All posts by Kage

Essays, Journalism, Non-fiction

Twitter Dee and Twitter Dumb

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Twitter has a real problem and no, I don’t mean the fact it is the only social media company that cannot make money.  I started an account for @Bestinyourgirl back in 2014 with the desire to build it up for promotional purposes.  By January 2016, I had just broken 400 in the early days of the account seen below:

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By the end of that same year, I had hit 600 on Twitter and it only seemed to be going up and up. My statistics were great, showing I knew what I was doing on Twitter, is was great for me, because I had no clue what I was actually doing, but still excelling.

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mid-late 2016, when I first broke 600 followers on Twitter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I noticed though, that by the end of 2017, my followers really started taking a hit and everything I had worked to build on Twitter was going to hell, including the statistics that showcased I had merited an account, worthy of being in the middle tier of “successful” accounts. I was and am not a Twitter legend, but given that I had no clue what I was doing in 2014, I was very proud of what I accomplished in so little time.

Now, up until a couple days ago, my account stayed at about 380-ish, when my account started to balloon again, along with my tweets and statistics doing better again. It could be just interesting timing with the Tweets, but I suspect it isn’t. The weird thing is, all my new followers, baring a few, were ghost accounts. So I looked into this and found nothing. Here is the account as of Oct 10th 2018

newtiwtter

Back at 400, and growing, which is interesting. So, now I decided to go investigate how many accounts are real and here are the results:

twitteraudit

A majority of my 400 followers are real, except wait, that says 572, about the same amount I had by mid 2016, of 600, if you add in the fake ones, it is over 600. Also, Twitter says I only have 400. So the question becomes, why is Twitter removing and then allowing back these accounts, so that my count keeps going up and improving my Twitter stats again? Clearly Twitter should know the difference between fake accounts and real accounts, right? I’m not the only one being hit by this and this doesn’t seem to be discriminating between left or right leaning politics, it just hurting everyone who has taken the care to build their brand online, using these services and the sheer incompetence exhibited by Twitter, not just as entrepreneurs, but as service providers is staggering.

I for one do not think this is a result of Twitter attempting to get rid of fake accounts, something that doesn’t do much at all to boost most Twitter accounts. I think that was a way to save face and skit responsibility to avoid a lawsuit from brands being crippled by the system in favor of of lifting up verified or more followed accounts to attempt to make some money.

Has anyone else had this problem? How has it impacted you? Comment below!

 

Edit: Minor corrections to the text @ 9:52 pm October 10th 2018. Also, account is now at 401 and slowly growing still.

kageoween, Review, TV Shows

Kageoween: Scream TV Series Review

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INTRODUCTION
     I have always loved Scream. I first saw it at about 10 years old, picking up a VHS copy at the local CVS to watch. I’ve seen them all. When MTV said it was going to do a series, I was filled with dread. MTV was never known for quality, it produced low rent TV shows with mostly mediocre music stars, whilst real music was mostly forgotten about. The last time MTV was even relevant, Kurt Cobain was still alive and Headbanger’s Ball was still on the air. I wondered what would become of my beloved series, one that inspired a lot in my first novel, including this gem of a scene from the original unedited manuscript.

I closed my eyes as I laid back and tried to not focus on the eerie silence when the phone rang and nearly sent me flying to the ceiling, like a scared cat getting its tail stepped on. “Hello.” I said into the receiver. All I could hear was heavy breathing on the other end. “Hello” I said more hurried and with a little annoyance in my voice. A voice came to life on the other that sounded deep and scratchy. “What’s your favorite scary movie?” It said to me. “Listen fucker” I cursed at him. “I saw that god-damned movie too, so leave me the fuck alone.” -Excerpt from 13 by Kage

     So was my fear founded? We will find out.

STORY
     Same basic premise as the movies, teenagers being stalked by Ghostface and dying off one by one until the big finale.
The first season had an additional backstory to this Ghostface, seeming like an homage to classic flicks of yore, where the killer had some weird backstory, but it works right up until the end, when obvious killer is obvious. Still, that was always one the charms of the series.

STYLE
     I hated the mask at first, but as the series progressed, I cared less about it and went with it. Lighting is good, albeit, typical of Hollywood teen shows and movies, but it works. While the style doesn’t have a Scream feel, the rest makes up for it.

ACTING
     It is a horror show and an MTV show. No one will be winning too many awards, if any at all, but it is fine and passable. The actors do very well in developing the characters, along with the writing, to give us characters to care about. MTV is really showing they can do a series and have it work, they just cannot get their shit behind the scenes working to keep going with more seasons.

