1.) The majority of Republicans will vote for not-Romney over Romney, given the chance. Mitt has only won three of eight states. In only one state (Nevada) has he managed to crack 50% of the vote (and then only just). In more conservative states he has trouble cracking 40% of the vote. The base does not like Romney, and for a long time their problem has been that they could not decide if they preferred Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum to him, which is understandable because Gingrich is an awful person and Santorum a proven loser, but it seems that, barring something weird happening (which has been the case frequently so far) that Santorum is finally getting the nod, mostly because Gingrich’s entire strategy was to say “I can beat Obama in a debate, I will own his ass” and then could not beat Mitt Romney in a debate. (Of course, Gingrich’s entire strategy was also predicated on the notion that Barack Obama would be lost without a teleprompter, which is blindly stupid – Obama owned McCain at the debates in 2008 and has always been a careful and eloquent extemporaneous speaker – but hey, nothing like the GOP for demanding that we all pretend that the black guy can’t speak well without help.)

2.) Despite this, Romney can still win. Since most of the GOP primaries are no longer winner-take all, Romney can still win the nomination by being able to get a healthy dollop of each state’s delegates plus a larger percentage of the big states like New York and California where he would never win in the general election but which are comfortable enough with him to give him their support. That, combined with the fact that Romney has practically all of the announced superdelegates so far, could give him the nod. Of course, a large part of Romney’s victory path has always required him to be viewed as the inevitable result, and if Romney appears to not be an inevitable result then he could very well crumble.

3.) No matter what happens, this is not a GOP version of Hillary/Obama 2008. That primary campaign was between a longtime Democratic party top dog and the Future of the Party ™ who was a legitimate threat. This primary is between a Republican version of John Kerry except less likeable and human, a dude who lost a re-election campaign by twenty points, a guy who was so dishonest that his fellow Republicans said “dude, whoa” and an insane dwarf.

4.) Nobody likes Mitt Romney. Mitt has run an excruciatingly negative campaign. He has spent more than the rest of the field combined, almost all of it on negative ads against Newt Gingrich. This is not someone who will convince you to vote for him; he can only say “don’t vote for the other guy.” That’s not how you win elections. He could still very possibly win the primary, because money can go a long way. But in the general?

The actual engine wouldn’t have to be too difficult: after all, pro wrestling writing mostly depends on a number of scenarios that only vary mildly (the basic feud, the friends-split-up-and-become-enemies, the formation of a heel stable, etc.). You could probably come up with about forty or so possible mini-plots and the player could mix and match them to best effect. In terms of the wrestlers themselves, you could assign ratings for various traits – some for interviews and acting ability (acting ability, improvisational ability, charisma) and some for wrestling ability (selling, execution of moves, large moveset, ability to resist injury) and then some X-factors (motivating factors which make the wrestler happy – some want money, some want outside-of-wrestling-fame, some want to only wrestle great matches, etc.; as well as how much the wrestler demands in salary). You could also do something like how baseball-manager games do and as wrestlers age their traits can shift (and not always simply a decrease, either). And, if you were being honest to the spirit of the thing, there would be the occasional tragic death.

Once you get past the wrestlers, you can start to consider the audience and business models as well. How do you negotiate TV deals? What does your audience demand, and does it vary from city to city? How much money does your company spend on pyrotechnics? What PPV schedule will you use? How do you deal with competing wrestling companies – cooperation deals like the old territory system or WWF/ECW in the late 90s, or total bloodthirsty competition a la the Monday Night Wars? Hell, you could even timeshift scenarios – managing a wrestling promotion in the 1960s-1970s was a totally different ballgame than managing one in the 1980s or today. Put together an “exodus” challenge to mimic the business challenges of losing a number of your top young stars to your chief rival – how do you stay afloat?

The only problem is I don’t see how you would account for events like the Montreal Screwjob or other things that exist only in wrestling and are one-off, non-duplicable events. Which is part of the reason wrestling is the way it is, I suppose, but make the tycoon game that much harder to design.

