The Final Word – 2017

Taking a well-deserved break in Temecula

In January, “Riverdale,” the long-gestating TV adaptation of Archie Comics, whose pilot episode screened last July at San Diego Comic-Con, premiered on the CW to lackluster numbers. The show looked doomed until it found its audience through a streaming deal with Netflix, and quadrupled its teen demo numbers for the season 2 premiere this October. I can’t exactly say I’m a fan of the show, as I blogged earlier this year. It’s certainly its own thing and separate from the comics, but I guess I’m happy it’s successful and keeping the lights on at Archie Comics.

In other entertainment news, Barry Manilow finally came out, on April 17, in the pages of People, timed to the release of his new CD. Of course, his marriage to Garry Kief was the biggest open secret in town, but it’s nice that at age 74, Barry’s finally owning it.

As you may recall, last October I retired from The Boeing Company and transitioned to an aerospace auditor-in-training job at DNV GL, a management system certification company based in Katy, TX. I’ve spent most of this year acquiring the credentials I need to become a successful aerospace auditor. I’m fortunate that DNV GL has allowed me to earn while I learn, paying me a salary and benefits while also paying for my training and testing. However, this was their maiden voyage and the sailing has been anything but smooth. DNV GL had never before run an auditor-in-training program, and probably never will again, at least not on this scale, because they severely underestimated the amount of time and money it would take to get us up to speed. They budgeted for six months, and it took most of us a year to become fully credentialed. Compounding the problem is that the whole industry is transitioning to new versions of ISO 9001 and AS9100, the primary standards we audit to, and the accreditation bodies are still catching up.

Here is a brief rundown of the gauntlet I ran this year. On January 13, six weeks after I took the ISO 9001:2015 Lead Auditor course offered by DNV GL, I finally learned that I passed the exam, qualifying me to take the AS9100D Lead Auditor course, which I took the last week of January in Santa Ana, CA. Two weeks later I learned that I passed that exam, qualifying me to take the International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG) Aerospace Auditor Transition Training (AATT) course and exams. Here’s where it starts to get ridiculous. Over the past year the industry has been transitioning from Rev C to Rev D of AS9100. IAQG requires 40 hours of classroom training, and everyone’s expectation was that they would start offering Rev D training in January. They did not. Instead, they required us to take Rev C training in a classroom, followed by three exams to Rev C (Knowledge, Application, and a 30-minute oral exam), which, if we passed, would qualify us to take the Rev D transition training and exam online. This meant unlearning Rev D and relearning Rev C in order to pass the exams, then immediately unlearning Rev C and relearning Rev D in order to pass the transition exam. With me so far? Making matters worse, with Rev C about to become obsolete, it became nearly impossible to find an AATT Rev C class. I enrolled in a class scheduled for the last week of February in San Diego, which was cancelled due to lack of interest. I then enrolled in a class scheduled for mid-March in Dallas, for which I was waitlisted and never got in. My next choices were the end of April in Miami or the first week of May in San Diego. I opted for the latter since I could drive to it. I got in, the class took place, I passed the three exams, and immediately started unlearning Rev C in order to take and pass the Rev D online transition exam, which – did I mention? – has a 40% pass rate on the first attempt. I devoted every free moment – nights, weekends, and lunch breaks – to drilling Rev D back into my head, and on May 23, I took and passed the final exam on the first attempt.

Was I certified now? Not hardly. In addition to all these exams, I needed 20 qualifying audit days in order to apply for my ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB) Aerospace Experience Auditor (AEA) certification. Here’s where it goes south. Until you’re a certified aerospace auditor, you’re not allowed to participate in any third-party (certification) aerospace audits, not even as an observer. So I had to get my 20 qualifying audit days by participating as an evaluated observer on ISO audits. At DNV GL, the AS and ISO camps are run by different managers. The ISO camp had no interest in helping the AS candidates earn their stripes. So I got scheduled on numerous ISO audits where the client pushed back, the Lead Auditor backed the client, and I was removed from the audit. As a result I amassed qualifying audit days very slowly. To move things along, my manager arranged for me to participate in a series of second-party (supplier) aerospace audits, which she assured me would count towards my qualifying audit days. Although I was skeptical, I performed over a dozen of them, only to see ANAB reject them all because they were really first-party (internal) audits to which I was a second party. Finally, in mid-July, I performed my first ISO Acting Lead, received glowing notices, and got promoted to ISO Lead Auditor, enabling DNV GL to start making money off me as both an ISO auditor and as an ISO trainer. Suddenly I had plenty of work, and by the end of September I reached my 20 qualifying audit days. On October 12, in the middle of an ISO audit in Grass Valley, CA, I received my hard-won AEA certification. DNV GL immediately pulled me off my scheduled ISO audits and reassigned me to AS9100 audits. Since then, I haven’t had a moment to breathe.

