it's a Numbers Game

This is the story of a missed opportunity. And the opportunity, the potential, would have been life-changing at the tender age of 18. 

In 1990, California had already been conducting their statewide lottery for a couple of years and it also happened to be the year I turned 18, I was old enough to buy a ticket to play. That spring semester I was living at my grandmother's in order to graduate the Rancho, the same school I started at my freshman year. So I was sharing my uncle's room rather he was sharing his room with me but that also meant I was sleeping on the floor because he didn't have a spare bed. And he was 25 at the time or about to turn 25, I don't remember if he was working or not but he would only stay up watching late night talk shows including Wally George. So while he'd stay up watching TV, I would fall asleep usually by 11.

I know multiple times throughout my life there have been periods where I do talk in my sleep. This was especially prevalent when I was much younger including into high school age. And on top of that, Grandma's house was also the location of the garage. And if you've read my other stories, the garage and Grandma's house as a whole had a lot of unexplained phenomena occur over the years. So that leads right into that spring semester, me asleep on the floor of my uncle's room and he was awake watching TV and I started talking in my sleep.

My uncle was only half paying attention because I had probably done it multiple times before while I was there. But that following morning he specifically mentioned that I had rattled off a series of numbers. He only remembered four numbers that I had mumbled in my sleep. But he did tell me those numbers that following morning and I thought it was such a bizarre thing to happen. He dropped me off at school and I went about my day didn't, think much of it until the following morning when looking at the paper and recognizing that the four numbers my uncle remembered I prattled off matched four of the six lottery numbers that night. A $60 million dollar prize at the time. 

I think for the next couple of weeks he kept a notepad next to his bed just in case something like that ever happened again. 

I was just randomly remembering that earlier today. How much my life and the lives of those around me could have, would have turned out differently if we had taken the initiative to maybe play those numbers on a whim that morning. 

$60 million paid out in a 20-year annuity, they didn't offer lump sum payments at the time. So $3 million per year before taxes to an 18-year-old?  Pretty dangerous, no?  

Then again, earlier that semester, as the jackpot was ever increasing, my civics teacher took an entire class period to talk about the lottery jackpot and what that money would amount to. The breakdown. Mind you, this was when the jackpot was only $20 million. He got into the minutiae of just how much that kind of money earns you per day, per hour, down to the second lol. 

But he also took the time to discuss how to invest that kind of money. Granted, in the 32 years since he gave us that advice, some of his figures would no longer be applicable. But it was still a solid investment strategy for the time period. 

And I've still retained all that info on the off chance I'm ever lucky enough to fall into that kind of fortune. 

Reminiscing

 It's only natural, I feel, that when you lose someone close to you, that maybe you start to ponder your own mortality.  Even more so now that you realize that you're just a few short months away from 50.  Half a century.  To be totally honest, I didn't think I'd make it this far.  Oh, I don't mean I expected to have gone to the great beyond just yet.  But maybe I hadn't really planned on what life was going to be like this far along.  I mean, as a kid you think 50 is just so far out in the future, who has time to figure out what you're going to be doing then?  After all, at different stages in life, I just assumed certain things were going to happen, develop, life was going to lead me in a different direction.  And to be totally honest, I never expected to be where I am today because of it.  

As a child, I loved the idea of flight.  I was obsessed with aircraft and flying.  I was in Air Force Junior ROTC in high school and I just "KNEW" I was going to head off into the military.  Going even further back, I was all about space travel and my 6th grade career day report was about being an astronaut.  TV production was just a hobby because dad bought a couple of VCRs and a video camera.  If you're old enough to remember the shoulder mounted camera with an umbilical cord to a separate recorder and massive batteries for each.  I would stage small scenes with my brother and cousins.  Stupid little shit that kids would do but who knew something like that would eventually become a 30+ year career?  

2005

 

2018

And thankfully, this career has given me the opportunity to travel, see more of our country.  I am forever grateful I've gotten to visit New Orleans, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia to name just a few.

