Chicken Ranch report no. 66: Texas Roadtrippers part 2

"Texas Roadtrippers," the spring feature series from KTRK-TV reporters Pooja Lodhia and Steve Campion aired the much-anticipated Chicken Ranch installment of their La Grange adventure last night, during the 10 p.m. newscast. There's a nice shout-out for my book, Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch and some great archival footage. It was fun talking with them and bringing this little bit of Texas history to life. If you don't live in the Houston media area, or haven't had a chance to see it yet, they've kindly made the segment available online for viewing:

Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse is now listed on both Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com for pre-order.

Title: Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse
Author: Jayme Lynn Blaschke
Publication Date: August 1, 2016
ISBN: 978.1.46713.563.4

Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch is still available:

Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch by Jayme Blaschke & Lisa Blaschke

Now Playing: Original Broadway Cast Recording Spamalot
Chicken Ranch Central

Chicken Ranch report no. 65: Texas Roadtrippers part 1

"Texas Roadtrippers," the spring feature series from KTRK-TV reporters Pooja Lodhia and Steve Campion aired the first installment of their La Grange adventure last night. I know a bunch of people watched, because about 150 people from the Houston area visited my website right after it aired. This segment only has a small teaser about the Chicken Ranch (and yours truly in my Lone Star shirt) but tonight's piece, set to air during the 10 p.m. newscast, is entirely devoted to the Chicken Ranch. It should be interesting--don't forget to set your DVRs!

Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse is now listed on both Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com for pre-order.

Title: Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse
Author: Jayme Lynn Blaschke
Publication Date: August 1, 2016
ISBN: 978.1.46713.563.4

Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch is still available:

Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch by Jayme Blaschke & Lisa Blaschke

Now Playing: The Hooters Nervous Night
Chicken Ranch Central

Chicken Ranch report no. 64: KTRK redux

Remember a few weeks ago, when a news crew from KTRK-TV out of Houston met me at the ruins of the Chicken Ranch in La Grange for a story? Well, I'm now informed by a producer at Channel 13 that the piece is scheduled to run this Friday, April 29, during the 10 p.m. newscast!

Those of you who know your Chicken Ranch history know why this is kind of a big deal, circle-of-life kind of thing. KTRK was the home of the legendary Marvin Zindler, a crusading consumer affairs activist whose bombastic, on-air reports about the Chicken Ranch operations forced the closure of the brothel in 1973. A year later, Zindler returned to La Grange to do a follow-up story and had an unfortunate encounter with Sheriff Flournoy and the rest, as they they say, is history.

In any event, Pooja Lodhia and Steve Campion were a lot of fun to work with. The story itself will air on Channel 13 (ABC) in Houston, but should be available on their website at some point and also via the ABC13 Houston mobile app.

Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse is now listed on both Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com for pre-order.

Title: Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse
Author: Jayme Lynn Blaschke
Publication Date: August 1, 2016
ISBN: 978.1.46713.563.4

Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch is still available:

Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch by Jayme Blaschke & Lisa Blaschke

Now Playing: Martin Denny Exotica
Chicken Ranch Central

Chicken Ranch anniversary: Happy birthday, Dolph!

On this date in 1923, Dolph Briscoe, who would go on to become the 41st governor of Texas, was born. He would've been 93 today. Briscoe, a long-time Uvalde rancher, is generally remembered fondly from his terms as governor for being a decent guy. But his administration did earn some dubious distinctions. Briscoe was the last Texas governor to serve a two-year term and the first to serve a four-year term. He undermined two efforts to rewrite Texas' abysmal constitution (which remains a trainwreck to this day). Briscoe once appointed a dead man to the State Health Advisory Commission, and if what I've heard is true, called a press conference in the aftermath to reassure the press and public that he hadn't lost his grip on sanity.

But what most people remember him for--and which doesn't appear in most official biographies--is that he is the governor who ordered the closure of the infamous Chicken Ranch brothel in La Grange. Ironically, Briscoe had no actual legal authority to order the Chicken Ranch (or any other brothel, for that matter) closed. But he did, hoping nobody would call his bluff. Fayette County Jim Flournoy certainly knew the governor had no authority to do so, but acquiesced to Briscoe and effectively ended a surreal two-week media circus that captured the attention of Texas as well as the rest of the country.

