DID YOU KNOW?? Captain Marvel Editon

Paul Yanover became president of Fandango 

in 2012 -
a position created THAT YEAR.

Fandango owns Rotten Tomatoes

The percentage of responders who said they wanted to see Captain Marvel went from the the high 90's to 27% ...

citing lackluster trailers and comments from Brie Larson in her Crystal + Lucy Awards speech:

“I do not need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work for him about ‘A Wrinkle In Time.'”

and strident Identity Agenda comments on her press tour.

Hours later Rotten Tomatoes removed the ability for viewers to say they were not interested in seeing the movie ...

The only option was to vote for seeing it. 

Rotten Tomatoes did this across the board for all their movies.

Did Disney have a hand in this to protect the only Marvel movie to sink so low in viewers wanting to see it?

Remember Paul Yanover?

Prior to becoming the 1st president 
of Fandango,

Mr. Yanover served

FOR 12 YEARS

as Executive Vice President

 and managing director of Disney Online.

Was the change at Rotten Tomatoes

RANDOM CHANCE?

What do you think?

MARVEL? THIS IS HOW IT'S DONE

Are you tired of all the media bickering about the upcoming CAPTAIN MARVEL?

Give yourself a smile or two and

watch how the trailer 

should have been done:

YIPPEE KREE YAY!

WHAT DID YOU THINK?

ALONE IN THE LIGHT

 

 "We're born alone, 

we live alone, 

we die alone. 

Only through 

our love and friendship 

can we create the illusion 

for the moment that we're not alone."

- Orson Welles

from Perchance to Nightmare.

"I sometimes think loneliness kills more people 

than cancer."

- A Simple Favor

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. 

You discover that your longings 

are universal longings, 

that you're not lonely and isolated 

from anyone. 

You belong.” 

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

It is said that no person is an island unto themselves. That is not true.  

We are all islands unto ourselves.

Though we swim in a sea of humanity, we are isolated one from another. 

No one can truly know what thoughts churn in the skull of another.

Even if we speak the truest words we know, are we heard?   

There are filters of perception over the ears of everyone we meet ... even those who know us best.

Yet, we are a tribal species.  

We thrive through healthy relationships; 

shrivel without them.

Authenticity is the prime ingredient for healthy connecting to another.  

Social Media makes it too easy to edit, filter, pander to gossip, photo-shop the realness from our image.

And to make it all about ourselves.

If we want to be heard, we must first listen.  

To truly listen, we must care about the person in front of us.

We must give that time, that energy 

only to those who respect 

and cherish it back.

In being seen and loved for who they are, how they think, and how they feel, 

they learn it is okay to be who they are.  

And in reflecting that back to us, we learn the same thing.

I hope you have or had such a friend.

Tell me what you think 

of friendship.

We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/orson_welles_142014?src=t_alone

We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/orson_welles_142014?src=t_alone

FEBRUARY IWSG & WEP Entry Time

http://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com

FOR MINE:

 https://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/2019/02/first-28-iwsg-wep-post.html

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, EVERYONE!

EMPTY ROOMS IN EMPTY PEOPLE

“Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow”

 - T.S. Elliot, The Hollow Men

Empty rooms in empty buildings range from Congressional buildings to churches.

Empty people with empty rooms within total even more:

senators who pass more gas than useful legislation; vain professors of philosophy; burned out mothers whose children run wild like weeds.

Derek Price, who was a British physicist, historian of science, and information scientist, discovered something about his peers in academia.

He noticed that there were always a handful of people who dominated the publications within a subject.

Price found out the following (now called Price’s law):

 50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work.

In other words:

Only a handful of people are responsible for the majority of the value creation. 

 Academics and intellectual bloggers love to dissect the world from their leather desk chairs, drinking their bottled water.

They love to explain how their perceived world works.

 But we have to live in the real world.

We don’t have the time to study all the 1419 mental models that exist.