Capital Building, 2010

Looking for the basement, 2016

Jefferson Square and St. Louis Cathedral, 2012

Pike's Market, 2017

Rocky Statue, 2018

But even discounting my professional career, there's so much that I'm truly appreciative of in my personal life.  But first off, let me openly admit, and this kind of touches back on the surprise that I'm still alive...  There were plenty of times that we didn't get into more trouble than we could have/should have in our youth.  That time we somehow ended up with 8 guys trying to cram into Paul's little Mustang II and I was the most sober one so therefore, I'm driving.  Driver's seat fully pressed up into the steering wheel, 5 in the back, two in the passenger's seat next to me, too much body heat that the windows started to fog over... and oh look, there's a San Bernardino County Sheriff coming in the opposite direction.  Danny started singing, "Yes Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, the bible tells me so."  We were coming back from our youth services meeting at the church if the cop stopped us.  

I don't recall if it was the same night or within a few weeks of that when Paul, Danny and I were dropping off a buddy of theirs when the buddy got into a heated argument with his wife.  In the middle of their apartment complex.  At nearly 2 in the morning.  Naturally the neighbors called the cops.  And oh, the wife pulled out a gun!?  Paul managed to talk her down from it, got the gun away from her and handed it to me to clear it.  I made sure it was safe and gave it back to him and he quickly tossed it into the bushes when he saw the Riverside PD officers coming up the footpath.  

Another night I'll never forget was after staying out late drinking and shooting pool, I was dropping off Cory at home and since we were all hungry, stopped off at Del Taco on 14th, right there next to the old Evergreen Cemetery.  Cory, despite living near there for a little over a year wanted to see it up close.  I drove into the middle of the cemetery, parked along the side of the road and the fog was thick enough to only see maybe 50 feet in any direction.  As soon as I stopped, Cory grabbed his bag of tacos and jumped out of the Goose, wanting his own little picnic amongst the tombstones.   Dude, dude, DUDE?!  Pawel, who had been following us, came up to the passenger side window, "Where'd he go?"  Cory finally wandered back after finishing his dinner and when I mentioned some of the headstone markers had Pagan symbolism on them, he wanted to go see.  Dude, this is a pretty sketchy neighborhood and shit's always going down here.  We've got protection!  He took his bike padlock and wandered off again to see the headstones I mentioned.  Fuck, man...  
We managed to locate a few in the dark and before too long, an RPD patrol car pulls up and lights up their wigwags.  Fuck man, just try to explain this one away.  3 dudes in the middle of the night in a cemetery, bike padlock on one of them, this is NOT going to end well.  
Fortunately for us, the officer was a really nice lady who told us to get back in the van and go home.  Yes, MA'AM!  and we were gone before the backup arrived.  
It's funny, another friend has often said that he's glad he didn't know us back in the day.  We all lived in Riverside at the time and are in the same age group, so it's likely we could have been friends.  But he's repeated often that if he had been friends with us and all the stuff we got into back then, he would be dead.  Wouldn't have been able to keep up with us, much less how much we were drinking back then.  OMG, the house party at Timmy's the night of the blackout.  No, we didn't get blackout drunk...  Well, not all of us.  But the power went out in the neighborhood and just came back up as I was pulling up to the house with my date.  Wild Thing was unstoppable, drunk to the point he started "surfing" on a coffee table.  Someone managed to get him down from there and take him outside to cool off and not even a minute later he comes RUNNING back into the house, belly flops on the wobbly coffee table and starts to "swim" on it.  