Personally, I can get neither excited nor outraged about this. DC, in response to what they have to believe to be popular demand for this, is publishing a prequel that will be subject to more scrutiny than the ‘Gone With the Wind’ sequel. They’ve lined up some pretty decent talent for this, although personally if I was any one of these writers or artists I wouldn’t take this job for love nor money. A good chunk of your potential audience has written you off as a soulless hack simply for the act of saying “yes”, especially since Moore himself has been on record for the last 27 years as saying he does not want other writers handling the characters. Even if they’re persuaded to buy the series, they’re going to be comparing you to the towering shadow that Moore and Gibbons cast over the comic-book landscape since 1985. If I thought I was good enough to write or draw something that could be favorably compared to ‘Watchmen’, you can bet I wouldn’t want to make it an actual prequel to ‘Watchmen’.

But more than that, I wonder, is there really a demand for this to begin with? Even if Moore could be persuaded to return for a prequel (which, let’s face it, was never going to happen…and frankly, I think this marks the point where DC has officially given up on seeking a rapprochement with Moore…which at least means we should finally see those comic-book based ‘Watchmen’ figures…) …even if Gibbons would return to work with Moore…is this actually necessary? Do we need (as Moore himself put it) to see a “Moby-Dick” prequel, or tales about what happened to Nick after the end of ‘The Great Gatsby’? For some reason, stories told in comics seem to have a momentum driving them to sequels that we don’t see in other media. (Arguably, movies fall victim to the same pressures, but it seems to be only the “light” films that give in. ‘Transformers’ gets a sequel, but nobody’s out there demanding we see a ‘Silent Running 2′.)

I think that to some extent, comics fans been conditioned to see comic books as a continuing story, despite decades of efforts to break away from the notion. The idea of a “final issue” is one we’ve never gotten truly used to, because the vast majority of comic book fans read comics to be immersed in a universe rather than to read a particular story. (Okay, that’s a pretty big statement to make, but I think there’s something to it. Comic book fans want to enter the Marvel or DC universe for a while, to vicariously live in a world of superheroes and excitement and strangeness, and so the individual stories aren’t as important.) As a result, when someone does put out a sequel or a prequel to a big story, the simple desire to return to that universe is enough to overcome even knowing skepticism about a story’s prospects.

Take ‘The Dark Knight Strikes Again’, probably the other best-known return to the other best-known 80s story. Miller was already beginning to be considered as “past his prime”, and many people doubted he could recapture the lightning in a bottle that was the original mini-series. The promotional artwork and story synopses sounded like fan-fiction based on a classic, and nobody really seemed to have a compelling rationale for the project beyond the simple mercenary belief that it would sell. And yet, sell it did. I personally bought the whole series. I thought the first issue was shoddy and embarrassing, and I still bought the next two. The pull of “what happens next?” was just that strong.

I think that DC believes that the same rationale will work again. They look at comics fans and see people so interested in the Watchmen universe that they don’t care about what’s going to be on those pages in particular; they just want to go back to that world for a little bit longer and live there. I don’t have any particular investment one way or another; I don’t hope they fail, but I don’t wish them success either. All I do have is two words regarding people who tried to recapture the spirit of a cult classic with different creators, hoping that people’s affection for the original would draw them back to a sequel:

“S. Darko”.

In comparison, when a kid speaks up against gay marriage, we get this:

I really feel bad for the kids who have two parents of the same gender. Even though some kids feel like it’s fine, they have no idea what kind of wonderful experiences they miss out on. I don’t want any more kids to get confused about what’s right and OK. I really don’t want to grow up in a world where marriage isn’t such a special thing anymore. It’s rather scary to think that when I grow up the legislator or the court can change the definition of any word they want. If they can change the definition of marriage, then they could change the definition of any word. People have the choice to be gay, but I don’t want to be affected by their choice.

