Hooray! Halle Berry is NOT in John Wick 4

So maybe I'm not done with the John Wick franchise after all. And maybe I'm late with this news, but I just found out that Halle Berry is NOT reprising her role in the 4th installment of the John Wick franchise. She should not have been in the 3rd installment. 

I have said I would have had no problem with Halle Berry performing the role of a strong female character in the franchise. Just not a female version of John Wick.

I should never believe news through the grapevine. As that was what I was going by when I thought she was going to be returning. So, okay. I guess I have a movie to look forward to after all. 

Hooray.

Done With John Wick - Thanks to Halle Berry

 I had posted after watching John Wick 3 that the inclusion of Halle Berry almost ruined the franchise for me. Nothing personal against Halle Berry. If they had found a good role for her, no problem. And I would agree with a strong female character for her, as stories and real history are filled with strong female characters and female heroes.

But no. At Berry's insistence, no doubt, they gave her the role of a "female" John Wick. Meaning there she goes beating up ten, twenty male fighters all at once. So, I cannot buy into that. And I am NOT a misogynist or a chauvinist. Quite the contrary.

Like I said, I believe in strong female characters. But my criticism is that a woman, or anyone for that matter, doesn't have to prove their strength by beating people up. Or by killing them by the dozens. I mean, aren't we seeing in real life enough psychos out there killing people? The headlines are filled with stories like that. Are we supposed to believe these mass murderers are strong characters?

I say it's bullshit. Look. The story had an ex-assassin return to avenge the wrong done to him in his own way. But the LEGEND of the John Wick character (the Boogey-Man) as was his nickname to the Russians, was that he was a one-of-a-kind type of assassin.

Which is why the inclusion of Halle Berry as the female John Wick ruined it for me. Now, John Wick is no longer a one-of-a-kind assassin. Now we have a 5' 3", 110 lbs. woman who is 50+ years old as his fighting style equal. That means there's nothing special about John Wick anymore. 

Now, it's like there's nothing to see here, folks. Now, you can just round up anyone, any age, any gender, any size, and you can have another John Wick.

I was willing to let it go, if the one scene Halle Berry was in was the ONLY scene she would be in. But I have learned that is not the case. I have learned that she will indeed be back in John Wick 4, and no doubt, the equal or dare I say, the superior to our beloved hero, John Wick.

So screw this John Wick franchise. I have gone on record as to insisting that beating people up and/or killing people by the dozens is not how you prove to be a strong character. Is this what we are teaching our kids? Is this what we are teaching our sons and now our daughters?

Being a public school teacher as I have been for thirty years, I have seen more fights between teenagers than anyone should ever have to witness. And yes, far more fights than I had seen than when I myself was a teenager. IT'S UGLY. Is anyone out there listening? 

And most of these fights I've seen are between GIRLS. Sure some guys will duke it out, but it's over in a minute or two. When girls fight, they are scratching and clawing with their nails, pulling out handfuls of hair, ripping at clothes, poking, gouging, anything and everything!

IT'S UGLY. It's not the choreographed dance-like moves, that the fighting sequences in the movies portray. NOTHING like that. I never want to see another girl fight the rest of my life.

Nor do I want to see a 56 year-old Halle Berry beat up and kill dozens of grown men twice her size, and then try to believe it can really happen. Because it can't. I will not see any more John Wick movies. Halle Berry's inclusion in the franchise didn't almost ruin it, it ruined it.

Rewrite of Books and Songs

 I have spent most of my time revising, re-singing, re-recording, and reposting my songs that I haven't had a lot of time to post on the Blog about my books. It's fun, though. Both are fun. That is, writing books is fun and writing music.

The funny thing is, I started writing music as a teenager so many years ago. I really only started writing books about ten years ago. So that makes sense that I've written 145 songs and five books.

