Month: October 2017

MST3K and Royalties

An overdue update:

A couple of years back, when MST3K: The Return was still a Kickstarter campaign, I talked about the lack of royalties most of the show's writers and cast members received from episode sales when the show was still owned by Best Brains, Inc. I noted that Rifftrax shared profits from its MST3K episode sales with all the principals, and expressed my hope that the show's new owner, Shout! Factory, would do the same.

I've been meaning to update that post, and have finally gotten around to it, because I found out some time ago that Shout! Factory does indeed pay royalties to the former MST3K cast members. Here's from the FAQ from The Mads are Back (currently an archive.org link, as the site is down as of this writing):

It was previously stated on this site that Shout Factory was not paying us any royalties for the classic episodes of MST3K. That was completely and totally untrue. Don't know how that slipped by, but Shout has been nothing but kind and generous with us. If you have attended our live shows, you know that they give us lots of boxed sets and DVD’s of the show to hand out to fans.

It's also notable that Mary Jo Pehl and Bill Corbett, who had complained about the lack of royalties in previous interviews, both returned to write for and appear on the new MST3K, so it would appear that they're satisfied with the new arrangement.

So please, rest assured that if you're buying your MST3K episodes from any legal source, whether that's Rifftrax, VHX, or a DVD set on Amazon, the cast members are getting a cut. (I'm not sure about streaming subscription sites like Netflix, but I'm guessing, and hoping, that Shout! shares the profits from those sites too.)

And I'll have more on the Mads later. (Or earlier, since I'm planning on repurposing a Brontoforumus post.)

Flake Out

Arizona Senator Jeff Flake announced last week that he wouldn't seek another Senate term. It's not at all clear what that means yet.

I didn't like Flake, but I thought he was a better choice than "Chemtrail" Kelli Ward, the Bannon-endorsed candidate who was running against him in the primary (and, according to current polls, was likely to beat him handily). I was strongly considering voting for Flake in the primary and against him in the general.

I don't agree with Flake on the vast majority of issues, but I think he really is sincere, honest, and principled. He helped save Scalise's life after the shooting in June, and never tried to make political hay of it. He defended a possible Democratic opponent against his own supporters when they smeared her for being Muslim. When other Republicans were canceling town halls, he faced an audience of protesters and even stayed late to talk to people one-on-one. Hell, here's a video where he holds the door open for someone following him around in a chicken costume.

All in all, I think Flake is probably a decent human being. I think his criticisms of Trump come from a place of genuine moral concern, not political calculation. (And if it was political calculation, oof, he sure miscalculated.) That said, his objections to Trump seem to be almost entirely on tone, not on substance; he agrees with Trump on economics, healthcare, choice, and government surveillance, to pick a few nasty examples off the top of my head.

But, non-trivially, he's strongly criticized Trump's racism. He vocally opposed Trump's travel ban, and for years he's one of a handful of congressional Republicans who's favored immigration reform. That doesn't excuse all the issues I disagree with him on, strongly, but I do think it's worth recognizing and praising a bad politician who does a good thing.

But I'm not gonna miss the guy. At least, not unless somebody even worse takes his seat.

Right now the frontrunners for the nomination are Kelli Ward (R) and Kyrsten Sinema (my rep, the most conservative Democrat in the House). But that could change.

FiveThirtyEight has a pretty good article called How Does Jeff Flake’s Retirement Change The Arizona Senate Race? and KJZZ's The Show had a discussion about Flake as well. Both pieces note that, while Ward's currently the Republican frontrunner by default, there's plenty of time for another candidate to enter the primary. In fact, that's almost certainly what Flake is counting on: he wants his seat to be filled by someone who's like him, but more electable. I see a lot of people saying Flake's a coward because he's quitting instead of staying and fighting, but quitting is honestly his best shot at keeping a Trump-friendly candidate out of his seat.

I think Sinema's got the best chance to win a Senate seat of any Arizona Democrat in thirty years. Just how good a chance isn't clear yet. Her conservative record, while deeply frustrating to liberal constituents like myself, will be an asset in a statewide election, she'll be running for an open seat instead of against an incumbent, and midterm elections usually favor the opposition party, especially if the President is incredibly unpopular. Flake's was the most vulnerable Republican seat in the Senate before he announced his retirement, and it still is.

But even assuming Sinema is the nominee -- and the primary's not until August -- we don't know who she'll be running against. I think she'd stand a good chance against Ward, but not decisively so; I'm legitimately worried that Ward could win.

And if it's not Ward, then who? We don't even know who else will enter the race at this point, if anyone. There's plenty of speculation -- Graham, DeWit, McSally, Schweikert -- but nobody's announced yet.

But shit, I'm getting ahead of myself. Never mind next year -- don't forget to vote next week.

Does Your Face Hurt?

My skin gets irritated when I shave. It gets irritated when I don't shave. I've tried electric razors and I've tried cartridge razors; the past few years, I've been using a Merkur 25C safety razor with Bic double-edged blades (which I settled on after a comparison of double-edged razor blades).

A couple of weeks ago, I developed a shaving rash, on the left side of my face, around and under my chin. I've been trying to get it to clear up, but haven't had much luck yet. (I'll try not to use the word "rash" again for the remainder of this post.)

