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Peter Beinart – Gaza myths and facts: what American Jewish leaders won't tell you haaretz.com/opinion/1.6080…—
Chemi Shalev (@ChemiShalev) July 30, 2014

Peter Beinart has a relentless rebuttal to several of the talking points by defenders of Israel’s latest assault on Gaza. Since it’s paywalled – but you can get around it by clicking the link in the tweet above – here’s my brief summary.

Myth Number One: Israel left Gaza in 2005. It didn’t in any meaningful way, maintaining control over all of Gaza’s borders, identification of all citizens, and squeezing still further the small space Gazans had to live in. It evacuated a small number of settlers in order to pre-empt any serious two-state negotiation based on the then-operative Saudi and Geneva plans. That’s why the US official position is that Gaza is still under occupation – an occupation that somehow allows Israel to pummel it at will, as if it were a foreign country.

Myth Number Two: Hamas seized power. Nope, it won an election, fueled in part by widespread opposition to Fatah’s corruption and incompetence. Now think about that: the Arab world held a free and fair election … in Gaza. The US reacted by fomenting a Fatah coup against it – that led to Hamas’ seizing power in response. That’s how the US reacts to Arab democracy if the Israelis don’t like it.

None of this excuses Hamas’ war crimes, its rocket fire purposefully directed toward civilians, its extreme theocratic essence and its rabid anti-Semitism. But it sure doesn’t excuse Israel’s brutality and contempt and propaganda either.

Universal Pictures, Imagine Entertainment and Brian Grazer have acquired the rights to Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles according to deadline. The deal includes the entire library of vampire novels from the author.

Centered around former French nobleman and vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, the characters were featured previously in Interview with the Vampire and Queen of the Damned from Warner Bros. The deal includes a screenplay for Tale of the Body Thief by Rice’s son Christopher Rice and any future novels including the 11th in the series Prince Lestat.

The report says Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who are developing classic monster flicks The Mummy and Van Helsing for the studio, will produce… but the two have previously split and only Kurtzman is working on the Universal monsters, so I’m curious to see if they are working on this together.

Universal Inks Deal With Anne Rice For The Vampire Chronicles

By Christopher Helton

Gen Con is all about the gaming. Each year people file into the exhibitor’s hall looking for the hot new game, or to fill those holes in their gaming collections. A lot of people don’t have gaming stores that are local enough to them, so Gen Con ends up becoming their local gaming store for the duration of “the best four days in gaming.”

This is by no means an exhaustive or comprehensive list, but these are some of the games that I think people should check out while at Gen Con. Get into some demos, or find some GMs running events and join a game. Then track down the publishers and get yourself a copy of these games. You’ll thank me.

First off, let’s talk about Numenera from Monte Cook Games. Numenera was launched via one of the most successful RPG Kickstarters ever, and Monte Cook Games comes to Gen Con this year with it, and a new game using the same system called The Strange. If Numenera doesn’t end up sweeping the ENnies Awards this year, I will be shocked.

Numenera is a weird game, in all of the good ways. It is a science fantasy game set in a future version of the Earth that is perhaps billions of years from now. I think that fans of the work of Jack Kirby will find this game to be appealing. Within the game Numenera are the remains and debris of the technology of previous ages that have “washed up” onto the current time of the game, like driftwood washing up on beaches. None one really understand how most of the Numenera work, but they don’t let that stop them.

Numenera uses an original system, streamlined and easy to play and make characters. Even if you aren’t interested in the game itself, the system is worth checking out for these qualities. As the upcoming The Strange game will demonstrate, this system is usable for many different types of games, so if the genre of Numenera doesn’t appeal to you, port the system into one that will. Much like with the 13th Age game, Numenera pushes system and genre into new directions for traditional tabletop RPGs. If you like games about exploration and discovery, check out Numenera.

Speaking of 13th Age, that is another one of the games to check out while at Gen Con, particularly if fantasy gaming is more your thing. Co-designed by Jonathan Tweet (who also worked on Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition with Monte Cook among so many other games) and Rob Heinsoo (who worked on Dungeons  Dragons 4th edition), 13th Age pushes the d20/OGL rules that were the backbone of D&D 3rd edition into new and interesting directions. Much like Numenera, 13th Age is pushed in a direction where story is more important.

While designed by Tweet and Heinsoo’s Fire Opal Media, 13th Age is published by Pelgrane Press. If you are interested in fantasy gaming and appreciate the work of a couple of the architects of the contemporary era of D&D you should check it out. There are a couple of interesting things to this game. One of them is what they call Icons in the game. Icons are NPCs that are important to the world, but instead of them being distant and aloof, characters can have relationships with these Icons that can impact the world and the ongoing story of your games. The other is the “unique thing” that each character has. Each and every character in 13th Age has one thing about them that makes them stand out from the rest of the world. I think that this is a great idea for making characters interesting.

If you prefer your gaming to be a bit more traditional, there is the new edition of Castles & Crusades from Troll Lord Games. I talked about these guys while their recent Kickstarter was running, but once I received a copy of their new Players Handbook I was suitable impressed. The art that had been black and white in previous editions has been upgraded to full color treatment due to the success of the Kickstarter.

Like 13th Age, Castles & Crusades builds from the foundation of the d20 system reference document to build a new system that looks back at the past of D&D while building something new and exciting. With Castles & Crusades the disparate mechanics of past editions of D&D (roll d20 for this, roll 2d6 for that, roll percentile dice for this) has been set aside for a unified mechanic that handles everything from saving throws to  ability checks to combat. In fact, the mechanics of the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons seem to be taking a page from the Castles & Crusades playbook.

Mindjammer from Sarah Newton’s Mindjammer Press is one of my favorite games of the year, and it will hopefully be a breakout game at Gen Con. A transhumanist science fiction game built using the popular Fate Core rules, Mindjammer sets the bar (and it sets it high) for third party Fate Core publishing. This game spins out of a previous game by Newton and Chris Birch, the Starblazer Adventures RPG based on the British comic magazine Starblazer. The first edition of Mindjammer was an original setting extrapolated from the art of Starblazer stories, and created by Newton. This new edition expands on the original supplement and breaks it free of any direct Starblazer influences.