In order, that’s

1.) An endorsement of traditional straight marriage as “special” and “wonderful” without bothering to explain why it is special or wonderful
2.) A suggestion that homosexuality is wrong without bothering to explain why it is wrong
3.) The old saw that same-sex-marriage will make straight marriage less special, which is an argument from privilege
4.) Sky-is-falling assertions about the powers of the courts to change legal definitions (which have existed since there were courts, basically)
5.) The suggestion that homosexuality is chosen behaviour despite mountains of evidence to the contrary

On the bright side, this young woman’s career path is most likely already mapped out for her. In ten to twelve years, expect to see Sarah Crank (and oh my god is that not the most appropriate last name ever) either writing for National Review or on Fox News, depending on how conventionally pretty she is.

Which, not to belabour the point: anybody out there interested in illustrating an approximately 8-page horror comic I thought of this afternoon (in between bouts of coughing), email me.

(The story is not coughing-related.)

Let’s be clear: this regulation won’t work. It won’t work because there’s no viable enforcement mechanism, which you kind of need in order to enforce municipal regulations.² It won’t work because it’s a local regulation in an industry which is, to an extent, notoriously mobile. (Even were this regulation federal – numerous porn producers already book time in the tropics and shoot multiple features in a row there. There is no reason this practice would not continue and/or expand.) And it won’t work because the performers – both male and female – mostly don’t want to use them, because pornographic sex takes a lot longer than regular sex and, to put it bluntly, there are chafing issues when condoms are used.

But the spirit of the regulation, at least, is welcome. I don’t believe there’s another economic sector that is as large and as under-regulated as porn is, which is the product of a public that is not willing to admit they mostly use porn regularly and equally not willing to stop using it. The result is an industry whose exploitation of young just-off-the-bus girls has become a well-known joke, where worker protection is essentially nonexistent and where HIV flareups are, sadly, not uncommon.³ We should demand a healthier, safer work environment for pornographic actors, because all it will do is make the industry better. (People who worry about whether better treatment of women within the industry could result in less wild porn should consider that some of the raunchiest and craziest pornographers working today are women. I won’t link here, but Google “Burning Angel” or “Ovidie” or even Nina Hartley.)

Plus, as a bonus for pornographers, regulation carries with it official recognition as well, and in an industry where copyright violation has become so endemic that numerous films are produced simply as loss-leaders to get additional longterm money from the shrinking portion of the porn audience that is still willing to pay money for it, official recognition is worth quite a bit.

1. Memo to all writers everywhere: when you use “bratwurst” as a euphemism for “penis,” you’re writing subpar Krusty the Klown material. CUCAMONGA!
2. Presumably police will not be accidentally wandering on to porn sets on a regular basis.
3. Many porn companies will talk about their rigorous testing schedules, but the day I trust self-regulation is the day I join the GOP and start ranting about immigunts takin der jerbs.

FEBRUARY:

February is traditionally a light month for blockbusters, but the same can’t be said for mockbusters; the Asylum is releasing “Spectral Riders: Vengeful Spirit” early next month. The film focuses on a horse ranch in California that’s haunted by demonic spirits that possess their horses, turning them into “spectral riders” that hunt down the ranch hands one by one. The same month features the release of horror film “The Lady In Black”, about a wizarding school whose ghosts turn against them, and “The Chronicles”, about a secret book that can bestow superpowers and the teenage boys who go searching for it. But perhaps the most exciting news is the Asylum’s 3-D re-release of their “lost classic”, “The Phantasmal Menace”, about a secret order of alien samurai that do battle with evil kung-fu ghosts that possess corpses.

MARCH:

The month of March sees the long-anticipated sequel to their film “Princess of Mars”. “Prince of Mars” shows how John Carter (Antonio Sabato Jr) returns to the world of Barsoom and rises to the position of Warlord alongside his love, Dejah Thoris (played once again by Traci Lords.) This one is rumored to have a serious budget to compete with Disney’s rip-off project, “John Carter”, possibly even as much as two million dollars! (That’s a lot of dollars.) March also sees the release of “The Starvation Games”, a gruesome horror flick about a fasting competition started by a group of anorexics, and “Fury of the Titans”, a movie about the ancient Greek gods re-emerging in modern-day Los Angeles.