Actually, I started writing my first book when I was about 8. That is I was eight years old. It was a child's effort of course, and I never finished it. But in college I actually started to write and illustrate a graphic novel.  You know....like a comic book. I almost finished it too. I got three or four "issues" done, (or was it two or three) I can't remember. That is I did the art, the writing, and everything.

But in the real comics worlds a comic book is a collaborative effort. Meaning there's a writer who writes the story. Then there are THREE artists who illustrate the story, (the penciller who creates the storyboard, then the inker who inks it, and then the colorist who, you guessed it, colors it.)

Of course there is the editor, the editor-in-chief, and the letterer who puts in the word balloons and such, and probably a lot of others also.

There are some artists who have done it all alone like Jim Lee and Frank Miller and others who excelled at doing that. They are legends who took over for the prior legends....those being Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Gene Colon, John Romita, Neil Adams, John Buscema, Jim Steranko, Jim Starlin, and the list goes on.

So, my graphic novel effort took a big pause when I got married. 

But way before that, I had started writing songs on the piano. I had a piano in my house and I had taken piano lessons, so I knew how to play it. And soon enough, I started writing some very good songs. I had written a dozen songs or so in those early years. I did not have the means to record them so I had to remember them in my mind over the years. But remember them, I did.

And then the technology caught up to me. I had become an art teacher, and I was married with a son, and there was a huge "Yamaha" store not far from my house. I dropped in one day and bought one of those Yamaha portable keyboards and bingo, the music flowed. 

I wrote the equivalent of four albums in the space of a couple months. (Yes, those albums are indeed Volumes 1, 2, 3, and 4.) As I said, I had already written a dozen songs for Volume 1, but I wrote a few more and put a total of 15 songs on Volume 1. Then I wrote enough songs for three more albums.

Then I bought another Yamaha portable keyboard, an even better one, and over the next few months I wrote the music for Volumes 5 through 13. After some years of just letting them sit on cassette tapes, and being unable to find a singer to sing them, I decided to sing them myself. 

Finally I wrote the songs for Volume 14 and all volumes are on SoundCloud now and can be accessed on the right margin of this blog. I think the songs are great, (if not the singing.) But I sing in tune and in key. So it works. And I am content. I am back to the books now. I will continue to revise Killer of Killers, Killer Eyes, The Vase, John Dunn, and Second Chance until new publishers step up. 

I'll keep you posted. Just don't hold your breath on those. I won't.

Revisions Continue

 Well, I talked about revising. As in revising many of the 145 songs I've written. (Contained in the 14 albums I've "dropped" at this time.) This revising includes re-singing many of them as well. And of course, the result is better songs.  

But at the same time, I've been revising my novels. I have the rights to all of them now, and I have focused on improving them. It makes sense. I'm older now, and more experienced now. I have a better understanding of how to write a novel.

So after doing so, I have resubmitted John Dunn, The Vase, and Second Chance for publication with different publishers. Each book is submitted to a different publisher, that is. (As well as different publishers than the original publishers.) It will be a long wait, but the time goes by whether you submit or not. I had revised each of those three books countless times over the past couple years, so it goes without saying they are all vastly improved at this point.

As for Killer of Killers and Killer Eyes? When I got the rights back I went right to work on revising them too. I found a publisher in the UK who specializes in the genre of Crime Fiction and Thrillers. Just right for my Martial Arts Thrillers. This publisher also noted that in his view a thriller novel should be around 72,000 words or so. So I promptly revised Killer of Killers, which stood at 88,000 words, down to 72,000 words. That's 16,000 words I cut out. And you know what? It's a lot better for doing that.

As for Killer Eyes? It was a novel with 96,000 words. And I'm just now finishing my first pass through it and I've already cut out 12,000 words. So, it's at 84,000 words now, but I'm not finished. I will give it another pass and then another, and if need be another until I'm in the 72,000 range. Can't wait. Because then, I'll submit that one too.