The game has an excellent set of rules for creating your universes, while also outlining its own setting which blends many of the tropes of classic space opera and transhumanist science fiction. Don’t like transhumanism? The rules are easily scalable and hackable to handle just about any sort of setting from noir-inspired Cyberpunk to pulpy space opera like Star Wars or Guardians of the Galaxy. Now, one thing that might scare people away (I know that it intimidated me when I got my copy of the game) is that Mindjammer is a big book. 400+ pages big. The thing is that the bulk of that page count is taken up with examples, explanations and sample builds that help you understand the rules and the setting, rather than the rules. If you aren’t familiar with Fate Core, at its heart it is a fairly simple game. Mindjammer takes these core rules and turns them into a sexy hotrod that everyone wants to take for a ride.

Finally, we have Achtung! Cthulhu from Chris Birch and Modiphius Press. The Investigator’s Guide and the Keeper’s Guide are dual statted for Call of Cthulhu (one of my favorites games of all time) and Savage Worlds. If you are a fan of the fiction of Tim Powers or the Tales of Cthulhu comics, this will be a game for you. Set during World War II, Achtung! Cthulhu is about Allied Intelligence forces fighting an occult war against Nazi Germany. True, this is a common trope, but the game has some really interesting ideas and could easily be integrated with Pagan Publishing’s Delta Green setting to game in the World War II era of that game.

Achtung! Chtulhu is also written from a British perspective, with rules for British, and other European countries, Intelligence and military forces during the war. Since most WWII gaming tends to be American-centric, it is good to see something being produced from the perspective of other Allied forces during the war. Achtung! Chtulhu is a great horror game, and if you are a fan of horror gaming you need to check this out.

I’m sure at this point someone is wondering why Dungeons & Dragons isn’t on this list. I am guessing that the Players Handbook will be on everyone’s must buy list (it certain is on mine) and doesn’t need any help from me. These are the games that may not be as well known, or have the marketing juggernaut that Wizards of the Coast has behind it. They’re all good games.

When you approach the publishers or designers at Gen Con about these games, be sure to mention that you heard about them here at Bleeding Cool.

Christopher Helton is a blogger, podcaster and tabletop RPG publisher who talks about games and other forms of geekery at the long-running Dorkland! blog. He is also the co-publisher at the ENnie Award winning Battlefield Press, Inc.  You can find him on Twitter at @dorkland and on G+ at https://plus.google.com/+ChristopherHelton/ where he will talk your ear off about gaming and comics.

Christopher has a crowdfunding page to help raise money to defray the costs for going to the Gen Con gaming convention and cover it for his Dorkland! blog and Bleeding Cool. Please click here to go to the page and help out.

The Five Must-Have Gen Con Games

“i can see the head!”

“that’s a mirror you lamebrain!!”

Word from THR is that Arrow has added yet another potential DC Comics hero to it’s growing cast. David Cubitt (Medium) has been cast as Mark Shaw, who in the comics goes on to be one (of a few) who takes the name Manhunter. Shaw’s character in print also has connections to the Suicide Squad, which has already been introduced in the television series.

In the show, Shaw will be an A.R.G.U.S. operative in Corto Maltese who crosses paths with John Diggle (David Ramsey). He will make his first appearance in the third episode of the season.

The series has already made Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman) a series regular for the new season as well as adding Atom/Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh), Wildcat/Ted Grant (J.R. Ramirez), Felicity’s mother (Charlotte Ross), Maseo (Karl Yune), Katana (Devon Aoki) and a new Count Vertigo (Peter Stormare).

Arrow returns October 8th.

Arrow Season 3 Finds A Manhunter

A couple of decades ago, Battlestar Galactica was this sci-fi TV show from the seventies and eighties that was roundly mocked for being cheesey, trite and quite a bit Mormon.

When Rob Liefeld got the license to create comics based on the show, he picked them up for pennies. There was no interest in the license whatsoever. He was the first who had enquired in years,

Unlike the later TV show, Liefeld and writer Matt Hawkins didn’t go a reboot but a continuation, years after the TV show. Involving Battlestar actor Richard Hatch as a writer, it was relatively popular for a while and innovated the idea of human-looking Cyclons infiltrating the fleet.

It also led to Trendmasters deciding to create Battlestar Galactica toys based on the comic book revival.

And yes there was quite a bit of discussion over the overpumped Starbuck. And the look of the Imperious Leader was based on the original idea of the Cylons being lizards that had cyborged up, before they became just robots who cold be safely killed

But this was the moment that the licensors realised that they actually might have a property that people would be interesting in. They upped the license amount for Liefeld, which he refused to pay. And they went hunting for folk who might actually like to turn Battlestar Galactica into a TV show again, using the interest in comics and toys to show that the project was still alive.

And they found them.

The rest is history. So say we all.

Thanks Rob. Hey, can we also blame you for the ending too?

Did You Like The Recent Battlestar Galactic Series? Thank Rob Liefeld.

Hawkeye #19 by Matt Fraction and David Aja is published today and already it’s a shoo-in for next year’s favourite single issue, just as Hawkeye #11 just won this year.

Because this is the deaf issue. The sign language issue. Which, of course, is ironic, because every issue of every comic book could be a deaf issue, operating as it does in a purely viual medium.

Except that’s not quite true. Though born deaf can have more difficulty reading than those born hearing as there are no audio hooks to hang words on. And there are experiences and sound effects taken as granted in comic books that can provide a disconnect. But certainly, I know a number of deaf people who find a connection in comic books in a way they can’t as easily with TV or film, as this is a visual medium is that is meant to be read. And I am very interested to see hearing-impaired Bleeding Cool contributor Kirk Staley‘s take on this comic.