Governor Briscoe died June 27, 2010, after ignoring my interview requests for the better part of a year. He's have been 93 today. Happy birthday, Dolph!

Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse is now listed on both Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com for pre-order.

Title: Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse
Author: Jayme Lynn Blaschke
Publication Date: August 1, 2016
ISBN: 978.1.46713.563.4

Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch is still available:

Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch by Jayme Blaschke & Lisa Blaschke

Now Playing: Prince Around the World in a Day
Chicken Ranch Central

Friday Night Videos

The Wife and I have discussed Prince on several occasions. "Genius" is a term grossly over-used, but I don't think anything other than "musical genius" does justice to Prince's immeasurable talent. Had he lived in the 1700s or 1800s, he'd be known today as a composer comparable to the likes of Mozart. The 20th century figure I'd compare him to most would be Duke Ellington. Prince was always pushing musical boundaries, fusing different styles and flexing his creative muscles in weird and original ways. Funk, jazz, pop, rock, R&B, soul, classical... just about the only genre he didn't regularly utilize was country, and I'm not 100 percent sure on that one. Was he a flake? Erratic? Eccentric? An egomaniac? Sure. It's hard to tell where the performance ended and the real man began. He produced brilliant work, and he produced a lot of crap. That's the thing--he failed musically many, many times, but he never stopped. He constantly tried new things, and many efforts fell flat but those that worked were hailed as visionary. He was so prolific that he got into a huge blow-up with his record label, Warners, because they only wanted to release one album a year and Prince wanted to do something like three a year. Nuts. It's rumored that Prince has more than a thousand unreleased songs in his Paisley Park vault--not outtakes or demos or rejects or alternative mixes, but actual finished, polished, fully-produced songs just waiting to be released whenever the Purple One deemed it time to do so. The only other artist who left a comparable legacy is (as far as I know) Frank Zappa, who left behind enough material for a dozen or more albums at the time of his death, the last of which was finally released just a couple years ago. I expect we'll be getting new Prince material for decades to come.

In 1988, I managed to get ahold of a bootleg copy of Prince's legendary Black Album, which was pulled from distribution right at the point of release because of a weird dream he had. That tape was a prized possession for years, until a friend's tape player chewed it up in early 1994. To say I was upset was an understatement. It was a damn cool album. I mean, any album that starts off with "Le Grind" can't go wrong. Fortunately, an official version of that album actually made it to market later that year, so I was able to replace the lost take with a more durable CD. That doesn't mean much, other than the fact that for a few years I was the cool guy who had a mythical album nobody else could get--at least as far as Prince fans were concerned.

Alas, Prince has fiercely fought to keep his music and videos offline, almost as hard as he's fought to keep Weird Al from parodying any of his songs. Therefore there are no official Prince videos to feature on Friday Night Videos. The only one I can find is "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" from the George Harrison tribute at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2004, featuring Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood, Tom Petty and a bunch of other folks. Prince upstages them all with a blistering solo that reminded everyone that no matter how great a performer, singer and songwriter he may be, he was still a much better guitarist than almost anyone gave him credit for.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show.

Now Playing: Prince The Hits/The B Sides
Chicken Ranch Central

And so it begins...

I've made no secret that the hardest thing for me about selling our old house (apart from the memories left behind) was parting with my office. I built floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in there, my small approximation of the spectacular formal libraries one always saw in those Agatha Christie-style whodunit films from decades past. I began it about two years after we'd moved in, in May of 2005 and finished it in November of 2005. Unfortunately, all of my meticulously-photographed stages of progress were hosted by a former internet provider that stopped offering residential service a decade ago, so it would appear all of those photos are lost. Here's one we took when we first put the house on the market at the end of 2014 to give you a frame of reference:

