This week A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever was released across the pond so I hope all the UK ghost heads are ready to check it out. Blackwell’s and Waterstones are just two of the fine UK retailers who carry the book. My apologies to anyone who preordered it from Amazon UK; for some reason, they are sticking to a release date of February 17th. Strike four thousand against the Jeff Bezos website.
Let me also remind you that the audiobook of Parallel Dimension as read by Tim Dixon is available via Google Play and Apple Books. Tim did such an amazing job and working with him was very cool. Thanks again, Tim!
So it looks like they’re gonna start filming another Ghostbusters movie pretty soon. This time I hope they bring back Janosz!
Awooo! I wrote a long thing about Wolfen, the best of 1981’s werewolf bumper crop. Also, what are the best Howling sequels? $2 a month unlocks this essay plus all my other exclusive content. Bark at the moon!
Bloody Disgusting has published a very flattering review of my new book A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever. Ike Oden writes that ACPD is “the definitive, unexpurgated story of the beloved film franchise and its central players. Finally, ghostheads have their own gospel, a Tobin’s Spirit Guide of thoroughly researched and thoughtfully disseminated Ghostbusters history.”
Oden sums up the book as “an addictively written, utterly engrossing read, and an absolute must-have stocking stuffer for fans this holiday season.” Thanks! Although I don’t think the book will fit in a stocking. Maybe you should wrap it up with a nice ribbon.
Remember, if you buy A Convenient Parallel Dimension directly from the publisher right now you can save 35% off with the code 22JOYSALE. This is a cool deal. It saves you some money and ensures that absolutely no money goes to Jeff Bezos. Sale ends on January 6th, 2023.
Speaking of odious billionaire scum, Elon Musk was making it feel extremely gross to remain on Twitter so I deactivated my account. It’s a bummer. For all its pre-Elon problems, Twitter was tough to beat as a news aggregate. There were tons of people on there who clued me in on social issues that never got amplification anywhere else. It was an awesome comedy aggregate too. The hardest laughs in the past decade came from anonymous weirdos tweeting like they had nothing to lose. Most importantly, I met my wife on Twitter.
So Twitter was a valuable resource in those respects and it sucks that the world’s richest edgelord is tanking it because all his kids hate him and his all his ex-wives hate him and everyone sensible person in the world hates him because he’s perpetually full of shit and his cars keep murdering people. Just another reason this country needs a maximum wage. No one should be able to spend $44 billion on a utility just so they can treat it like a pile of Legos. Billionaires should not exist!
Meanwhile, the rest of us are just trying to afford groceries. That reminds me — if you enjoy my writing, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to this blog. For the nominal fee of $2 a month, JG2LAND PREMIUM unlocks a tier of exclusive content that’s continuously growing. Here are the pieces subscribers have enjoyed thus far:
Ass My Kiss (history behind KISS tribute album Kiss My Ass)
Too Hot To Stop (review of Live Wire, a.k.a. the exploding clown movie)
Witchy Woman (review of “Tucker’s Witch” pilot starring Kim Cattrall)
Your membership fee also helps support all the free stuff I post around here, like my story about trying to do a Dead Kennedys book and my piece on the deadly Pepsi revolt of 1992. Help support independent writing, help support me and my beautiful wife and my beautiful children and my beautiful guinea pigs. Sign up for JG2LAND PREMIUM today.
Enjoy your holiday season and remember, the pandemic is not over. Please keep masking and avoiding large crowds. Let’s make 2023 the safest year yet. I mean, as safe as we can be in a country with no gun control.
The audiobook of A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever has been released! It’s available via Google Play (click here) and Apple Books (click here). Twelve engrossing hours narrated by the incredible Tim Dixon. What better way to drown out the ills of the world?
Of course you can still buy the silent, three dimensional version of ACPD and if you buy it directly from the publisher right now they’ll take 35% off the price with the code 22JOYSALE. Wow, not a bad deal. Click clicky!
The best deal of all is free, so ask your local library to get a few copies of A Convenient Parallel Dimension if they haven’t already. Support your local library! Support all libraries! They are vital to functioning communities!