But the majority of the audience for this comic will be those with functioning hearing and little familiarity with sign language, which permeates the comic. That could have been offputting to come. But the comic makes some clever choices in introducing you to this world, through your familiarity with the characters.

Because that is “Clint” isn’t it? There’s no other possibility here in this context. And the unfamiliar becomes instantly familiar.

It’s also worth noting that you don’t generally see the character using sign language. Mostly you see the sign itself, as a dispassionate, black mannequin, posed in the correct position. It conveys clarity, but also that this is a word or a ketter or a sentence rather than a person. It merely extracts the meaning.

Also, speech balloons are unfilled when Hawkeye isn’t looking at the person, when he isn’t able to lip read. And when he is, he dialogue appears like this.

Snatches of typed words, separately, pieced together into a sentence, sometimes wrong, but the lipreader is a detective, doing their best to transfer a audio medium into a visual one.

So the comic teaches you some, lets you intuit he rest and in some cases inspires you to do you own research. But, as with Monty Python’s “Summarising Proust” sketch, you get it, even if you don’t get all of it.

Okay, sometimes it holds your hand. But not much.

And that’s the greatest achievement of this comic, it creates the world of guesswork, or detecting, of putting pieces together and coming up with the result, often correct but with a few missing pieces and a few things wrong, with the worry that you have missed something along the way.

And that is often the experience of the deaf person dealing with a hearing world. No matter how experienced or talented, there’s always something…

They might as well just give this comic the Eisner right now.

Comics courtesy of Orbital Comics of London. currently exhibiting the work of Sally Jane Thompson.

How Hawkeye #19 Portrays The World Of A Deaf Superhero To A Hearing Audience, For Next Year’s Eisner Awards

That’s how Joshua Fialkov‘s final issue of Ultimate FF begins. A parody of Mark Millar’s Ultimates, as we meet Miles Morhames, the new Ultimate Spider-Ham, currently visiting the Ultimate Universe.And if you think this comic opens in a mad fashion, just wait and see how it ends.

(Although… what does the A stand for, in non-dog terms? Americat?)

Because, yes, this is one of those times when we run the final page of a comic, utterly spoiling it. Because no one is reading this comic and it might be worth it to encourage you to pick it up and get the final issue next month.

The new Ultimate FF book launched with a brand new team that no one cared about. And now it has reverte to stories about the original team. Because Miles Morhames has a message for Susan Storm.

That, despite Reed Richards of the Ultimate Earth being a pschyopathic genocial murderer, it is imperative for the survival of the world that Susan Storm have a child by him.

Nice.

So she takes the matter into her own hands.

So what exactly happened? Does Harley Quinn (from earlier) have an idea?

While we may have to wait for issue 6 to discover, with Joshua Hale Fialkov’s final act on this comic was for Susan Storm to harvest the sperm of Reed Richards by removing his testicles?

I rather think it might have been…

Comics courtesy of Orbital Comics of London. currently exhibiting the work of Sally Jane Thompson.

Joshua Hale Fialkov’s Final Scene From Ultimate FF Is A Cut Too Far (SPOILERS)

It all started as a joke. That’s what Taylor Jannsen thought, at least. Jannsen lives with an old friend in his hometown of Pewaukee, Wisconsin, in a two-bedroom, third-floor walk-up of an apartment building about five miles from town. He’s 25, a basketball personal trainer and coach just getting his business off the ground. It’s postcollege living at its purest: 1,000 square feet, beige appliances about his age, wall-to-wall carpet, and a pair of recliners in front of the TV. So when J.J. Watt mentioned he might want to crash on Jannsen’s floor, he didn’t take it seriously.

A few days later this spring, the Texans’ superstar defensive end was knocking at the door of apartment 3A, carrying a mattress and not much else.

Jannsen doesn’t know why he was surprised. He’s known Watt for the better part of a decade. A spot on the floor at the Manor²⁴ gave Watt exactly what he wanted: a place to sleep while he wasn’t working out. Twice a day, Watt drove the 10 minutes to the gym he’s visited since he was 16, a place called NX Level, in a business park next to a machinery company. Watt’s parents live only a few minutes from the Manor. They thought his move home would mean seeing their son for dinner almost every night; they barely saw him once a week.

Suburban Wisconsin became Watt’s version of Rocky’s Siberia. The only traces of him were half a closet of button-down shirts, three printer-paper boxes of belongings, and a few pairs of size-19 chukkas and sneakers thrown in a corner. It was everything he needed.

“If you’re an outsider looking into my life, you’re thinking, That dude is crazy. He’s literally crazy,” Watt says.

Click here for more from our 2014 NFL preview.

Watt’s routine has always been maniacal, but the pains of last season are what pushed him to a spartan existence. Calling Watt’s 2012 season historic doesn’t do his performance justice. In his second year, he finished with a league-best 20.5 sacks, 39 tackles for loss, and 56 defeats — the highest total in the 17-year history of the stat. He was named Defensive Player of the Year, and many believed he was the league’s rightful MVP. It was a type of dominance not seen since the days of Lawrence Taylor.

Repeating that was going to be next to impossible, but Watt came closer last year than most think. He was again a first-team All-Pro and could still lay claim to the title of best defensive player alive, but after three months without a win, blame becomes a virus. “When you’re 2-14,” Watt says, “you have moments of doubt.”

That’s why Watt is here, on this Wednesday in mid-June, having just finished another workout at NRG Stadium.²⁵ As he sits down at a table in a half-lit room used for press conferences, his gray sleeveless T-shirt is soaked through with sweat. Four drinks — two waters and two small protein shakes — sit in front of him. It’s the Texans’ day off.

He’s here for the same reason that mattress was on the floor — because doubt was an unwelcome guest he would rather never see again.

“When it comes down to that moment,” Watt says, “when it’s me against you, you know in your head whether you worked hard enough. You can try to lie to yourself. You can try to tell yourself that you put in the time. But you know — and so do I.”