Having trouble breathing at work

If this past year sounds like one constant test, it was. I have always had test anxiety, and by March my anxiety attacks grew so frequent and so crippling that I could barely function. When I slept at all, I dreamed about being tested. I routinely woke up in a panic at 4 a.m. with tightness in my chest and dread in my bones. It didn’t help matters that my mentor was determined to make me the “the best,” when I was still struggling to become adequate. I finally turned to my doctor, who prescribed Ativan. It makes me drowsy, so I use it sparingly and counteract it with caffeine, but it has enabled me to function through all of this.

With Danny Lu & Giulia Hamacher on Broadway

Needless to say, I’ve had very little time for extracurricular activities this year. I did make appearances at some local comic-book conventions – San Diego, Anaheim, Long Beach, Palm Springs – and made one trip to the Northeast, where I visited briefly with family and friends in Pennsylvania on my way to New York, where I saw Bette Midler in “Hello, Dolly!” with my friends Danny Lu and Giulia Hamacher, and made an appearance at New York Comic Con. 

I did not release a new book this year, but I contributed to “Love is Love,” a comic book anthology to benefit the survivors of the Orlando Pulse shooting; please buy it.

Love is Love on display at WonderCon

I also attended a few local shows with some of my favorite performers: saxophonist Vincent Ingala at Thornton Winery in Temecula; singer-songwriter Levi Kreis at Sunset Temple in San Diego; and Julie Brown headlining “The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun: The Musical” at the Cavern Club in Silver Lake. Meeting the star afterwards was one of the highlights of my year.

The Homecoming Queen's Got ... Me & Kurt

This year I’m proud of what I’ve endured, and what I’ve accomplished, and I’m sincerely grateful to those friends who’ve endured my long silences and lent their support along the way – especially my housemate Kurt Mossler, who listens to my rants when I’m at home, and safeguards the house and the cats when I’m away. I couldn’t do this without him. 

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Archie’s Weirdest Mystery: “Riverdale”

Last fall, I moved and started a new job that requires a lot of travel. I intended to establish new cable service once I got settled. But I got busy, the election happened, and after a few months I realized that I don’t miss having a TV at all.

I attended the pilot screening for The CW’s Archie Comics adaptation “Riverdale” at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2016, and while I puzzled over the odd pacing and some of the characterizations, the final scene, in which openly gay Kevin Keller and closeted Moose Mason sneak off into the woods to do the nasty, only to have their coitus interrupted by the body of Jason Blossom washing up right in front of them, had me all in.

Then I had to wait until January to start watching the 13-episode first season. Having now done so via the CW website, I can report that, while the series kept me interested, if not riveted, it was rife with lazy plotting, suspect choices, and painful dialog delivered by a mostly inexperienced cast.

Let’s address the show’s worst sin first. The murder of Jason Blossom was concocted as a device to introduce the cast and establish the core relationships to a wider audience. It was promised that the killer would be revealed by the end of the first season, and he was. Show creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa admitted during his 2016 Comic-Con panel that the murder was Warner Bros.’ idea, and that once the pilot sold and the writer’s room was filled, they were going to sit down and figure out who did it. [Full disclosure: I pitched myself to Roberto at New York Comic Con (2015) to join the writer’s room and he demurred.] At the panel, there was also fair amount of grumbling from concerned fans about Archie’s affair with Miss Grundy, now a nubile music teacher rather than the septuagenarian depicted in the comics. Roberto promised that Archie’s choices would have consequences.

The big reveal [SPOILER ALERT] was that Jason’s father Clifford Blossom killed his own son for reasons that remain murky but may have had something to do with Jason’s unwillingness to run the Blossoms’ maple syrup business as a front for its drug cartel. The reveal was surprising, but only because it came out of nowhere and made no sense. A good reveal would make you reconsider the information you’ve received up to that point, and see it in a new light. This did none of that, and tied up the murder only because it was time to tie up the murder and move on. Who made the videotape of Clifford shooting Jason? Why did they send the tape to Betty instead of the police? Since Jason just wanted out and had no intention of exposing his family, why would Clifford kill him and then kill himself? The writers don’t care.

