The White Hero

Today I want to talk about a controversy in fiction, mainly movies, concerning a white hero saving some minority group, such as Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, even Avatar and The Help. the controversy is that minorities feel it is degrading that they need a white person to save them. However, I look at these stories from another angle, it isn't about how the minorities need a white hero to save them, it's that white people need to see a redemptive character in a a narrative that paints us as the villain, especially when we know that it's the truth that we are, or at least were, the bad guy. My generation is the first in which white people aren't unquestionably on the top of the social order. Yes, you can argue that those who are large and in charge are still white people, but for the first time in our history, we have been raised to understand that just because it's true doesn't make it right. America has a very rough history, white people displaced the native population, dragged Africans in as slaves, persecuted Chinese during westward expansion, persecuted Japanes during World War II, persecuted Muslims after 9/11 and we've had a long history of being less than welcome to anyone who didn't speak English despite the fact that we celebrate our country as being founded on ideals of liberty, freedom, and equality. For two hundred years, we have ignored our own hypocrisy and now we have a generation of white people who have to live with this guilt despite the fact that most of it was done before we were even born and we are trying to be better, but is it too late? Do we deserve to live where another race should be? And where do we go? I have a diverse European ancestry and only one branch goes back to a place that speaks English. Primarily I am Italian, but I do not speak the language, so if I had to go back to Sicily, I don't know if I'd be able to get by in my ancestral homeland. I was raised Catholic, but how does the life of a Jewish carpenter in the Roman Empire two thousand years ago on the other side of the world hold more relevance than the spirituality of the Haudenosaunee where I was born and raised? How do I reconcile where I am with where I have come from? The white hero is not about a white person saving another race from white people, it's about turning the tide to redeem ourselves from our history and find a new place in a world where we don't belong to live in harmony with people to whom we owe an apology that we can never give. These are stories about people working through regret that is bigger than us, bigger than we can deal with on our own. Honestly, the only way we can cope at this point is to believe that at some point there is one of us who knows what is wrong and does what is right and that we can be that person. Ideally, these stories wouldn't have to exist, every race could simply have their own independent narrative, or we could have a mixed narrative that was all inclusive, but we cannot  erase our past, we screwed up royally, and we still work to do to set things right, and in this period of transition, the reality is that white heroes are still needed, because no matter what we did, we are here still and we need to find our place, and we need to send the message that we will not pursue our own progress at the expense of others anymore, and we will fight against those who are backward minded enough to continue outdated racist thinking. On behalf of all white people, we are sorry if we are still stepping on your toes, but there are over seven billion people in the world and we are out of room, so we need to learn to get along, and the white hero is the first step, it may not be the best step, but the first step rarely is steady, so please be patient during our social course correction.

The Last Sharknado:It's About Time (part 2 aftermath)

It happened and I wanted to write about it right away, but it did take a couple days to gather my thoughts.

First of all, here's what happened: Finn was sent to the past, way back, to the Mesozoic era alongside dinosaurs where it was revealed that Nova, April, and Brian(a minor character from the second one) were also sent back by Gil just before they died in the regular timeline and they have to ride the flow of time through sharknados back to the present and correct the damage that the sharknados are doing. The next stop is Arthurian England where we find out Gil has been tutored by Merlin as played by Neil De Grasse Tyson and Finn draws the chainsaw sword from the stone. From there, it's off to the Revolutionary War where they lose Brian, then the Wild West, where they are reunited with Skye from the second movie. Then they go to the fifties where Finn meets his parents when they were young and played by Tori Spelling and her real life husband, a mini 90210 reunion where Tori says the funniest line in the movie "Did we go to high school together?" Next stop is the day Nova's grandfather was killed by a shark where she tries to save him and succeeds, but she and April are sacrificed in the process. The next stop is two thousand years in the future where Aprils cyborg head that Finn had been carrying along until it fell under water at the last stop has become a mad queen in a post-apocalyptic world. Finally, Finn makes one last time jump back to when it all began, the first scen of the first movie, when the sharknado first formed at sea and this time, April's cyborg head is there and one well timed nuclear xplosion inside the sharknado stops it all before it ever started. This brings us to a better altered timeline in which Nova's grandfather never died and she doesn't hate sharks and sharknados never happened so April never became a cyborg and nobody got killed by sharknados so they are all still alive and well.

