New book for the Kindle: The Hidden Crystal

This is the link to the Amazon page to purchase the book via your computer. OR just use your Kindle to go to the Kindle Store and search under the title The Hidden Crystal.

Here's the description of The Hidden Crystal:

Sarac, a young student magician is beaten and cast aside when Alena, a priestess he loves is captured and carried off to sea by marauders who torch his village in search of the Crystal of Fire.

Sarac resolves to rescue Alena, though doesn’t realize that his urgent quest is part of a greater purpose; the Crystal of Fire is one of four Crystals of Power ancient Wizards created to prevent the terrible planetary upheaval their world suffers every one thousand years. Sarac must find the Crystals of Power and unite them before the Fall Equinox when the red planet Nibiru comes into alignment with their planet or all will be lost.

Naga, an evil sorcerer, who led his soldiers in search of the Crystal of Fire, seeks the Crystals of Power as well for a different purpose, to enslave all mankind and gain dominion over their world regardless of the devastation it will cause.

With the help of Joran, a wizard of immense power, Sarac faces increasing threats from the approaching cataclysm which is starting to rain destruction on their planet, and from Naga who is determined to retrieve the Crystals of Power at all costs. The urgency of their quest increases when Sarac learns that Naga is torturing Alena to get her to reveal the location of the remaining Crystals of Power. As the Fall Equinox approaches, Sarac struggles to unravel an ancient prophecy, defeat Naga, rescue Alena, and ultimately save their world from violent destruction.

Chapter One

Chapter 1: Land of the Golden Sun

Sweat ran down Sarac’s cheek as he raced down a narrow forest path, panicking as branches lashed his face. His boots crunched through virgin snow, now stained with drops of blood. He clutched his wounded chest and stopped suddenly, unsure of his surroundings. Nothing looked familiar.

Pale blue eyes stared out at the surroundings from a narrow face of sixteen seasons, framed by thin cheekbones. He ran a hand through his tousled blonde hair and shivered, pulling his coarse white robe tighter around him. This was supposed to be a training exercise and he was wholly unprepared for the climate. He pressed himself against the trunk of a tree as the sound of his pursuers passed close by, trying to remain as still as possible while his ragged breathing sent puffs of fog into the cold air.

Four shadows appeared around a bend in the trail. A thin boy with straw-colored hair and a sour expression on his face, wearing a white robe with a polished buckle of a golden sun stepped forward, followed closely by three other boys. “Which way did Sarac go?” came Braden’s surly voice. “I should have killed him when I had the chance. If he makes it back to the Temple of Inscriptions to tell the Elders what happened…”

Sarac picked up a small rock and threw it hard against a tree on the other side of the trail. It made a loud cracking sound as it struck the trunk.

“This way!” Braden shouted, leading the boys away from Sarac’s hiding place.
Sarac breathed a sigh of relief, and stumbled forward. Female voices drifted on the wind as Sarac’s feet snapped fallen branches. In a grassy clearing ahead, four girls were practicing their dancing. A chestnut-haired girl in a white dress caught his eye; her long, brown tresses flowed as her feet skimmed the ground. Sarac’s eyes widened as he watched, entranced as the girl spun and twirled, seeming to float across the meadow. She looked like an angel as the radiance of the sun cast a golden nimbus behind her, lighting up the edges of her dress. The way her body moves! Sarac felt faint. He looked down at the jagged tear in his soaked shirt, and the underlying wound in his chest and was startled to see how much blood he had lost. His vision wavered and he stumbled forward into the clearing. The girl’s heads spun toward him; three of the girls shrieked and fled the clearing. Sarac clutched the front of the remaining girl’s shawl as he fell forward, his bloodied fingers leaving red marks on her dress.

“What are you doing over here on this side of the river?” the girl asked, one hand on her hip. Her dark eyebrows lowered in concern and she gasped as she saw Sarac’s bloodied chest. She quickly bent down over him, her hanging hair framing her face as she shook him gently.

Sarac moaned and stirred, slowly opening his eyes as he looked at her. “There was a—”
The girl placed a finger against Sarac’s lips and smoothed back his hair. “I’m a healer. Rest now and let me see what I can do for your injuries,” she said, closing her eyes in intense concentration. White light flowed from her fingertips, snaking across Sarac’s body. Sarac gasped and arched his back; he squeezed his eyes tight, pain rippling through his body as his flesh mended and muscles knit. When the power faded, the only sign that Sarac had been injured was a lightening of the skin on his chest. The healer swayed unsteadily on her feet, her face pale.

