First of all – it seems that Columbia has bought the movie rights to Isaac Asmov’s Foundation stories, and the director tapped is Roland Emmerich.
To wash the taste of that out of your mouth… well, this worked for me, anyway:
As one of the three people who read this blog, you likely know about the recent issue of Amazing Spider-Man (#583, to be exact), in which President Elect (at the time) Obama makes an appearance. Blogger J. Caleb Mozzocco over at Newsarama posts in his Linkarama section:
“I swear to God this is the most often a black man has appeared on the cover of a superhero comic since they canceled Power Man & Iron Fist back in the 80s”:The Stranger’s Paul Constant on you-know-what, in a piece entitled “Everybody Knows Obama First Appeared in ROM Spaceknight #53.” I’d go double-check that in my copy of Essential ROM Spaceknight Vol. 3, but it doesn’t exist because there is no justice in the world.
Okay, that’s who I forgot, in my listing of the genre-related recently dead: Ray Dennis Steckler. Sorry, sir.
Now…
My son, apparently tired of his former diet of non-stop Cartoon Network series and painfully unfunny Disney Network tween sitcoms, has taken to raiding my DVD collection for entertainment, since I finally alphabetized the damn things.
First of all, forget black and white. I ran into this a lot at B-Fest. Apparently the modern young mind cannot operate in grayscale. There’s a hook to a cautionary sci-fi tale in there somewhere…
After the obvious stuff, like my animation discs, and all five seasons of Babylon 5 (I did warn him about Season 5, but you know kids: all 6 feet tall and bulletproof), it’s a little harder for him to find stuff that I’ll let him watch at his age level. He’s ten, but functioning at a teen level on most things except the hormones. (Yeah, I’m looking forward to that, he said in a monotone.)
I have an entire shelf devoted to Sherlock Holmes books and movies, so he decided it was time to watch one of those. We sat and watched the first of the Granada Series starring Jeremy Brett, “A Scandal in Bohemia”. At the end of the episode, his only response was a sigh and “That was long,” At an hour. Guess we won’t be watching more of those.
Then, today, he decided he had to watch the Halle Berry Catwoman. response after viewing: “Is there a sequel?”
How have I not disinherited this changeling yet?
Well, that was a long, dark week. A week of ignoring practically everything else in order to be at the disposal of contractors (themselves all overworked and behind schedule) so I could get repair estimates to submit to my insurance company. That includes my search for a job, to which I could only devote a minimum of time.
Well, I now have all the estimates I need, I have an interview this Friday (pray for me to your heathen gods, if you would), and I borrowed the money to get the destroyed tree out of my backyard and off my neighbor’s house.
I need to get a picture of the pile of organic debris currently in my front yard – it’s pretty impressive. The best news associated with this is that, once the damaged parts were removed, the rest of the tree was pretty healthy. I was worried that I was going to totally lose the tree, and dammit, I love trees.
Speaking of tree hugging – and that is my clumsy segue for the day – I am entering radio silence for the next month. By which I mean I won’t be listening to the radio or watching TV until after the election. I made my decision quite some time ago, and it sure as hell is not about to be swayed by the sewer water spray that has become The Campaign.
On the other hand, via my ol’ homie, Roy Bragg (who was known as “B-Pad” back in our dayz on da street), and his blog At Large, comes this sublime piece of Comedy Central:
(Present me must weigh in here and admit, with eyes averted, that Viacom took the clip off YouTube, or something equally shabby. Too bad. It was funny. Even if I don’t remember exactly what it was)
While doing research for 50 Foot DVD, on the long-gone vistas of 1967, I started thinking about a few things that had some impact on the then ten-year-old me. Of course, YouTube has it:
Yes, I owned a toy sniper rifle in its own case. There was a lot of incredibly un-fun crap going on in the late 60’s, but goddamn how I miss them sometimes.
Somehow made more poignant by last night, when my ten-year-old finally prevailed upon me to watch Alien vs Predator: Requiem, a viewing which was fraught with multiple pronouncements of “Awesome!” from him.