Still on the fence about reading this book? Consider these critical appraisals. “A deeper dive into Ghostbusters than anything before,” says Chris Stewart, founder of long-running Ghostbusters news source Proton Charging. “I love this book like Winston loved New York!” raves Book Bits emcee Dave Kirby. Noted Ghostbusters fan / historian Alex Newborn also posted a very positive video review on his YouTube channel.
I’ve been on two podcasts to talk about ACPD — Episode 253 of People Are The Enemy and Episode 149 of The Hungry Trilobyte Podcast. Big thanks to Andy Mascola and Aaron Bossig, the respective hosts of these shows. Both are awesome dudes.
Well, that’s the update for now. Thanks to everyone for your interest. I hope bustin’ always makes you feel good.
I wrote a book detailing the history of the Ghostbusters movies (all of them, even the ones they didn’t make). It’s called A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever and it’ll be published this November by Lyons Press. Click here to preorder it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — I thought I knew everything about this franchise…then I started work on this book. I think you’re gonna love it.
Before A Convenient Parallel Dimension, I was working on a book about the Guns N’ Roses album Chinese Democracy. You know, the album it took them 15 years to record and release. I am pleased to report that Backbeat Books has asked me to complete the Chinese Democracy book for 2025. What can I say? Take me down to Paradise City.
I’m going to blog here again on a weekly basis and that includes some posts that will only be available to JG2LAND PREMIUM subscribers. For just $2 a month (or more, if you want) you can enjoy access to it all. The first premium post went up yesterday. It’s a review of Two of a Kind, a 1983 John Travolta / Olivia Newton-John comedy no one really remembers. Click here to sign up and check it out.
Remember, when you become a JG2LAND PREMIUM subscriber, you’re not just supporting me, you’re supporting my beautiful wife, my beautiful children, and our beautiful guinea pigs.
Thank you for all your love and support. Now let’s try to relax before Rob Zombie’s Munsters comes out and the discourse becomes unbearable.
— I deleted my substack after it came to light that the company was giving money to anti-trans voices; eventually I will repost much of that content here as I attempt to relaunch jg2land; only recently have I accepted the fact that throughout the history of my freelance career this blog has been the only truly reliable structure
— my latest book A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever will be published by Lyons Press in the Fall of 2022; I think it’s going to be the best thing I’ve ever done and I hope you will agree
— they changed the interface on the wordpress post editor and I don’t know how to make that image of Muncher smaller but honestly every image of Muncher should be the size of a highway billboard
— my latest book A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever will be published late next year by Lyons Press
— I keep talking about how much I’ve learned working on A Convenient Parallel Dimension and to that degree I’ve removed some articles from this blog that contained factual errors about our very famous ghost smashers
“I bet you have a lot of great stories about writing that Misfits book,” people occasionally remark, and they’re right.
Here now are those stories, collected in one easy-to-look at PDF. Who was nice / cool to me while I was making This Music Leaves Stains? Who wasn’t? What was the book tour like? Also, selected pieces of Misfits lore deleted from Stains that you might not be overly familiar with. Please, come inside and read You Can’t Come Inside.
If you want to absorb this thing for free, be my guest. If you want to give me money for it, wow, that’d be fucking cool. Think up an amount and Paypal or Venmo jgreenejr at gmail dot com.
The photograph on page 42 was taken by Rob Farren, whose name was accidentally omitted from the credits. James Greene, Jr. regrets this error. James Greene, Jr. also regrets the typos on pages 6 and 14.