Sarac opened his eyes and moved his lips, trying to form words as he rose unsteadily to his feet. “I’m Sarac. Thanks for healing me.”

The girl extended her hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Alena. I’m studying to be a Keeper of the Flame.”

Sarac nodded his head. “I know, I saw you practicing―”

Color rose to Alena’s cheeks as she brushed a dark strand of hair out of her eyes. “How embarrassing!” she said. She put a hand to her head and stumbled forward.
“Are you okay?” Sarac asked.

“I just need to rest for a minute. Healing is hard work.”

“Here, let me help you,” Sarac said, offering her his shoulder to lean on.
“Thank you. I must be getting back to the temple as the Sisters will start to wonder what happened to me.”

When the golden dome of the Temple of Fire came into view above the treetops, Alena stopped on the wooded trail. “Well, this is where we part. I can’t risk them seeing us together this close to the temple.”

“Why?”

“I’m studying to be a Sister of the Flame and must remain pure and chaste. For the other Sisters to see us together and think—”

“Say no more,” Sarac said as he raised her warm hand to his lips and kissed it tenderly.

“Alena! Where are you, child?” A stern female voice carried through the forest along with the sound of snapping twigs.

Alena’s eyes widened. “Oh, no! A Sister of the Flame! She cannot see me here with you, Sarac!”

The Sister burst through the underbrush, to find Sarac still holding Alena’s hand. “Out here with a boy, and an apprentice of the Temple of Inscriptions, no less!”

Sarac turned and ran in the other direction as the Sister grabbed Alena by the ear.
“Thought you would have some fun out here, did you?” the teacher sneered as she pulled Alena back down the trail toward the Temple of Fire.

“No, I healed him! You must believe me!” Alena cried in protest.

Sarac watched in dismay from the protection of a thicket of bushes, wondering if he would ever see Alena again.

Want to know what happens next? Order the book for your Kindle!

Harlan Ellison sues yet another science fiction movie for copyright infringement

From IO9: Harlan Ellison sues yet another science fiction movie for copyright infringement
Harlan Ellison famously sued James Cameron over The Terminator and won — and now he's going after Andrew "Gattaca" Niccol's new film In Time. Ellison claims In Time is too similar to his story "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman." And he's not just seeking a payout — he's trying to stop the October 28 release of the film, and seeking the destruction of all copies of the film. (Of course, I'm sure he's open to a settlement.)

In Time has been in development for ages, and there have been trailers that basically narrated the entire plot for months now, but apparently Ellison only just noticed.

In "Harlequin," being late for anything is a crime, and the Master Timekeeper can shorten your life in punishment for failing to be on time for things — and when your appointed time runs out, the Master Timekeeper can stop your heart using something called a "cardioplate."

In In Time, everyone stops aging at 25, but after a year you die, unless you can earn or inherit more time to live. Rich people have millions of years to live, while poor people (like Justin Timberlake's character) usually only have 24 hours to live and have to keep earning more time.

It seems highly unlikely that Ellison will be able to stop the release of In Time, but you never know. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Source Code Film Being Developed Into A New Science Fiction TV Series

From Television Blend: Source Code Film Being Developed Into A New Science Fiction TV Series

Source Code, one of the best science-fiction actioners from the summer film season, is already headed for a TV adaptation. The Jake Gyllenhaal starring, Duncan Jones directed film is about a soldier who has only eight minutes to solve a terrorist train bombing. Well, eight minutes every time he's reinserted into the source code. Yeah, you may want to check out the film because describing the plot in full may take a while.

THR first reported the news that the Source Code producer's production unit, "Mark Gordon Company, which is locked into an overall deal at ABC Studios, has sold a TV version of the sci-fi thriller to CBS with a meaningful penalty."

Gordon already dabbles heavily in TV with shows like Grey's Anatomy under his belt (ugh). However, no one apparently consulted with the film's director Duncan Jones, which is odd considering his talent is a large part of what made the project work in the first place. They should at least offer Jones the pilot to direct if he wants it but judging by tweets [in which he says he's never heard of the show], he probably would amiably refuse.