Anyone who's followed me or been friends for any length of time knows all too well my history of REALLY bad dates.  Are they out of the ordinary or do I just have a better memory and recall them better than others?  I mean, does everyone go through such ridiculous stretches like I have?  I've had 2 relationships that lasted 6 years each, although neither of them were that length of time consecutively.  And one relationship that lasted almost 2 years.  We even moved in together for a time.  And that was a giant clusterfuck right from the get-go, we should never have dated, it was literally only going to be a hook-up that somehow got dragged out and extended and she ingratiated herself with family and friends.  Seriously, that girl, right after we met, sent flowers to my mom and my sister for Mother's Day.  She hadn't even met them.
When we finally broke up, it got even more awkward.  She begged me not to make the news public, some bullshit about if her parents found out, they were going to not move to Florida.  Turns out, she used my silence to wedge a divide between my friends and I by playing the victim in our relationship.  Which was made more awkward when she kept trying to sleep together in the same bed as me.  My bed, to be clear.  Until one morning I woke up snuggled up next to her, my hand cupping her... Odd that I had never woken up like that before with her.  I moved out to the couch the next night and for the remainder of the time we lived together.  

What sort of life have you led, any accomplishments you're most proud of or maybe there are some regrets along the way.  And as the song goes; Regrets, I've had a few.  But then again, too few to mention.  

Mawwige

Mawwige is whut bwings us togethaw, today...

I've been going back and forth over what I've been wanting to say since even before Saturday's nuptials. Despite my career involving sometimes writing scripts, putting words into other people's mouths, I often find it difficult to express myself in the moment. My mind is racing at a thousand miles an hour and my mouth just can't keep up, I get tongue tied, my rate of speech speeds up and slows down as I search for words to accurately convey what I'm feeling. So it's with that in mind that here I am removed from the day of, and finally just sitting down and writing out everything that's been on my mind. Everything I wanted to say to the newlyweds. And I hope it comes across with the intentions that I have in my mind and in my heart. Forgive me if this goes astray.

I've said it before that Carol literally walked into my life 10 years ago. I was the manager of an adult kickball team and had invited my new teammates to my place in Huntington Beach for some pregame drinking. If you know anything about adult kickball you know drinking is a significant aspect of the "game." I was at my place with a friend and we were already a couple of beers in, walking back and forth between the inside of my place and my patio overlooking the street. This little blue Honda pulls into the street, goes back and forth before she finds a spot to park in and she's walking up towards my unit. She knocked, the door was open, I said come on in and in walks this young woman in our team colored t-shirt and I had no idea at the time that she would eventually go on to become one of the best friends I've had in my life.

If you know Carol, you already know how big and kind her heart is. How she will go out of her way to...  I can't even say she does good, but rather she is good. She is just a good person through and through, she doesn't do it for anyone, it's just literally how she is.

We bonded over a mutual love of pi and in the nine March 14th's we've been friends, we've only missed two Pi Days together. The pandemic and then again this year with her having moved to Ventura. 

If you know Carol at all, then you know Marley. And if you know Marley you may know a little bit about the backstory of how he came into her life. Granted I wasn't fully aware of how their relationship began until about 4 or 5 years ago when she finally told me.  We were coming back from a night out at a Home Alone/Christmas Story photo thing in Hollywood, we stopped for a bit to catch Danny playing at some bar in Whittier and Carol tells me she had gone to the animal shelter and seemingly looked for the saddest looking dog that she could find so she could take him home. And from her description he was just matted in fur, covered in fleas, just this mangy looking little dog that, by all accounts, nobody would adopt. That is nobody except Carol. And now looking at Marley you would never guess the kind of life he may have had if it hadn't been for Carol. That's just the kind of person she is that she went to a rescue shelter and literally, literally rescued Marley. To the point where you've seen just how spoiled and taken care of and loved this dog has been the entire time they've been together. 

Carol is unbelievably thoughtful and always looking to do the little things which don't seem so little when she does them. Case in point, a few years ago at her beach birthday party, we were all setting up under the canopy on the sand and she happened to notice the scrap of paper just kicking along the footpath. Literally someone's trash that they just tossed away and was just laying there. She walked over to pick it up and then walked it the additional 15 ft to deposit it into a trash can. Again this is just a small example of the type of person she is. It would have cost her nothing to just ignore it It's another piece of trash, there's countless pieces of trash littering the beaches up and down the state and yet this one scrap, one used up napkin, she walked over and properly threw it away. 

