Looking to God

A World War Z Sequel

Posted on April 27, 2015April 26, 2015 by Jack Flacco

The 2013 zombie film World War Z raked in truckloads of cash at the box office. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m ready for a sequel. For my Monday Mayhem series, let’s talk about this for a few minutes and see if we can make any sense of wanting to have a sequel hit another blockbuster season.

Call this a wish list. I suppose this is my wish list of what I would like to see in the next World War Z installment. However, I’ll have to stop short of presenting other wish lists for sequels to the films Dawn of the Dead and Night of the Living Dead. I’ll leave these for another time. Right now, I want to jump in to the heart of the zombie saga based on the bestselling novel by Max Brooks.

When I speak with my friends about World War Z, they say the film is a great action movie. I agree. The film certainly knows how to pack a knockout with its vast array of visual and sound effects. I can’t get over how incredible it looks and sounds whenever I sit down to watch the thing. I don’t think this undead flick can ever bore me.

Yet, what can the sequel deliver that the first movie didn’t? The first movie contains the change a human goes through when the virus enters the bloodstream. It also features a number of battles between humans and zombies, not readily seen in other movies. The sheer magnitude of the choreographed sequences leaves me to want more. And the best part about the movie is the little moments when the audience falls for the subtle trap that nothing will happen to our hero if there is dead silence on the screen. That fallacy quickly disappears soon after watching the movie for the first time. The scares come fast, and they come frequently.

So what would the sequel need to do to keep the audience interest from waning? It would need something never tried before.

I would love to see a subplot where a naval ship by the coast suddenly turns into an undead barge where people would have to defend themselves against a breakout of the virus. Since the boat would be a closed environment, confined to the water or the high seas, the people trapped wouldn’t have much choice other than to fight or run. Given there wouldn’t be that many places to run, the entire subplot would yield a pivotal dramatic beat akin to the plane scene in the first movie.

The other thing I would enjoy watching in a World War Z sequel would be a battle between the zombies and the humans in a wooded area, much like the film Gladiator. With the humans having only a short supply of ammo to contend with, every shot would count. Why not have a scene where humans could defend themselves with farming equipment fashioned as swords. Have you seen a scythe? Imagine the damage a tool like that could do on the undead population. Worrying about ammo would be so outdated. A whole range of weapons exists in a barn. Have you seen the ending to the film Twister?

Lastly, no sequel would be complete without new characters. This is where Brad Pitt himself could fall by a new strain of the zombie virus, but he’d have enough sense to quarantine himself before the full effect of the infection kicked in.

Actually, after thinking about it, maybe that’s not such a good idea after all. The film wouldn’t have anywhere to go after that little debacle, unless it happened in the end and proves to be a cliffhanger for a subsequent film.

Maybe?

What do you think a World War Z sequel should look like? Should Brad Pitt once again lead the cast?

The Human Brain

Posted on April 24, 2015May 9, 2017 by Jack Flacco

My wife recently introduced me to a series of CDs by Dr. Caroline Leaf, a cognitive neuroscientist with a PhD in Communication Pathology specializing in Neuropsychology. In the series, she talks about the development of the human brain. My wife and I had an hour to kill in the car on our way for a weekend jaunt, so she thought I might enjoy listening to it. Boy, was she right.

I’m taking a moment for my Freedom Friday series to talk a bit about the human brain. By no means will I pretend to know everything about the human brain—but I’ll mention what I’ve learned.

What interested me was the idea of learning. How does the brain learn? Is there a physical change in the brain when someone decides they want to learn a subject? Or does that knowledge somehow get there because some people are smarter than others?

The brain has two hemispheres, right and left. Both hemispheres work together. Past science once suggested the two hemispheres worked independently—the left dedicated to logic (eg. science, mathematics, etc.) and the right dedicated to creativity (eg. music, art, literature, etc.) . Science has now discovered the brain works as a complete unit with both hemispheres working together. They’ve also discovered an interesting interaction that takes place between the two hemispheres they didn’t understand before.

The right hemisphere processes information from detail to big picture. The left hemisphere processes information from big picture to detail. The brain works best when the information it needs to process has a logic to it. If the information lacks organization, the brain goes into a default mode and shuts down not accepting new information. The only way I can describe this default mode is a person becomes unresponsive to the knowledge and would rather be out surfing with Beach Boys music playing in the background.

The brain also contains what’s called dendrites. Dendrites makes it possible for the brain to remember. Healthy dendrites have an actual physical appearance in the brain that is stalky, thick and branch-like. If you’ve ever seen a head of broccoli, that is what the human brain looks like underneath. Obviously the color of the brain wouldn’t be green, otherwise it would be a) weird, b) make us zombies. The thicker the dendrite, the more powerful a memory.