I'd never attempted a project of that scale, so my learning curve was a steep one riddled with trail-and-error (mostly error). The new office, however, is half again as big as my old one with ceilings about 16 inches taller. It's not exactly build-a-photo-studio challenging, but it's no day at the park, either. With the completion of my workbench the other day, I saw no reason to delay any further. Last year, sometime after I finished The Wife's photo studio, I closed in the large entry to the former dining room, which is designated my office. Over the past 10 months or so I've been purchasing cabinetry here and there with which to build my bookcase upon, so as to not break the bank all at once. I started with an unfinished corner cabinet on clearance from McCoy's--spruce, I think. Then I picked up unfinished horizontal, double cabinets from Home Depot when they were on sale--these are oak. As happened back in 2005, I ran into some logistical problems. The cabinetry I'd planned on using wouldn't fit in the space I had available, and the pieces I did need had been discontinued. Great. Scrounging the internet, I found some building supply clearance outlets in the DFW area that had two narrow, vertical cabinets just the right size for me. It was a hassle and shipping costs more than made up for any savings I realized by getting discontinued cabinets, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

But some mistakes are there to be learned from. In 2005, I picked up a polyurethane stain that looked great in the store, but turned out to be pretty darn ugly when applied. I ended up having to sand everything down, which was an unpleasant experience. I was never able to get the issue resolved to my satisfaction. Also, back then, The Wife and I were wary about dark woods and stains, since our house didn't have an over-abundance of window light. I eventually went with a golden oak stain, which is the default neutral wood color for all subdivision construction. So this time around, I wanted to avoid that cheap look and go with a deeper, richer, warmer wood color. We really loved the flooring at the old house, but since that has naturally been discontinued, I found another type of laminate that is very similar and set out to try and come up with a stain that would come close to matching it. I picked up one can each of Minwax and Rustoleum's Dark Walnut stain, because they both looked great in the store. But remembering my folly with the cherry wood stain before, I experimented on pine plywood first. It's a good thing I did:

The big board on the right was my initial test subject. The Minwax, on the bottom, looked like black ink spread over white wood, imparting impressive grain texture but zero underlying color. The Rustoleum, on top, boasts of incorporating advanced nano-sized pigments for better penetration. What it did was give me brown wood. Chocolate brown. Gunshoe brown. Buster Brown. Crayola brown. Neither looked like the in-store samples. Neither was acceptable. What I needed, I realized, was a layered approach. I needed the raw wood to already have a deeper base color so that the dark walnut stain could just focus on accenting the grain. Since the Rustoleum was super-thick and not so easy to work with (and I didn't like the brown color anyway) I picked up a can of Minwax's lighter "Special Walnut." Using another scrap of pine (middle, above) I stained it with Special Walnut, then after a three-hour break, went over it again with Dark Walnut. The result was very much closer to what I wanted. There's a lot of glare in the image above, but the image below shows the color match between the pine and floor sample much better. In reality, the color difference isn't even this noticeable--the mixed flourescent and flash of the garage really did a number on the white balance in these photos.

Encouraged, I removed all the doors from my accumulated cabinets. Seeing as how oak and spruce differ from pine, the stain could still turn out to be a mistake, so I made the strategic decision to stain the insides of the doors first, just in case.

To hedge my bets even further, I broke down and bought a can of pre-stain treatment, which is supposed to prevent blotches from forming and ensure an even coat of stain. That's never been a big problem for me, but I'm trying to up my game on this one. The pre-stain went on easily and gave it a familiar honey oak hue. The instructions said to wipe off any excess after 10 minutes, but the rag I ran over the wood came away clean.

The next step was to apply the Special Walnut. Using a foam brush, I applied the stuff and was a little worried at first, as it appeared much darker than I expected. Uh-oh. After five minutes I wiped a section of one door and found that the wood hadn't absorbed very much--it was still quite light, so I left the remaining stain on the others for 15 minutes before wiping. It looked quite nice. Were I not going for a specific look, I might've stopped right there. As it was, I set the doors aside for a three-to-four hour dry.