The Hitchcockian thriller was a hit with both critics and audiences alike, so it's easy to see why the people behind the film are pushing for the adaptation. The premise actually lends itself quite nicely to a television series. I just commented yesterday about the intriguing mix of episodic and serialized storytelling that the new Hannibal Lecter TV show can take advantage of and this seems right up the same alley. Each week a new attack or crime needs to be solved by our 'source code' soldier while the overall narrative trajectory can follow him/her finding out what happened to them and why they suddenly woke up as part of this new program.

Either way, Source Code doesn't sound like a bad idea for a new show and maybe this and Hannibal are just the first few in a new trend, bringing features to the small-screen instead of vice versa.

17 Sept: Science fiction-themed radio show at Kenosha museum

From The Journal Times (Wisconsin): Science fiction-themed radio show at Kenosha museum

KENOSHA - RG Radio Productions will present an old-time radio show with a science fiction theme at 1 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 17, at the Kenosha Public Museum, 5500 First Ave. The show will include episodes from "Flash Gordon" and "Space Patrol" and is free and open to the public.

Flash Gordon, from about 1935, features Gale Gordon as Flash Gordon, an interplanetary traveler who battled the evil Emperor Ming on Planet Mongo. Flash Gordon originated as a comic book series.

Space Cadet ran concurrently on television and radio in the early 1950s with the same performers in key roles. The story concerned the universe-jumping exploits of Commander Buzz Corry, assigned to bring law and order to the interplanetary frontier, and Cadet Happy, whose astonishment at inevitable trouble was expressed in the catchphrase "Smokin' Rockets."

Children are encouraged to come in costume as comic book superheros. Prizes will be awarded.

Free tickets to the production will be available beginning at 9 a.m. Sept. 17 at the museum. Doors to the show open as 12:30 p.m. Seating is unreserved.

Wesley Snipes Could Have Been Geordi LeForge!

This is a blog entry from the Letters of Note blog.

Star Trek casting
It could have been so different. From the archives of Paramount we have a memo - written in April of 1987 to the studio's Head of Network TV - detailing the acting talent then being considered for various roles in Star Trek: The Next Generation; a programme that would begin to grace the small screen just five months later. A few observations: at this juncture, Patrick Stewart was already a favourite for Picard, alongside Patrick Bauchau; Brent Spiner wasn't even being considered for the role he eventually took, as Data; a young man by the name of Wesley Snipes was in the running for the part of Geordi, a role ultimately filled by LeVar Burton but seemingly close to being taken by Reggie Jackson; Jenny Agutter at least read for the part of Beverly, and there was, as of yet, no sign of a certain Wil Wheaton, the youngster who eventually played her son, Wesley Crusher.

Transcript follows. Memo found at Slice of SciFi.

Recommended reading: Making of Star Trek, by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry.

TO: JOHN PIKE
DATE: APRIL 13, 1987
FROM: JOHN FERRARO
SUBJECT: STAR TREK/Casting

Per your request, following is a list of actors who are being considered for their respective roles in STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION.

Picard
Patrick Stewart
Mitch Ryan
Roy Thinnes
Yaphet Kotto
Patrick Bauchau

Tasha
Lianne Langland
Julia Nickson
Rosalind Chao
Leah Ayers
Bunty Bailey

Data
Mark Lindsay Chapman
Eric Menyuk
Kevin Peter Hall (also for Geordi)
Kelvin Han Yee

Ryker
Michael O'Gorman
Gregg Marx
Jonathan Frakes
Ben Murphy

Geordi
LeVar Burton
Reggie Jackson
Tim Russ
Wesley Snipes
Victor Love
Chip McCallister
Clarence Gilyard Jr.
Kevin Peter Hall

Beverly
Anne Twomey
Jenny Augutter
Cheryl McFadden

Troi
Denise Crosby

Wesley
J.D. Roth

The above actors will be brought in to read for Gene Roddenberry starting next week. However, Patrick Bauchau did come in to read for Gene today for the role of "Picard." His reading was well received; he and Patrick Stewart seem to be the favorites for the role of "Picard."