Miss Grundy was an early suspect in Jason’s murder, but the gun in her possession was justified as protection she needed from her vengeful ex-husband, and when her true identity was exposed, she explained that she assumed the real, deceased Miss Grundy’s identity as part of her do-it-yourself witness protection program. When her affair with Archie was revealed, she was run out of town and never heard from again. So much for consequences.

Here’s what should have happened: Fake Miss Grundy’s jealous ex tracks her to Riverdale, and exacts his revenge by killing the boy-toy she took up with after she left him. Except he mistakes Jason for Archie – they’re both redheads, they both wear the same letterman jacket – and shoots Jason while Archie and Fake MG are making out within earshot. When the killer is revealed, Archie is crushed to learn that Jason’s murder was an unintended consequence of their affair. This would have tied the whole season together and restored our faith in Archie as a good kid who made a bad choice and learned an indelible lesson.

The show’s second-worst sin is in its depiction of the parents. While the kids at least look like their comic-book counterparts, and possess some of their superficial character traits, the intact, salt-of-the-earth families of the comics have been mostly replaced by younger, single parents who are free to have affairs with each other while also acting batshit crazy most of the time. It makes you wonder how the kids turned out as well as they did, and also what kind of twisted relationship Roberto must have had with his parents. Betty’s mother Alice Cooper, in particular, seems to have wandered in from Twin Peaks, the way she controls her daughters, emasculates her husband, and has no qualms about throwing bricks through windows. When Betty invites Jughead over for dinner, Alice keeps mocking his name, as if she forgot that he’s been Betty’s friend since childhood and his name should be nothing new or special by now. Like her namesake from the rock world, this Alice Cooper would be completely at home biting the heads off snakes. And in this version of Riverdale, she’d have plenty of snakes to choose from.

The show sets up and squanders so many opportunities that it appears to be written on the fly, with complete disregard for consistency, continuity, and structural basics. As one example, it was established in the pilot that a rift recently developed between childhood friends Archie and Jughead, but it had yet to be explained. As far as I can tell, it never got explained; it simply got dropped as the season progressed and Jughead moved in with Archie. As a more egregious example, at the end of Season 1, Archie spends the night at Veronica’s house to consummate their relationship. At this point we also know that Veronica’s father Hiram Lodge is about to be released from prison as Veronica’s mother Hermione is preparing for his arrival. Since one of the core relationships in the comics is Mr. Lodge’s loathing of Archie, I was anticipating that as Archie tries to sneak out of the house in the morning, he would run smack into Mr. Lodge, establishing an instant and compelling justification for Hiram’s loathing. (In fact, this would be stronger than in the comics, where Hiram simply believes Archie to be unworthy of his daughter’s affections.) But no, Archie just sneaks out undetected, and neither Hiram nor Hermione is any the wiser.

What works about this show is a much shorter list: it begins and ends with Cole Sprouse. A consummate actor, a stickler for canon, and the glue that holds the show together through his wry, noirish narration, Sprouse enlivens every scene he’s in. He has expressed disappointment that “Riverdale’s” Jughead has not been established as asexual, leading to his current pairing with Betty. In fact, “Bughead” seems to be the most buzzed-about couple on the show. Chalk this up to the chemistry Sprouse enjoys with simply everyone, elevating the performance of whoever his scene partner happens to be. In fact, considering that Archie has already plowed through every girl and woman on the show except Ethel Muggs (that we know of), and that Jughead has spent most of the season sleeping in Archie’s bedroom, my vote for the show’s cutest couple goes to “Jarhead.”

Archie, as played by KJ Apa, is certainly easy on the eyes, although his come-and-go American accent can be a bit distracting and his performance runs about as deep as a bottle cap. In interviews, Apa appears much more charming and jocular when speaking in his native Kiwi accent. The requirements of the role appear to be straitjacketing him into giving a mannered, self-conscious, frequently shirtless performance. I understand that this role was the hardest to cast, but I think it would have benefited the show to have an American actor play such an American icon.