And it's in this type of attitude that she always looks for the best in people. Even when those people may not be thinking along the same lines towards her. Which brings me to what I know about her love life. And yes I've seen too many guys... I wouldn't want to say mistreated but they definitely didn't treat her the way she should have been treated and respected. A lot of these guys were by most accounts very self-involved. Very egocentric. I've often used the term metrosexual. That they would spend more time primping and preening themselves then she does. God one guy even had his own peach tree dish facial scrub and apricot scented body wash. There was the other guy who, man that guy just smoked like a chimney. He literally... I can't even describe how much that guy just bothered me so much from the time I met him. And when he left, I felt relief for her but at the same time felt very sad that she was hurt by it all, the entire experience.

So when Carol told me that she had been using dating apps, and I guess this might be a surprise if some people didn't know how they how Carol and Greg met but when he came along she was really excited. I don't think they had gone on their first date yet when she told me about him. But she also made a point to say that he wasn't her usual type. Which to me obviously meant he wasn't metrosexual hahaha. That he rode a motorcycle and that he had tattoos, again not what she would usually date. And over the course of the next few months she just kept gushing about how much fun she was having riding with him. I even jokingly called her a biker chick. And then he volunteered to dog sit Marley while she went off to Japan for an extended vacation long overdue. Over time seeing Carol and Greg on their adventures together, I could see, I could sense a difference in her attitude, in the way she held herself. And I've said this multiple times before Greg ever even popped the question.  Haha, even just remembering her getting all excited that they were stopping by a jewelry store while on another date. I joked at the time, sounds like he likes it and he's gonna put a ring on it. Haha!  I finally told her after I saw the ring, that she didn't just look happy but she looked content. Almost, almost complete, I would say. Looking back now I guess I could see she found her other half... I'm already starting to well up again just thinking about it and writing this all out.  Seeing the two of them together just feels right. They feel like they belong together, like they've always been a couple. Oh yeah, Greg and Carol?  Oh, they've been a thing for years, I can't seem to remember a time when they weren't together. 

Wuv...  T'woo wuv... 

Cheers to many more happy memories of and for you both. And uh, well I didn't want to be the one to say it but, Uncle Louie wants to see some nieces and nephews soon!  

Much love to you, Mr. and Mrs. Greg and Carol Bloom. 

Salud.  

A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far Away...

 Taken as individual parts, when you get right down to it, the entire premise for Star Wars seems rather silly.  A western set in space.  The good guys wear white, the bad guys in their black hats, a motley collection of guys in rubber masks and fur suits pretending to be aliens from other worlds.  The lone bandit with a heart of gold with his trusty sidekick, the young, naïve farmboy who goes off on a quest with a wise old gunslinger who was an outcast himself.  

It's all been done before, countless times.  In fact, George Lucas has unabashedly taken cues directly from the Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, that goes into great detail about how often these stories get repackaged and retold countless times throughout the history of man.  After all, how different is the relationship between Luke and Obi-Wan from say, King Arthur and Merlin?  

And yet, for all its similarities, or perhaps BECAUSE of it, the story of a Boy, a Girl and a Universe has become a cultural touchstone for 45 years.  There was something different this time around.  Whether America, and the world at the time, needed something like what Star Wars was offering.  After all, we were still in the middle of a cold war, tensions rising in the middle east while gas prices soared, America was losing its place as a global leader.  Star Wars seemed to become the escapist fantasy we could all rally behind.  