If the Texans would have had their way in 2011, Watt wouldn’t be in Houston. The plan with the 11th pick was to take an outside linebacker, someone who would ease the transition to Wade Phillips’s 3-4 defense. But when the linebacker options were off the board, Phillips offered up a contingency plan: If a quality defensive lineman was around, they could move former no. 1 overall pick Mario Williams to outside linebacker. There were two choices, with the room split nearly down the middle. Eventually, they landed on Watt.

Out of high school, Watt chose to play tight end at Central Michigan, but after only one season, concerns about the Chippewas’ spread offense and a lifelong affinity for the Badgers pushed him to walk on at Wisconsin. That meant going back on his promise that his parents wouldn’t have to pay for college. They agreed to take on tuition for his first year, but with one condition. “I said, ‘OK, fine. We’ll pay, but you have to treat every practice like it’s your Super Bowl,’” says his father, John. Watt obliged. During his mandatory redshirt year, his relentlessness earned the highest honor a scout team player can have from a team’s starters: disdain. “They didn’t like me very much,” he says. The move to defensive line was seamless. He was gifted, a prodigy. In two seasons, “J.J. Watt” went from some walk-on to the name being chanted at Camp Randall Stadium in the waning moments of Wisconsin’s last home game. 

The start of his rookie season was unspectacular — some scattered sacks but little pointing to what we see now. “Some of it was us,” Phillips says, laughing. It took Phillips about 15 weeks to learn the same lesson Watt’s coaches had in Madison. The only way to unleash J.J. Watt is by letting him break the rules.

One of Watt’s favorite moves is one he calls the jab-and-go.²⁶ It typically starts with him lining up just outside of a guard. In Phillips’s one-gap defense, that space between the guard and tackle is Watt’s responsibility. The standard way players are taught to control that gap is by firing into it just as the ball is snapped, to claim that space with the most speed and authority possible. Every so often, Watt will eschew those lessons. Instead, he takes a step inside, momentarily leaving him and the defense vulnerable. “If it works, you’re giving up your gap for a brief second to gain an advantage in getting back in your gap more effectively,” Watt says. “If it doesn’t, you’re giving up your gap, and you’re also blocked, so now there’s one gap unaccounted for.” Usually, it leaves a guard so off-balance that he has to catch his footing just to keep from falling on his face.

When Phillips first saw Watt try the maneuver, 35 years of NFL practices set off alarms in his head. “The first time you see it, you think about the old coaching adage, ‘You never go around the block,’” Phillips says. “Well, you do when you can make the play.” Coaches refer to these plays as calculated risks, and what Phillips and defensive line coach Bill Kollar soon realized is that Watt’s were more calculated than most. Because Watt watches so much film, he has an ironclad grasp on what plays to expect out of formations. Because he was quicker, he could recover faster. Because he has the best hands in the league, he could shed blockers more easily.

This is what makes Watt special. His genius comes by way of subversion. He is allowed to look down his scarred nose at defensive line conventions only because he’s mastered them.

Trust from the coaching staff is what allows Watt to chase plays, and by the end of his first season, he felt like he had it. Houston’s final game — a loss to the Ravens in the divisional round — was his best of the year. His 2.5 sacks were nearly half what he’d compiled the entire regular season. He finished with 12 tackles, nine on his own. “That springboarded me into the offseason, into the next season,” Watt says.

In nearly four decades of pro football, Phillips has been lucky enough to coach some of the best pass-rushers ever. He had five years with Bruce Smith in Buffalo. He coached Reggie White for three in Philadelphia. Before arriving in Houston, he oversaw the prime of DeMarcus Ware’s career with the Cowboys. “Two years ago was the best defensive line play in the history of football,” Phillips says. “He had more tackles, blocked passes, pressures on the quarterback. The conglomeration of all that was the best that anybody has ever played. I’ve had some great ones, but they’ve never made that many great plays in one year.”

The gap between greatness and fame is measured in time. Achieving greatness may be a process, but fame comes all at once. Becoming a great player took J.J. Watt years. Becoming a famous one took a single play.

With a minute left in the first half of the wild-card round against the Bengals after the 2011 regular season, Andy Dalton dropped back to pass on first down. As Watt realized he couldn’t get to the quarterback, he opted for what has since become his signature — stop, raise his arms, jump. This time, instead of ricocheting to the turf or caroming to a cornerback, the ball landed right in Watt’s massive hands. Twenty-nine unmanned yards sat between him and the end zone. The touchdown gave Houston a 17-10 lead. They were the last points the Texans would need for their first postseason win in franchise history.

“That was the moment,” Watt says. “That was when whatever this is now started.”

The next day, Watt and his family drove the hour to Galveston for a day at the beach. As he and his brothers threw a Frisbee around, a few people approached with congratulations. By the time they left, more than 100 people had gathered at the seawall. Someone had tweeted that he was there.

There’s a tradition at Packers training camp that Watt remembers from when he was young. As the team walks across the street from Lambeau to the practice field, local boys and girls hand over their bikes for players to ride. Watt craved to be one of those kids, but really, he craved to be one of those Packers. They were gods to him.

He does his best to hold on to that feeling. In June, a nearby high school held its graduation at NRG Stadium. Seeing the students lined up against one wall, Watt worked his way down the hallway, popping his head out of every door along the way, each time to shrieks. “We take this for granted so often,” Watt says. “I can open up a door and someone goes crazy. Why wouldn’t I take advantage of that?”

Watt’s sincerity about kids never sounds contrived, in part because of how he looks. The 6-foot-5 and nearly 300-pound hulk makes it tough to imagine him ever being a child (somehow, he looks bigger out of pads), but it’s still there in his face. Save for the divot on his nose, it’s boyish.

That’s where the playfulness ends. The first time Charlie Partridge, Watt’s defensive line coach at Wisconsin, met him, he had only one thought: That’s a very, very serious young man. At times, the approach makes relating to his peers a struggle. His longtime trainer, Brad Arnett, tells a story about when Watt and a few Badgers teammates were working out at NX Level. The others were talking about a bar in Madison, one of those spots so established it might as well be a stop at freshman orientation. When they asked Watt what he thought of the place, he didn’t have an answer. He’d never been. How, they kept asking, is that possible? “You want to know how?” Watt snapped back. “I was too busy becoming a first-round pick.”

