| Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large |
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 Ok, I’ve seen “The Avengers: Endgame,” and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was an amazing achievement of wrapping up 11 years and 21 movies that all occur in the same cinematic universe. Think of it as an epic “Happy Days,” “Laverne & Shirley” and “Mork & Mindy” cross-over event on “Law & Order.”
But, here’s the thing:
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 Well, as the TV Christmas holiday season winds down, I just wanted to say what I thought of it. It was pretty lame. It's like all my complaints about radio have been applied to TV. Led by AMC and Freeform, the premise is that the month of December is dedicated to Christmas shows and movies, all month! Every day! Except here's the thing, they only have enough movies to fill a weekend. Both channels are ENDLESSLY repeating the same dozen movies over and over, sometimes two or three times a day and then again on weekends. Freeform apparently lost a good number of their Christmas product and has been reduced to filling in the gaps with Pixar movies that have nothing to do with Christmas.
It's a little sad, actually. I think I prefered the old fashion way where the TV schedule was sprinkled with holiday specials, movies and Christmas-theme episodes of shows, not inundated. Don't get me wrong, I like ELF, just not exclusively. Freeform used to have a better handle on it. They used to have so many shows, that they had to start a "Countdown to 25 Days of Christmas" to show them before they even got to December. But, with the loss of Harry Potter, they've been reduced to filling the void with Toy Story marathons. AMC filled their spotty inventory by getting the rights to all the Baskin/Rankin TV specials, just not the ones you remember ("Jack Frost" "Rudolph's Shiny New Year"). Followed by Elf, or the colorized version of "Miracle on 34th Street." I guess TCM has the right idea, just do the Christmas movies once a week through the month, but oddly, TCM doesn't have the rights to a lot of the best Christmas movies, so they've been forced to "create" their own Christmas classics, older, overlooked films like "Remember the Night" (which sounds like a Titanic movie) or "A Holiday Affair," a Christmas movie starring Mr. Holiday Cheer himself, Robert Mitchum. Well, there's always next year. Or July, when they pull out that "Christmas in July" nonsense.  I know terrorism is a threat to us, but, frankly, we're now facing idiots. Idiots hired by fanatics. Not an winning combo. Some people are insisting the dangers are worse than ever, but are they? The latest terror attacks have been, what, some guy driving a truck into a crowd? Terrorists are now stealing their ideas from drunk drivers! It seems to me that terror groups are in a downward spiral: you got some guy running around with a knife, another clown attempting to build a bomb in his apartment which goes off. These are all angry, demented people with just one thing in common: The internet.
Sure, people always had stupid, dangerous ideas and seething resentments. But in olden times, they would think them up, tell a friend or two, accept the eye rolls they got in return, shake it off then return to their business of collecting the carts in the parking lot. Then the internet came along. Now some maniac can post his bizarre concept and get thousands of comments saying "That's a good idea, you should do that." The internet is like a dating app for terrorists. You're not getting the best. Also, you can't outsource outrage. But fanatics haven't realize this; their ability to judge others is compromised. If some internet guy says he'll help carry out a plan, the fanatic is so happy to have that support he won't realize that the internet guy is a buffoon. On the other hand, having all these doofuses in one place certainly makes it easier for law enforcement to find and catch them. And as long as they don't have money, they will be punished. So, the only thing we really need to be careful of are rich terrorists...oh, wait...  You know what, American businesses? Stop harassing me about your employees' abilities. Or my experience at your store. I don't want to take your online survey. I don't want to stay on the line to answer a few brief questions upon the completion of our interaction. I don't want to evaluate your hires. I'm not your HR department. You keep telling me you're recording my call for possible quality evaluation, so evaluate it yourself. Just hire someone to listen. And I don't want to go to the site on the back of your receipt to take a survey that will then enter me into a sweepstakes where I might win a prize. I'm not answering your stupid questions on spec. At least Burger King will give be a Whopper if I answer its questions (I'm looking at you Wendy's). Hey, look, if I have a complaint, I'll write you a letter. And don't force me to rate your employee's performance when your company sucks and isn't getting my cable picture fixed. Most of the time it's not about that poor cubicle jockey forced to deal with the public, it usually about your management's crappy decisions, but none of your telephone surveys give that as a choice. I'm your customer, not your mom. You figure it out.