WRITING
     The writing is very much in the same vain as Scream. Maybe closer to part three, but the overtones of Kevin Williamson are still there and it hits all the right beats, making me satisfied that this isn’t some scheme to capitalize off the name rights alone. It takes care to pay homage to the film whose name it bears and takes care not to fuck with the formula too much, while being interesting. The teens are characters we can continue to care about and want to see a resolution with, which is nice, given most of the character is movies serve only for use to like the killer. Not here though, it is about the story. Fantastic and much appreciated from my perspective.

CONCLUSION
     For something I had zero hopes for going into it and really thought I would come away pissed off, I was surprised that it was actually really good. It isn’t flawless, but the nitpicking isn’t really relevant to me. I enjoyed it as I enjoyed the original flick as a child and that is all that I can ask for.

     I can’t really believe I am going to praise MTV but this series deserves its rating. I also hope we will get a third season, and they resolve what storylines they need too as well as the rumor of the original ghost mask making a return.

I give it 4 stars out of 5

Books, kageoween, Reviews, Uncategorized

Kageoween: Carmilla Book Review

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INTRODUCTION
     Carmilla is one of the earliest vampire stories and the inspiration behind Bram Stoker’s Dracula, apparently. Besides this, the only other known source for vampire mythos prior to Dracula is Varney the Vampire, a penny dreadful, which was sold on the streets for a penny back in the 1800’s.

     Much has been said about this novel, mostly the balls on J. Sheridan LeFanu, for adding Sappho eroticism in a time frame when such would have been on par with child molesting today.

     So, what does it come off as in 2018 and is it really any good? The answer, probably won’t surprise you!

STORY
     A young woman lives with a family when strange occurrences start to, well, occur, leading to a less than suspenseful build up to the climax of wow, vampire.

PROSE
     The prose has moments of sheer beauty throughout its page. If written in a modern voice, I think the story would fail even more. Part of the charm is that 1800’s style narration with beautiful prose in some places and misplaced telling aspects that could of be written better.

CHARACTERS
     The characters are mostly shallow, but still enough to get an idea for their personalities. No one character really sticks out in my mind, except for the father of the young woman who is friends with the vampress title character. He is a weird scientist of sorts and I don’t mean a literal scientist, I mean, he looks for the simplest explanation of a situation, but in the same breathe is glad that it wasn’t witches. I like this weird, juxtaposition between science and superstition. The original inspiration for Van Helsing is also present, but he isn’t as developed as he is in Dracula, but you can see where the inspiration came from, but it was less homage and more a “Hold my beer” moment, as Bram Stoker showcased he could do it better.

SUBTEXT
     Unlike other reviewers, most of whom are also male, I don’t find lesbianism to be a subtext of this book. I think it is inferred by men with an inkling of homoeroticism for other men, who have projected their desires on two characters.

     I know Vampires are known for their sensual nature, but they’re predators mostly, they’re also dead, thus they really don’t have a sexuality at all. I also find it weird that these same reviewers never spot male homosexual subtext in Dracula or other novels about vampires. Interview with the Vampire comes to mind with blatant male homoerotism, of which no one ever points out or holds up in esteem. The homosexuality is especially noticeable in the movie of Interview with the Vampire, where the sexual ambiguity between Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise is so thick, you could cut the fuckin thing with a knife. Just like this book, 90’s male homosexuality would have been considered loathsome and horrible, but no praise for pushing the envelope there.

CONCLUSION
     This book is really short and sparse of form, while giving some of the future tropes for the vampire mythos that we either all know and love or find to be horrible clichés. I wouldn’t say Bram Stoker was so much inspired by it, as being a flat out plagiarist on quite a bit, while extrapolating with better fleshed out characters, subtext and themes. Ironically, Bram himself would later be plagiarized with Nosferatu, a lawsuit ensued which he would win, even though he really had no grounds, notwithstanding his own plagiarism. Still, the story is good, the prose is decent and while the lesbian subtext is inferred by Horny men, the book still has a lot going for it and is well worth picking up.

3 out of 5 stars.

kageoween, Movies, Reviews

Kageoween: American Psycho Movie Review

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INTRODUCTION

     This movie came out two days after my 14th birthday and I can recall wanting to go see it. I didn’t get the chance to and ended up ordering it on PPV months later. My first impression was about how much I loathed the flick and how slow it was. I like dark comedy, but this was devoid of humor. What was funny about it? The pacing was wrong, the acting atrocious and it was devoid of any story whatsoever. It was, in my mind, how not to do a slasher flick.
Well, having just re-watched it for the first time since the year 2000, the question of, does it hold up and is it ultimately better than I remember needs to be answered.