Watt can’t eat out much anymore anyway, but there is one restaurant, a steakhouse near his home in Pearland, that he still hits every so often. They have a system. He parks in the back, slides past the storage area, and slinks in through the kitchen. On a busy night, the owner will set up a curtain in the back. “I don’t feel like I’m entitled,” Watt says. “It’s just so I can sit down and have a meal with family and friends in town.”

That became a challenge about midway through 2012. Watt’s parents were in town, eating at a Mexican restaurant near his house. “As we walked out, you could kind of hear the noise building outside as we were leaving the restaurant,” says Watt’s father, John. “There were clearly a lot of people.” A ring of nearly 50 bodies had gathered in the parking lot. On the way toward the car, a girl in her twenties, boyfriend in tow, leaped onto Watt and wrapped herself around him. She was crying. “I had to peel her off him,” Watt’s mother, Connie, says. “I turn around, and another girl passes out!”

Elvis moments make for good stories, but eventually, Watt’s local fame crept into his daily life. Trips to the grocery store that once lasted 30 minutes now took two hours. The Texans urged him to hire an assistant, and finally he relented. Now, Emily does his food shopping twice a week — first for the essentials (egg whites, milk, turkey) and once more for any last-minute cravings. “It sounds so prima donna, but it’s literally for convenience because it would take too long to grocery-shop on my own,” Watt says. She also handles the post office, the dry cleaner, whatever he needs.

The only trip left for him is the one between home and the stadium. “You can find me one of two places,” Watt says. It’s about a half-hour drive to Pearland. Watt’s lived there since his rookie year, in a house he bought from a family of five. Before they moved, the owner asked Connie if she wanted to keep what was up on the walls. She did. Otherwise, “he would have a toothbrush, a pan to make his eggs, and a couple glasses,” Connie says.

Watt has never been quick to make friends. “He’s not the type of person who meets someone and after two weeks says, ‘This guy’s my buddy,’” John says. “It takes a while to get close to J.J.” The week after Memorial Day, they noticed the remnants of a party from the weekend. There’s a hint of relief in John’s voice as he remembers it.

“I barely know one person outside of the organization,” Watt says. “It’s just so hard, because everyone wants something. Everyone wants an autograph, a picture. I can’t go out to a bar and meet John Smith. ‘Hey, we should go out some time, John. Want to play some shuffleboard?’ I can’t do that.”

When Watt needs a human moment, he finds it with the Berrys. During the lockout, someone tweeted him a story about three siblings — Peter, Aaron, and Willa Berry — whose parents had died in a car crash. Two of them were left paralyzed from the waist down. Watt visited them in the hospital, and they’ve stayed in touch ever since. The kids live with their aunt and uncle now, and there’s always a home-cooked meal and some perspective waiting for Watt when he needs it.

But Watt spends most of his time alone. He’s tried dating, but it tends to end the same way, with him admitting he can’t give a relationship the time and focus it deserves.

“I’m used to it,” Watt says of solitude. “For me, it’s kind of what I need. It’s hard to understand the life that I live and rationalize some of the things that I do. I don’t need someone questioning every move that I make, asking me why I don’t just relax. When there’s no one asking me those types of questions … to me, it’s peaceful.”

In the span of four days last summer, both John and Connie Watt left their longtime jobs. John retired after 35 years as a fireman, Connie after 23 as the vice-president of a building inspection company. She now runs her son’s foundation, but as John says, “her boss is pretty lenient on travel.” The newfound free time means more stays in Houston, but last year that wasn’t always pleasant.

The week Houston hosted the Colts, the Watts and a few family friends had come down for the game. It was the Texans’ sixth straight loss. Watt was no longer hiding his irritation. “[At home], he was right through the front door, through the kitchen, into his bedroom,” John says. “The door would close, and you wouldn’t see him until it was time to come out and get something to eat.” It was supposed to be an extended stay, but by Monday, Connie was looking for flights home. “You could just kind of tell, maybe this isn’t a good week for us to be down here,” she says.

Watt had never lost at anything, and the confusion about how to cope was fueled by how close Houston seemed to winning in each game. “The worst part was that every single week, I thought we were going to win, until the very last week,” he says. “Every single week.”

Houston was bad enough to land the no. 1 pick, which it spent on Jadeveon Clowney. Despite its need at quarterback, people saw pairing Clowney — considered a rare pass-rushing talent — with Watt as a way to build one of the most frightening defensive fronts in memory.

“I haven’t really thought about it at all,” Watt says of his new teammate. “What I told him when he got drafted was, ‘Listen, I don’t care what people have said about you before. I don’t care about what you’re going to do. I’m basing everything I see on what I see with my own two eyes: how hard you work, how much you study. I’m going to be an open book.’

“Now, I can’t make anybody learn. I can’t make a guy work hard. I can’t make him come in and do extra work. But if he wants it, I’m here.”

It was also the type of season that costs people jobs. Head coach Gary Kubiak was gone by early December. Phillips followed a month later. Replacing him is Romeo Crennel, who, like new head coach Bill O’Brien, is a branch off the Bill Belichick coaching tree. Crennel runs a 3-4, too, just a much more conservative version, in which players are often tasked with controlling rather than attacking. Watt’s line coach, Bill Kollar, survived the transition, but Phillips hopes the rest of the new staff realizes what they have faster than he did. “They just need to let him play,” Phillips says. “You can’t box him in.”

There are only two shows in rotation on Watt’s DVR. He loves Modern Family, and although he hesitates to admit it, because “it’s kinda girlie,” he’s a fan of Nashville. He was drawn in by Connie Britton — he’s watched every episode of Friday Night Lights. Twice. “The fact that that show didn’t get more credit blows my mind,” Watt says.

