Monthly Archives: April 2013

Boss: A Show Designed to Make You Hate Politics

Politics, Television, , , , ,

I’ve recently been watching the first season of the television show Boss, which stars Kelsey Grammer, the guy who used to play Frasier. The show is one of those paid television episodic soap operas that involves Grammer as a guy named Tom Kane, who happens to be the mayor of Chicago. As you would expect, a show about Chicago’s inner government is going to be one about the Democratic Party’s control of the city, and as might also be expected, it’s also about the serious corruption of Chicago itself.

Now, I could go on a huge bent about politics and how I suspect the show might actually be written by Republicans who hate Chicago and Chicago-style politics, but I’m suspecting that’s not the case. But rather that it’s designed by people who just hate politics and love to throw mud all over the place and laugh at how well it sticks to everything.

A quick run down of the premise: Tom Kane is dying of some degenerative disease, so he has to keep it a secret from practically everyone. At the same time, as the Mayor of Chicago, he’s probably the most corrupt individual to run a city since, well, honestly I don’t know someone as corrupt as this guy in the whole of history. Caligula comes to mind, but even Caligula seems like a nice guy compared to Tom Kane. As we quickly find out, Kane screws over his closest allies, his enemies, his wife, his daughter, a nurse caring for his father in law, union members, the city of Chicago, cities near Chicago, his own senior adviser, his own senior propagandist, and…well, you probably get the idea that there’s not a person Kane wouldn’t screw over if you gave him enough time.

In a show like this, you’re bound to find some characters to care about to juxtapose against the evil Tom Kane, but honestly, there’s not a single one. His department head is probably the closest to someone you’d like or respect, but at the same time this guy has no problem hiring people to beat up other people, or just kill them. And this is literally one of the good guys. Kane’s female assistant (I guess she’s a deputy mayor, although I suspect “sex object” is part of her job description as well) is a beautiful blond woman who has zero problem sleeping with Kane’s new project, a guy running for governor under Kane’s umbrella. I guess we’re supposed to feel some compassion for her as she screws the governor candidate over and over again, even though the guy is married and screwing pretty much anything that moves. I guess she’s the jilted woman on the show?

Speaking of the blond woman and the governor candidate: Look, I’m not a prude or anything. I like a good sex scene here and there, but my god, this show has so much sex going on that at one point I felt I had to pause the playback and seek out a priest to confess. And I’m not even religious. Look, I understand the girl is attractive and foolishly chose “will appear nude” in her contract, but my god, I’ve seen her have sex more times in one season than I honestly think I’ve had my entire life. And I had a good run. I almost fear whenever the two actors end up in the same room together because panties are going to slide off, his shirt’s going to go flying off, and we’ll have porn for the next five minutes.

Anyway, as I was saying, I couldn’t find myself caring about a single character on the show. They’re all a bunch of scumbags that I’d vote out of office the first moment I got a chance. And that’s every politician on the show. It doesn’t matter if they’re with Kane or against him. There’s not a single one that doesn’t look like he or she came from the same crappy cloth as Kane did. They’re all on the take, taking what’s on the take, or just evil, bad people.

You might say it gives a watcher the sense that anyone in politics is a crappy person and not worth respecting.

Part of me wants to say I dislike the show, but it’s got that certain quality that comes to people who are transfixed by an out of control train wreck. You can’t stop watching, even though you’re convinced you’re completely wasting your time and energy.

So, I finished the first season and am apprehensive about season two. There’s only so much corruption and sex I can take in an hour.

At wit’s end with writing

Books, Business, Technology, Writing, , , , , , , , ,

I honestly don’t know what to do. I can’t seem to get anyone interested in my writing. It’s not because it’s not good enough; it’s mainly because it’s not famous enough, and it’s never going to be “famous” enough because no one reads it.

I guess what gets on my nerves is that I tend to support all of my friends and colleagues on their social networking sites, but rarely is that ever reciprocated. I’ll give a thumbs up to someone’s ridiculous cat picture or to someone’s latest “look how cute my baby is” photo. But rarely does that get returned.

I have about one friend on my social networking sites who I am very thankful for because she’s always supporting me with my writing. Probably more than she should ever have to. But she’s a rarity. I sometimes wish there was more I could do to support her, but I try.

Recently, I published probably the most important book of my career. To give it the credit it’s due, I need to hype the hell out of it because the publishing world is not the same place it was a decade ago. Publishers don’t support you. Writers are pretty much on their own, and unless they were Stephen King-level of famous a decade ago, they’re pretty much stuck with trying to make an impact in a world that has the attention span of a five year old.

So, I have been trying everything possible to get people interested in this book. For the first time ever, I created a book trailer and put it on Amazon and Youtube. It’s really funny and entertaining. The people who have seen it, all ten of them, love it. If you start to get my drift, I now can’t get people to watch a Youtube of a promo for a book that they aren’t interested in reading either. Basically, a writer trying to get traction today is essentially screwed.

The tragic part of trying to make it has a lot to do with the mechanisms that drive the whole industry now. In order to advertise my book anywhere, you generally have to have at least 4 to 5 reviews that are 4 stars or above (averaged). So, if you don’t have people who already read your book and reviewed it, you can’t get advertising for it so that people can actually read it and review it. And if by some chance you got those first five reviews and then could pay for some advertising, you then have to get dozens of reviews before you can actually start hitting a breaking point of where people will ever even notice that you’ve written a book. If you’re unknown, kind of like I am, then you’d probably get better results standing on the corner and throwing copies of your books at passing cars, hoping to hit one, blinding the driver so that he has to stop after running into a flagpole.

Anyway, here’s a last look at the video I created for this campaign.

 

Novella and poetry collection available for free on Amazon all this week

Books, Writing, , , , , ,

My novella, All Roads Lead to Pine Bush, the story of a travel writer who discovers all of his articles keep leading him to the same place, is available for free on Amazon for the next five days.  You can get it here.

My poetry collection, License to Quill, is also available for free for the next five days on Amazon.  The collection, which includes the epic poem License to Quill, is written in the mind of a young teenage runaway who escapes an abusive childhood, only to end up on the mean streets of downtown San Francisco.  You can get it here.  It is also available in paperback as well, but obviously not for free.

So, please go to Amazon to get free copies of these for your e-reader. All I ask is that if you like them, please review them. It’s the only way people are going to know they exist.