Even though science fiction had been done, and done often, it was almost always done poorly.  Cheesy special effects, flimsy costumes, boring battles between the sides of good and evil.  Even spaceship battles tended to be static, uninspired.  Then along comes this plucky kid out of USC Film School named George Lucas.  His senior thesis was a project called: THX 1138.  A dystopian science fiction film that was out of the ordinary for its time.  He followed that up with a tribute to the California car culture and his love of the early 1960s with American Graffiti.  He took the clout he built off of the success of that film to push ahead with his space opera, Star Wars.  It was a gamble as, I mentioned previously, science fiction had been done often and not very well.  But he went above and beyond, assembling a rag-tag team of artists who were willing to challenge the norms, take the next steps and effectively, re-write how things were done in Hollywood.  

He backed virtual unknown commodities and talented artists to found Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) who practically reinvented special effects for film.  In fact, ILM's team of artists would later go on to become innovators in 3D imaging and effects and Pixar was later born out of that.  And the magic that these artists created, taking simple greenscreen imagery and adding motion tracking shots to make these simple plastic models appear as though they were truly flying through space was revolutionary.    

On the advice of his good friend, Stephen Spielberg, Lucas would hire composer John Williams to score his little space opera.  And John Williams did what John Williams does, bringing emotional gravitas to the film.  Like the classical composers of the Renaissance Era, Williams could embody a depth to his music that they can easily stand alone without the visual cues from the film.  I defy anybody to listen to Binary Sunset and not FEEL the loneliness of a boy in the middle of nowhere who aspires to become something.   

His sound engineering teams going out and finding JUST the right sounds to add to his visuals to bring them to life.  Imagine how boring a lightsaber alone would be if it wasn't accompanied by that audible hum or the buzzing sound as it whooshes through the air.  All that from just waving a microphone in front of a speaker and picking up the feedback loop.  The distinctive sounds as their blasters shoot at one another is just a simple small metal hammer tapping a guy-wire on an electrical pole.  

Even more subtle than all that was making his vision of space look LIVED in.  Prior to Star Wars, most science fiction sets, whether they're spaceships, space ports or some random planet homes, the world of Star Wars looks as though people have actually lived there.  They don't look like someone just finished building it and people moved in before filming.  When you visit the Lars homestead in the sands of Tatooine, you feel as though the Lars family has lived in this hole in the ground for generations.  The Mos Eisley Cantina looks like it's somewhere you don't want to accidently walk into while you're looking for a drink.  The first time you set your eyes on the Millennium Falcon, you think exactly what Luke said, 'What a piece of junk!' 

Despite claims to the otherwise, I'm certain Lucas never, in his wildest imagination, would he ever have thought his little sci-fi film would become the multi-billion dollar corporation that it is today, with fans stretching across the world, legions of role players and fan clubs, generations of families growing up and enjoying watching the adventures of this plucky band of rebels defeat an evil empire.  

May the Fourth Be With You.

What did you say?

Of the MANY comic book movie tropes, the most annoying and laughable to me is always the battlefield banter between enemies. 

I'm not talking about our heroes or villains talking amongst themselves, plotting, planning. 

No, I'm talking about when opposing sides talk to each other in the midst of battle. How many times has Spider-Man or Deadpool cracked wise while they're exchanging blows with the villains? The idea that anything could be heard over the din of battle. But the variant of that which is even more ridiculous is the opposing sides stopping the fight to pontificate to the other. Whether our heroes attempt to appeal to the villain's better side or the antagonists threaten to kill our defenders or worse yet, start monologuing. Lay out their entire evil plan to bide the heroes more time to execute their last-ditch effort to save the city/world/universe. 

And the most absurd to even those are the normal speaking voices despite standing hundreds of yards apart. Have you tried to have a normal conversation with someone standing a football field away from you?  

