Color Blind Casting

The rant/article caught my eye.

One reason is that I really like Michael B. Jordan (Friday Night Lights, Chronicle).  And reading the controversy it somewhat amuses me that I remember MBJ from his teenaged years on "All My Children" where he had not one, not two, but three sisters who were caucasian (He had a single father who was raising the blue-eyed blond (autistic) daughter of his late first wife.  The father eventually re-married and acquired two more step daughters, which is how Jordan's character ended up with three sisters.)

From a poster @ DailyKos:

Comic book geeks are in an uproar over the casting of African American actor Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm (aka The Human Torch) in the upcoming Fantastic Four movie. I didn't know comic book purists carried so much racial baggage.

Producers for the new movie announced the new cast recently, which also includes Miles Teller as Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), Kate Mara as Sue Storm (The Invisible Girl) and Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm (The Thing).

What has most of the geeks spun up is that in the comic book Sue and Johnny Storm are full biological siblings and they're both white and blonde. The geeks are in a tizzy over the "political correctness" of making Johnny black and can't wrap their minds around how a black guy and a white girl can be siblings. Guess they never heard of step-siblings or half-siblings.

Anyway, reading some of the comments made by comic book "purists" on a story running on Variety.Com (http://variety.com/2014/film/news/miles-teller-kate-mara-fantastic-four-1201099921/#respond) made me alternately laugh, sigh and want to punch somebody. Many of these people really take these comic book stories seriously...way too seriously. But if you're a true comic book geek, I guess that what you do.

Alliteration. It's a Thing.

I wrote up some comments recently about one of the romances that I had read and nutmeg3 pointed out that I never gave the title of the novel.  I had to admit that I had forgotten the title of the novel.  I forget titles all the time.

Want evidence of why it's so damn easy to forget the titles?  There are two novels (that are in no way related) currently downloaded from my Audible account.

*  Beguiling the Beauty

* To Beguile a Beast


Gee, who could ever confuse those?

(And how often is the term 'beguile' used in everyday conversation?)