Here, let me spare you the incredibly spastic nature of the YouTube comments by embedding this here:
It wasn’t as awful as I’d been led to believe, but then few things are. It was pretty much standard action movie mediocrity wrapped in a fairly large budget, and continued the first AvP movie’s pattern of a large cast of undeveloped characters about whom the viewer could not be bothered to care. The more I think about this movie, the more I think this course of affairs deserves closer examination in that old, venerable project of mine, The Bad Movie Report… but that would also mean watching this, the first one, and Alien 3 and 4 again, and that could get ooky.
I have joked that since my son professes the original Alien vs Predator to be his favorite movie (it edged out The Empire Strikes Back), I may have to disinherit him… but then, he’s ten. And I have to ponder how my parents felt, forty years back, when yours truly watched that psychedelic Levis commercial raptly, over and over again… on a black and white set.
I discovered the budget-priced season sets for Banacek some months ago, each with the “TV Guide” logo. One for each season. I first stumbled on the second season, then later started looking for the first… so I’ve watched the seasons backward, too. I finally started the first season last night.
I remember watching most of the NBC Mystery Movies with variable interest. I don’t remember much about McCloud or McMillan and Wife, but I do remember Banacek and Hec Ramsey, which starred an exceptionally grizzled Richard Boone as an old west lawman who utilized then-newborn methods of criminology, including the Bertillion Method… identifying people by the shapes of their ears.
But Banacek… ah, he was my favorite. Not only was George Peppard playing the coolest man alive (had James Coburn played the role, it would have reached a level of coolness that would have caused atoms to split), but he investigated impossible crimes.
For instance: last night I watched “Let’s Hear It For A Living Legend”, in which a star NFL running back is tackled, buried under a pile-up of opposing team members, and when the players get up – the running back is gone, leaving only his helmet.
As a freelance insurance investigator, it was always Banacek’s job to figure how incredible things like that were accomplished, and half the fun was trying to figure it out before he did – though admittedly, the first time I did back in the early 70s, it really killed the rest of the episode for me. In fact, I never saw the whole episode until I watched the Season Two set.
My first viewing of these is far enough in the past that I am occasionally surprised, though I note with a bit of satisfaction that in those instances, there’s usually one part of the solution that stretches reality.
The other part of the fun is watching the writers try to deal with the early 70s. Banacek is definitely a lady’s man – suave, secure, and as I mentioned before, sooooo cool. Women repeatedly throw themselves at him, and I can imagine the scribes at their manual typewriters, thanking God for Women’s Lib, so they didn’t have to be subtle with it – they’re liberated, they can be brazen about it. Or at least as brazen as TV would allow the hussies to be!
And my word, the B-movie greats that have made guest appearances. Scott Brady, Martin Koslek, Anne Francis, Candy Clark, Don Stroud, Eric Braedon, Cesar Romero, Don Gordon, Andrew Prine, Sterling Hayden, John Saxon…. and that was just season two. Apparently I have Margot Kidder, Ted Cassidy and Broderick Crawford ahead of me.
Man, seek and YouTube shall find:
On the other hand, I can’t get into Matlock, so maybe I’m not that old.
Well, there’s not much else going on with my life right now, so I might as well.
The job search continues. Much as I’d like to say I’m looking for work 24/7, that’s just not possible, or maybe even sane. I’m starting to get “You have already applied for this position” messages, not to mention entrepreneurial spam in my inbox.
Not having to get up at the crack of dawn has some benefits. I’ve returned to my movie-before-bedtime habit of yore. This does not, alas, mean I’ve watched anything new or exciting. No, it means I’ve revisited some time-consuming stuff I’ve been meaning to for ages. Just finished up the extended versions of the Peter Jackson-directed Lord of the Rings last night. My lord, but Return of the King is a loooong movie. Still loved it.
Viewing them in the course of three days was enlightening. I picked up on a lot of stuff I could not have in a theater, each a year apart, or on DVD, released on pretty much the same schedule. Awesome stuff. Sadly, it also reminds me of how much I wanted to love Jackson’s version of King Kong, but could not. Maybe it’s time to revisit that, as well. But not tonight. Tonight… well, it’s been too damn long since I last watched The Seven Samurai.
In other time-wasting news: Back when I thought everything was hunky-dory, I bought myself a used Nintendo DS. Used, for the price, and not refurbished, because only the DS Lite was available refurbished (and at a price only $20 lower than a new DS Lite, at that). I prefer the size and heft of the original unit.