My opinion on all of this was that it did bring about a happy ending, but I've seen this before and I hate it, it is my least favorite deus ex machina, because while the time loop fixes everything, it also means none of it ever happened so none of it mattered and it was all irrelevant. The first half of this movie is pure garbage(hilarious, but garbage) and aside from Tori Spelling, Nova saving her grandfather, and the tribute to the original movie, most of this movie was utterly pointless. However I think I understand why this happened, in retrospect, the last worthwhile moment in the series was the Russian nesting doll sequence at the end of the fourth movie, and it immediately crossed the line from funny running gag to overdone when April used electrified sharks as defibrillators to save Finn, and I now see that was the moment even the cast, crew, writers and film makers realized they had nothing left but it had snowballed out of control, the fans demanded more and now there was only one way out: burn the mother to the ground. The only way to stop this madness was to make the fifth movie so bad we would welcome the end, and then deliver the promise of ending it all in such a way that it was definitely done. In retrospect, I'd like to say that they should have stopped at four, but the ending was just good enough that if they could recut the happy ending to tack straight on to that fourth movie, we could call that the true canon of this franchise. In any case, they said this was the last sharknado, and as a fan who enjoyed the ride, I think they should stick to their word this time and let this be the end.

Or, if someone demands another Sharknado, it should be a full reboot with a new cast. my pitch, bullsharks, a real species that can survive in freshwater, get dumped in Lake Ontario and a sharknado rips through Upstate New York. However, this should be a one-shot, let us learn from the mistakes of the past and not milk the cash-cow dry.

The Last Sharknado: It's About Time (Part 1: recap)

The time has come, this weekend is the premiere of The Last Sharknado: It's About Time! The title has double meaning, both that it's about time for the last Sharknado, and its about time travel! Why time travel? Because they have done literally everything else. This isn't the end just because it's getting old and the fans may be losing interest, but because they have used every trick in the book and there just isn't anything else to do with this. Even as they have pushed the limits, there just simply isn't another twist in this twister that the writers can come up with to make another movie. Let's review from the beginning, shall we?

Sharknado started with a basic premise, a waterspout at sea picks up a bunch of sharks and as it comes to shore it combines the threats of a tornado storm and sharks that swim in the resulting flood waters. The protagonist of this scenario is Finn Sheppard as played by accidental action hero Ian Ziering who was previously best known for Beverly Hills 90210 and his most embarassing role up until this was leader of the Mighty Ducks in an animated series Disney attempted to bank on that franchise turning the Anaheim hockey team into a team of anthropomorphic ducks from another dimension that fight reptilian aliens between games. Finn is a retired marine who owns a bar on the beach in California and at the start of the movie he's in a bit of a slump after a divorce from his wife April Wexler, played by Tara Reid, and surfs all morning until he opens his bar with bikini waitress Nova played by Cassie Scerbo, known best for this role. When the sharknado hits land precisely at Finn's bar, he and Nova have to make their escape inland to find Finn's family and try to save them from the sharknado as well. Throughout the movie, Nova is clad only in her bikini, and I can just imagine the pitch "She's only wearing her bikini because it's her work uniform and when the sharknado hits, they have to move so fast, she has no time to change clothes so she is only in her bikini the whole time. THERE'S NO TIME TO CHANGE CLOTHES, BIKINI ONLY!" Anyway, the story is pretty straight forward, the tonado chases them and destroys everything in it's path and whoever surves the tornado gets eaten by sharks. Everyone except Finn, nova and the Sheppard family. April's new boyfriend falls victim to a shark at the house before Finn gets April and their daughter out and continue driving away from the sharknado to find Finn's son who has joined the military and as a pilot has access to a helicopter that they can use to drop a bomb into the tornado and stop it from the inside which they explain in such a logical way and implement so quickly you don't have time to consider whether it actually abides by the laws of physics. In the process, Nova is eaten by a shark whole leading to the best and most iconic moment of the movie when Finn revs up a chainsaw and jumps into the open mouth of a shark, cutting his way out the other side and saving Nova who happened to be in this very shark unharmed by the shark and the chainsaw which coincidentally managed to not leave a scratch on her.