Next up... hoo boy. Remember how I said the first bit of cabinetry I got was a corner piece made of spruce? Yeah, well, this bad boy is already becoming a pain in the ass. For the first time I realized that it does not have molding on the front of the door--it's simply flat, so visually it stands out quite obviously from the other cabinets. I'm not sure what I will do about that--I may get some boards and try to router out an approximation of the trim for it. Will have to think on that. Of more immediate concern, though, is the fact that spruce doesn't really want to take the stain, even after I sanded the surface to remove accumulated grime (it'd been a display model, after all). The grain's not differentiating as much with the spruce as with the oak, so I have a strong suspicion this one's going to give me trouble this entire build.

After the requisite drying period, I broke out the Minwax Dark Walnut and applied it with a foam brush. I wiped one spot after 5 minutes, saw that the underneath was still relatively light, so left it on for the entire 15 minutes before wiping away. Jumpin' Jehosaphat, that surely does look pretty! Below, right, is the wood with only the Special Walnut applied, and left is the wood with the Dark Walnut soaking in. The middle piece is the finished product. To say I'm pleased is an understatement. There's a tonal depth to the wood that my single stain applications don't come anywhere close to matching. Hopefully, I'll be able to get the fronts of the doors completed tonight and turn my attention to the cabinets themselves this weekend.

Now Playing: Prince The Black Album
Chicken Ranch Central

Tool time!

Some of you may or may not remember a couple of weeks when I realized (and subsequently posted on Facebook) that after 13 years and two homes here in New Braunfels where I undertook quite a few of building and remodeling projects of varying ambition, I didn't actually have a workbench with which to facilitate those various projects. Kind of a d'oh! moment for me. It was a deficiency I needed to rectify, and I did:

This is, to put it mildly, unusual for me. I always have a long queue of jobs that "need to be done" and tend to stick to them on a first-come, first-served basis. But, of course, the workbench would make so many of those easier--not to mention help tidy up the garage--that I jumped it to the head of the line. The Wife even said, as I was cutting lumber that first weekend, "When you said you were going to build a workbench, I didn't realize you meant right now." If you're curious, here is the set of plans I used, with a few minor tweaks of my own. I used a 2x4 as a backstop and made the bench top wider than the plans called for so I could double-layer the overhangs to anchor a vise on one end and a bench grinder on the other (still need to get the grinder, though). The pegboard above just seemed like a necessary addition. The "one-day" project actually took a week to complete construction, doing a little bit every evening, then several more days to apply the polyurethane and let it dry between coats. A word of warning, though--the plan instructions are not very clear in places, so trial-and-error is necessary on occasion. And I don't know what they were smoking when they calculated the cost, but unless you're one of those folks who has a lot of lumber and assorted parts stockpiled, the total cost is going to be closer to $150-200 than the absurdly low $20-100 estimate they cite.

Now Playing: Various artists Dr. Demento Show 2/28/1998
Chicken Ranch Central

Friday Night Videos

Okay, there's no denying that Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show was politically incorrect to an amazing degree back in the day, but the group had such a knucklehead charm about it that they still kinda get away with it. Case in point: "Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk." Overall, this was clearly a cheap video to make, but I hope the woman was well paid, because her butt gets more screen time than all of the other elements in the video combined. Has anyone ever done a serious study on the fetishization of women's blue jeans in the late 70s/early 80s? Because goodness, it was big business at the time! I'm guessing that this coincided with the first jeans cut and marketed specifically for women, but that's just based on vague memories that may or may not be accurate. If any social historians want to take up this area of research, this Dr. Hook video is a good place to start.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... Merle Haggard.

Now Playing: Various Artists Cool on the Coast
Chicken Ranch Central

Chicken Ranch report no. 63: Order now! Beat the rush!

It's with a degree of sadness that I report my editor and the History Press, Christen Thompson, has accepted another job and is departing the company at the end of the week. All the heavy lifting has been completed on Inside the Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse, so this move shouldn't really impact my book, but still. Christen took over when my acquiring editor departed, and she worked hard to "get" my book and the approach I was taking. She brought some of those misconceptions spread by the film version with her, but soon figured out what I was doing with the Chicken Ranch and zeroed in on my wavelength. We exchanged what seemed like a thousand emails going back and forth on titles, getting deep into the weeds with discussion of SEO, advertising restrictions the title could encounter and the like. When I turned in a final manuscript almost 10,000 words longer than what my contract called for, she didn't demand I cut it but pushed it through the editorial process intact. She inadvertently paid me a huge compliment by saying "few of our books actually are as nuanced" as Inside the Chicken Ranch, which was something I think I really needed to hear at that point of the conversation. While I expect the book to do just fine without her, I'm going to miss having someone on the inside to experience the fruition of this years-long Quixotic quest with. She did a good job, and will be missed.