Short dendrites are known as floppy cells. Floppy cells occur when the brain absorbs a piece of information but then discards it. We all know the condition as short term memory. When the brain needs to remember five minutes’s worth of info, it creates floppy cells.

You must be wondering, what happens to the floppy cells when we don’t need them anymore? Good question. This is where sleep becomes comes to the rescue. When a person sleeps, the brain cleans away the floppy cells and stores them in an inaccessible part of the brain. The storage capacity of the brain is about 300 million years. I’d place a winning bet that we have enough capacity in that noggin of ours to store five minutes worth of garbage in there, don’t you think?

All right, having said that, what is the result of this brief discourse regarding the human brain?

When a student is in the process of learning a new subject, there’s an actual physical change in the brain that takes place in order to retain the new knowledge. As the student learns, dendrites grow thick. Anything not needed, the brain cleans away during sleep. As the student continues to learn, the student becomes smarter. The physical changes in the brain allow that to happen. Barring disease, the brain is the only organ that continues to grow in spite of getting older.

In other words, don’t let anyone say to you that you’re too old to learn. You’re never too old to learn.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, on sale now.
RANGER MARTIN AND THE ALIEN INVASION, on sale now.

Have you ever studied into the human brain? If so, what do you like about it?

Wednesday Warriors

Sam Witwicky

Posted on April 22, 2015April 23, 2015 by Jack Flacco

What would you do if you found out your car wasn’t what you thought it was? You’d take it to where you had bought it and either ask for your money back, or sue the car company of course. But let’s say your car is not what you thought it was because it’s not of this world? You could very well take it to its manufacturer, but that would mean you’d have to travel a few million miles to get there.

Megan Fox as Mikaela and Shia LeBeouf as Sam Witwicky

Joining my Wednesday Warriors series is Sam Witwicky, the high school motormouth who happens to come upon one of the greatest discoveries to ever hit earth.

Transformers opened to become one of the biggest box office draws of 2007. It spawned three sequels (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Transformers: Age of Extinction) and secured Hasbro‘s franchise as a guaranteed money cow for Paramount Pictures.

Based on the toy by the same name, Transformers introduced the world to Shia LeBeouf as Sam, the stress-induced teen, and Megan Fox as Mikaela, his love interest. The film is an assault on the senses. From the very first frame to the last, the plot revolves around explosions, more explosions and lots of explosions. The never-ending barrage of pyrotechnics is simply an amazing thing to watch.

Add to it a good helping of fast cars, stunts and tense moments, the film pulls off a brilliant show for anyone wondering what a big budget summer flick ought to look like.

In the midst of the damage is a teenage boy stuck in an alien car that has a mind of its own. Sam’s frantic nature propels the story forward by making every scene a snapshot into impending doom. The heightened energy he expels from his rogue dealings with the Autobots makes him a prime target of the Decepticons.

To boot, the geeky savior hooks up with his dream girl, Mikaela, who takes it upon herself to instill courage in her otherwise tormented friend. While he attempts to outrun and outfox the Decepticons, she acts as his sounding board for all his crazy ideas.

As neurotic as Sam appears, there’s a side of the young teen only Mikaela and the Autobots know. He would give his life for those he believed deserved saving. Through the mayhem of artillery fire and bombs blasting, Sam devotes his loyalties to a cause that would eventually save the world at the cost of almost losing his life.

Ultimately, Sam Witwicky is a hero thrown into a cause greater than himself. In the end, he’s an ordinary kid who turns around and saves Earth.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, on sale now.
RANGER MARTIN AND THE ALIEN INVASION, on sale now.

Have you seen any of the Transformer movies? What do you like best about these sci-fi action flicks?

Monday Mayhem

Zombie What Ifs VII

Posted on April 20, 2015April 21, 2015 by Jack Flacco

Today’s Monday Mayhem is all about fun! That’s right. It’s that time again, folks. It’s time to put your thinking caps on and help me escape the zombies. Are you ready to indulge in some serious undead running? It ain’t gonna be pretty. Not today.

How it works: I present a scenario filled with zombies, and your job is to figure out a way to escape. Of course I’ll give you my answer telling you what I’d do, but it doesn’t mean that’s what you would do. That’s up for you to decide. And if you missed them, here are the first six parts: I, II, III, IV, V, VI.

Are you ready? All right then. Let’s go!

Scenario #1: You’re in the middle of a corn field. You see the stocks behind you wafting back and forth and you know that’s not a good sign. Thirty feet ahead, past the logs and trees, is a lake. If you don’t get a move on, you’ll end up as zombie meat. The only way out will be to head for the lake. When you get there, you realize something is swimming in the water. Schools of fish. You think nothing of it until you place one foot in the water. Piranha. Your choice? You either fight your way through a zombie horde or swim to the other side of the lake, hoping the piranha don’t get you first. What do you do?

My Answer: I don’t know about you, but I’d rather fight through a crowd of the undead. Piranha are much too dangerous for my taste.