STORY
     Same basic story as the novel. Young yuppie, wallstreet cunt, does too much cocaine, desires to fit in and does a bunch of boring, mundane things, like rent porn, exercise, have random outburst over shitty business cards that anyone but him would find virtually impossible to tell apart from one another, fuck prostitutes and oh yeah, he moonlights as a killer.

ACTING
     The acting is still fucking atrocious. I’ve seen better acting on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood than this snooze fest of a flick. It is one of the few movies where the leads are upstaged by minor characters, proving the age old adage of “there are no small roles, just small actors” correct. A lot of people praised Christian Bale as nailing the role of Patrick Bateman, but compared to his roles in other movies, he really seems to have no fucking clue what the hell he is doing in this flick. The only person worse, is Jared Leto. Thank fuckin’ God that both of them finally learned to act, but this isn’t the film that would showcase their talents.

VISUALS
     The visuals suck and don’t hold up. The lighting is poor, the sound quality on the Amazon prime version was complete shit. Is that a fuckin 90’s Glock in his hand towards the end? What the fuck? Then again, how could you tell, almost all Glocks look alike, which I think is the overly subtle joke, that few people will understand, that just like all the people are alike, so too are the inanimate objects. Besides that, there was a few, seemingly, era inaccurate aspects, which I won’t waste my time point out them all, because there isn’t a point to it. Other than that, there isn’t much to say other than that there are 80’s B-movies on VHS that look better than this eyesore.

CONCLUSION
     What is there to say about this movie, after nearly 20 years? It doesn’t hold up is what I have to say and it never did. The failure on the director’s part to seemingly make it like every other shallow, shitty, slasher flick, as if the movie itself was trying to fit in, is also lost on the audience, because of how Hollywood operates. Hollywood doesn’t like to mock itself often and few films, short of Scream, could has pulled off a feat so well. It fails overall and if you have to explain the joke, it isn’t funny. Oh sure, it has some very iconic scenes for any horror movie, from chasing the hooker down with a chain saw, to the ATM saying to “feed it a stray cat” and the Huey Lewis and the news ax scene, to name a few. Yet everything that was enjoyable about the book, is lost in translation in the film. Bateman is too one dimensional in the flick. I know that’s the point, superficial, charming, typical serial killer, yet so mundane and typical. How Bale played Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins is exactly how I expected Bateman to be played, which makes more sense, since Batemen was a metaphor for how Bret Easton Ellis felt during this time, the conformity and loathing within oneself lost here and would of added some depth. Another problem is that, they, the director, chose for us that Bateman is indeed, a serial killer and was supposed to have actually committed murder. In my mind, that was piss poorly done, since I left the movie, twice, thinking he was just making the shit up and still unreliable. The movie is way too long, with no clear intention of story and worst yet, it is unfunny as fuck. For a black comedy, I would have recommended adding some humor into it, besides “Feed me stray cat”.

     The movie is, has and never will be for me, but perhaps I will watch it again in another 20 years and see what I think then, but my teenage self and thirty something self absolutely agree, that this shit sucks!

1 star out of 5

Books, kageoween, Reviews

Kageoween: American Psycho Book Review

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INTRODUCTION
     American Psycho is perhaps more known for being controversial as opposed to being classic. When it was first released back in 1991, it stirred quite the riot over it. Some places banned it, others wanted it to be censored, those mentioned within its pages wanted to be dissociated with it. A decade after its release, it was turned into a movie and has pretty much been forgotten about since, after than a few articles on its 25th anniversary.

STORY
     The story takes place sometime in the 1980’s, although when, I’m not sure. So many clues allude to 1988 or 1989, but his reference to new things, skew the timeframe, especially because our narrator is obsessed with going with the crowd, material possession and what is the “in” thing is. He’s successful, or so he claims and he moonlights as a psychotic killer. Very interesting narrator indeed. If I were to sum this up, it would be Seinfeld meets Psycho in reverse. You see, our narrator is unreliable, much like Humbert in Lolita. You get 100 or so pages in and he describes killing a homeless man, which is so over the top, you wouldn’t even need to read a rudimentary criminality book to know he is full of shit and his bullshitting doesn’t let up from there, until the end, of a lying, banal, but witty, narcissistic, vain and dull shell of a person. Bateman is just going through the motions and you can get an understanding of why and I can completely why the author has expressed it as how he felt during the decade. There is nothing of substance in this book, not even the prose, but it still does so much with so little.