For the role of "Ryker," Michael O'Gorman seems to be a favorite. He's sort of an atypical choice for the role, however, a good one.

Denise Crosby seems to be the only possibility for the role of "Troi" at this point; the same for J.D. Roth for the role of "Wesley."

There are several contenders for "Tasha," "Geordi," and "Data." However, Rosalind Chao seems to be a favorite for "Tasha"; Reggie Jackson for "Geordi"; and Mark Lindsay Chapman for "Data."

For the role of "Beverly," Cheryl McFadden is the favorite. However, her schedule may pose a problem. She's currently performing in a play in San Diego.

General reading sessions are continuing; our next one is on April 14.

cc: Jeff Hayes

The War of the Worlds in 30 seconds

Re-enacted by Bunnies.

There's one for Star trek: Wrath of Kahn, but I wasn't impressed with that one.

This one is a lot of fun.

An alternate Star Trek t heme

Apparently on the BLue Ray version of Star Trek's second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," there was a different Kirk preamble and different theme music!



and this is supposed to be the original theme (with the vocal by Loulie Jean Norman)

UK: Was postmodernism born with Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

Francois Truffaut
From Guardian.co.uk: Was postmodernism born with Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

Is Close Encounters of the Third Kind the first and greatest work of postmodern art? As the Victoria and Albert Museum prepares to unveil its exhibition Postmodernism, I have been watching Steven Spielberg's 1977 science-fiction film and it struck me as a work of art, almost a filmed installation, that defines what "postmodernity" is, or was, or will be. I remember seeing a still from the film, a few years ago, in an exhibition in some New York gallery or other. But even without that prompt, the postmodern look of Close Encounters is hard to ignore.

Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990 Victoria and Albert Museum, London SW7 Starts 24 September Until 15 January 2012 More details
A man sees lights in the sky that move and dance. He is not imagining things. The aliens have arrived, in a glorious nocturnal spectacle of fear and wonder. At home, he starts making models, first of clay then of earth and rock, of a mountain in his mind's eye. That too turns out to be a real place, where he intrudes on a secret scientific gathering and finally enters the blinding light of the alien mothership.


What makes me call this film "postmodernist"? Partly it is the homely suburban world where Spielberg sets his story. American films have a long heritage of adventure. Big films before this tended to be set in big places with big characters – but Richard Dreyfuss plays a nobody who lives in nowhereseville to whom something weird happens.


In high art, postmodernism was the moment when the idea of the avant garde as a radical movement – rejecting conventional society and pushing perception forward into an ever more ambitious vision of the new – collapsed. The lofty idealism of a Rothko was suddenly unconvincing to advanced artists. The idea of artists as prophets or priests was abandoned. Artists were not special and neither was art. This was above all an American moment, for it was in America in the 1950s and 60s that modernism attained its loftiest heights and shaped a national culture, from skyscrapers to the space race.


Close Encounters marks this same moment in popular culture. Science fiction is a form of modernism. It shares modern art's belief in progress and meaningful change: it proposes a history of the future. 2001, the great modernist science fiction film, actually creates a model of history in which we evolve as a species under alien guidance. By contrast, Close Encounters does not offer any sense of history or progress or any theory as to what the alien encounter means. It is rooted in everyday suburbia and the revelation that unfurls is beyond understanding. In fact, it does not feel right to call it "science fiction" at all, for it refuses the genre's rationality.


Instead of reasoning, Dreyfuss builds a mountain in his home, like a work of contemporary art. The new artists of the postmodern age in the 1980s, from Cindy Sherman to Jeff Koons, did not claim a loftier vision or even a higher level of skill than other people. They were suburban artists, like Dreyfuss, using the stuff of everyday life to make images at once ordinary and bizarre.


Postmodernism anticipated the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of communism, and a world with a single superpower: a global, American, suburban culture. But as soon as those things came to pass at the end of the 1980s, art moved on again, imaginations railed at the supposed complacency of postmodernism and turned once more to grand themes of death, history and mourning. Spielberg himself took up the burden of the Holocaust, leaving the unexplained, eerie optimism of Close Encounters – whoever they are, the aliens mean us no harm – far behind.


