Beauty and the Beastmaster

This is a piece I wrote a few years back for Geek Speak Magazine. A very cool site, if I may say so. Check them out. I left in the editor’s notations in the piece and their ending tagline. The photos in the post are from a quick image search and mostly IMDB.



A few years back my comic collaborator Mark Gonyea and I exhibited at Wizard World Chicago. The Con was going well. The only black mark on the event was the stranglehold Coke held on the venue and our hotel’s vending machines. (I’m a Mountain Dew guy, by nature, and was more than willing to endure a four-mile round trip walk to the nearest retail temple that stocked my divine Ambrosia.) We arrived early on the final day of the show to walk amongst the exhibitors and make last minute purchase decisions. As it was early, I hopped in line to buy a coffee. I noted with fatigue-blunted senses a tall, blonde man in front of me in line. There was nothing outstanding about him, save instantly my brain told me I knew him. I asked my brain how it made this leap without seeing the man’s face. It replied it was working on it and hinted the coffee might help its efforts. The line advanced with mechanical precision and soon the tall man faced the coffee hawker.

“May I get two cups of coffee, please?” he asked in a pleasant tone.

His voice was familiar, too. It was too soon in the day for mysteries, so before my brain could cross-reference his voice I leaned over with the subtlety of a colonoscopy and looked him in the face.

Holy Crap! It’s Marc Singer!

Holy Crap! It’s still Marc Singer!

He looked at me, smiled, and reached for the first of the two cups of his order. Think fast!

“Mr. Singer, I have enjoyed your work for a long time. May I please buy your coffee?” I blurted.

Marc looked surprised for a moment before replying, “Really? Thanks!” [Marc Singer is the star of cult 1982 sword-and-sorcery epic The Beastmaster and its sequels, and he also starred as Mike Donovan in the original V - Ed.]


Before I could think of another point of banter, Marc started making small talk at a furious pace. He invited Mark and I back to his table in the autograph area to continue our chat and grant us a couple of free autographs to say thanks for the coffee. When we approached our destination he called down the line of tables to an attractive woman who was setting up for the day.

“Here’s your coffee, Erin.”

Neat! It’s Erin Gray!

Neat! It’s still Erin Gray!

 [Erin Gray starred as Colonel Deering in the 1979-81 TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. - Ed.]
She casually walked over and took her coffee with a smile to us all.

“Erin,” said Marc. “These are my friends. Take care of them.”
She motioned for Mark and I to follow her back to her table, which we did like puppy dogs. She asked which photos we would like. We picked one out each and she signed them.

“That’ll be $20,” Erin said without an ounce of humor.

Somehow Marc’s words translated in Erin’s mind to, “Hot dog, my first sale of the day! I eat tonight!” What could we do? Without missing a beat we reached into our pockets, handed her our money -- that was $20 each, by the way -- and then thanked her with a smile for taking it. All the while she sipped on her hot, fresh, free coffee.

Mark and I walked back to Marc’s table and finished our conversation. It was very enjoyable. In fact, we chatted so long about comics, movies, art, writing, raising kids, and pop culture that we were twenty minutes late getting back to our table after the doors opened! We thanked Marc for his time and he did likewise to us. I don’t begrudge Erin Gray... much. She did take me by surprise, though. All I’ll say is that of the two autographs birthed by that encounter, only one hangs on my wall.

Beastmaster 1 Erin Gray 0

Sam Girdich is a writer of kick-ass comic books. Visit him, and artist Mark Gonyea, at their website StrongArmLabs.com.

Kickstarter Update

Hello everyone! Kickstarter update. It is 2/3’s over, 1/3 funded, and the final ten days are here. I believe in the quality and uniqueness of the work Mark and I put together so I am asking anyone wo has been on the fence or waiting until last the few days (which I know there are a few!) to pull the trigger and pledge or share our link. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1339844610/strongarm-labs-scenes

To all those we have heard from and have shown their support I give a hearty THANK YOU. You’re part of the reason we keep creating.

Kickstarter project is GO!

 

We have an awesome Kickstarter project launched and I swallowed a bug and here’s the link below to see for yourself…

KICKSTARTER! HUZZAH!