As much as I love the 3rd act of Endgame, it's also the WORST at battlefield conversations. The battle between the Triad vs Thanos and somehow they vary between a few feet away to suddenly being at least a quarter mile away from one another. That scene when it's just Cap and Thanos, Thanos somehow knocked Cap hundreds of yards away and then in a voice barely above a whisper tells Cap he's going to reduce the universe to atoms before summoning his army to assemble behind him. And there's Cap waaaaayyyyy off in the distance, all by his lonesome. 🤦‍♂️ I know he's got super hearing but holy fuck, come on, I don't think he heard you without shouting. 

I will say that as much as I didn't really care for Shazam, they skewered that trope perfectly when Dr. Sivana starts to monologue and Shazam yells back at him, "What?! What'd you say?! I can't hear you, you're like a mile away!" And they cut to the wide shot and you see Dr. Sivana wayyyyy off in the distance. 

Adventures in Online Dating - RPV

 It was a friend's recent post about Performative Receiving that actually prompted/reminded me about this girl I went out on a couple of dates with.  Honestly, I had forgotten about her mostly because we only went out a couple of times and both of those times, she was seemingly lost in thought during most of our dates.  

As the title states, this was another Adventure in Online Dating and RPV is because this girl, and I keep using the term 'girl' despite the fact that she was my age when we first met.  I would assume she's still my age but I digress.  Anyway, this girl and I met online, I forget which website or app, but it was soon after I had moved out to Huntington Beach.  And let me tell you something that I hadn't really thought much of but man, once I moved to HB, my dating life EXPLODED!  It was kind of ridiculous how many girls I dated/hooked up with/scratched that itch with those first few years I lived in HB.  I guess a single dude in his late 30s living in his own place(no roomies!) was a big draw for the ladies at the time.  And I took advantage of it as best I could.  Anywho, I met this girl and she was from Rancho Palos Verdes, RPV.  And for those who aren't familiar, RPV tends to be a little more hoity-toity, upscale neighborhood along the coast in LA county.  She did drive a BMW SUV so she was doing fairly well, financially speaking.  But she was also newly single.  And by newly single, I'm talking she was divorced within the past 6-months.  That whole "freshly divorced and making up for lost time" mentality was in full effect.  She was now a single mother of a teenager and using the dating sites to get her groove back.  

We originally chatted for a bit and she sort of dropped off for a few days, ghosted.  Didn't think much of it since it happens ALL the time but she was back and eager to meet up when she returned about a week or so later.  Dinner at some place in Hermosa Beach and then a walk along the pier.  But the entire time after dinner, she was distant.  Seemingly not into the rest of the date.  I walked her back to her car and we kissed goodnight.  She wasn't really into chatting much after that so I figured that was that.  No harm, no foul.  And when she dropped out of the dating website again, I took it in stride.  

Then maybe a couple of weeks later, she was back.  We talked a bit again and this time I got her to meet up with me and some friends at 80s karaoke at Alex's Bar in Long Beach.  Yes, Mr. Mister Miyagi, if you remember them.  Are they still even around?  They were fun but I stopped following them after their shows at Alex's got ridiculously packed.  First couple of times I saw them were cool but then the bar was starting to get nuts to butts crowded and getting on the list to sing was next to impossible unless you signed up as soon as they set out the list.  Which is ironic because I saw them perform once at The Gaslamp and NOBODY was there.  I think I went up to sing 3 times and when my name came up a 4th time, I said, "Pass!"  Their lead singer even bought me a shot just because I was willing to go up so many times.  But I'm straying from the story.  

So she met up with my friends and I at Alex's and for the record, one of those friends was my regular FWB but she totally gave me the thumbs up on my date.  RPV really was my 'type', if I had one.  She was about my height, curvy in all the right places, something to hold onto, I like to say.  Curly brown hair, cute AF.  Anyway, we were there for a while and when we all broke to leave, RPV followed me back to my place.  Yes, brown chicken, brown cow!  
We got back to my place and we're talking for a little bit, getting comfortable and she starts to explain/semi-apologize for ghosting me before.  Turns out I was right in assuming she met another dude and thought things with him were going in the right direction.  At least that's what she thought until she started giving him a hummer and he started taking pictures.  He hadn't asked, she just saw the camera flashes going off to clue her in.  Classy dude.  