I had gotten to play a bit on a DS back when I bought one for my son for his birthday, back during the original launch. He’s been through two to date. He keeps losing/getting them stolen, so he and his hoodlum friends are coming nowhere near this one.
The purchase was spurred by one game, which got a mention in the Penny Arcade blog, called Etrian Odyssey II. First person dungeon crawl on the top screen, and virtual graph paper on the bottom screen so you can draw your own fucking map. One forum post said, “Looks okay if you like old school.” Well, it’s absolutely perfect if you are old school.
Turn-based combat, which I prefer. Another complains that you don’t get to see your party. Again old school. Given that your party portraits are mainly anime-style urchins, I find this a blessing.
Since it’s going to be a while before I can afford the DS port of Final Fantasy IV, this is a fine substitute, and I’m really enjoying it.
Yes, it’s my birthday (Thank you for remembering, Tim). Cue the bad Beatles imitation.
49 years, if you care. One year short of the half-century mark. 14 years more than I expected to live, due to various health problems when I was young.
And not a damn sight wiser.
I think that if I’ve learned anything in the last year, it’s that blogging is not for me. Being of the if-you-have-nothing-to-say-don’t-say-it persuasion, a daily sort of journal isn’t going to yield much fruit, outside of a laundry list of perceived wrongs and blatant whining about life in general. Rather too much of that these days, and I’ve done more than my fair share of contributing.
Paradoxically, one of the things that bugs me most these days is the lack of creative output on my part. I know people who work at least as many hours as I do, and still do a prodigious amount of writing/art/theater. So why not blog as a daily exercise, a means of keeping the tools sharp?
Eh.
As ever, that’s some catch, that Catch 22. The Best one we got. There are a couple of bloggers I check on regularly; they are bright, witty and interesting. They establish a very high standard, one to which I feel I can aspire, but then there is the other consideration…
…shouldn’t I be working on something else? One of the moribund stories that have been rotting in my file cabinet for years? That website I once updated weekly? Something that, I don’t know, might actually earn money?
One of these days. Meantime, it’s my birthday, it was a longer day than usual at work, I’m home now, and screw everything else – I havin’ my cake and watching Heroes.
You don’t really want to know where I’ve been for the past month, do you?
Well, maybe one or two of you do.
By and large, I have been here, sitting on my ass, staring at one line written on a blank page. For weeks. There is a term for this: Writer’s Block.
This has been tremendously humbling, and above all, depressing. After nearly a year of churning out stuff on demand for the Video Game Project, to suddenly be faced with my own inadequacy has been brutal, to say the least. Not even my usual solution, to watch episodes of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes, has worked to soothe the hurt.
It’s like this: I was asked to write a touring show by a local theater, a show about a pernicious social ill (somewhere in there, I seem to have moved from writing about knife-weilding zombies to being the Social Ills Writer. Don’t ask me how that happened). “So,” I asked. “What shape do you see this show taking?” “oh, we don’t know,” was the reply. “We’re sure you’ll come up with something. We just want it to be entertaining, and interesting.”
I wrestled with that a long time. Finally handed in the first ten pages of a script that made a social ill entertaining and interesting. The response, almost predictably, was, “This wasn’t what we had in mind at all.”
The things that leap to mind are many, including the obvious If you knew what you wanted, why didn’t you tell me? I then attempted to fulfill their needs, and have found myself staring at that one line for hours on end, as I realize over and over again that one of the major reasons I don’t own a gun is because I lack the strength to resist the urge to blow my own brains out.
There has been a slight alleviation in this gloom, as it has been decided that I will meet with a Panel of Concerned Experts, which means I will once more be writing by committee, but at least I will by God leave that first meeting with an actual idea of what is needed.
That job at Fry’s is looking better and better every day.
And that, gloomy and demeaning as it is, is where I’ve been. Except for one bright weekend, where I got to hang with my b-movie brethern. Ken has written about it far more eloquently than I could at this point, so I’ll just direct you there.
Oh, and I pulled my head out enough to review the movie Constantine. I think the movie deserves more than the few lines I scrawled about it, but hey: I got something written. Two somethings, now.
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