He and Michael B. Jordan, the star of Friday Night Lights’ final two seasons, exchange texts every so often. They met at a dinner party in Los Angeles made up almost entirely of celebrities. It’s a world Watt discovered after his rookie year, through his reps at CAA. He doesn’t name names, but mom and dad aren’t so tight-lipped. One party was at Kate Hudson’s house; Katy Perry and John Mayer were there, too. He’s met Leo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. When he first started going to these parties, Watt was the new guy, politely introduced by the host to the rest of the guests. His second season changed that.

“They were walking up to me, introducing themselves,” Watt says. “It was crazy. There are people out there that I never, ever thought would know who I am.”

Excess is rare for Watt, but he uses L.A. as a free pass for lavishness. He rents a Ferrari, stays at the Ritz. Elsewhere, he’s frugal in the way befitting a child of middle-class Wisconsin. When he does spend, he spends on travel. Since his rookie year, he’s footed the bill for an offseason trip with 10 friends every year. This February it was Cabo San Lucas. “It’s a time for me to just be J.J., and not have to be J.J. Watt,” he says.

That trip is where the idea to crash at the Manor started. “I think that’s why he did this, to be honest with you,” Jannsen says. “Instead of living in a fancy hotel, I think he just wanted to be him again. Where he just hangs out with his buddies, jokes around, screams at the TV playing video games.” The game of choice was FIFA 14. There was an apartment-wide tournament, replete with standings tallied on the back of a Nike shoe box. They called it the MPL — Manor Premier League. Watt played with Chelsea. He won.

Watt’s father says that March and April were a chance to capture the college life his son had ignored in Madison, but the reason Watt knew his mattress would be worth it is the connection he and Jannsen share.

The two would spend evenings talking about books, like Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code, which explains the factors that create greatness. As Watt tells me about Coyle’s book, he eagerly leans forward in his chair. It outlines three main elements: deep practice, master coaching, and ignition. The first two are easy to understand for a world-class athlete.

Ignition is “that moment of motivation,” Watt says. “What makes you do what you do?” That moment is what people have started to wonder about Watt. After winning Defensive Player of the Year, after a two-year stretch rivaling any in NFL history, they’ve asked how he still manages to find it.

“The way I look at it is that somebody in the world, no matter what your field is — teacher, violinist, football player — has to be the best,” Watt says. “Why not me? If I dedicate all my time, if I cut out all the other crap from my life, if I give everything I have to this game for 10 or 12 years, maybe it is. And when I’m done, I’ll go sit on my front porch with my buddies, have a beer, and say, ‘That was pretty cool, wasn’t it?’”

Those are reflections for another time, though, he says. Right now, his four bottles are empty, and his shirt is almost dry. Morning has turned to afternoon, and it’s time to take the familiar stretch of road home. His off day is almost over. And he has work tomorrow. 

Photo illustration by Gluekit.

The Israeli army is employing what Jesse Rosenfeld calls scorched earth tactics in Gaza, practically leveling entire neighborhoods, as the UN satellite photo above illustrates:

The Israeli military, relentlessly and methodically, is driving people out of the three-kilometer (1.8 mile) buffer zone it says it needs to protect against Hamas rockets and tunnels. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the buffer zone eats up about 44 percent of Gaza’s territory. What that means on the ground is scenes of extraordinary devastation in places like the Al Shajaya district approaching Gaza’s eastern frontier, and Beit Hanoun in the north. These were crowded neighborhoods less than three weeks ago. Now they have been literally depopulated, the residents joining more than 160,000 internally displaced people in refuges and makeshift shelters. …

According to Hebrew University political scientist and longtime analyst of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Yaron Ezrahi, with or without the phrase ["scorched earth"], the idea does have a certain logic.

Ezrahi says there is a military and political calculation behind this devastation. Some in the Israeli government believe it will create enough Palestinian suffering so that Gazans will rise up against Hamas or force the leaders to come to terms with Israel when they come out of hiding. But that is an assumption that greatly underestimates the resolve of Gazans to see an end to their seven years of Israeli blockade and rid themselves of the Israeli presence that controls the strip like guards positioned around a prison yard.

Sari Bashi argues for lifting the travel restrictions on Gazans:

[I]t would be a mistake to consider the negotiations over the travel restrictions as a zero-sum game—as if lifting them were a concession to militants that must be balanced by concessions to Israel. Ending the restrictions on civilian movement into and out of Gaza would have the primary effect of benefiting Palestinian students, workers, farmers and factory owners, and many Israeli officials say doing so would improve Israeli security.

Closing off Gaza hasn’t made Israel safer. Yet that’s exactly what Israel has gradually done for the past two decades, especially since the 2007 takeover of Gaza by the Hamas movement. While Israel formally recognizes Gaza and the West Bank as a single territorial unit in international agreements, in practice it implements what it calls the “separation policy,” designed to sever Gaza from the West Bank and keep movement of people and goods to a “humanitarian minimum.” Travel to Israel and the West Bank is limited to exceptional humanitarian cases, mostly medical patients and merchants buying essential goods, and the number of Palestinians passing through the Israeli-controlled Erez Crossing is less than 1 percent of what it was in September 2000, on the eve of the Second Intifada.

Previous Dish on the humanitarian disaster in Gaza here.

(Image source: WaPo)

Tim Heath and Yiming Shao see it in vertical farming:

It has been suggested that a 30-story, 27,800,000-square-meter vertical farm could be achieved within one New York City block. That farm could feed 50,000 people, providing 2,000 calories for every person each day. With results like that as a prospect, it’s easy to see why enthusiasts see vertical farms as the future. … Vertical farms do indeed have many advantages. They would enable us to produce crops all year round using 70 percent less water. We wouldn’t need to use agro-chemicals and could avoid the adverse environmental factors that affect yield and quality in more traditional farming. And if food were grown in urban areas in the first place, we could eliminate the financial and environmental costs of importing food into towns and cities.