As for my music? I'm not quite done revising my songs yet. I still have to redo the percussion on Looking Back and maybe re-sing parts of Volume 12 and 13. Maybe I'll have time over Christmas break. The good news is I'm pretty much done revising and re-singing Volumes 1 - 11, and 14 too at this point. And those songs are all sounding great right now, even with my less-than-ideal singing voice. But I'm cool with that. Hope you are too. Hope you have time to give some of them a listen. 

Resinging Songs

Since I'm not a singer, (but I sing my songs anyway,) I have found that treating my songs the same way I treat my manuscripts, (novels) is the best way to go. That means, yes, I am revising them.  

The good thing about Soundcloud is that you can replace any file without interrupting the song's playlist or any of the stats each song or playlist has compiled. (For me, a "playlist" is the same thing as an album.) But it's not the same thing to Soundcloud. Albums to Soundcloud are real albums produced by a real recording label and released or "dropped" by those same producers.

I'm just a loner doing everything myself. But so what, I'm getting it done. Surely not with the same production values as a real recording studio, but hey, I'm not a real singer and as far as I'm concerned, the music is sounding great anyway.

Well, they're my songs, so they better sound great. And they do. I actually have 45 followers now. I know it's a far cry from 45,000 followers. In case you don't know, a "follower" is someone who has heard a song or two and decided he or she likes it enough to follow the artist to hear more of his or her songs later. And yes, some people are actually "liking" some of my songs.

One of the good things about Soundcloud is that it compiles the number of times each song has been played by someone other than me. Some of my songs are in the triple digits now. I don't know how anyone knows about my songs. I suppose people surf through the Soundcloud "line up" and choose songs at random in the genre of the music they prefer. And they can click on the heart icon which means they like the song. Some people are doing that too, even people who are not followers.

Sure, artists want people to like his or her works, and that goes for any kind of art. Whether it's fine art like drawings, paintings, or sculpture, or a performing art like music, it doesn't matter. But the bottom line is that I like my music, and that's good enough for me. 

So if anyone who's reading this happens to listen to a song or two of mine, I can only hope you will like it too. Just click any of the "album" covers in the right margin of the blog. Just be forewarned. I won't sound like Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin. But I will sound like me.

Blacklist - Meh

So it's over just like that. Marvin Gerard is dead, apparently by suicide. It was appropriate, but, of course, the audience did not see it. The audience was only privy to hearing a gunshot from the car in which Gerard was sitting. And that's it for this season.

Next season promises a brand new villain. A Chinese assassin, who was tipped off (by Gerard) who it was that put him behind bars. Was it Red? According to Marvin Gerard it was. Is it true? We don't know. We had never seen this guy before. But I had said that I wanted new villains, not just the same old premise of former friends turned enemies. So I suppose they are giving me what I asked for. Right? We'll see.

I still want to see storylines that include the Skinners. It was a great idea, but seemingly forgotten. Maybe they can meld the two storylines. That's what I would do. Again. We'll see.

This is So Old

So it's not Mr. Kaplan. But once again, the writers of The Blacklist can't think of any new or original storylines, but to make another one of Red Reddington's closest allies into a hated enemy. 

So it seems the Mr. Kaplan angle was a hoax, as I hoped, but that didn't make it any better. Instead, it's his oldest friend and attorney, Marvin, who had betrayed him. And he's the one who had Lizzy killed, and he's the one who was framing Harold. I was so disappointed because I have been criticizing this show for a long time, years even, that I was so tired of the same old storyline of Red's closest friends betraying him and becoming his enemies. From his closest friend, (and who better be his daughter,) Lizzy to his other close friends, and now it's Marvin.

Why can't they create a new foe? A real foe? Or at least stop rehashing the same storyline over and over again. Will they ever get back to that Skinner story? I was thinking they had a good concept there. But it was a one and done deal. At least so far. Once this Marvin story is over, I would very much like to see the Skinner story resumed. I hope they won't make me wait until next season. But they probably will.