We still have to put on our clothes every morning and work, so we can pay the bills.

But on the minefield that is life, it would benefit us to think and walk smarter ...

and if we find empty rooms within ourselves, to fill them with things and thoughts that matter.

If you’re feeling empty, you’re not alone. Many of us feel empty in different ways.

 For instance, you might feel empty because something is missing in your life,

 Or the emptiness might stem from slowly abandoning ourselves,

 not listening to our own hopes and desires.

You might abandon yourself unintentionally or unknowingly because you’re striving for perfection or others’ approval.

WHAT TO DO?

DENIAL IS NOT JUST A RIVER IN EGYPT

 Don’t beat yourself up for feeling this way. Don’t try to dismiss or change your feelings.

Whatever has happened to hollow you out has happened. A new normal has been established.

Learning to live with it will take time.




DO NOT BE A STRANGER TO YOURSELF

  Instead of trying to fill the void with drugs, alcohol, TV, computer games or anything else, look within and spend time with yourself,

 Carve out time to explore your own desires, fears, hopes and dreams. This helps you create more meaning in your daily life and your future.




BE YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND

 It’s important to be self-compassionate.

Whether you are experiencing difficult relationships, losses or feeling a lack of purpose or meaning,

you are worthy of living a fulfilling and meaningful life.

Give yourself permission to find a path to it.

 
LOOK UP - CONNECT TO ANOTHER HUMAN BEING


Walk into a lunch room, down a street -- sit and observe in a mall.

Everyone is looking down into their cell phone's screens. 

But our spirits are filled when we look into another's eyes and see we matter to them.

No wonder then that our cell phone generation feels so hollow.

We have succeeded in amassing more and more things, but we have less and less joy, less and less empathy.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

And now, for a little laughter: 

THE NEW THOUGHT POLICE

There are times when I feel 

as if I've stumbled into 

an episode of BLACK MIRROR.

I watch the governor of Virginia say his new proposed legislation will allow 

a baby to be fully delivered, and then the mother and doctor can discuss ending the child's life!

All the while the two women beside him nod sagely in agreement. 

Once out of the mother's body, the child has become this nation's newest citizen and

 has the legal right to be protected against silly nuisances like ... murder.

 I have become belatedly cognizant of 

Sensitivity Readers.

Welcome to the 21st century and 

"sensitivity readers,"

 people hired by writers and publishers, 

especially of young-adult titles,

 to vet manuscripts to make sure things are, ah,

 politically correct, "authentic," and, especially,

 inoffensive.

Is there any sane reason why a small group of experts 

should be able to claim that it alone can validate a manuscript 

as authentic and real for potential protesters who will claim that 

this or that book must be pulled from shelves, heavily rewritten, or just not published at all?

How many Sensitivity Readers will a book have to go through?

A black critic won't know what a Native American critic might find offensive 

or a Latino critic 

or an Asian critic 

or a Polish critic 

or a Russian critic 

or a Samoan critic.

You get the point

 Take Laura Moriarity.

Her book, American Heart, takes place in a dystopian America 

where Muslims are rounded up and sent to detainment camps.

The narrator is a white girl and even though the publisher and Moriarity worked with sensitivity readers 

and the book received a coveted and rare starred review from Kirkus, 

an intense, immediate online uproar about the book's basic premise erupted. 

The original review, written by a Muslim woman, called it "suspenseful, thought-provoking and touching." 

An online mob, which presumably had not yet read the unpublished book, 

saw it differently, as an intolerable "white savior narrative" and worse.

 Kirkus took down the review and replaced it with a contrite statement from its editor in chief, Claiborne Smith, 

who noted that the review, which was written by a Muslim woman, was being re-evaluated. 

When the revised version was posted, 

it was more critical, 

and had been stripped of its star.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0525707794

 Take Amélie Wen Zhao’s Blood Heir

There was a nasty, vicious Twitter "Pile-On" for this poor author.