Sharknado 2: The Second One takes it from the west coast to the east coast, specifically New York City. At this time, the Sharknado is still considered to be an isolated incident but April wrote a book about it and is going to appear on Live with Kelly and Michael to talk about it and is on the way on an airplane with Finn when a sharknado hits th plane. When a hole is ripped into the plane, April is hanging out of it and shoots at the sharks until her left hand holding the gun and wearing her engagement ring as conspicuously pointed out seconds earlier is bitten off by a shark(I knew the hand was coming back the moment this happened, but let's not get ahead of ourselves). They manage a safe landing and April is hospitalized for her unfortunate amputation but seems to be okay otherwise. Meanwhile, Finn meets with his sister, brother-in-law(Sugar Ray's Mark McGrath) and childhood friend Skye (Vivica A. Fox), then the weather turns unseasonablycold because of the coming sharknado, but really because they filmed it in winter while setting it in the summer and covered it with surprisingly the least ridiculous plot device in the series. Finn desperately tries to outrun the sharks and the 'nado and rally the New Yorkers to stand with him in an impressive speech "I know you're scared of being eaten, so am I, I know I've been eaten...but I lived through it, and you will too...because we're New Yorkers and takes more than that to get a New Yorker down!" punctuated by him revving up a chainsaw while a shark conicidentally flies overhead at the precise angle and timing to get cut in half. The movie proceeds to have three moments that make this movie definitively better tha the first. First, Skye uses a sword to fight against sharks, which regardless of context is cool because swords just make anything cooler, period. Second, Finn falls into the sharknado and there is a scene of him flying through the tornado chopping up sharks as he goes along, which just took the most iconic scene of the first movie and raised it exponentially. Third, April comes to rescue Finn at a critical moment using a small buzzsaw attached to the stump that was her hand, and after the tornado is finally stopped, the last shark flies at them at the top of the Empire State Building and as Finn realizes he needs a weapon, he looks down to see the very shark that bit off April's hand at the beginning of the movie with the hand sticking out of its mouth still holding the gun, which he then uses to shoot the shark, takes the ring off the severed hand and uses it to repropose to April. I swear I actually got off the couch and gave that a standing ovation the first time I saw it.

Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! takes place a year later, starting in Washington where Finn is being inducted into the Order of the Golden Chainsaw, complete with a fully functional golden mini-chainsaw award. The president is played by Shark Tank's Mark Cuban who mentions losing a friend in last year's sharknado, a nod to the cameo by Daymond John. After the opening credits, the story shifts to Florida where April, who now has a proper prosthetic hand which conceals a mini-chainsaw because the motto of the marines and the Sheppard family is semper paratus "always be prepared", as in always be prepared for a sharknado, because at this point they realize sharknados can strike them at any moment. She is now nine months pregnant and she is at Universal Studios, for two reasons, one because Universal Studios is the parent company, and two because it give them excuses to make references to Jaws including shooting as many scenes near the ride as possible. Fin is trying to reunite with his family and en route meets up with Nova who has been researchign sharknados and the sharks that live in them, revealing in the plot twist that finally severs the last remnant of plausibility by revealing that the sharks are living in the clouds drinking ice crystals and eating birds. They make it to Florida where the sharknado chases them to Cape Canaveral and has escalated to the point that it can only be stopped from space with the help of Finn's father Gil played by David Hasselhoff, because you know you just haven't capped your cheese quota until you cast David Hasselhoff, and also, let's point out that both of them are named after body parts of a shark. Now, you'd think the climax of sharks in space with a light saber inspired laser chainsaw would be the highlight of the movie, but no, the topper is when Finn and April are both eaten whole and ride the sharks back down to Earth, shielded both from the heat of re-entry and the impact of the landing by the shark's bodies and Finn escapes for the second time in his life and goes over to rescue April to witness her using her mini-chainsaw hand to cut her own way out and then instead of getting out herself, hands out their newborn son that she just gave birth to on the way down. Ian Ziering absolutely deserved an award for keeping a straight face while attempting the most dramatically realistic reaction to this insane scenario. The movie ends with a cliffhanger as a piece of space debris lands on April and she may either live or die, leaving fans to wonder for a full year until the answer is revealed in the next entry.