And in fact, we have the technology to do it:

We can already cultivate plants without soil and recycle the water used to deliver clean indoor farming, for example. Hydroponics, where plant roots are grown in nutrients dissolved in water, is one option. This plant-growing technique can be combined with traditional aquaculture to raise fish or prawns – a farming technique known as aquaponics. Another way to grow plants is aeroponics, which involves growing suspended plants by spraying the roots with a nutrient-rich water solution.

But even though it has been more than than 20 years since the concept was first proposed and the pressure of climate change continues to mount, vertical farming is still not a reality. The two biggest problems have been financial and technological viability, particularly when it comes to actually building these high-rise spaces.

Previous Dish on vertical farming here.

(Image of 4 vertical farms surrounding a couryard in a Shanghai Sustainable Masterplan model via Except Integrated Sustainability)

What’s the real measure of a book’s success? Tim Parks considers how big sales numbers affect the literary landscape:

Would J. K. Rowling have written seven Harry Potters if the first hadn’t sold so well? Would Knausgaard have written six volumes of My Struggle, if the first had not been infinitely more successful (in Norway) than his previous novels? Sales influence both reader and writer—certainly far more than the critics do.

In general I see nothing “wrong” with this blurring of lines between literary and genre fiction. In the end it’s rather exciting to have to figure out what is really on offer when a novel wins the Pulitzer, rather than taking it for granted that we are talking about literary achievement. But it does alert us to the fact that as any consensus on aesthetics breaks down, bestsellerdom is rapidly becoming the only measure of achievement that is undeniable.

Or put it another way: a critic who likes a book, and goes out on a limb to praise it, may begin to feel anxious these days if the book is not then rewarded by at least decent sales, as if it were unimaginable that one could continue to support a book’s quality without some sort of confirmation from the market. So while in the past one might have grumbled that some novels were successful only because they had been extravagantly hyped by the press, now one discovers the opposite phenomenon. Books are being spoken of as extraordinarily successful in denial of the fact that they are not.

The PR images are out. And we can see the covers for Star Wars by artist John Cassaday, Darth Vader by Adi Granov and Princess Leia by Terry Dodson.

The PR has basically been sent out too soon… and its now being reported that we have Star Wars, written by Jason Aaron and drawn by John Cassaday set after Star Wars Episode IV.  Star Wars: Darth Vader by Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larocca also set after IV but from the Empire’s side. And a five issue mini Star Wars: Princess Leia, from writer Mark Waid and artist Terry Dodson, coping with the destruction of her home planet.

You may compare and contrast with what we ran earlier this week…

Jason Aaron, John Cassaday, Kieron Gillen, Salvador Larocca, Mark Waid And Terry Dodson – Marvel’s Star Wars Announcements Break Out Before Cup O’Joe

Have smartphones and Facebook ended the golden age of the spy novel? Charles Cumming worries that it “may be that technology strips the spy of mystique”:

Once upon a time, spies like [John le Carré's] Alec Leamas could move across borders with ease. Passports were not biometric, photographs were not sealed under laminate, and there were no retinal scanners at airports (which, incidentally, can’t be fooled by fitting a glass eye or wearing contact lenses manufactured by ‘Q’ branch). … Nowadays, travelling “under alias” has become all but impossible. If, for example, an MI6 officer goes to Moscow and tries to pass himself off as an advertising executive, he’d better make sure that his online banking and telephone records look authentic; that his Facebook page and Twitter feeds are up to date; and that colleagues from earlier periods in his phantom career can remember him when they are contacted out of the blue by an FSB analyst who has tracked them down via LinkedIn. The moment the officer falls under suspicion, his online history will be minutely scrutinised. If the contacts book on his Gmail account looks wrong, or his text messages are out of character, his entire false identity will start to fall apart.

“All of this has affected storytelling,” continues Cumming, who describes how he circumvented the issue as a novelist himself:

If a character can be reached or tracked by phone, it follows that he or she can be warned of impending danger, or rescued from peril. In my novel A Foreign Country, it was necessary to set a crucial sequence deep in the English countryside so that the principal characters were thwarted by feeble mobile reception. Likewise, unless a character knows to remove the battery from their phone (something, incidentally, that can’t easily be done with an iPhone) he or she can be followed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even when switched off, a phone emits a signal that can be picked up by GCHQ and others. The phone’s position can be then be pinpointed to within a few feet by “triangulating” the signal to the nearest satellite or mobile phone mast.

The latest round of cover contest:

“All Along The Watchtower” is an answer that’s too perfect, too obvious, to be fun. So I’ll go with Alien Ant Farm’s version of “Smooth Criminal”, which is nothing if not fun:

Another reader:

Thanks for the much-needed and timely mental health break! I usually just lurk and read, but I couldn’t help but send this one, since it came to mind immediately upon reading the contest description - Alanis Morissette covering Black Eyed Peas “My Humps“ in a slow ballad style:

Another genre-bender:

Obadiah Parker’s “Hey Ya!”. What nobody hears in the original, very upbeat original is the devastating sadness of this song. It’s full of passages like:

If what they say is ‘Nothing lasts forever,’
Then what makes love the exception?
Oh why oh why are we so in denial
When we know we’re not happy here?

But everyone’s too busy dancing to notice. Then along comes this overweight hippy who gets what the song’s really about and captures the shit out of it.

And rocks one helluva beard.

This song nominee might win just based on the number of readers who submitted it so far – 84:

I’m writing in to nominate my favorite cover of an already well-known song. I’m sure I’m not the only person to submit this one, but it’s got to be the Jimi Hendrix cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower“:

Dylan’s poetry is at its best in the song’s lyrics, and it works musically, but you can’t ever go back and listen to the original once you’ve heard Hendrix’s. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a series of guitar solo so perfectly illustrate the drama and stormy environment of a song’s narrative. There are plenty of songs with instrumental sections that manage to paint an even more vivid picture than its lyrics, but this one just blows them all out of the water.