On the other hand, I've got some small but significant information to share with you good folks today. For the past seven years, people everywhere I go have asked me "Where can I buy your book?" or "When can I by your book?" or "Dude, do you have a book or not?" Well, now I can answer "Yes!" to all of those, although that answer won't really make much sense for the first two questions. What I'm trying to say is that Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse is now listed on both Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com! Pre-orders aren't active at Amazon, but Barnes and Noble will be more than happy to let you reserve a copy. It doesn't seem to be listed with Hastings, Books a Million, Book People or Powell's yet, but I'll keep checking and update when it is.

And, finally, History Press has started initial promotion of my book on the History Press blog! It's actually just a reprint of my blog post here from last week, but it's alerting a wider world to the shenanigans I've wrought. I expect to contribute more posts between now and August.

Title: Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse
Author: Jayme Lynn Blaschke
Publication Date: August 1, 2016
ISBN: 978.1.46713.563.4

And remember, Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch is still available if you just can't wait for August 1 to get here:

Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch by Jayme Blaschke & Lisa Blaschke

Now Playing: Various Artists Best of Bond... James Bond: 50 Years 50 Tracks
Chicken Ranch Central

Friday Night Videos

I've posted way, way too many tributes to singers who've died this past year. The latest legend to go is Merle Haggard, who was actually supposed to play here in New Braunfels next week with Willie Nelson. They've played here a couple times in the past, and I kept telling myself I'd catch their show the next time they came through. Now it's too late. Everyone else is talking about his songs "Mama Tried" and "Okie from Muskogee," and while those are great songs, my favorite of his has always been "I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink." There's no deeper hidden meanings or twists in the lyrics--it's just a straight-ahead, wallow-in-misery country song about a doomed relationship that makes no apologies for what it is. One has to admire such a strong sense of purpose.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... The Georgia Satellites.

Now Playing: Jimmy Buffett Feeding Frenzy
Chicken Ranch Central

Chicken Ranch report no. 62: KTRK-TV

Guess where I spent yesterday morning? La Grange! I swear, I've visited La Grange more times in the past couple years than in all the 18 I spent growing up right down the road in Columbus. They're going to have to make me an honorary La Granger if I keep this up.

Let me back up a little. On Monday, I received an unexpected email from Pooja Lodhia a reporter with KTRK-TV out of Houston. For those of you not familiar with H-Town broadcasting, KTRK is better-known as Channel 13, the former home of the late Marvin Zindler. Yes, the television personality who shut down the Chicken Ranch in 1973. Can you see where this is going?

Pooja explained that she, Steve Campion and a cameraman were putting together a little road trip to do a series of feature stories for the spring. I suspect they were looking for an excuse to get out of Houston and just have a little fun traveling around. They pitched a trip to La Grange to their producers and were approved, so Pooja wanted to know if I could meet them when they arrived in La Grange and talk a little about Marvin Zindler and the Chicken Ranch.

After explaining that I didn't actually live in La Grange, I agreed to meet them in the late morning. Then I did them one better--I got permission from the property owner to give them a tour of the actual Chicken Ranch ruins. Let me tell you, they had a great time seeing what remained of the historic site, learning some of the background of those infamous events that happened before any of them were even born. When they drove up looking for a place to park, I told them "Drive up there a piece, then hang a left at the bluebonnets." Campion exploded in laughter, insisting "That is the most Texas thing I've ever heard anybody say." You can see we started off on the right foot. We talked for close to two hours, and by the time they had to leave to make another interview appointment in Luling, they said a lot of the myths surrounding the place made a lot more sense to them now. They also seemed genuinely enthusiastic about Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch (forthcoming August 1 from the History Press) and said they want to do something with me for broadcast in Houston once the book is out. Which I'm entirely in favor of, since I have a sneaking suspicion this topic will find a ready audience there.