 

SIX MONTHS OF INSURANCE SALES HELL

Chapter One

-THE END-

January 1997 ushered in a horrendously bad job decision. I had been looking to leave the mall retail management rut when a “friend” (notice the quotations marks) informed me that selling accident and life insurance was good money. Very good money, in fact, and it just so happened the company he worked for was hiring new sales reps. It had to be better than working mall hours and dealing with shoplifters, right? I applied, was hired, trained, and then set loose with a group of other noob sales reps to earn the money I kept hearing about.

And we lived happily ever after.

July 1997 rode into town with little money (good, bad or otherwise) to show after months of cold calls, literally knocking on doors, and using every company sanctioned half-truth sales pitch I could convince myself was not damning my eternal soul. My then fiancé/now wife and I were broke, and in the grip of a deep malaise. I was 30lbs. overweight, driving 300+ miles a week with no mileage or gas allotment. Every fourth week or so our team went out of town to work in different areas of Eastern New York. These trips, I was repeatedly told, generated more sales and more income because sales agents working away from the distractions of home could concentrate on making calls and selling. I was told this by several people. With a straight face. It was about this time I started noticing the worried looks on several of my co-worker’s faces when their own rent or mortgage was due.

I had reached my limit by then. I informed my manager I was leaving. Sales obviously wasn’t for me. He implored me to give it just one more month. If I still wanted to leave, he would not try to stop me. He would spend more time with me and help me turn my job and finances around. He asked if that sounded reasonable. Not wanting to feel I quit without a final try, I agreed. Perhaps I should have remembered my last out of town sales trip. I had $20 with which to feed myself for five days. I ate once a day at a grocery store salad bar, bought a soda every other day, and at the end of five days had fifty-six cents left to splurge on the motel’s Indian Jones pinball machine. The key was not pouring dressing on the salad before it was weighted at check out. Yeah. Perhaps I should have remembered that. At least I lost some weight.

(I later learned agents received a cash bonus for recruiting new people. I also discovered managers received a bonus for having a certain number of agents in the field. It had never occurred to me that a supervisor might use sales techniques on their own people. Fool me once, as the saying goes.)

So, two weeks later I am traveling to Long Island. It was a warm week, drunk with sun and blue sky. The drive down was quite enjoyable. The directions were clear and I found navigating through the city toward Mastic Beach was easy. Maybe this was the turning point I had been hoping for? I checked into the hotel finding most of my co-workers already there. They seemed agitated. I poked around and found the source was that the hotel didn’t provide free local phone calls. We would have to pay (1997 remember) for the 50-60 calls necessary to book sales appointments. That worked out to almost $30 worth of calls per day. Okay, maybe this week was going to be like all the others. Freeing a sigh of annoyance, I sought out my room and the hotel’s cable. My wife and I had canceled ours to save money a few months earlier. A couple episodes of classic Star Trek later our group got a call at the front desk from a nineteen-year-old agent. A thief stole his wallet when he stopped in Lake George while traveling down. That sucked. We told him just go home. He said it was too late for that because he wasn’t calling us from Lake George, but the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge. Um, what? He spent the last of his pocket money on phone cards to call us. He had no means of paying the bridge toll or buying more gas. He was stuck. Being the team players we were taught to be, we called our district manager who hadn’t arrived yet.

What the hell do you want me to do? He’s on his own, was the response.

Being the team players they were taught to be, the rest of the reps agreed that was an excellent plan of action. I was livid. When the agent called back some ten minutes later, I told him I was on my way. He asked if I could hurry because people kept pointing at him. One woman threw a piece of paper at him as she walked by. He was panicked enough that he wasn’t even sure of the motel’s name or how he got there. I jumped in my car and left.

The next 115 minutes are hard to describe. You see, the only directions he could offer me were, “I’m near NYC, I can see the GW Bridge to my left, and I may be in New Jersey.” I was only twenty-six myself. This was my first time in The City, as well. What I did have was a good idea of what the lights on the bridge looked like, as it was early evening, and what kind of car he drove. I quizzed him on the size, perspective, direction, and height of the lights compared to him. I got lost in Fort Lee for about thirty-minutes. Somehow ended up almost in in Hackensack. Almost ran out of gas (of course), but eventually my gut told me to turn down a back street using the bridge as a marker. And there he was. To this day I am not sure how, but I found him based on that mental picture in my mind. He was locked inside his red “LOOK AT ME!” sports car next to a motel's outdoor pay phone. Whether the small parking lot held more cars than garbage was debatable. The smells were...interesting. I exited my car, handed him $20 through his driver's window to pay the tolls, ordered him to follow me, and returned to my car.