Spielberg was at his best, and so was postmodernism, in that spookily still and light-filled moment when a suburban man steps into a spaceship, and history ends. (Of course, you may have found this pretentious and baffling. But, as the movement that launched a thousand cultural theories, that, too, was typical of the postmodernist era the V&A is about to celebrate.)

The Picard Song

I'm not quite sure how this video was made, but it's pretty good.

It goes on about a minute too long, but the first four minutes are great.

QUIRKY CURRICULUM: Professor’s class gets graphic

From Red and Black (University of Georgia): QUIRKY CURRICULUM: Professor’s class gets graphicChris Pizzino has a cure for American culture — more comics.

University professor Chris Pizzino teaches two classes extolling the virtues of the graphic novel and science fiction. MICHAEL BARONE/Staff
“The anti-comics prejudice is out there,” said Pizzino, assistant professor in the University English department. “You pick it up as you go, even if you were never told it in no uncertain terms. It’s in our cultural DNA and we’re having to do some intellectual gene therapy to change how people think about comics. So that’s what I want the comics class to do.”

Pizzino, who has taught a recurring class on graphic novels in past semesters and is now teaching a class on science fiction, said he developed an interest in studying the subjects when he realized their potential for scholarly inquiry.

“Such choices don’t always arise,” he said. “I’m actually very fortunate, here at the University of Georgia, to be able to teach these classes because they’re not on the books that colleges and universities have been very supportive of making part of the English curriculum. I’ve definitely spoken to colleagues at other universities who have met some form of resistance about this. And for the science fiction, the same.”

Though Pizzino has not received resistance from professors, he said some students have come in with misguided expectations for the comics class.

“Every once in a while, someone will take the comics class out of a kind of whimsical curiosity, thinking that it’s just going to be pure fun,” he said. “And most of those people are happy to discover that they are having fun but they’re also learning to read comics. I haven’t yet had anyone turn bitter when they discover this class is going to be work as well as fun.”

And people’s understanding of comics as a lower literary form, and their urge to hide that interest as they grow older, is something Pizzino said he understands.

“I think I absorbed what was in the air,” Pizzino said. “I’ve always read comics, and then like a lot of people of my generation I kind of quit for a while and then came back to them. I came back to them to find they had been changing and were changing before my eyes in terms of the kinds of comics that were being produced.”

It’s this use of the medium as a literary form, and the cultural attitudes surrounding it, that drives Pizzino’s research — as he is working on a book entitled “Arrested Development: Comics at the Bounderies of Literature.”

“I feel that the barrier is much lower for science fiction as a narrative mode than it is for comics as a medium,” Pizzino said. “Although science fiction is definitely put down, it’s never had to undergo the legacy of censorship that comics have undergone.”

Science fiction also enjoys a higher status in American culture because certain works in that genre, such as “Fahrenheit 451” and “Stranger in a Strange Land” have become cultural touchstones to non-fans of the genre.

“At various points in American history, various science fiction novels have come to be very important to different sectors of Americans,” Pizzino said.

Still, despite the significance that science fiction and graphic novel works have had in American culture, Americans still reject science fiction and comic “nerds.”

That stigma of over-enjoyment, of loving sci-fi and the graphic novel a little too much, is something Pizzino rejects.

“I guess in the eyes of some Americans there’s something uncool about excessive enthusiasm about anything,” he said.

But a secret love of comics and science fiction is something Pizzino believes is starting to be drawn out of people by modern cinema.

“We’re seeing a lot of closeted nerds now decloseted by going to movies,” Pizzino said. “And people around the world went to see ‘Inception,’ which was a very nerdy movie to the tune of $800 million,” Pizzino said.

Using the tools of scholars before him, and the cultural value of both comics and science fiction, has become the main method Pizzino uses to spark a love for both genres in his students.

“Comic scholarship has been going on in a serious way for, depending on how you measure the time, a few years, or a decade, or more,” he said. “The comics class is very much about either
introducing a type of literacy that people may not be very familiar with or reintroducing a type of literacy and getting people to see it anew — [and] that it gives the same pleasures and challenges and rewards as any other kind of literature.”

But though he said he believes comics and science fiction are not as valued as intellectual forms, it’s become more than a topic of conversation.

In a way, it is the conversation.

With the larger advent of sci-fi pop culture, enthusiasts everywhere are “coming out of the closet.”