Sharknado the 4th Awakens named after the Star Wars film that came out that year, goes forward five years. The story abandons plausibility with the premise that sharknados became such a significant concern that a company formed to control the weather and stop tornados before they start, never mind that if this were remotely possible there are plenty of real weather problems that need to be handled, but if you haven't diengaged your brain enough to not think about that by now you're trying too hard. Finn has been running a farm in Kansas as a widowed father since April did not survive (or did she?) and he has been called to a party in Las Vegas by the owner of the company that controls the weather at a tower that ambitously houses a large aquarium full of sharks tempting fate in the most obvious way possible. This time Finn is joined by his cousin Gemini, played by Masiela Lusha known best for playing George Lopez's daughter in his sitcom, who takes over the role of Nova as the girl with the stripper name and wardrobe who shows skin for a plausible reason then never has time to change into anything more sensible. The Vegas setting fits for one very significant reason, and that is so Ian Ziering's stint as a Chippendale's dancer can be referenced while one dancer dispatches a shark with a pelvic thrust. The story then pushes the envelope over the edge as the weather control system fails and five years of back pressure lead to a sharknado that chases Fin  across the country and picks up more stuff to make it bigger and badder than ever. Al roker appears for th third time, destroying any of his remaining credibility as a meterologist by popping in with periodic reports describing the escaltion from a boulder-nado over the desert, a fire-nado after an ill-fated attempt to stop it with fire, an electric-nado after it hits a power line, and finally a nuclear-nado when it hits a nuclear power plant. April is revealed to be a cyborg reconstructed by her father played by Gary Busey and she now has super strength, flight, and a virtually infinite arsenal installed in her body to save the world. April is eventually reunited with her family as they fight the biggest fight of their lives. The movie has several high points, including a run through Texas where the cast of Texas Chainsaw Massacre run a chainsaw shop, because why not at this point, and even directly reference themselves while throwing chainsaws at the sharknado while saying "It's just not Texas without a Chainsaw Massacre!" a run though Kansas where Finns house is blown the next state over, lands on a woman who had been bad mouthing him the entire movie and he emerges on a literal yellow brick road to say "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore" and then the final showdown at Niagra Falls where David Hasselfhoff does a slow motion run with fellow Baywatch castmates and then the series topper of a Russian nesting doll when all the members of the Sheppard family are eaten whole by sharks that then eat each other and then are eaten by a whale and Finn's son Gil cuts them all out one by one.

Sharknado 5: Global Swarming has brought us to a point where we have utterly exhausted all domestic possibilities for Sharknado, and we are left with no choice but to go international. this time the sharknado has a spatial warp that forces them to randomly move from one location to another, from London to Australia to Japan where a godzilla like kaiju confrontation happens between the sharks and...ok, I'll be honest it's hard to kee track of this point, but the take away is that everyone dies by the end and Finn is carrying April's disembodied cybernetic head through a post-apocalyptic wasteland until he encounters his son Gil...but here's the wierd part, Gil is all grown up and played by Dolph Lundgren, revealing that in the last possible twist of this franchise after exhasting every last gimmick, trope and deus ex machina they had, the sharknados now have a temporal element and he has come back from the future and now they will go back to the past and save everyone by preventing the sharknado in the first place.

So...yeah, this is where we are. Next week, I will reveal how it all ends, in the meantime, don't forget to tune into the 12-hour marathon and check out the whole thing from beginning to end from 10AM to 10PM EST Sunday August 19.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

Tonight Jojo's Bizarre Adventure finishes one chapter and next week it will begin another. True to it's name, this series is truly bizarre in many-quite possibly every-way. The first most bizarre thing about the series is that it is multi-generational, Jojo is not just one person but a family in which the first and last name invariably both contain the syllable "jo" hence the nickname. What makes it more bizarre is their ever growing power to face ever more powerful enemies.