APRIL:

The Asylum takes a bit of a respite in April, only coming out with one film, but it’s a doozy. “Titanic: Adventures in the Third Dimension” is the true saga of what happened to the legendary lost vessel, as it passes through a vortex contained in the heart of an iceberg (known as “The Heart of the Sea”) and two of its passengers, Jackson and Rosie, must battle the ferocious natives of the lost planet of Pandorra. But will the robotic Terminatrix be their ally…or their assassin?

MAY:

May sees an exciting twist on the “found footage” genre with “The Avenged”, about a group of everyday people trapped in Los Angeles in the middle of a vast superhero/supervillain battle. Those who’ve seen the advanced screenings have described it as “like “Cloverfield”, but with supervillains”, and some consider it the Asylum’s most ‘avant-garde’ release. Fans of military action might prefer “American Battleship”, an exciting drama about a battleship lost in the Bermuda Triangle and fighting aliens, while fans of horror will no doubt get excited about “Darkest Shadows”, the tale of an immortal vampire who has an irrational fear of darkness, but cannot survive in sunlight. Meanwhile, fans of the “weird west” genre will get their fill with “Three Men In Black”, a tale of three outlaws who ride into a town beseiged by zombies.

JUNE:

In June, the Asylum finally releases their long-anticipated “Grimm’s Snow White”, an ultra-faithful retelling of the Snow White story that returns it to its gory roots, along with “American G.I.: Retribution”, an action thriller about three soldiers trapped behind enemy lines who have to take down a secret research lab that creates vampire cyborg lizard zombie ninja pirahnas. (The zombie theme continues with “George Washington, Zombie Hunter”, which purports to tell ‘the true history of the Revolutionary War’.)

JULY:

The Asylum is officially declaring July “superhero month”, as they come out with twin action blockbusters that focus on capes and cowls. “Amazing: Rise of the Spider-King” takes the super-hero saga and inverts it, telling the tale from the point of view of a two-bit punk as he attempts to become the hero ‘Spider-King’, only to find that his past won’t let him go. At the same time, “Fall of the Darkest Knight” is a tragic tale of the last battle of New York’s legendary superhero, as he tries one last time to battle evil with a body that is finally beginning to betray him. (Rumor has it that the two films were shot simultaneously, with the Darkest Knight battling it out with Spider-King in the finale, but The Asylum will neither confirm nor deny this exciting tidbit of info!)

AUGUST-OCTOBER:

After the breakneck pace of the summer, August finally sees a slowdown to the release schedule between the end of the summer movie season and the start of the Christmas season. (After the blockbuster action we’ve already discussed, we might need to take a breath!) Only “Totally Recalled” is on the Asylum slate, scheduled for August. According to the press release, this is an experimental sci-fi film about a man who develops a memory enhancer so perfect that it actually can summon past memories into tangible existence…which becomes all too dangerous when taken by an FBI profiler trying to catch a killer.

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER:

And as we finally enter the holidays, it becomes clear that the Asylum has saved the best for last. “Broken Dawn” is the terrifying tale of a pack of vampires stalked by a relentless, obsessive romantic named Dawn; this girl’s creepy, emotionally manipulative vampire fetish even freaks out the undead! Elsewhere, “Zombie World War” is an alternate history saga of a World War II fought by Germans with access to voodoo sorcery, while “Fallen Sky” is the story of a superspy’s attempts to stop a madman from hacking into the guidance systems of the world’s satellites and turning them into orbital-strike missiles. But the film everyone’s talking about is “The Unexpected Journey of the Habit”, an urban-fantasy saga about a nun recruited by a modern-day pagan shaman to rescue a circus (the Asylum used just about every actor under four feet tall in Hollywood!) from a demonic entity in the form of a gaseous cloud. The spectacular battle between the nun and Smog supposedly took upwards of a week to render digitally!

So for those of you who want to see movies, but can’t afford to see actual movies, the Asylum has your 2012 set!

(Note: Two of the titles in this are real. Try to guess which two without looking it up.)