We rolled about twelve feet toward the roadway when the world suddenly turned into swirling Christmas lights as four unmarked police cars seemingly teleported in front of us.

What the police saw was a young, white male in a red “LOOK AT ME!” sports car place several calls from a known drug/prostitute haven, then sit an hour or two before another young, white male drove up and gave him money. I cannot stress how absolutely clear the officers made it that we should stay in our cars, or how bright their spotlights were. I turned my car off as fast as I could, turned on my interior light, and placed my wrists on top of my steering wheel in the most ‘I am not a threat’ manner I could muster. The nineteen-year-old, however, decided the wiser course of action was to NOT turn his car off, to YELL Everything is okay! at the police officers, and to EXIT his car.

That’s when the guns came out to play.

Mentally, I was fuzzy at this point. I was scared, confused, and raging angry. How did this happen?! I pulled off a solo rescue mission that never should have happened, played 'find the human needle' in an urban haystack (and won), and now I am watching an idiot ask to be shot. Worse yet, the idiot could get me shot. The whole scene brought the term “long moment” into my understanding. Something sank into the idiot’s understanding too, because he finally did what he was told to do.

Slowly the guns disappeared.

The police grilled us separately for over maybe thirty minutes, no doubt making sure our stories matched and didn’t change. (Not that I was thinking that clearly at the time.) I made damn well sure all the sales materials on my back seat were in the face of everyone I spoke with, along with my anger at the person I was trying to help. Once the officers were satisfied, they laughed at the whole affair. They admitted they were fairly sure we were not completing a drug deal when we didn’t try to, “…smash into their cars and drive away.”, though what exactly we were doing needing vetting. They even took us on a little tour of all the dents and scrapes on their cruisers from people trying to bolt. They then gave us directions to get us directly to the bridge and sent us on our way.

Just like that, it was over.

When we returned to the hotel, not a single person asked me how it went. The district manager, now snug in his room, never thanked me for retrieving his valued team member. That was the final straw. We were granted a mileage allowance(!) for this trip, so when I received my $100, I determined to put it to good use. I spent the next five days attending the morning sales meeting, lip syncing the Go Team! song and dance, and wishing everyone a great day as we left to hit the field. At night, we would all meet to share stories about how the day went, exchange sale tips, and plan for the next day. For most, this meant buying beer. What I somehow failed to share at our gatherings was the fact that every day I drove around aimlessly for about two hours before heading to a Cinema 10 three exits down the Long Island Expressway. Yup, every day for a week I did nothing but go to the movies. I did take three hours out of my busy movie schedule on Wednesday to try to sell. Surprisingly, I moved some policies. In fact, I out sold some of the guys who went out and actually tried. Never underestimate the power of not giving a damn. But, 96% of the time, I parked my tush like a lazy mule in the only theater I had ever been to that served Mt. Dew. It was great. On our final day, after the free pizza and wings promised us at the beginning of the week, I told my shocked and shaken district manager to sod off and thanks for all the heartfelt concern towards the young agent I collected. I was done. I drove home the next morning and told Kathy the good news.

Credit must be given when due. I learned a lot in the homes of strangers during those months. I saw boredom and awful loneliness. I saw deplorable poverty. I met individuals who planned for nothing, cared for nothing, and blamed the world at the end of the day when they had nothing. I stomached the discomfort of sitting tight-lipped across from a father of three (maybe ten years my senior) who loudly exclaimed he didn’t care what happened to his family after he died while they were in the same room. Explaining a financial product when all you want to do is wrap your hands around a dirty, puffy throat and squeeze until your palms touch is a feeling time finds difficult to erode. I tried helping families manage the financial hardships of death when I didn’t know how to pay my own bills. I saw one family torn apart by stress and another saved when I told them of a life insurance policy no one knew existed. One elderly gentleman living in a trailer I thought was abandoned told me how the State took away his infirmed wife of over fifty-years because he could no longer take care of her. I think of him whenever I smell kerosene. Then there was the woman who let her pet pygmy goats drop piles of tiny meadow muffins all over her living room floor. All. Over.     