I found some articles with titles like How to Get Rid of Razor Burn Fast, Simple Ways to Prevent Skin Irritation After Shaving, and How to Prevent Shaving Rash (hey, that one's not my fault; it's the title of the page). I also found my way to /r/wicked_edge, Reddit's Home for Traditional Wetshaving. It's...quite the rabbit-hole.

The users of Wicked Edge have some opinions on things. First of all, they don't much care for William's Mug, the cheap shaving soap I've been using, though several of them say that, if you add enough water to it, it foams up more and isn't so bad.

I tried that. I grew out my beard for a few days and then, when I couldn't take the itching anymore and it looked like the redness was clearing up, I shaved again. True to the Wicked Edge users' recommendation, more water meant better foam. But after a couple days, my chin started to flare up again. So I'm going to have to try something else.

And oh! there are so very many things to try. Blades! Soaps! Oils! Moisturize more! Moisturize less! Use alum! Use witch hazel! Stop using astringents! Lotion-based aftershave, alcohol-based aftershave, stop using aftershave! Ultimately, the challenge is that everybody's different, and what works for one guy won't work for every guy.

For now, I'm growing the beard back out, hitting the irritated skin with tea tree oil (a couple of drops on a wet cotton pad) and aloe vera (straight from the plant) a couple of times a day and hoping it'll go away soon. Once that happens, I've got some new stuff to try.

I saw several recommendations for Voskhod razors as providing a smooth shave without being too sharp; I'm going to try those. I know my technique needs work; I'm in a habit of pressing, which I need to unlearn because I know that's contributing to the irritation.

I also saw a number of soap recommendations. Consensus seems to be that the best soaps are tallow-based, but I'm not big on animal products; fortunately, there are lots of recommendations for vegan soaps, too. I ordered a few samples from Maggard Razors; I'll try them out, see if any of them work, and plan on reporting back later.

Shout-Out to Nathan Rabin

A few months back, I tried to start blogging regularly again.

It lasted five days and five posts, at which point I started experiencing some debilitating thumb pain (carpal tunnel?). The thumb pain's not gone but it's under better control, so maybe I'll take another crack at it.

As I noted at the time, there were a couple things that inspired me to give another shot at regular blogging. One was an angry Sonic the Hedgehog fan who was so incensed by a years-old series of blog posts about Ken Penders that he just had to tell me about it when he came across my name in an entirely unrelated conversation. (Since then I've actually toyed with the idea of reposting my old, 1997-era Sonic the Hedgehog comic reviews here, but unfortunately I haven't been able to find them. They were on the same hard drive as KateStory Book IX, which I went to all that trouble to recover nine years ago; I suspect the files are still somewhere in my giant stack of hard drives but I haven't been able to find them.)

But another big inspiration was a blog called Nathan Rabin's Happy Place.

I first became a fan of Nathan Rabin about a decade ago, when he was the head writer of The AV Club and writing a column then called My Year of Flops. Every week for a year, Rabin reviewed a movie that was a commercial failure and evaluated whether it was really as bad as its reputation suggests.

I love bad movies. I love good movies. I love movies that other people don't love. My Year of Flops was right smack-dab in my wheelhouse.

My Year of Flops was eventually completed and released as a book. But the column continued after that first year, under the title My World of Flops; it expanded beyond failed films to include failed books, albums, and recently even a failed presidential campaign.

The AV Club is no longer the kind of site that does features like My World of Flops. So Rabin has started his own, Patreon-supported blog, Nathan Rabin's Happy Place. He's still writing My World of Flops, and other, similar features where he examines lesser-loved media (like Cannon Films). He also talks about other stuff, from politics to brutally honest discussions of his life experiences, including financial hardships and struggles with depression.

But my favorite of his features right now is The Weird Accordion to Al. Rabin literally wrote the book on "Weird Al" Yankovic (it's called Weird Al: The Book), and now he's taking a song-by-song look at Al's entire discography. (As of this writing he's up to Talk Soup from Alapalooza.)

I love Weird Al. I've loved Weird Al for over 25 years. Hell, all this talk about Weird Al has me thinking maybe I'll write some posts about Weird Al. (They won't be as good as Rabin's. But they'll have the added benefit of being about me.)

If you're a "Weird Al" Yankovic fan, you owe it to yourself to read The Weird Accordion to Al. And hey, if you like what you see and can spare a little money for it, kick in on Nathan's Patreon.

It's not just that Nathan's work is enjoyable, insightful, and frequently funny. It's also that his enthusiasm for his blog is infectious. I read a post where he talked about how easy it's turned out to be to write blog posts every day, and I got to thinking, shit, I used to do that for free, I enjoyed it so much. And I thought, y'know, maybe I should start doing that again. I'm going to be writing about whatever the hell's on my mind anyway, whether it's here or on Brontoforumus or The Avocado or the Techdirt comments -- so what the hell, why not here?

So thanks, Nathan Rabin, for giving me the bug again. I don't think I'll manage the same pace I did back in '11-'13 (seven posts a week about Frank Zappa, five posts a week about other stuff), but I'm still going to try and post more often.

And I'm sure those Sonic the Hedgehog comic book reviews are around here somewhere.