this, that, the other thing... But gee whiz, folks, does Miley Cyrus really deserve this much notice? It's Miley Cyrus, for chrissakes! Where the hell are your priorities? I don't want to know who really gives two turds in Turlock whether she's twerking or tonguing or whatever she was doing on the MTV VMAs. It doesn't matter. It's Miley Cyrus not Mother Teresa. And since when is anyone caring about the VMAs again?

Among the other stuff and nonsense as of late:

BEN AFFLECK IS THE NEW BATMAN

Never mind the obvious joke about Matt Damon as Robin (it's already been done in BEHIND THE CANDELABRA), this news about Affleck playing The Caped Crusader in BATMAN vs SUPERMAN has caused a shitstorm that made Hurricane sandy look like a light breeze. First of all, Warner Brothers should have cast an unknown. Henry Cavill is still Superman, a carryover from THE MAN OF STEEL and he's not exactly a household name. Second, it's called BATMAN vs SUPERMAN. Can it be any more obvious that it's going to stink up the cineplex? DC has been losing to Marvel on the film adaptation front. THE DARK KNIGHT series gave a boost and THE MAN OF STEEL performed better than expected. They just couldn't wait to junk it up with an AVENGERS-like wannabe. FRANKENSTEIN vs THE WOLF MAN, KING KONG vs GODZILLA, FREDDY vs JASON, ALIEN vs PREDATOR. This is what you do when you're trying to squeeze your last nickel, not when you're mving forward, nitwits. Third, the question of Ben. Well, he's taller than Christian Bale, so there's that. But why hasn't anyone questioned what this stupid all-around idea will do the career he's been trying to establish since GIGLI? His film ARGO won Best Picture last year and now he wants to play superhero again. DAREDEVIL wasn't humiliating enough for him. This is a step down for all involved. It's not a crime against nature that's Affleck is the new Batman when there are worse ramifications here, not the least of which is another craptastic superhero movie for the summer cesspool season.

COREY MONTEITH EMMY MEMORIAL

It's no secret that I hate the Emmy broadcast, but it's an awards show, so what can one really expect a show business circle-jerk that the public gets the privilege to witness. This year, the BIG scandal involved this Corey Monteith kid, a supporting actor on GLEE who ODed this last summer, getting a special memorial on the show, separate from the normal Death Parade. Others that got the same special treatment were James Gandolfini, Jean Stapleton, Gary David Goldberg and Jonathan Winters. Viewers, mostly older, were incensed that Monteith got an honored spot rather than Jack Klugman, Larry Hagman or even Julie Harris. The truth is none of the five should have had this tribute. Why were these dead people better than the other dead people? Gary David Goldberg had a couple of hit shows with Michael J. Fox. Jonathan Winters, one of the funniest man ever, guested on a a lot shows and joined the cast of MORK AND MINDY in its final year. Big contributions to TV? Not as much as Hagman. Due to the popularity of his JR Ewing, DALLAS wasn't just one of the most popular shows of all time in America, but the world. Its ratings were more than all of these shows put together. So the special memorials were really unnecssary unless you included them all, making it a five hour show. All or nothing. The inclusion of Monteith was supposedly a nod to younger viewers. Yeah, way to bring in the kids. Just say no, chillun. Maybe Nancy Reagan should have given the eulogy instead of Jane Lynch. It's a subject not worth the bluster. Let the kid have his only day in the sun. The rest have legacies. What I considered worse was Carrie Underwood singing "YESTERDAY", though I did get a good chuckle when she admitted she's "not half the man she used to be".

 FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY CASTING SONS OF ANARCHY'S CHARLIE HUNNAM

A book I'm never going to read adapted into a movie I'll never see. As my sister used to say to piss off my grammarian mother, "It don't make me no never mind."

Trivial bullshit? We're soaking in it. Yet the apoplexy on the web and beyond has reached tsunami levels. It's a whirlpool that is just going to drag us further down the drain and flushed out to the sea of despair which is not a round trip back to any semblance of normalcy.

As for me, I try to focus on what really matters in life, the important things that are important to enrich one quality of being in this. For example:

Why did I waste 12 full hours of valuable time watching UNDER THE DOME? Hah! UNDER THE DUMB is more like it. (Snap goes the dragon!) Thanks for nothing, Stephen King. Your story played better in THE SIMPSONS MOVIE. It also had an ending. Boy, one cow chopped in half and I got sucked in for the whole summer. Well, at least Moo-Moo was cut length-wise...