All of these are stories I might one day tell. We’ll see. It was a glorious end to a decidedly inglorious career. Career choices, ain’t they a hoot.

Pretty sure I met this kid.

Goodbye AJ

An old friend recently posted a photo on FB that lead to a sad discovery. Meet AJ Confessore, aka C.C. Banana. I met AJ a number of years back when Mark and I first attended the NY Comic Con. Here was this friendly, odd fellow who used humor and an ever changing banana costume to score interviews with well-known artists, writers, actors, and musicians. We became Con acquaintances. We’d exchange emails, see what shows we’d both be at, and make sure to take a minutes to say hi and catch up. Over the years as I was able to attend fewer and fewer Cons we fell out of touch. I hadn’t thought about AJ for some time until I saw the photo. It was from a 2011 interview series he did for Midtown Comic at the NY Comic Con.

Cool, I thought. Let me look AJ up and see what he’s been up to and drop him a line.
 
He committed suicide in 2012.

What the hell?
 
It seems there was a series of events in his life that he felt he could not overcome. The monstrosity of life, as he saw it, was too much. I’m not going into the details. I read people tried to help him, and for that I am grateful. I know stuff happens in life. I know not every story has a happy ending, but I did not expect this. Who does, right?

In my mind there was this person walking around the earth (AJ aka C.C.) doing his own thing, only to learn that was completely wrong. Normally my mind would craft some lesson, some example of the value of keeping in contact, the importance of learning warning signs, or, I don’t know, SOMETHING. I got nothing. I’m just stunned. I don’t know what to do with this. I don’t even know if I am supposed to do something with this. I just don’t know. I keep wondering about all the other people whose path I’ve crossed, but that feels like living in the past. Maybe the lesson is that not everything has a lesson. People make choices. You. Me. All of us. Is that the lesson? Remembering we have choices? Hmm… I’ll ponder that.

Goodbye, AJ. I liked you. You always had a smile, a hardy handshake, and a quick quip at the ready. I will miss you.

“But had the walls eyes to pluck out….”

 

Some of you are familiar with our story The Haunting House. Put simply, two men enter a purported haunted house only find out the hard and final way the reports are correct. Thematically I wrote it to try to spur the reader into thinking what it means about the nature of the universe and reality if a haunted house can exist. (Frightening stuff if you carry the logic out fully, but I’ll elaborate more on that in a different post.)

What very few are aware of is that this tale is a small part of a much larger, more serious and scary story I am working into a novel.

Enjoy this tiny sneak peak into the troubled background of The House. They set the tone for the novel.

PIECES OF WHAT THE HOUSE HAS SEEN

MR. & MRS. BRINKERHOFF

Robert Brinkerhoff was a socially awkward, nervous young man who enjoyed the quiet and predictable life of a banker. Ruth was a vivacious flapper from a small Westchester County town drawn to New York City during the Roaring Twenties. The unlikely pair met at a Petting Party that the timid professional was tricked into attending by coworkers. Robert was too shy to talk to any of the women present, which was exactly what caught Ruth’s eye. She found his discomfort charming. She walked straight up to him, said Hello, and stole his heart. They quickly fell in storybook love and spent the next few years in Manhattan before moving Upstate to start a family. They thought it was a stroke of luck to find such a large home at such a low cost, even for Depression Era prices. The real estate broker never mentioned any of the local legends and mysteries surrounding the house. They planned and prepped to spend the rest of theirs days in each other’s arms.

Three weeks later they were both dead.

 