Speaking of Americana, when a property such as Archie Comics has been around for more than 75 years, a present-day adaptation presents unique challenges. One of the biggest challenges is that, in the comics, all the main characters are white. “Riverdale” overcomes this challenge in various ways. Dark, alluring Veronica has been reconceived as Hispanic. Reggie has been cast, and now recast, as Eurasian. Peripheral characters such as Pop Tate and Mr. Weatherbee are now black. The biggest change from the comics is that all three Pussycats, not just Valerie, are now black. (This is a bit jarring considering that Archie also launched a new Josie & the Pussycats comic book last year, with Josie and Melody looking like their traditional white selves. But that book is about to be cancelled, so I guess it doesn’t much matter.) For me, the larger question is why Josie & the Pussycats are in “Riverdale” at all, considering that in the comics they lived in a different town and only crossed over for “very special episodes.” Riverdale has so many iconic characters – Reggie, Dilton, Ethel, Moose, Midge – whose surfaces were barely scratched in Season 1.

Here’s hoping that with more runway to plot out a 22-episode second season, and with the murder of Jason Blossom firmly in the rear-view mirror, we might see a stronger show that builds more faithfully on the Archie canon while also planting “Riverdale” squarely in the 21^st century. The history of television abounds with shows that went on to critical and ratings acclaim after rocky first seasons. As a lifelong fan of Archie Comics, I hope this turns out to be the case for “Riverdale.”

Moonlight in the Garden of La La Land

I haven’t seen many first-run movies this year, but two I checked out because of the buzz they generated on the festival circuit were Moonlight and La La Land. I wanted to like each one a lot more than I did.

Moonlight is two-thirds of a good movie. It tells the story of a gay black man named Chiron (pronounced shi-RON) at three different ages. The chapters devoted to Chiron’s childhood and teen years are gritty and compelling and transported me to a world I have never experienced nor seen on film. Unfortunately, the third chapter, depicting Chiron as an adult, plays as if someone took a Merchant Ivory film full of repressed Brits and remade it with a black cast. Nothing happens for at least 30 minutes until, I guess, Chiron decides to finally have sex. Fade to credits. Very early in the film, there’s an ambitious, unnecessary 360-degree camera shot surrounding a drug deal. Either this was the sizzle reel the filmmakers used to raise money for the film, or they blew their budget on this shot and settled for static camerawork thereafter. Either way, the third chapter, which represents nothing but inner turmoil, would have benefited from a few such camera tricks; alas, none were employed.

Similarly, La La Land opens with a dizzying, how’d-they-do-that musical number staged on a real Los Angeles freeway. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with the rest of the story. The simple boy-meets-girl premise is told through unmemorable songs, vast dull patches, and an unsatisfying ending.  And if you’re casting a musical, you might want to consider hiring leads who can actually sing. The weak pipes of Emma Stone (otherwise beguiling) and especially Ryan Gosling pale in comparison to co-star John Legend, a real singer who blows the roof off the dump during his brief turn in the spotlight. Gosling is supposed to be a jazz purist who has written exactly one song to prove it – a yawning piano number that’s not remotely jazzy and that he plays several times in the film to diminishing effect, reaching its nadir in the cringe-worthy final scene. Stone plays a struggling actress who beats long odds to become a bona fide movie star – yet she walks down the street unbothered by fans, slips into jazz clubs unnoticed, and Gosling doesn’t even seem to know what she’s been up to for the last five years. Moreover, as if to underscore the disconnect between the exciting opening number and the two hours that follow, when Stone finds herself in a traffic jam near the end of the film (in her own car, very unstarlike), no attempt is made to tie this scene back to the earlier one or to musicalize it in any way. I won’t spoil the ending – writer/director Damien Chazelle did that for you – but suffice it to say that, in real life, Stone would have had far better odds of ending up with Gosling than of becoming a major star.

That said, as awards season approaches and these two films have emerged as frontrunners, which one of them has the better chance of taking home the gold? Moonlight will get a slew of Oscar nominations because it’s highly original, a critics’ darling, and boasts a predominantly black cast that will allow Hollywood to avoid another #OscarsSoWhite controversy. But because no one in Hollywood can relate to the impoverished, crack-addled world of the film, it will go home empty-handed except for maybe a screenplay nod. La La Land will also get a slew of Oscar nominations because it’s somewhat original, a critics’ darling, and a love letter to Los Angeles. And because everyone in Hollywood can relate to it, it will likely win Best Picture, not unlike The Artist, another mediocre film about Hollywood.

Personally, I would like to see a more accessible and uplifting film like Hidden Figures go the distance, but I fear they launched their campaign too late. For my twelve bucks, the best film of 2016 was Deadpool, and the struggle to get it made will resonate with the Academy; but come Oscar night, it will be an honor just to be nominated.