In my time I've dealt with reporters who've been pushy, disorganized, disinterested... you name it. Pooja and Steve were the exact opposite. They were fun and engaging and downright pleasant to spend time with. I believe the technical term is "Good People." They promised to let me know as soon as the segment is scheduled to air, and when I know I will pass that information along here. Even if you're not in the Houston area, the piece should be available online or via the KTRK mobile app. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Title: Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse
Author: Jayme Lynn Blaschke
Publication Date: August 1, 2016
ISBN: 978.1.46713.563.4

And remember, Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch is still available if you just can't wait for August 1 to get here:

Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch by Jayme Blaschke & Lisa Blaschke

Now Playing:
Chicken Ranch Central

Batman v Superman: Bleak and nonsense

I despised Zack Snyder's Superman reboot, Man of Steel. I despised it because it was almost a good Superman movie. Despite a bunch of clever ideas and a central plot concept (Phantom Zone Kryptonians terraforming (ha!) Earth to make a New Krypton) that showed some imagination, it all went to naught because Snyder made Superman a broody, self-absorbed prick who, if he bothered to do something even remotely heroic, did so grudgingly. Since then, I've learned that Snyder is a devotee of Ayn Rand, which pretty much explains his apparent worldview that anyone who willingly does the right thing for the right reasons is a chump.

So I finally saw the Bats and Supes slugfest last night at the Alamo Drafthouse, and had my expectations set suitably low. I'm sorry to report that the film lived down to to them. So as not to come off as relentlessly grim as this film, I'll list what worked for me: 1) Ben Affleck's Batman/Bruce Wayne is mostly great. I say mostly, because Bats' indiscriminate killing and disregard for the safety of innocent bystanders is almost as egregious as Superman's from the first film. As the world's greatest detective, Batman figured out that Lex Luthor was manipulating public opinion against Superman--and directly caused the bombing of the U.S. Capitol Building with all the death that entailed--yet still decided to go ahead with his plan to kill Superman because, I dunno, he'd already gone through all the prep and it'd be a shame to let those cool SFX go unused. 2) Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman is mostly great. I'd worried that Gadot might not be physical enough for the role, or be too sword-and-shieldy, but once all was said and done, Wonder Woman's brief screen minutes count among the highlights of the film. And her accent made me very happy--I've heard people complain that they couldn't understand what she was saying, but these people are morons. Wonder Woman is not an American, and does not speak English as her first language. Having a vaguely Mediterranean accent brought the character home for me. That said, the Macguffin of getting her involved--Luthor had stolen a photo of her that she was trying to get back--makes absolutely zero sense, as what she eventually chases down is a digitized scan which has been copied at least three times (and probably more) by the end of the film. Huh? Ultimately, I came away looking forward to the upcoming Wonder Woman film, although the World War I setting remains something of a head-scratcher.

Beyond that, the movie is vastly inferior to the sum of its parts. Snyder didn't just take cues from The Dark Knight Returns, he lifted entire sequences and vast chunks of plot. But what wasn't widely reported in advance was the fact that Snyder also folds in large chunks of the Death of Superman storyline from 1992. Yes, Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer are credited with writing the actual script, but they wrote the script Snyder wanted. Snyder's fingerprints are all over this, and looking back over his previous films, this movie falls squarely within his oeuvre. Here's the thing: I don't think Snyder has ever actually read The Dark Knight Returns or The Death of Superman or heck, even The Watchmen before that. Oh, sure, he owns the books, and they're probably well-worn and tattered from his thumbing through them constantly, but I am convinced Snyder doesn't actually read them. He only looks at the pictures. How else to explain his slavish recreation of spectacular visual sequences from said comics whilst completely misunderstanding (or simply missing) the substantive underpinnings to those sequences?