The WARRENDER family

The Warrenders built the house in the mid 1850’s, but they weren’t the first to live on the land. The grounds had a long history, a fact Mrs. Warrender hated. Mr. Warrender in his typical patient manner explained the practicality of tearing down the large, pre-existing colonial and re-using it in the new construction. He also explained with much logic why the old barn should remain untouched. She listened but heard none of it. She clutched a life-long list of hatreds, miscarriages of justice, and perceived slights close to her heart like a rosary. She despised the older and unsophisticated Mr. Warrender. Much can be overlooked for security she told herself again and again during their lavish wedding ceremony some years earlier. She birthed three children who were all taught to call her mother when old enough to speak. The single light in her life was William Abbott, her husband’s handsome business partner. She loved him fiercely, though he never knew nor suspected. His Sundays visits, especially when Mrs. Abbott could not join them, made life tolerable. Then one day Mr. Warrender, Mr. Abbott, and group of local men went hunting for deer in the nearby woods. Mr. Abbott never returned. It was a terrible accident, all the men agreed. Mr. Abbott was careless and walked in front of Mr. Warrender’s rifle at the exact moment he fired. An accident? she thought late that night How? and more importantly Why him? She rolled the question over and over in her mind looking for an answer as her husband lay sobbing in his room next to her’s. A very small, very clever voice answered her. The next day she searched for a title in their library. She had argued against the books (Mr. Warrender insisted the children needed them) but the voice reminded her of a story that made her, silently and for the first time, thank her husband. The book was titled Hamlet. Mr. Warrender was found in the root cellar two months later. Mrs. Warrender dutifully wiped the tears from her children’s eyes at the funeral. The following years were the most peaceful of her life. Then one day the little voice came back. Go away she told it. I don’t need you anymore. It laughed in her ear. At night it crawled into bed with her and reminded her of the list. She ignored it and told herself it wasn’t real. And yet. Doors opened by themselves. Floors creaked. The servants whispered of a dark shape hiding in the library. The voice reminded her it of its good council. It then pointed out how much her two youngest, Charles and Edward, looked, acted, sounded, and even smelled like their father. Mrs. Warrender had to agree. Both were dead within six months. Only her eldest, George, whom she thought looked a bit like William, was left alive. She would make sure nothing happened to him. The year was 1860. 1861 came and her eldest died with the eldest and youngest of a nation torn apart. One day the servants woke to find the front door open and Mrs. Warrender gone. Her body was never found. In time the town folk came to agree poor Mrs. Warrender had succumbed to despair and a broken spirit.

In a way, they were right.

When Superman fought the KKK

Every now and again I stumble onto a person or fact I cannot believe I did not know before. It is always an awkward moment when the realization slaps the old brain. The sensation is equal parts indignant shock and little kid yelling, “AWESOME!” I was recently skipping through cable channels when I landed on the last minutes of a program on the American Hero Channel entitled How Superman Defeated the KKK.

“Excuse the hades out of me but what the what?!”

I watched its last seven minutes baffled by my complete lack of knowledge on the show’s subject. How could I NOT know the first widespread public attack on the KKK involved The Man of Steel? More importantly, how had the mere mortal with Courage of Steel behind Big Blue’s actions, Mr. Stetson Kennedy, escaped me? I asked around to gauge if I alone was unaware of this historical event. I was not. In fact, no one on the mental list I quickly made of peers who might know did. Time to fix that.

Using popular media to expose a problem and influence the general public is second nature in our Connected Age. Twitter that protest! Blog that injustice! Record and upload that cute kitten falling asleep! That’s today. In the 1940’s this was still a radically new idea reserved mostly for print, but a growing electric giant was poised to share that stage The 1940 US census, for example, estimated that 82% of all households had a radio. This was the heyday President Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats, the Kraft (yes, that Kraft) Music Hall variety show, The Jack Benny Program and a host of other shows featuring everything from live radio drama to soap operas on NBC, ABC, and CBS among others. The later got a taste of the power of its medium a few years prior with Orson Wells’ infamous War of the Worlds broadcast. It was also a time when Superman filled fifteen minutes a day in the lives of hundreds of thousands of children and adults thanks to the fine people at Kellogg’s.

Enter Stetson Kennedy. He was a celebrated writer and collector of southern folklore who by 1942 (age 25 I think) decided to apply his talent for observation and data collection to his interest in human rights and the continued discrimination against African Americans in the south. Here’s where he sets the bar for commitment. He decided on his own to infiltrate the then powerful KKK. For almost three years he attended meetings, rallies, and gained the trust of members of this very secretive group. Secrecy is a powerful tool and weapon. No one outside the organization knew if the local sheriff, doctor, or school teacher was a Clan member, and that created a parlaying fear for its victims. Whom could you trust? Whom could you turn to? Stetson made this secrecy his target. By 1946 he had cataloged names, practices, ritual origins, passwords, discarded paperwork and financial records, or anything else he could use to dispel the Clan’s mystique and shed light on their operations. He took the information and contacted several people who could use it, including the writers of the daily Superman radio drama. The result was a sixteen episode story arc called the Clan of the Fiery Cross. Adults listened and talked openly about the Clan as never before while children reduced them to a cheap comic book villain. The Clan protested the show and called for a boycott of Kellogg’s. Kellogg’s refused to pull their support. The KKK lost its national charter and never fully recovered. I am listening to it now and it is quite amazing.