Her fantasy series, a loose retelling of Anastasia  

with a diverse cast of characters and a hefty dose of blood magic, 

sold at auction in a high six-figure deal with Delacorte. 

A series of tweets, 

without accompanying evidence, 

 accused the author of 

alleged screenshotting-with-intent

of authors who disliked her book.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38205707-blood-heir

A smattering of one-star reviews 

cropped up on Miss Zhao’s page.

Miss Zhao put a slave auction scene in her book,  

in which a black character was killed.

Then, the poor woman was called racist.

.

On January 30th Miss Zhao 

 called for her own book to be canceled.

We now live in 

the Tyranny of the Touchy,

where accusation alone

is enough to convict.

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HM8ZS5Q

In my own book set in 1946 New Orleans, I described the deplorable attitude of many whites towards blacks.

Yet, I also included Orson Welles impassioned advocating for equal rights for blacks 

when it was very unpopular to do so.

I so wish he had finished his film, "The Story of Jazz."  

He'd signed contracts from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. 

Armstrong was cast as himself, Ellington was to have supervised the score.

But Mr. Welles, the genius that he was, was barely able to create in his own time, 

much less have been allowed to create in ours ...  

where Mel Brooks classic movies would be still-born before even reaching the screen.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE TIMES IN WHICH WE LIVE?

THE BEST WAY

To get People NOT to LISTEN

Is to talk about YOURSELF

1.) People want to hear about something that will help THEM not you.

Write a post on how to connect to a larger segment of the internet and readers will flock to your blog.

Write a novel that speaks to THEIR dreams, hurts, insecurities, and yearnings  ... and people will buy your book ... if they hear of it.

Your horn will sound louder when someone else toots it than when you do!

2.) INSTAGRAM

People aren't on Instagram to find books but to connect to like-minded, fun people.

3.) FACEBOOK

2007 -- oh, those were the days! 

You posted something to your personal page or your Fan/Author page, 

and everyone who was your Friend or Follower saw it. 

Since then, however, Facebook has recognized the error of allowing us to speak to our friends for free, 

and now, of my Fans, only 3-10% see any given post on the Author page 

that they have chosen to follow for the express purpose of reading my posts. 

 If I pay $20, I could bump that number up to 30%. 

I would have better luck randomly

 mailing postcards to strangers!

4.) PUSHING

SOCIAL MEDIA pushes ...

And NO ONE LIKES TO BE PUSHED into liking a movie, liking a candidate, or BUYING A BOOK.

5.) PULLING

 I want a book to tug me into wanting to read it.

Remember what I said of others sounding louder than you tooting your own horn?  

If I see an evocative cover and read a fascinating hook, I am pulled to read that book.

6.) FISHING

What if, as you fished, dozens of fish leapt out of the lake and kept slapping you in the face?

That's what it feels like to me when I go to Tweetdeck ... 

dozens of authors leaping out at me to

shill their books like barkers in front of a carnival show.

How about you?

WHAT TO DO?

1.) CHILL AND BEGIN TO WRITE YOUR NEXT BOOK

I just started on my next book: 

WITHOUT MERCY OR NAME

It is focusing me on the one thing I can control:

Writing the best, most entertaining book I can.

2.) BE KIND TO YOUR FELLOW BLOGGERS WITHOUT REGARD TO WHETHER THEY CAN HELP YOU OR NOT.

People who are smart enough to write a book are smart enough to see when you try to leverage them.

Besides, none of us have enough true friends, right?

3.) REMEMBER FEW FAMOUS WRITERS KNOW WHAT MADE THEM BESTSELLERS.

And the few I read who said they did were wrong about why I liked them!  :-)

4.) HAVE FUN in your writing.

It will color the tone of your work and splash over into the minds of your readers.

OH, AND BUY MY BOOK!

JUST KIDDING!

But I won't whine if you do,

and I might if you don't!