Scenario #2: Twenty-three. You’ve counted them twice. Twenty-three. That’s how many of the undead have you surrounded on the roof of your neighbor’s garage. After seeing them on the right, on the left and in the driveway, your only chance would be to make a run across the backyard to the fence on the other side. There’s a catch, though. The jump alone will kill you. If you decide to hang by the roof and drop graciously, you may survive the fall, but by the time you get down there, you may also have zombies on your tail. Will you take a chance and make a run for it? Or will you die a miserable death while thinking of last year’s chocolate cake?

My Answer: I’m not going to starve to death. Every roof has debris in their eavestroughs. I’ll distract them, tossing the debris in the front, then I’ll make a break for it in the back.

Scenario #3: You venture into a general store that contains plenty of goods left to raid. You fill your backpack. When you’ve loaded it to the point you can’t carry anymore, you hear a ring in the front of the store and a shuffle on the floor. You drop the backpack and duck behind the deli counter. Five zombies head your way. You don’t know if you’ve attracted them when you dropped your backpack, but what you do know is you have to get out of there. With only one way out, through the front, your chances of surviving are small. Do you risk your life, make a run for the front door, perhaps leaving your backpack behind? Or will you sit tight, hoping they’d all go away?

My Answer: For this one, I thought of sitting tight. But then I thought every deli has a set of steak knives. I can do a lot of damage with a set of steak knives.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, on sale now.
RANGER MARTIN AND THE ALIEN INVASION, on sale now.

What would you do?

Freedom Friday, Other Things

My Mentor

Posted on April 17, 2015May 9, 2017 by Jack Flacco

Well over thirty years ago, I sat in my high school music class pondering the meaning of why I was there. I had my whole life ahead of me and didn’t know better. I didn’t know better because prior to that, I’d gotten into heaps of trouble with the schools I had attended but not enough to constitute a criminal record. Thank goodness. Had I not smartened up, I’m sure I would have ended up on the street somewhere doing who knows what.

I had help. My high school music teacher was one of my mentors throughout the length of my stay there at the insane asylum. He was a bulk of a man, tree stumps for arms and a thick neck. He also was Romanian. Not that it mattered to other students, but it mattered to me, considering I had a huge crush on gymnast Nadia Comaneci at the time, and he came from the same area of Romania she did. So naturally, I gravitated toward his instruction and put him on a pedestal.

His name doesn’t matter either. Suffice it to know he influenced me in ways that even today bewilders me. “Hey, so-and-so used to say that,” I would say to myself whenever I’d do something he would have approved.

His approach to life was a simple one—be the best you can be without being a goof about it. His words. If you expected something dramatic, that’s as dramatic as it got. His intention was to instill courage into every student, and never to be afraid of making a difference in the world.

Before becoming a teacher, he escaped communism from which he experienced firsthand the persecution of his family by those less intelligent than he. When he immigrated to Canada, his goal was to live a peaceable life. Eventually, his reputation as a perfectionist in the field of music preceded him and my future high school offered him a position as a teacher.

Students like me flocked to his classes simply from word of mouth. They were not easy classes to get into, and they were not what anyone expected. His philosophy of marrying music with life lessons made him the most popular teacher in the school. The courses were worth an extra half credit for those lucky enough to have him accept their entrance application.

From the onset of taking one of his classes, he made it plain that students who did not give one hundred percent of their attitude toward the class would not pass. To him, skill wasn’t what mattered. It was attitude. He used to say

“You can teach an ape to do anything, but it is very difficult to teach attitude to a human.”

Many kids came and went through his doors. Those with problems, he personally helped with encouraging words. I landed on the student council believing I was capable of more than what I had shown him.

After graduating high school, I visited my music teacher several times to see how he was doing. He was his cranky old self, teasing his students to sit up straight, and pay attention while I distracted him with simple stories of my effort with living a peaceable life.

Eventually though, we lost touch. However, by that time, I didn’t consider him a mentor anymore but a friend.

I miss my friend.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, on sale now.
RANGER MARTIN AND THE ALIEN INVASION, on sale now.

Have you had a mentor in life? What ever became of them? What do you think of the mentoring others for their betterment?

Wednesday Warriors

Brian O’Conner

Posted on April 15, 2015April 16, 2015 by Jack Flacco

Turbo-charged, Nitro-boosted Brian O’Conner—the cop with the metal—exceeds all limits this week on Wednesday Warriors.

The Fast and the Furious movie franchise may not win awards, but what it lacks in praises by the academy it more than makes up in heart-pounding, adrenalin-soaked, action-packed racing sequences. The photography is a blur, the editing is jarring, and the shear thrill of its biting score burns tread marks around the competition of wannabe imposters.