Stetson’s life, or even this one segment in it, is far larger than the confines of a blog. I am so very tempted to add much more and fill in details like how he infiltrated them, stayed hidden, was eventually forced to flee to live a short time in France where he met Jean-Paul Sartre, and all the work he did for the rest of his long life. Clan members sent this man death threats until his passing at age 94. Think about that.

Some topics are too large for a blog and this is one of them. You need to research this. You need to delve into his life and make your own discoveries, conclusions, and, “wow” moments. He was not a perfect human. He did not work alone, but he did what he set out to do. He made a decision and followed through with it. I for one am glad he did.

Click on the YouTube link above to start listening for yourself!

Sources: My research was admittedly quick because I wanted to learn as much as I could as quickly in a short time knowing I will go back at my leisure. In no particular order I read articles on sites on Wikipedia, The New York Times, Stetson Kennedy.com, Dangerous minds.net, mentalfloss.com, discovery.com, and census.gov.

In the short term I plan on watching Drunk History’s episode on YouTube and the full American Heroes Channel program.

Commuting Rant

Dear People With Whom I Share the Northway,

I hope this letter finds you well. I write to bring to your attention a pattern of behavior that has become quite troubling. I shall explain myself using with an example of comparison. ‘A leaf falls from a tree.’ Common or Uncommon? “Common”, I hear you say. Excellent. Try this one. ‘A unicorn walks into a self-service car wash for a quick spray down.’ Common or Uncommon? “Uncommon”, you reply with a dry chortle. Here’s a tricky one. ‘A car gets pulled over on the Northway.’ Common or Uncommon? Tough one, I know, so I’ll answer for you: Common. Here’s another fact you might not be aware of: there are cars behind you on the Northway. Slowing down to inspect a presumed lawbreaker like you were just made a Junior Trooper for a Day dusting for prints at a murder scene has a cascade effect. By all means move to the next lane and measure your speed to ensure the safety of the officer and those around you, but when you slowdown to a crawl you force the vehicles behind you to match your crawl. This in turn births more Junior Troopers for a Day who are compelled to quality control the crime scene for something you might have missed. This causes a huge delay on a road built for unimpeded travel. You can see the problem, yes?

And I understand the flashing lights are a distraction in and of themselves. Popping, vibrant colors crafted to capture your attention are hard to ignore; so much like the pretty, shining objects around us in our youth when the world was fresh and full of potential. You must resist these sirens of illumination. Stare at them too long and you risk falling into a cycle of reminisces and self-reflection over how you have spent the days since your youth. The Northway is no place for leisurely pondering what went wrong in your life. I know this because it is exactly what I do while I try to figure out why everyone is moving so damn slow…

 

 

* Found the above photo on several meme pages. No idea who made it. Sorry, person who made it. I tried to give you credit.

Wondering About Wonder Woman

 

Warner Brothers and DC are trying hard to make up for lost time and a much larger quality gap regarding the big screen adaptations of their characters. High hopes and MILLION$ of dollars are hanging on next year’s Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice film. A large chunk of the hype is not around the titular heroes however, but for a certain amazon whose fans for years have yearned to see in a movie. The portrayal of Wonder Woman will make or break this film for many. Me? I just want a GOOD MOVIE. Entertain me while keeping the story’s internal logic consistent and fleshing out solid characters and I will hand over my money. In that spirit I given you one of several openings I envision for the announced 2017 release of the Wonder Woman film. Enjoy!

Wonder Woman

by Sam Girdich

Fade In:

EXT. A LARGE CITY PARK ON A BRIGHT, SUNNY FALL AFTERNOON. A SERIES OF CUTS:

We see scenes of people, but sometimes the view becomes blurry. Couples read books, listen to music while sunning, or text who knows who while completely NOT interacting with the person right next to them. Parents play with children. Elderly couples walk hand in hand. The view finally becomes completely blurry.