The whole story begins when two man have a chance encounter on the road and one, having suffered an accident, believes the other has saved him and promises to repay the favor and ends up raising the man's son, who is named Dio and he turns out to be the worst. By worst, I mean he hates his foster brother Jonathan Joestar so much that he kills his dog and steals his girl and then steals a valuable artifact that turns him into a vampire. That last one is kind of a big deal, and leads Jojo to learn how to use ripple energy or hamon to fight vampires along with his friend and fellow vampire victim Robert E. O. Speedwagon under the tutelage of Baron Zeppolli. Zeppolli dies trying to save Jojo but Jojo succeeds in defeating Dio-or so he thinks. Dio makes a last stand against Jojo and they both seem to go down, but Jojo leaves behind a pregnant wife who becomes the grandmother to Joseph Joestar, who with some help from Speedwagon and his foundation fights the ancient vampires who had created the mask that empowered Dio. These guys up the ante, to the point that he last villain standing becomes indestructible and the only way to stop him is to launch him via volcano into space where he freezes and his powers are useless and this all happens before the space program because this show is truly bizarre. Where to go from there? Fast forward to the present day and Jotaro, Joseph's half-Japanese grandson believes he is possessed by a demon only be told that it is his Stand, a psychic projection that is shared by his grandfather and a few dozen other people (as well as a dog, an orangutan and a falcon) and apparently Dio himself who has been inadvertently dredged up form the ocean floor. Dio has found a way to poison Joseph's daughter, Jotaro's mother, with her own Stand and the Jojo's must save her by traveling from Japan to Egypt to fight Dio. Along the way they are accosted by several Stand users, which are so bizarre they range from scary to comical, including a perverted orangutan that created an entire ship, a baby that haunts them in their dreams, a cherry licking shape shifting illusionist, a mirror wielder who manages to get himself killed without even getting seen, a clairvoyant who uses a comic book and manages to get two partners killed and himself beaten badly twice, two gmablers who learn the hard way that Jojo is the best bluffer in the world, and one idiot whose sole gambit fails in record time. After all of these trials and tribulations, they surviced only to get killed by Dio himself leaving Jojo alone to fight Dio and end the five generation family feud.

Spoiler alert: Jojo wins and the war of Stands continues with his relative, yet another Jojo, next week. This time new stand users are showing up and only the Jojos can Stand against them(see what I did there?) But for tonight, see how Dio finally meets his end...

Twitch and Dragon Quest Builders

Tonight is when I plan to premiere my new Twitch series on Dragon Quest Builders. For those who are not aware, Dragon Quest Builders is kind of a ripoff of Minecraft only with special story based on the alternate ending to the original Dragon Quest. In that game, the Kingdom of Alefgard was tormented by the Dragon Lord, quite possibly the least imaginitive villain in JRPG history, but then again, we are talking about the original JRPG that set the template for all that followed, so originality is negligible. There were five major towns in the kingdom, and in Builders, those towns were destroyed when the descendant of Erdrick/Leto failed to fulfill the prophecy of stopping Dragon Lord. Now, the legendary builder has come to fulfill the back-up prophecy by rebuilding.  Where I last left off in the story, Galen II(my descendant of Galen, the builder of Galenholm) has rebuilt Cantlin and Rimuldar and has begun work on Kol, a town known for hot springs, proximity to the desert, and being near to where a dragon once held the princess as well as where the fiary flute had been hidden. The flute was needed for the Golem of Cantlin which has aleady been dispatched in this story so I don't know if that will be relevant, but the rest is being referenced as I rebuild the town. I acually kind of forgot what's going on at this point, but I'm trying to help a band of desert refugees rebuild Kol including their hot springs and save their leader who has been captured and taken to the south where I believe I will have to fight another dragon.

I started playing last year and managed to get just over halfway through the storyline before various factors halted my gameplay. Now I intend to finish the game on Twitch. My take to make things interesting is to demonstrate my voice acting skills by reading the dialogue that unfortunately does not come with voice overs, so I hope that will be entertaining, and between those scenes I will explain the significance of various references and generally give commentary on whatever crazy stuff happens, and yes this game has some crazy weird content, after all, this is the series that gave us slimes and puff-puff. I am planning to start this at 9 PM EST and do it the same time every week leading up to Toonami at 10:30. Tonight I may start late and later his month on 8/18 it will end early when Toonami moves up to 10.