“Although comics are definitely seen by many in a sort of lesser light, they’re also very much a part of cultural parlance,” Pizzino said. “Even people who say they’re not science fiction nerds probably use some term every day that came from a science fiction text. They go to see science fiction films. We’re all nerds now, to some degree or another.”

Captain America: The First Avenger

This movie has been out for a while and I just saw it a couple of days ago.

I enjoyed it... it coulda been better.

The movie takes place in the 1940s, but it was made to set up the Avengers movie, which takes place in the present day. So that gave pretty short shrift to Cap's adventures throughout WWII (as told in the contemporary to WWII Captain America comic book), and to Nick Fury (who does not appear at all) and the Howling Commandoes. [Yes, I said Nick Fury doesn't appear at all. There is a character with that name in the movie, at the very end, but that isn't the real Nick Fury, I don't care what anybody says!]

I've been reading the IMDB message boards about the movie, and there are a couple of threads about the multi-racial/ethnic Howling Commandos. The ignorant (aka unknowledgeable, not stupid) posters have been set straight - that wasn't an invention of the movie makers - in the 1960s comic series entitled Nick Fury and the Howling Commandoes, that's who was there - the Free Frenchman, the Englishman, the African-American. Truth to tell I don't remember a Nisei being with the team, but it's possible.

(Japanese immigrants and even first generation citizens were interred during the War, but the US Army actually had the gall to draft the boys of fighting age and send them off to battle - albeit in the Western theater, not the Eastern. And these Nisei troops proved their courage and their patriotism over and over again - I think they were the most wounded, and the most decorated outfit in the Western theater over the course of the war.)

Anyway, the ending was an anti-climactic disappointment.

Spoilers below.

As anyone familiar with the story of Captain America knows, the comic book ran during World War II, and after the war, ceased pubication. The comic featured Steve Rogers and his sidekick, Bucky - who was only 16 or so and the camp mascot - not a grown up soldier.

In the 1960s, the character was resurrected. The Avengers, cruising around the North Atlantic, find an iceblock calved off an iceberg, and inside it is Captain America, who has been frozen since the end of the war. He thaws and wakes up screaming, "Jump, Bucky, jump!"

Turns out, the Red Skull has been defeated and is escaping in a plane. Cap and Bucky jump onto the plane, intending to bring it down. Then Cap realizes its been booby-trapped and the Red Skull isn't aboard. (There's no threat to the US). Cap slips off the plane, Bucky doesn't, and so dies. Cap falls into the North Sea, gets frozen, and wakes up 25 years later.

In the movie, the Red Skull is flying the plane toward the US, where its set to crash into the capitol and will kill thousands of people. So Cap heroically steers the plane straight down into the Arctic icecap.

The problem? Why does he do it? It wasn't clear to me that, once he'd set the plane heading straight downward, he couldn't have just jumped out of the plane with a parachute. (He still could have hit the ground, been knocked unconscious, and been frozen, but I guess the movie makers wanted him found inside the plane.)

Second problem. The anticlimactic part.

While Cap is piloting the plane into the Arctic ice, he and love interest Peggy Carter have a dialog, where they're talking like he's going to meet her at a restaurant at 8 pm in the next week.

Then his voice goes silent, and she starts to cry.

What should have happened was that the movie switches back to present day, where Cap's frozen body has just been found, and while he's still unconscious, somebody says, "that's Captain America. We need him now more than ever."

Instead, what happens is, he wakes up in what looks like 1940s US, with a baseball game going.

We think to ourselves... oh, no, he's just been dreaming all this? We've been tricked?

No. Because the baseball game Cap is listening to is not one that took place after he disappeared, but rather one that took place before he even became Captain America. How stupid is that? THat's his clue that he's being tricked, so he breaks out of the room, out of the building, and runs into high-tech Times Square, where some guy named Nick Fury (portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson) approaches him and explains they'd wanted to acclimate him slowly to the truth, that he's been asleep for 70 years.

"I had a date," says Steve.

If they had to do this, why couldn't they just have had Steve go to the restaurant, and find the very aged Peggy Carter sitting there. She sees him, she's happy, she dies. That would have been poignant.

So, flawed, but enjoyable. And a helluva lot better and more worthy to be viewed than My Idiot Brother or Don't Be Afraid of the Dark!