by Kenneth Burgin

1/7/2011

written on the subway this morning

Wanna be Scrooge McDuck swimming in your money rich? Start hoarding your chocolate now! According to the Cocoa Research Association, the world is consuming more chocolate than it is producing cocoa. It doesn’t take an economics major to figure out what that means. Chocolate may eventually be more valuable than gold and become the new standard for the American dollar.

Cocoa is very difficult to harvest and cocoa farmers in West Africa currently make an average of 80 cents a day which is why they are beginning to grow less troublesome, lower-cost crops with better yields.

According the Nature Conservation Research Council’s John Mason:

“In 20 years chocolate will be like caviar. It will become so rare and so expensive that the average Joe just won’t be able to afford it.”

So you may laugh at my survival shelter full of Chocolate now, but in 20 years I’ll be the Bill Gates of Candy Bars!!

I had the pleasure of seeing Howard Shore’s The Fellowship of the Ring score performed live with full choir and orchestration at the Radio City Music Hall this past Saturday and I have to say that movies will never be the same again. I did wonder before arriving if I would be able to hear the dialogue of the film over the orchestra, and am amazed to report that they did such an incredible job matching levels that I didn’t miss a word of the film. I can’t get over how amazing this was. It was like seeing the movie again for the first time. If you missed don’t worry, they are doing it again next year for The Two Towers. For further information go here http://www.theradiocitylotrconcert.com/ If you did see the film and are worried that you’ll never be satisfied with a cinema experience again, there may be some hope for you yet. There is a similar experience on tour now for John Williams Star Wars Score for more information go here http://starwarsinconcert.com/ Contain yourself fanboys, the opening vid on the site will make you go all tingly.

The picture above was the view from my seat before the choir came in, Spike Lee was nearly 15 rows behind me, thank you ebay!

I mean, c’mon he’s a vampire! If I wrote a book and a movie romanticizing regular serial killers, (albeit ones that are trying to quit) and not supernatural ones, do you think it would do as well? I guess Dexter is doing all right, but is he trying to quit? (Hate to admit it but yes, I did enjoy the movie) God, we’re a sick society…

Sorry I’ve been gone for awhile folks but I plan to be posting on a more regular basis (fingers crossed). I know there’s no excuse but I was kidnapped by ninja’s and saved by pirates and well I had to pay off my rescue by plundering the high seas for awhile. I do miss it so if I disappear for awhile again, be careful on your cruise ship.

I normally buy my fix of superheroey cracktasticness from my dealer on a weekly basis, and usually walk out having spent between $12 to $20 some smackaroons. Last month however, I had such a crazy schedule that I found myself unable to get to my favorite purveyor of 2D delight (Midtown Comics) until the third week of the month, and that’s when I had a jaw dropping revelation; Comic books are a lot more expensive than they used to be. It dawned on me when I realized that I had spent over $80 Georgie Porgies to catch up on the three weeks of paneled drama that I had missed out on and caused me to take a closer look at my bill and then subsequently the front of those crack covered harlots we call comic books (they’d just as soon go home with you as with me if you bought them). 

I noticed that the indies were averaging 3.99 which I thought was appropriate due to lack of volume, merchandising, licensing, fan base, and difficulties involved with finding a publisher or self-publishing but then I hit my mainstream rags and saw something that nearly made me pop my claws, grab Mjolnir from its hallowed place on the wall, pull down my pointy eared cowl and raise holy hell, Marvel and DC were charging the same thing for most of their titles.

I felt hornswaggled. Marvel and DC make more money from licensing, movies and ad revenue than any other comic house out there and yet they feel the need to gouge us on books which already have multiple crossover storylines forcing us to buy more titles to follow the whole story. Another interesting tidbit I picked up on; most of the indie comics were printed on thicker more durable, i.e. expensive, stock.

Then another thought crossed my mind. How can a kid buy comic books today? They’d have to get a part time job just to follow a couple titles. Up until recently you could walk out of your local purveyor of 2D stories with 3 books for a 10 spot. Now a 10 spot will only get you 2 books. Let’s put this in perspective. A paperback novel costs $7.99, so a comic book now costs half the price of an entire novel and you have to buy another one next month to follow the story. An average comic reads in about 15-30 min, the average ½ hour television program is $1.99 on iTunes. It costs me less to buy a television show on iTunes than it does to buy a comic book from the two biggest publishers in the industry? Just doesn’t seem right.

In these tough economic times it seems more than a little insensitive. I know a father, with a love for comics who would love to share the tradition and mythology with his kids but can’t afford to give them an allowance right now to buy comics and the little buggers aren’t legally old enough to get a part time job, and I know he’s not the only one.

Comic book popularity is nearly mainstream (can you believe it?) and must be nearing its all time peak partly due to the incredible writers and artists bringing us our favorite heroes today and also due to the continued success in Hollywood, but with ad revenue, licensing and movie profits that most indies don’t have, it seems sort of greedy for Marvel and DC to do this to their fans. Maybe it’s because I just had a birthday and am starting to feel entitled to be cheap, but I think this is worth looking into.

So c’mon Joe (I’m going to challenge you to take the lead on this), we met at Marvel’s Comic con after party, I was the loud drunken Scotsman (who’s only Scottish when he’s had a few too many),  have a talk with the boys and girls over at Marvel to do something about this and DC will have to follow suit.

With all the respect in the world,

Kenneth Burgin

Actor/Writer and faithful Fan

Now imagine I’m a psychologist and let me ask you “How does that make you feel?”, better yet imagine I’m a entertainment news host who’s asked to interview you and then surprises you with the trailer for said project and waits for your reaction.

That’s exactly what happened to William Shatner, now 78, at an interview on Access Hollywood when shown the trailer for the Star Trek relaunch. He handles it like a pro, even manages to plug a book he wrote in the process.

I’ve never been a big fan of the Shat or the original Star Trek for that matter, more of a Star Wars guy myself, but I can’t help feeling sorry for the guy. Sure he’s had his time in the sun but Leonard Nimoy does have a cameo in the movie. It seems only appropriate that if you are to honor one of the original cast with a cameo, that you should include the other living cast members, and at least the Shat. Look close, you can see the pain in his eyes.