 Breaking: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enacted a rule on June 1 making it easier for companies to use asbestos in products. Has anybody been clamoring for the return of asbestos? I mean, seriously? This stuff has been proven dangerous. Men in HAZMAT suits show up when it’s present. My 80-year-old father had lung surgery to deal with a nodule doctors have been monitoring for most of his adult life because of exposure to asbestos in the Navy and on his job. There are lawyers on TV commercials every hour telling you to call them if you’ve been exposed to asbestos. Every person at Ground Zero after 9/11 is on constant surveillance after breathing in this crap. Why this is happening? Were they looking for something we could all get that's compatible to coal miner’s black lung? Whatever made the EPA decide that we were over-reacting to the threat of asbestos? Was this some campaign promise I totally overlooked or something that was updated at the GOP Convention? I’m sure it’s not because the President says reports of asbestos’ danger was all the work of the mob. I’m sure it’s not because Russia is a major source of asbestos. No, it must be because it’s now just asbestos’ time again, like bell bottoms and vinyl records. What’s next? Cyclamates? Red dye #2? Leaded gasoline? Clackers? Well, I guess the mesothelioma lawyers are happy about it.   People keep claiming that, as a New Yorker, I live in a bubble. Let me tell you about my bubble. There are 8 million people in my bubble. My neighbors are like 50 feet from my front door. Every day I have to travel to work by train, boat and subway with thousands of other people. I work in an office with people from around the state, country and planet. And if that’s not enough, my bubble is so special, that people from all over the world travel here just to visit. These people crowd our sidewalks and Burger Kings. Businesses are run from my bubble. Companies erect skyscrapers with their names on them to mark their section of the bubble. International decisions are made here. As well as other decisions; like, for lunch I can choose to get some egg rolls, or pizza, or empanadas, or curry chicken, or a hamburger, or a Philly cheese steak or a hot dog. Or some of each…  My kids went to school with hundreds of other kids. Neighborhood kids. Kids from the other side of the borough. Military kids stationed nearby. Kids with whom they had to work, compete against and share multiple childhood diseases.
It’s a crowded bubble where people have learned to get along. There are rules and laws that the vast majority agree to live by if we are all going to get along and move along. We can have tall buildings that don’t constantly burn down, ferries that don’t capsize regularly and trains that don’t crash and kill hundreds often. Yet I have to listen to people carry on that where they are is the real America. They tout places that don’t get a lot of visitors until it gets flooded or a twister rips through. They carry on as if somehow they have their fingers on the pulse of what “real Americans” want because their neighbors live “down the road a-piece.” The whole point of coming together as a nation is that we are stronger together. As a country, we are a mutt, made up of all the people that couldn’t hack it in the old country. They all brought their customs, traditions and foods here. But they’re here because they wanted to be here, not because their parents happen to live here. America was their goal. They also brought a sense that what’s good for the least of us is good for the greatest of us. I don’t understand what other people, in their big empty states, are getting so cranky about. They live isolated lives, worried about things that just don’t happen. They hold grudges against others they don’t know because some loud-mouth tells them too. But mostly I don’t get why these salt-of-the-earth, hard-working Americans elected a loud, elitist, lying, crooked business man and pseudo-billionaire from New York City as the face of the nation. If this is what real America should be, I’ll stick to my bubble, thank you. 
Dear Hollywood,
Look, I’m sorry “The Mummy” tanked…oh, who am I kidding, I’m not. I was angry about it since they announced it and the start of this whole Universal Monster “Dark Universe.” I’ve been mad about this stuff since “Van Helsing” came out. I grew up loving the monster movies of Universal Studios. From “Frankenstein” right up to “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein” (if you don’t know it’s one of the most solid Universal horror movies done in the Forties, I pity you), the movies were scary, funny, thrilling, and hokey. Sure, continuity is off, this was back before “franchises” existed and each movie kinda started from scratch, but they were fun and not calculated. Even the first time the idea of two monsters existing in the same universe occurred (“Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman”), it started off a joke idea that people grew to like.
But it was a train wreck of a movie, whose only acknowledgment of previous Universal monster movies was the vague notion that werewolves can kill vampires, which was first implied at the conclusion of “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.” Anyway, the film got me angry. So angry, I wrote the sequel to the last Universal monster movie they SHOULD HAVE done. I brought it into modern times, I managed to explain why we haven’t heard from the monster is decades, and I folded in every bit of folklore from the movies I could PLUS give it a sense of humor about itself. It was a tale of thrills, revenge and villainy. Naturally, as soon as I started showing it around, Universal started floating the idea of a “Dark Universe” to compete with Marvel movies or DC. 
Sure, I tried to do a rewrite, and convert the monsters into the more public domain versions of themselves, but the same reaction was had. Apparently you can’t pitch a movie called “Island of Frankenstein” without triggering those connections. Oh, well. I’m very happy with it and I love the big finale. So, I park it here, on my website. Enjoy.
island of frankenstein by api-211615770 on Scribd  In March 2016, a new comedy website launched, featuring short online articles. It was The Morning Kvetch. Alas, there was no traction and the site no longer exists. So, I'm going to drag out the bits I wrote for them and post them here from time to time. So, let us present (the last in the series): Lions & Tigers and Beards, Oh My! In March 2016, a new comedy website launched, featuring short online articles. It was The Morning Kvetch. Alas, there was no traction and the site no longer exists. So, I'm going to drag out the bits I wrote for them and post them here from time to time. So, let us present: To Shave and Shave Not In March 2016, a new comedy website launched, featuring short online articles. It was The Morning Kvetch. Alas, there was no traction and the site no longer exists. So, I'm going to drag out the bits I wrote for them and post them here from time to time. So, let us present: It Doesn’t Take a Village to Raise a Pet |
Dan FiorellaFreelance writer, still hacking away. 
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