Hollywood Ending…

Haven’t we seen this movie (hacked) a hundred times already?

Okay, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of Insanity… and Hollywood. Think sequels! Here’s a big idea to remember in this technological age in which we all live; the last thing that is yours, the last thing that no one can steal from you, the last thing that no one can use against you, is your own internal thoughts. They are privately held in your mind. They are the very origin and exacting definition of “intellectual property.”

That’s a term Hollywood knows well. They’ve got thousands of lawyer’s and hundreds of ways to screw you out of your intellectual property, while having the FBI protect theirs. But I digress.

We are talking about the smartest people on earth here. That must be because we shell out 35-billion dollars a year for their games and movies -almost everything they produce. Well, these masters of technology, art and marketing, forgot that an E-mail, a computer and even the Internet, are not extensions of their central nervous system. That cybernetics is not an extension of who they are. These inept TECHNOSPIENS are seduced away from the common sense logic that the web is not a part of their private, mental space, but instead a public, at times very public, space. When these high-priced executives foolishly think it’s secure they believe they are actually communicating, one-on-one with another person in private.

We now know, and have seen this movie at least a hundred times so far, that they are in fact connecting through at least a dozen nodes, network choke points and just as many opportunities for someone to invade the communicated thoughts of these geniuses. Their most insightful, embarrassing and detrimental thoughts that is… laid bare to the world. Smug little comments and corporate secrets, all damaging to their business and stature that they freely expressed in an E-mail. AN E-MAIL!… HELLO.

This is so unnecessary because Hollywood has made at least a few dozen movies (including optioning my book, The Eighth Day) about when evildoers assume identity; erase a person’s data, or hackers hack (starring Gene Hackman, I believe) . BUT not once did these enlightened folks ever get the very message they were sending out to an enraptured audience… that being: Beware the Internet, take heed that Big Brother is always watching, listening and digesting your entire “on-line life.”

Of course they have an excuse. In most of their dystopian-internet yarns, the evil is the government… the all powerful, all knowing and very capable federal government (only in the movies, by the way) So here’s the behavioral truth brought out by how these guardians of the public taste and trends- these titans of Hollywood conduct their own lives: They never really thought the government would do this to them. At this point I have to remind you that the name of this blog and my tag line is, “It’s Only Fiction ‘til It Happens.” After all, they support political candidates and causes. They donate, in a way, by waving their huge appearance fees to show up for a lowly “cause non-celeb” and make it an instant, cause-celeb! We can deduce from the actions and false trust in the Internet, that they never held much faith in their own storylines, namely that someone would, purloin, scrub, scrape or out-right expose their private E-mails … Amazingly these are the same folks who thoughtfully considered how many millions to spend on, and how many movies to “green light” into production about Edward Snowden!

Well they got it half right and half wrong… it was the government, just not ours. How do you say, “That’s a Wrap!” In North Korean?

P.S. How do you say, “Did they mention, The Eighth Day, in the e-mails and whether or not why were considering funding the movie?” in North Korean?

Calling Anthony …Anthony…Carlos Danger

From the public files of, “It’s Only Fiction `til It Happens…”

The master of intelligent suspense, author Linda Fairstein, was recently on the radio discussing her new book, Death Angel, when she related a story to the show’s host that in her first draft she had created a character that was a New York political type who had gotten mired in a Sexting scandal. Her agent pushed for and succeeded in getting her to remove the character from the manuscript because it was, and I am paraphrasing, “too unbelievable” or some such expression of, ‘far fetched’… it should be noted that Linda Fairstein was chief of the Sex Crimes Unit of the district attorney’s office in Manhattan for more than two decades as well as a brilliant author!

Welcome Anthony Putz:

In case you haven’t heard, here in New York, we got a guy from Brooklyn running for Mayor, Anthony Wiener.  He’s a freak of the highest order. His ego knows no limits, matrimonial or legal.  He practices a form of “electioneering” that takes all the wrong lessons from our political past and combines them into one very ugly new paradigm.  He’s a object lesson of why sometimes technology in the wrong hands, his hands pointing back at himself, doesn’t deliver on the promised utopia it might otherwise had achieved.

The “D” Word: Paula Deen’s rise to Number 1 on her way down!

Authors take note. Paula Deen has become a very controversial figure.  In the popular media she is toast, very well buttered toast.  Sponsors, networks and I am sure, even many of her hanger-on friends, have dropped her like radioactive slag.

But! She shot up to NUMBER ONE on Amazon!!  You know, Amazon- with 130-million-billion active titles of which I was once #95,651 (#343 now and trending upwards according to my psychic.  Although, I don’t think my psychic has my publisher’s phone number?).  

But no matter, the fact is that while a transgression from over 25 years ago has plummeted her standing in our popular culture, AMAZINGLY at the same time, it has rocketed her to NUMBER 1, NUMERO UNO, on Amazon! Now that’s a deal with the devil any author would pay double for. 

So all you folks in the media take notice, here’s my big confession…

comin 1962 I called lunch room monitor, Joey Mantone, and I am quoting here: “A big, fat, stupid, Doody Head!”  

And just to add insult to the verbal injury, I know that I stuck my tongue out at him when I said it. 

How’s that? Pretty horrible and despicable right? I mean it’s got to be good for at least a spot in Amazon Top Ten!  I mean, “Doody Head”!  C’mon, these days, in some quarters, that’s referred to as the “D” word.  Or is it the “DH” word…?

Did Bin Laden read my book?

Let me start out by saying there is absolutely no proof supporting the rumor that a dog-eared copy of my book, “The Eighth Day”, was found in the Bin Laden compound. (hat tip, Lawyer Robert Rosenblatt) Yet, rumors can be persistently pesky little gnats always buzzing around.  Like the one that I got an $8 million dollar advance for the film rights to “The Eighth Day.” Let me categorically state for all you who are reading this, and any IRS agents, that I have not received that check yet.

But as someone once said, “Why let the facts get in the way of a good story?” of course his name is a fact that never came with the story so he will remain “someone.” As an author, some rumors are cool, “I have Alec Baldwin on speed dial”,  “I used to hang with Raquel Welch”, “Tom Clancy liked my book.”  “Bill Clinton gave me the final green light to write, “The Hammer of God.”

Now, here’s the thing, that last one, about Clinton, was True! Yet, with all these other tall tales out there, who’s going to believe it? For years I hesitated to publish “Hammer” the sequel to “The Eighth Day” because I didn’t know if the “secrets” revealed within would hurt America’s National Security.  After a generous, and in-depth discussion with the former president, he assured me that as far as global thermo nuclear war was concerned, those “secrets” were, at best, theories, but ones that never the less, ever crossed his desk or was part of the SIOP (Single Integrated Operational Plan, which was the secret playbook for American Nuclear response).  So, here I sit cut by the double-edged sword of the rumor mill. While any unfounded item, at minimum, gets your name out there, they also create a fog that makes it hard to see the truth underlying the main plot point to my second novel in Bill Hiccock’s Quarterback Operations Group, Thrillogy.

I have to tell you, it’s enough to push me to spend the entire 8 million on an ad campaign to set the record straight.

 

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