Inspired by article focusing on street racing in the 2000s, The Fast and the Furious torched the box office, raking in $207 Million on a production budget of $38 Million. It shot to #1 throughout North America in 2,628 theaters on opening weekend. Even then, the film had the markings of a juggernaut series few would reminisce in disputing.

Among the players stands Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), a bulk of a man tearing like thunder on four wheels. A hijacker. A family man. He’s the guy who the cops have been wanting to jail for a long time. Next, Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriquez), the strong one. She’s Dominic’s girl. She has earned a god-like status among her admiring peers as a crazed driver that no one ought to mess with.

Then, there’s Brian (Paul Walker), the cop. The guy sent in to bring Dominic to justice.

How can one describe Brian without spoiling the story? He loves the thrill of the chase. He loves speed. Give him a choice between sitting in a sandwich shop ordering tuna and cranking the juice on his NOS (Nitrous Oxcide Systems) tank—he’ll choose street racing any day of the week. He is not a cop who goes by the book.

Torn by his allegiance to the police force and his newfound friendship with Dominic, Brian searches for a way to breach the boundary between duty and honor. Falling for Dominic’s beautiful sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) was not in the plan. Yet, neither was burning dust in one high-speed contest after another.

Eventually, Brian questions his abilities and weighs the consequences against losing the one thing that drives him. Respect.

[Author’s note: The first time watching The Fast and the Furious I remember how actor Paul Walker seemed like the everyman. His boyish grin and stellar gaze certainly captured the attention. When I heard of his passing on November 30, 2013, I didn’t know what to think. I was still recovering from the shock. I eventually learned Walker was the passenger that fateful day of the accident that had taken his life. Reports stated he died instantly. I still can’t believe he’s no longer with us.]

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, on sale now.
RANGER MARTIN AND THE ALIEN INVASION, on sale now.

Have you seen any of The Fast and the Furious movies? What did you think of Brian?

Monday Mayhem

Benefits to Becoming a Zombie

Posted on April 13, 2015April 14, 2015 by Jack Flacco

The other day my friends and I couldn’t agree if becoming a zombie was a good thing. Aside from the annoying groan and smells emanating from the undead corpse, some of them seemed to think turning into a zombie was a positive experience. I begged to differ.

Crowd photo of the Guinness World Record™ breaking New Jersey Zombie Walk held on October 30th, 2010. 4,093+ zombies attended the event. [Photo credit: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.]

On a dare, I promised my friends that for my Monday Mayhem series post I’d refute their claims and prove beyond a doubt that the life of a zombie was not something one would aspire to, if one were to put things into perspective.

Being a Zombie Saves Time—The biggest advantage my friends put forth as a reason to becoming a zombie is that zombies do not have to worry about personal hygiene. They argued that the byproduct to such an action is saving time. Well, I thought, so is not sleeping. But you don’t see me not taking showers and staying up all night. That is, if you don’t live in a frat house. No, I countered their argument stating the obvious. Okay, you’ll save time by not bathing and not sleeping. Then what? How will you use that extra time? You can’t go out on date because, frankly, you’ll smell. And you can’t learn a new hobby because the teacher will run away at the first sight of you. Jack 1, Friends 0.

Being a Zombie Means Never Having to Go Hungry—I’m not sure how we ended up talking about this, but eventually the conversation of food came to play. My friends agreed that zombies would never have to go hungry again. With a lot of humans running around, they’d have their choice of meat any way they want. Sorry, but I’m going to raise one slight detail they forgot to factor into their genius argument. Everything would be all sunshine and rainbows if humans didn’t have the weapons to splatter your brains all over the back wall where you were standing. As zombies, you can run after humans. The question remains, will you live long enough to claim your prize? Don’t think humans will lay down without a fight. Jack 2, Friends 0.

Being a Zombie Means Having Eternal Life—I literally laughed out loud when one of my friends suggested they’d have eternal life. The first thought to hit me was, living forever? How? As an undead creature, you’d rot to a slow death. What kind of life is that? Would being a zombie mean having the ability to cheat death? I don’t think so. Look at what happened to the zombies in the movie Warm Bodies. They had sniveled to stick figures with no hope of living a productive life. Then there’re the walkers in The Walking Dead. They’re about to fall apart soon. No thanks. I’d rather remain human with the full knowledge that when I die I won’t have to worry about the dastardly deeds I’d committed as a zombie. I know, weak argument, but still. Jack 3, Friends 0.

Being a Zombie Means I Can Dance—My friends used the Michael Jackson Thriller video to make their point. Zombies can dance, they said. And you know what? I happen to agree with them. Great video. Jack 3, Friends 1.

There you have it. Other than knowing how to dance, the benefits to becoming a zombie are not that great. I’d choose human over zombie any day of the week.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, on sale now.
RANGER MARTIN AND THE ALIEN INVASION, on sale now.

What arguments did I miss? Is being a zombie all that great?

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