***WARNING***
Some of you might feel a bit uneasy reading the details of what happened next between us but you can stop reading this at any time.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

The reason why the Performative Receiving topic triggered this reminder for me was because once RPV and I started getting intimate, I went to go down on her.  Gotta be honest, that's really something I truly enjoy doing to a girl.  REALLY, truly enjoy.  What can I say, I've got a really talented tongue and it's not just for pictures.  But that's when she started to tense up.  Her body language let me know she was uncomfortable with me going down on her and she told me after a few minutes that the reason was because she hadn't planned on our date going so far, not that she wanted to stop but because she had gone to the gym shortly before meeting us at the bar.  She didn't give herself time to shower.  So the entire time, she's worried she might be giving off a 'not-so-fresh' scent while I was down there.  

Rather than let that kill the mood, I shifted my attention to the rest of her and we continued on, eventually wearing each other out and falling asleep for a few hours.  She woke me up, it must have been after 3 a.m. when she said she had to get home.  She hadn't told her daughter she was going to stay out all night and her daughter had soccer in the morning.  I walked her out to her car, hugged and kissed goodnight, said we'd definitely see each other soon. 
I never heard from her again.  Ghosted a third time.  Never saw her on the dating website either.  

Woke Up

, I'll read through the comments across social media platforms and invariably, someone, often a white male in their late teens to mid-40s will whine about how "woke" comic book movies or entertainment as a whole has gotten. They're so offended that more stories involving people of color and women are ruining their favorite characters and stories. And every time I read one of their complaints, I wish I could reach through the screen and slap some sense into them. 

Then I think about this post that I shared a couple of years ago and wanted to share it here again: I wish I could take credit for these words but the thoughts and sentiments are definitely on my mind often:

X-Men is about civil rights. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get X-Men.

Black Panther is about civil rights. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get Black Panther.

Captain America literally fought the Nazis. He is the embodiment of fighting the alt-right. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get Captain America.

The Empire in Star Wars is fascist. The Rebel alliance is Anti-Fascist. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get Star Wars.

The Punisher isn’t meant to be a role model for police or armed forces. So much so that the writers of The Punisher made him actively speak out against it in a comic. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get The Punisher.

Deadpool is queer. He’s pansexual. Fact. If you didn’t get that you didn’t get Deadpool.

Star Trek is about equality for all genders, races, and sexualities. As early as the mid-60s it was taking a pro-choice stance and defending women’s right to choose. One of its clearest themes is accepting different cultures and appearances and working together for peace. (It’s also anti-capitalist and pro-vegan). If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get Star Trek.

Superman and Supergirl (and a whole host of other superheroes) are immigrants. The stance of those comics is pro-immigration and pro-equality and acceptance. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get Superman or Supergirl.

Stan Lee said, “Racism and bigotry are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today.” If you’re bigoted or racist, you didn’t get any of the characters Stan Lee created.

The stories we grew up with all taught us to value other people and cultures and to treasure the differences between us. Only villains were xenophobic, or sexist, or racist, or totalitarian. I can’t understand how anyone can have missed that.

If you’re upset that there’s a black Spider-Man, or a black Captain America, or a female Thor, or that Ms. Marvel is Muslim, or that Captain Marvel was pro-feminism, or any of the other things right-wing “fans” say is “stealing their childhood” - you never got it in the first place. The things you claim are now “pandering to the lefties” were never on your side to begin with.

If you consider yourself a fan of these things, but you still think the LGBTQ+ community is too “in your face”, or have a problem with Black Lives Matter, or want to “take the country back from immigrants”, then you’re not really a fan at all.

Geek culture isn’t suddenly left-wing... it always was. You just grew up to be intolerant. You became the villain in the stories you used to love.

Disagree? See yourself out.