THEMES
     By now, most people know it is a satire, a critique on the 1980’s and its culture of material wealth, meaningless existence and just dialing it in.

     If you’re aware enough, you’ll pick up on all the clues around you, that people are self-absorbed, narcissistic, blow-hards with little to no substance. If anything, now with the addition to Millennials, into the world and this is more poignant that ever and could still describe our world today, even if it is a bit dated.

     The worst part of this book, is that Patrick is actually a “normal” human, who isn’t actually insane, albeit, slightly OCD, which causes his weird thoughts and obsessions. Add in the fact he is an MBTI Guardian type and that fills in quite a bit of his personality code as to why he is the way he is. One could argue that the stress Batemen is going through is causing his auxiliary to kick in, giving him the odd and inferior intuitive aspects he exhibits.

     If this character was written today, there is no doubt that he would be an Incel type, bitching online and expressing himself as vulgarly as he can and probably be leading a cult, resulting in his untimely death.

CONCLUSION
     This book is still relevant, the movie does a piss poor job at recreating what is so good about this book. The beats are all still funny, the prose is a character in and of itself and if you get it, you’ll love this book as I have.

5 stars out of 5

Movies, Reviews

Kageoween: Devil in the Dark Movie Review

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INTRODUCTION
     The poster looks like a cross between Donnie Darko and The Knights of Ni from Monty Python, but this is a serious movie. It’s a character piece, dealing with the trials and tribulations of family and strain that the past can cause, that sees two brothers, reunited after 15 years, on a camping trip, that results in supernatural horror.

CHARACTERS
     I like this trend that I seeing when picking movies for reviews. A lot of them are old school in storytelling, with putting suspense and storytelling at the top of the list. This movie really works to establish a bond between the two main characters and showcase a rift between brothers that could start to mend during a hunting trip.

     From the first frame, we’re thrust into two brothers so fraught with tension, you could cut it like a knife before you’re even 15 minutes into the flick. One brother is more than hinted at as being a leftist, with his conspicuous Che Guevara shirt as he shoots pool with his friends at a bar, the flashback to childhood and his anti-hunting stance, his inability to let his childhood die and a line about his deceased father thinking he was a homosexual. The other brother is straight, family man, with hunting in his blood. They shy away from making him a full on conservative, though. The typical brotherly divide will make up a majority of the movie and it is believable that these two are brothers.

ACTING
     The acting is kind of weak in the beginning, with the flashbacks being the best, but by the time we get into the middle of the film, it seems as if both actors have found their bearing and are more than comfortable with their characters. The rest of the cast a decent in their roles with little to complain about, for the short amount of time they’re on screen.

STORY
     There is only so much you can do with a story about two brothers going into the woods on a hunting trip, even with supernatural elements, but this did very, very well in regards to character building. Sadly, it kind of fails in the suspense category. While they built up characters well, they missed a lot of opportunity to really amp up the tension and give the characters a battle. It never seemed like their lives were in jeopardy for us to ultimately care about the climax. At one point, the younger brother falls and breaks his arm, but this would have serviced the movie better, earlier on. The older brother moves from barley skeptical, to scared with little to be scared off, minus a cave filled with deer antlers. The movie reminds me of a standalone X-Files episode, where the editor forgot to add in footage of Mulder and Scully to round it out. I’m not sure what the creature is, but clearly it is after the youngest one, for unknown reasons. Also, there is this weird false finish a few times, which seems more like no one was paying attention to continuity as opposed to a part of the story, especially with the younger brothers arm, now fine.

     The climax was a cliché and a bit of a letdown, as they both get away too easy, but at the same time, it leads to a weird twist, that is just kind of there, before ending abruptly, leaving more questions than answers.


VISUALS
     This movie looks great, it is lit well. This isn’t filled with anything fancy, short of a few crane shot, giving us a wide eye view of the beautiful, but eerie forest. Not too much to write about, it.


CONCLUSION
     This movie despite its flaws, has charm and merit to the story. It could of use a bit more friction from the antagonist of demon, ghost, thing a bob, whatever the hell it was, to build up the suspense and give our desire to care about these characters getting to safety. Ultimately, this movie does the opposite of what most movies do and develops the characters too much and leaves the tension building on the cutting room floor. I think making this a horror movie was a mistake, as it might have worked as anything but. Overall though, another nice throwback to older films, when the audience who enjoyed them didn’t have ADHD and could pay attention to story.
This gets a 3 out of 5.