– if we’re to believe this futuristic entry from 17 years ago, hundreds of mirror universes exist around our own, and there are in fact ways to move between them; get this, though—if you can find and kill your mirror self in one of these extra realms, you gain physical and mental power; Jet Li’s charming villain Gabriel Yulaw is the Bo Jackson of eliminating his doppelgängers, much to the chagrin of multiverse cops played by Jason Statham and Delroy Lindo; soon Yulaw finds himself in our dimension, on the hunt for nice guy Gabe Law (also Jet Li), husband to a veterinarian (Carla Gugino) and basically some schmoe you could have a beer with
– The One wants to be Terminator 2 meets Men in Black meets The Matrix meets “The Patty Duke Show”; the resulting broth is a dissatisfying cartoon, even in the martial arts sequences that ostensibly hold this film together; so many computer fx are ladled over Li’s fights you never get a good sense of gravity, which the viewer needs to empathize with / root for either character
– it probably wouldn’t have hurt for every actor to take another run through additional dialogue recording; sometimes what they say is crystal clear, and other times it’s pure mud
– the most dated aspect of this early Aughts blunder is the blanket nu metal soundtrack; alas, it was never commercially released, so you’ll just have to turn on FM radio if you want to hear the dissonant grind of Drowning Pool, Disturbed, Linkin Park, and Papa Roach
– Jet Li’s final piece of dialogue in The One is remarkably stupid, so much so you won’t believe it isn’t more widely quoted in irony
– if nothing else, there are flashes here that suggest Li would have made a far better Batman than Christian Bale
– alas, the above screencap is all we get of Dreadlock Universe Jet Li
Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Starring: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill
Directed by Rian Johnson
2017
Accepting reality is one of life’s most difficult challenges. Answers elude burning questions, or arrive with baggage you couldn’t expect. The wrong decision feels one hundred percent right; the right decision leaves everyone feeling wrong. These ideas form the core of The Last Jedi, an entry in the Star Wars saga that blurs the good versus evil / black against white mythos that’s been cemented in this entertainment monolith for decades. The results are dream-like, surreal, mostly captivating, occasionally bonkers—yet you witness a growth, not just with the characters but the franchise itself.
The Last Jedi picks up right where 2015’s The Force Awakens left off; Rey (Daisy Ridley) has located the hermit Luke Skywalker, whom she hopes will join the Resistance against the First Order while training her in the ways of the Force. Luke, still reeling from events in his recent past, is wary of this young newcomer and the trouble she may bring to his doorstep. Meanwhile, a power struggle is coming to light within the First Order as Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) openly doubts the abilities of Darth Vader’s grandson, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). Ren is battling his own demons and is not in fact very present in mind for what the First Order believes will be the final push against General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) and her Resistance. There’s internal distress on that side, too, as spicy boy pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and ex-stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) bristle under Resistance leadership and ultimately go rogue.
Ideas that the Star Wars prequels fumbled to infamy are presented here with grace and wonder. There are also moments in The Last Jedi where they roll the space dice and come up with droid eyes. Of course, this echoes the film’s aforementioned themes—you can’t always get what you want, reality can be a bitch. Director Rian Johnson has broken away from the formulaic feel that many believe hampers The Force Awakens; at the same time, Johnson (who also authored the script) deepens the chemistry between the leads, bringing resonance to the fact this war for the galaxy’s heart is extremely personal.
And yes, the rumors are true: this might be the Star Wars with the most jokes. One liners, visual gags, even bits reminiscent of Monty Python. The levity is appreciated as it bridges the gap between emotional set pieces. Don’t forget, The Last Jedi is two hours plus. A little editing may not have hurt, but perhaps that would decrease the perfectly feverish ambience.
FINAL SCORE: Three and a half porgs (out of four).
For a lengthy, uncensored history of the Ghostbusters films, who ya gonna call? A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever. Available in regular, ebook, or audiobook form. Click here or here!
BRAVE PUNK WORLD
My second book is called Brave Punk World: The Internat’l Rock Underground From Alerta Roja to Z-Off and it is now available for purchase. It’s about the development of punk rock in other countries. All the info you want / need about it is right here (click here!).
The Misfits Book
The soft cover of This Music Leaves Stains is available here. Get that sucker and learn all about New Jersey's greatest punk band! Click here to look at the corresponding photo tumblr and click here for the official F.A.Q.
“I bet you have a lot of great stories about writing that Misfits book,” people occasionally remark, and they’re right. 
For a lengthy, uncensored history of the Ghostbusters films, who ya gonna call? A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever. Available in regular, ebook, or audiobook form. Click 
The soft cover of This Music Leaves Stains is available here. Get that sucker and learn all about New Jersey's greatest punk band! Click here to look at the corresponding photo tumblr and click here for the official F.A.Q.
JG2LAND: THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF JAMES GREENE, JR. 