CUT TO:

The shot changes to a very old man (ARTY). He is holding his thick glasses in one hand while rubbing his blue eyes with his other. His cane leans against his bench. We were watching the park and its users through his eyes. He is dressed in clean but old and slightly too large clothes showing he has had, and worn, these items for some time. With his glasses returned to his face he continues people watching. We now watch him watching others. A pattern emerges. He is watching couples or families while he sits all alone. He absentmindedly plays with his wedding ring the entire time but that action is NOT focused on. Let the Audience notice it or not. A tall person walks past him blocking his view for an instant. His attention captured, he turns toward the person.

CUT TO:

It is a woman. She is very tall, confident, and sporting long black hair. He watches her with some interest as she walks away without looking back. She looks familiar. She’s gone in a few seconds.

SFX:

Thud tink

CUT TO:

Arty looks down at the sound. A German, WWII era hand grenade (a potato masher) has just landed at his feet. No time to react. IT EXPLODES!

CUT TO:

The flash and bang pass, but the smoke does not. Someone in the smoke is coughing. A man screams in pain somewhere off screen. Suddenly a young US soldier circa WW II runs into view thinning the smoke. We are now in a dark forest in Germany. The solider is wearing a mobile communication pack. He drops behind a tree as gun fire and more explosions rock the area around him. Panicking he pulls his pack off and reaches for the receiver.

CUT TO CLOSE UP: The unit is damaged. The wires to the hand piece are split.

CUT TO:

He immediately sets to trying to repair the wires. He bites at the thick wire coating to expose a new length of wire. The explosions are getting louder. Soldiers run past him. He twists the two pieces of exposed wire together bridging the gap. A new mechanical sound reaches his ears.

CUT TO:

THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE TREE IS BEHIND

He slowly peaks around the tree.

CUT TO:

Arty’s POV. We see he is only yards in the forest. German tanks approach the tree line. He retreats behind the tree and tries the unit. Bullets fly past him.

CUT TO:

Arty makes a pitched plea.

ARTY:

Charlie Tango Echo. Repeat. Charlie Tango Echo. The Germans are pushing north toward the Luxembourg border. Repeat. This is Charlie Echo Tango. We are in full retreat requesting air support.

SFX: static

SFX:

KABOOM (tank shell lands nearby)

CUT TO:

Arty is hurled through the air. He lands on his own equipment.

CUT TO. OVERHEAD VIEW:

Arty is dazed and bleeding badly from his ears and nose. Several seconds pass. A large, blurry figure leans over him. He reaches for his gun half unconscious. A woman’s dirty, blood stained effortlessly hand pushes his arm down.

DIANA (VO)

Don’t move.

CUT TO. SIDE VIEW.

Diana inspects his injuries. Arty’s panicked eyes watch her every move.

DIANA

You are badly wounded and will likely die. (She speaks calmly and directly.)

Close your eyes. Find what peace you can. I will hold off the Germans while your men regroup.

CUT TO:

Arty stares, gasping for air, at this impossible person who just pronounced his death. She looks closer at him. He looks very young.

DIANA

Close your eyes. Think of your home.

CUT TO: ARTY’S POV

She stands and walks off. She was carrying a bloody sword in her other hand the entire time. She is dressed for battle. Arty watches her transfixed. She suddenly runs off toward the Germans far faster than any human can run. He follows her path, his life still draining. German soldiers fire at her. She blocks with her bracers easily deflecting some back toward the soldiers. She raises her sword and dives into them.

CUT TO: OVERHEAD VIEW

The view switches to Arty’s face. We see the shock in his eyes match the sound of her battle cries and screams of the Germans. She is literally tearing through them and we see it reflected in his face.

SFX

Screams and rending metal. (She can tear apart tanks, lest we forget.)

He looks away and skyward.

CUT TO: ARTY’S POV

It is a clear blue day. Blue just like his eyes. The sounds are fading, calming as his eyes close.

CUT TO: ARTY’S POV. MODERN DAY.

He blinks his eyes open. Several people are standing over him discussing what to do while one person calls 911.

SFX

Crowd words: Don’t move him. What happened? Don’t know. Heart attack? How should I know? Don’t move him.

Excuse me (VO)

CUT TO:

The crowd parts allowing the same woman Arty was watching to approach. It is Diana in civilian clothes. She looks him over and stops at his eyes. They look at each other for a second. She smiles.

DIANA

You can get up.

CUT TO:

She easily but carefully helps Arty back to his feet. A siren wails in the background. The bystanders walk away. She helps him back onto the bench.