See? The IMPORTANT things.
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Red Asphalt: Under the Influence

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Plagiarism is a crime. Somewhere in the middle lies influence.

When I began writing, the voices of those artists and authors that passed before me kept whispering into my sub-conscious as I struggled to find my own voice. I didn’t try to ape anyone’s style or appropriate anyone’s prose, at least not intentionally. But the more that we are exposed to the works of others-the great, the good and sometimes even the bad, something is bond to stick. Once it’s all on the page, it’s pretty easy to spot the inspirations, allusions and furry lil’ copycats.

Sometimes it’s just a matter of structure. I basically had all the components for my movie memoir IN THE DARK, but didn’t really know how to tie it all together until I read Anthony Bourdain’s KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL and I’ve made no bones about it. I’m pleased that I was able to tell him that when I attended his book signing here in Portland back in 2003. (Bourdain also gets a cursory nod in PLEASE HOLD THUMBS)

For RED ASPHALT, since it was a novel, I thought I was starting fresh. Now in retrospect, it’s downright obvious to me who and what stimulated my imagination in one form or another as I scribbled my story. It’s high time I acknowledged them.

First up, CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger: To me, the first person narrative of a smart-ass loner who thinks he’s better than everyone is more than just a Holden Caulfield reference and more of a blatant steal. I unashamedly admit that RYE is my favorite novel of all time and even fantasized adapting it into a screenplay back in my twenties. Of course, I missed the point. I haven’t gotten smarter over time, but at least I finally recognize that this would have been impossible and realize the long lasting impression it has made on me since I first read it as a teenager.


TAXI DRIVER, written by Paul Schrader and directed by Martin Scorsese, obviously shares this theme as well. Travis Bickle is Holden Caulfield inside out and Calvin Wheeler is a degenerated clone. Travis’ wanting to rid society of the scum of the earth isn’t very different from Calvin’s wanting to be the World’s Handyman, fixing all of its problems. Shooting off the middle finger in my book could have come from the multiple digits in TAXI DRIVER.

(Jesus. CATCHER IN THE RYE and TAXI DRIVER. I’m a regular John Hinckley.)

Stephen King: The inclusion of the synopsis for ABRACADABRA, the book my main character is obsessed with writing, ain’t a far cry from what King did with MISERY. The tortured writer going over the brink is a familiar King device. Now it’s one of mine.

Oddly enough, Joel Schumacher’s FALLING DOWN, written by Ebbe Roe Smith is NOT on the list. This vigilante tale actually came out after I came up with the initial story for RED ASPHALT and it is because of this film that I shelved it for a few years until it became (hopefully) a distant memory. When I appeared on the MILES AROUND radio show to promote ASPHALT, one of the hosts mentioned it but since that was a nerve-wracking first media appearance for moi, I shrugged it off. The thing is that as much as I like FALLING DOWN, I had to distance myself from it for a couple of reasons. First of all was the similarity to my story. Second and most important was that ASPHALT is based in part on my job working as a lab courier for Smith-Kline Beecham Clinical Laboratories and my everyday uniform was identical to Michael Douglas’ wardrobe in FALLING DOWN. Too close for comfort. Good thing I wasn’t inspired by that show.

“Look out! Jm J Bullock has a gun!”

Anyway, I backed off of RED ASPHALT until near the end of the decade because of FALLING DOWN. Distancing myself from it for a period actually helped. I don’t recommend that tactic for everything. I have one project I’ve been trying to put together since Betty White was an ingénue for the same reasons as RED ASPHALT. Other works have popped up that are too damn similar. But at this rate, I’ll be dead before I’m anywhere near finished. It all becomes procrastination very quickly and that is a crippler of epic proportions.

I have no delusions of grandeur about my writing. I don’t think RED ASPHALT is fit to be mentioned in the same breath as the works of Salinger, Scorsese, Schrader, King or even Schumacher. But at the end of the day (somewhere around 11:30), whatever stimuli I digest filters through me, sometimes causing me to riff on their ideas, themes and ambiance, sometimes prompting (gasp!) originality.  Whenever inspiration strikes or from whatever source, it has to be welcomed with an open mind or it just ricochets into oblivion.

It's a gift. Treat it as such.

RED ASPHALT is available in paperback or Kindle on Amazon. To read an excerpt, please visit my website: WRITTEN BY SCOTT CHERNEY