When Superman SPOILER ALERT! dies at the end, this is supposed to be emotionally devastating for the cinema audience. It's not, because throughout two films now, Superman has not been presented as a hero to cheer for. He's a self-centered jerk who seemingly only dies to impress his girlfriend at the end. Snyder was rightly criticized for Superman's lack of regard for saving human lives in the first film, so in this film he tries to rectify that with a montage early on showing Superman saving people from burning buildings, exploding rockets, deadly floods... except none of these rescues actually come off as heroic. They're filmed like sequences from horror movies, with ominous music playing as Superman slooooowly descends. Often scowling. There's no urgency, no emotion, no concern. He stands around brooding as the unwashed masses fawn over him. A number of characters in the film tell us that Superman is beloved, but the film never shows it. If anything, these ominous "rescue" sequences serve to validate Batman's nightmare visions of the coming of Darkseid and Apokolips--hardly something that will ensure the audience is emotionally invested in the character. Ditto the people of Metropolis' (and by extension, the world) sudden grief at the loss of Superman. Not very much earlier, everyone had turned on Superman when a crazed bomber took out half of the U.S. Capitol, then started destroying both Metropolis and Gotham when Doomsday showed up (and really, as problematic as the comic version of Doomsday is, at least he was visually distinctive and menacing. This one looks like a cave troll extra from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings). The emotional arc is not there. Chris Reeves' Superman? Not a problem. He was beloved by the people in his cinematic universe as well as audiences. Brandon Routh's? More problematic, but ultimately, yeah, he'd be mourned. Cavill's? Apart from those few people he grudgingly saved, this Superman hasn't really given anyone reason to trust him, much less like him.

Snyder, as a director, is very much a poor man's version of J.J. Abrams. They are both about the on-screen eyeball kick, and in my opinion, come up with various eyeball kicks for their films first, around which they then construct a script. For this reason, their films don't normally make a tremendous amount of sense and are rife with logical inconsistency and plot holes. The difference between Snyder and Abrams, however, is that Abrams understands character and gives the audiences compelling personal narratives and motivations even if they exist within an exploding world of dazzling nonsense. Snyder, instead, only offers nightmare dream sequences of Jack Kirby's unrecognizable New Gods, bizarre non sequiturs so disengaged and irrelevant to the events at hand that I was at a loss to explain any of it to my baffled family even though I probably understood what was going on better than anyone else in the half-empty theater. Jesse Eisenberg's lunatic, evil Mark Zuckerberg take on Lex Luthor conveys nether genius nor menace. His unhinged erraticness is more evocative of the Joker than a worthy rival of Superman, but hey, his insanity allows him to scare Batman by confirming his bad dreams about Darkseid coming are all true! For Snyder, this is what passes for subtle foreshadowing.

There are rumors circulating about an extended director's cut, an R-rated cut, all sorts of cuts of this film that will "restore" all the sequences and scenes left on the cutting room floor and make the choppy, helter-skelter nature of the film flow better and make more sense. Sorry, but watching more if this mess is the last thing I want to do. Even if an hour of film that is pure character development is added back in, that doesn't change the fact we're still starting with two-and-a-half hours of celluloid that has none to start with. I've seen every one of Snyder's films at this point apart from the cartoon about the owls--yes, even his "passion project" Sucker Punch--and I've yet to see anything that leads me to believe he has any better grasp on pacing than he has on character. The best thing that can be said about Bats vs. Supes is that it's rapid collapse at the box office may finally be enough to convince Warner Brothers to remove Snyder from any future DC Comics films and give them to those who've show an ability to deliver movies with coherent character, narrative and emotion in addition to pure spectacle--and preferably all of the above.

Once all is said and done, I can't even bring myself to despise Batman v. Superman the way I do Man of Steel. The latter has an arrogant contempt for the source material that is simply wrong. This one... Batman v Superman is a hapless kid who sits in the back of the class and eats paste all day. You can't hate that. You just pity him and get on with your life.

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Friday Night Videos

I played the Georgia Satellites' first album relentlessly when it came out. It was a pure distillation of Southern guitar rock in an era dominated by hair bands. I loved "Battleship Chains" but there's no arguing that "Keep Your Hands to Yourself" is the 800-pound gorilla on that disc. For my money, their second album is their best, but the band was never able to replicate that debut success and eventually broke up. Dan Baird's had some success on his own, but nothing matches that original rocking earworm.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

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