ARTY

Where… have you been?

DIANA

I had to leave.

But I am back now.

CUT TO: CLOSE UP ON ARTY’S HANDS. THEY ARE SHAKING. SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG WITH HIM.

ARTY

Stay with me this time?

DIANA

You have my word.

FADE OUT

 

Is this fan fiction? Honestly, I have no idea. I don’t read her book, though I have sampled it over the years. I simply haven’t found a writer (yet) who brings that something to the character that hooks me. It is the same reason I don’t read Green Lantern. Both are awesome, long-lived and well-loved characters I’d like to read but don’t. I never read Daredevil, for example, until I found Ann Nocenti’s run. She brought a something to the book that blew me away. Maybe it is the lack of finding that something? If I know me, and I do, then I may be on to something there. I want more ‘Ann Nocenti moments’ in my comic reading life and Diana is one of several characters I want to experience that with. To me, she is dichotomy in motion. The most obvious being the warrior archetype and the healer archetype if I may fax philosophic. There are others, as well. In other words, she has conflicting natures within her (like you and I) that could be used to examine what it means to be human. Let me stop now before I re-hash the millions of words that have been spilled on the psychology of literary characters. I’m just saying I’ve always thought there was more to her character and if I can’t find what I am looking for then I will create it.

Looks like I answered my own question.

This Interview Would Have Been Bullshit

HAD Matt Page agreed to an interview, this would have been the format. I sent Matt a couple of requests via YouTube and so far never haven’t back. No prob! I know the folks I hope to interview (like Tsoukalos) are busy and must pick and choose how they spend their time. I get that fact and accept it 100%. So enjoy the following Once and Future Interview and insert your own answers after you check out Matt’s work. It is very funny and very well made. Enjoy!  

Matt,
Thank you in advance for taking the time to read my email.
My name is Sam Girdich. I am a writer, life-long martial artist, and co-founder of the sequential art & graphic design project Strongarm Labs. I would love to interview you for my blog!

I understand time your time is valuable so my interview format is designed to be quick and easy. I pose three main questions with one follow-up question each if clarification is warranted. And that’s it! I do not edit your replies in any way. Not a word is touched. I send you a full copy of the interview pre-posting so you see exactly what the readers will read and give you the final word to publish it or not. My goal simply is to have fun and provide an avenue for myself and others to learn something new.

Before you read your three questions below, I invite you to visit my blog Lab Work to peruse my posts and writings, as well as our Strongarm Labs page for some of our work. I want you to know who I am and how I think so you know you can be comfortable having your name on my site. I’ll wait here while you go check me out…

You’re back! Excellent. Here we go. I made these two images for the intro.

In the early winter of 2013 I was wandering around YouTube when I stumbled into a red gi wearing, mustached martial arts instructor named Master Ken. He was proclaiming loudly -and in stunning detail- that every form of martial arts in the world except his own Ameri-Do-Te style was unequivocally, “Bullshit!” I was hooked. More than hooked, I was impressed and laughing so hard I took a two-day break from Master Ken and his students. No joke.

My new favorite instructor is the creation of actor/writer Matt Page, who also stars as Master Ken in the hit YouTube comedy web series Enter the Dojo. Now in its third season, Enter the Dojo is a mockumentary following Master Ken and his oddball students in his New Mexico dojo. Imagine the irreverent, character driven comedy of The Office and drop it into a martial arts school. Matt also delights viewers with thick, frothy bursts of instruction in his Master Ken’s Privates videos plus much, much more.
Enter the Dojo is produced through Riffraff New Media, a multimedia production company co-founded by Matt. Click on the link and check out samples of their work. You’ll recognize a familiar setting if you are a fan of the show. Matt has a long history of acting and is himself an accomplished martial artist in Kenpo karate with two black belts.
Enough intro. Let’s talk to Matt!

1. Thank you again for your time, Matt. Tell us about the origin of the series and what was it about the concept that convinced you it warranted your time and resources.

2. Enter the Dojo premieres as a web series in August 2011 and by 2014 you are roasting martial arts legends and giving seminars in the UK. That speaks to the quality of the series’ acting and writing, but was it planned? In other words, did you early on envision the possibility of expanding the production to these venues or did it grow organically?

3. How has the success of the series affected your acting career?