This is a really fun idea for a contest, by the way! Keep up the awesome work!

Another writes, “Hendrix’s version so great that I think people forget it’s actually a cover.” Another adds:

The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s cover of “All Along the Watchtower” is a classic (and easy) choice, but c’mon, even Dylan was impressed by this version. Per Wikipedia, Dylan described his reaction in an interview:

It overwhelmed me, really. He had such talent, he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other people wouldn’t think of finding in there. He probably improved upon it by the spaces he was using. I took license with the song from his version, actually, and continue to do it to this day.

Live version here. Another points to the “story behind the song“. One more:

And on the subject of Hendrix/Dylan covers, Jimi’s version of Like a Rolling Stone isn’t half bad either. He did a few others, too. But nothing comes close to “All Along the Watchtower”. Play it loud.

Richard Gunderman argues in favor of concierge medicine, a system in which patients pay hefty fees to spend more time with their doctors:

The concierge model of practice is growing, and it is estimated that more than 4,000 U.S. physicians have adopted some variation of it. Most are general internists, with family practitioners second. It is attractive to physicians because they are relieved of much of the pressure to move patients through quickly, and they can devote more time to prevention and wellness….

Of course, there are drawbacks to concierge practice. For one thing, some patients cannot afford it, and others will choose not to pay the fee. Critics also see such models as promoting a two-tiered system of healthcare, in which those with more money get better care.

“But we have always had a two-tiered system,” [internist Frederic] Becker counters, “and it is better to care for 600 patients well than just adequately for three or four times that number. Someday patients, physicians, and healthcare payers will recognize that slower-paced but truly high-quality medical care is a better value than the fast medicine many physicians feel pressured to practice today.”

Meanwhile, Christopher Flavelle fears the rise of specialists who demand cash payments:

The slice of the population that’s willing and able to pay for specialty care in cash is small; the share of physicians in cash-only practices was just 6 percent last year. But that’s double the level from 2011. And if the income gap keeps growing, so will the number of doctors who can find enough cash-only patients to stop taking insurance. …

If the trend accelerates, it may call for new guidelines from the American Medical Association. The AMA now says doctors moving to cash-only practices must “facilitate the transfer of their non-participating patients to other physicians” – for instance, not charging for the transfer of medical records. If no other physicians are available in the community, the doctor “may be ethically obligated to continue caring for such patients.” The AMA also reminds doctors of their “professional obligation to provide care to those in need.” Those guidelines may start to look too vague if the best specialists drop out of the insurance system altogether.

Previous Dish on concierge medicine here.

Breaking out of the Marvel TV panel just now, here’s some bullet points on new doings for Agents of SHIELD:

• The”Big Bad” this season will be Daniel Whitehall, known as Kraken in SECRET WARRIORS, played by Reed Diamond.
  
• Nick Blood joins as Lance Hunter
• Lucy Lawless playing a long time S.H.I.E.L.D. veteran. Isabel Hartly.

Lucy Lawless Is Longtime SHIELD veteran Isabel Hartly (And Other New SHIELD Cast)

Game of Thrones Season 5, new cast:

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean series) — the High Sparrow.
• Alexander Siddig (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, 24) — Doran Martell.
• Keisha Castle-Hughes (Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith) — Obara Sand.
• Jessica Henwick (Silk, North by Northhamptonshire)  – Nymeria Sand.

Game Of Thrones Season 5 Video Intro For A Bunch Of New Cast Members

You film and tv studios do know I have a bunch of other deadlines to attend to today, don’t you?  No?  Well, it is superbowl week, so let’s keep the news flowing.  TV Guide tells me:

Former Xena star Lucy Lawless is heading to ABC’s super series in Season 2, TVGuide.com has learned exclusively.

In true Marvel fashion, details on her role and how long she’ll be sticking around are being kept under wraps. (Call off the Level 7 snipers now, please!)

We’ll know who soon, I bet. But I have no brain today, so you must guess for me. Who will it be?

Which Agent of SHIELD Will Lucy Lawless Be Playing?

everybody i have an announcement: i’m sick of worrying about money. we got a kid on the way, the same old process isn’t gonna cut it. patreon, kickstarters — the new models will only take you so far. time to get rich now

PRESS RELEASE – World-Renowned Author Kris Straub Reveals New Erotic Blockbuster

Get ready for “Sex” with Kris Straub’s “The Wildstreak Chronicles: Meeting Geoffrey Sex”

When Bellissima Wildstreak, cub reporter for New York’s most prestigious finance magazine MoneyBoys, gets an opportunity to interview corporate wunderkind Geoffrey Sex, she pounces on the opportunity. But Sex turns out to be more than just a handsome, charming billionaire — he also introduces the meek-but-willing Wildstreak to the secret underground world of erotic trashplay.

Straub turns the horniness level up to 11 million in his star-making foray into the genre. “I wanted to basically rip off Fifty Shades of Grey,” said Straub in an exclusive interview for his own press release. “They just announced a movie and it looks dumb as shit. I can’t believe people eat this stuff up. It’s just porn that pretends to be sophisticated but come on.”

EXCLUSIVE – EXCERPT FROM “THE WILDSTREAK CHRONICLES”

“I’m not sure if I should,” Bellissima intoned huskily, her hesitance betrayed by her quivering girl-whatevers.

“I think,” he said with a gentle nod of his head as he pushed open the secret bookcase door, “it’s time you met the real Geoffrey Endeavor Maximillian Sex.”

The bookcase door swung open exactly like a real door to reveal Mr. Sex’s innermost, privatest sexual playground: a room meticulously painted to look like a city landfill. “When I’m done with my important work,” Geoffrey said, “this is where I can come out to play.”

He kneeled and sunk his hands into the old newspapers, diapers, empty cans of Coke and plastic grocery bags. He swept his arms in two great arcs as his eyes widened and pulse pounded in his super-masculine chest.

“I like doing it on top of or near garbage.”

Bellissima nearly fainted with hyper-lust.